Ken Ham is disgusted. Ontario, Canada is going to allow an “X” designation in addition to “M” or “F” on their drivers licenses, for people who “do not exclusively identify as male or female”. This is unbiblical! Don’t you know that the Bible specifically prescribes what material must be present on your motor vehicle licenses? What is St Peter going to do when you die and you have to present your ID in order to go through the Pearly Gates?
But seriously, he’s concerned that this is a sign of creeping moral crepitude.
Many people in the church—especially young people—have been so influenced by the culture’s do-whatever-feels-right ethic that they accept whatever is popular, regardless of whether or not it contradicts God’s Word. Christian leaders and parents need to note this growing trend and teach their young people to think biblically, starting with God’s Word. That’s the only way we can raise up a generation that stands solidly on the Bible and the gospel of Jesus Christ. And they need to be reminded of Scripture such as, “But from the beginning of the creation, God “made them male and female” (Mark 10:6).
You can learn more about a compassionate, biblical response to transgender issues in the Answers magazine article, “Transgender Identity—Wishing Away God’s Design.”
Oh, this explains everything. Transgender men and women are making this choice because it’s popular. Declaring yourself to be a gender different from the socially imposed one is done simply to get oneself invited to all the chic parties and to be loved by all the other kids at school. But wait! That tract Ham cites, “Transgender Identity—Wishing Away God’s Design” includes this comment:
The rates of suicide among transgender people show the brokenness this choice causes. Paul McHugh, former Johns Hopkins University psychiatrist in chief, has noted in the Wall Street Journal that the suicide rate among transgender individuals is 20 times higher than in the normal population. Embracing transgender identity at the cultural level does not produce happiness and wholeness. It goes hand in hand with personal confusion and disorder.
So the apologists at Answers in Genesis are simultaneously declaring that transgender people are only in it for the popularity and happiness it brings, and recognizing that there are high rates of misery imposed on the transgender population. And they don’t even pause to realize the contradictions in their position.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It goes hand-in-hand with how they read the Bible — there are no contradictions here, while happily embracing both sides of every contradiction.
Sorry, Hamm, but the bible says no such thing. True fact: it was NOT WRITTEN IN ENGLISH. He will need to read the original manuscripts† in Ancient Greek, not the mistranslated (intentionally and unintentionally) versions we have today. On then will he understand what was truly written.
† Ha ha, trick statement – there ARE NO ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS, just copies, all rife with errors, deletions, and additions (intentional and unintentional).
As I have pointed out before, Genesis 1:27 states that God created man and woman in his image. Since man and woman are both in the image of God, the image of God is not gendered binary. Transgender — and other nonbinary — are therefore closer to being the image of God.
This has actual theololgical precedent: The rabbis of the Talmud were the first to suggest that Adam was actually created with both the man and woman combined. One said that the man and woman were joined at their backs, and God split them at their backs when creating Eve (basically, God divided Eve from Adam).
Reading Midrash is a hell of a trip.
Is crepitude a word? Decrepitude is.
Oh, but it’s all in the translation. God made everyone male AND female. We’re each a bit of both, you see.
Maybe Ham can try to stop the Canadians by claiming that an “X” is a Christian cross, so this is a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state. Except, of course, it’s Canada. But then Ham is good at ignoring the technical stuff.
Heck, why don’t I just copy this whole paragraph?
Source: Bialik, Hayim Nahman and Ravnitzky, Yehoshua Hone. The Book of Legends (Sefer Ha-Aggadah)
Hey, Ham — how d’ya like these answers in Genesis?
The beginning of creation wasn’t people at all – male, female or gender X – it was the planet, there were no people at the beginning. When people were created it wasn’t male and female in the beginning, it was just one guy, just Adam (who, we presume, wasn’t really a guy because there was no need for wedding tackle). The first woman was made from Adam, which implies something or other.
And what’s to say that there wasn’t change over time? I know Ham hates evolution, but he sure needs a lot of it to get the critters from the Ark to our present foms. Can he show a scripture that says gender must stay binary, or is he just taking something from popular culture and imposing it on the Bible?
Fuck me, Canadia is looking more and more attractive by the day. Get your shit in gear US, or you’re going to lose a valuable customer to the store up the street :P
My province doing the right thing *and* pissing off Ken Ham?
What a glorious day.
I don’t think that Ham recognizes “that there are high rates of misery imposed on the transgender population.” (i.e. imposed from outside) I think he believes their problems are all self imposed. Of course, his post is a perfect example to the contrary.
Usernames
Not only are there no originals, but the manuscripts we have aren’t all in Greek. Some are in Aramaic and various generations of other western Semetic languages concocted into “Hebrew.”
Why start now?
I rather like Bishop John Spong’s take on this. If you take man and woman and subtract the things that they have in common, the remainder must be the image of God. God is male genitalia!
@robro:
I am not sure what you mean by Aramaic manuscripts. The Bible was written in Hebrew (with a very small amount in Imperial/Middle Aramaic in Daniel and a few other places) (Old Testament; Tanakh), and Greek (NT). The Hebrew was later translated into Greek, and also into Aramaic.
I have no idea what the phrase «various generations of other western Semetic languages concocted into “Hebrew.”» is meant to indicate. Biblical Hebrew is divided by some into Early and Late; there are also inscriptions in Hebrew on various ostraca and other artifacts, and in a few archaeologically significant sites (Siloam). The Documentary Hypothesis posits that the Pentateuch had different authors, but implying that they used different languages is extremely misleading.
“regardless of whether or not it contradicts God’s Word”
Since reality contradicts “God’s Word” it is exceptionally clear that the latter is totally worthless.
People who cling to “God’s Word” are actually extremely afraid of reality since the latter does not
offer them the pacifier that they so desperately desire.
The Ontario government is also removing gender markers entirely from government health insurance cards, starting August 1st. And I had to fight, hard, to get that gender marker changed back in the day. Nice to know trans folk will have one fewer obstacles to face.
But Paul in the NT was very clear:
The best Christians should become castrated, if they are able to do it.
That’s presumably why both Pat Robertson and Fraknlin Graham (amab) are so publicly discussing their bottom surgeries?
The bible is much better described as a pro-Trans document than most things. It also has an abortion “pill” procedure and formulation documented.
These are much less ambiguously documented than most things ken ham pulls out of genesis.
Gosh no, PZ, totally misunderstands the “popular fad” euphemism, Hamster so casually throws around. Every one knows that the most popular thing is to do the opposite of what ones parents, or any authority figure, wants one to do. So the popular thing is, by definition, to go against God’s Holy Written Instructions For Life. And look, it of course doesn’t work out, like God warned, to be stricken with suicide, to teach one a lesson, donchano??!?!?!
..
the above was not entirely sarcastic absurdity, as I often feel the desire to rebel against good advice. (not that Hamster offers anything like good advice). To demand that a book, cobbled together from many undocumented verbal stories, from a time period that was struggling to survive, and during an ancient period of human existence; should be followed by contemporary society, absolutely literally with no updated usage to the words therein, is a refusal to live in the present and desire only to live in the past. (J Tull had a few words to say about that. *snicker, snick*)
The bible is also full of shit.
Reading how these bigoted, transphobic arseholes pretend to care about the very people whose lives they work so hard to make a living hell makes my blood boil. The hypocrisy, the crocodile tears, the faux-compassion – all underpinned by the judgemental suggestion that the victim brings their suffering on themselves, and so deserve it – it is a noisome stew of Xian evil indeed.
slithey tove @17: A few Tull lyrics that could be addressed to Ham come to mind.
(Thick as a Brick)
(A Passion Play)
Ontari-ari-ari-o!
Why does a drivers’ license even need a gender?
Owlmirror #13
How do we know that, if we don’t have original manuscripts? Anyway, what is Hebrew? In it’s earliest form the written characters were Phoenician, including on those ostraca you mention. Several scholars have referred to the Siloam inscription as Phoenician. Phoenician and the other Semitic languages of the region were diverse dialects used across a broad area that evolved over time and were influenced by the dominate powers including Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian, and Greek. Hebrew as a distinct language from these is questionable practice that may merely serve the myth of the Bible’s special origins as put forth by priests, preachers, and rabbis, i.e. those with a vested interest in that myth.
As for the Documentary Hypothesis, there is ample textual evidence that all the writings that make up the Bible, not just the Pentateuch, are collections, even collections of collections, that were heavily edited and redacted over time. Even the little letters of Paul are a patchwork, which like much of the New Testament writings appear to have been written in Greek in the first place.
So, it seems to me to claim that these diverse writings of uncertain authorship, composed and compiled over centuries were written in a single language of uncertain provenance is at the very least an unfounded assertion, though a popular one by those that believe the myth of the Bible.
Crepitude???
Surely “turpitude”
@robro:
The same way we know that the Illiad was written in Greek — it’s a parsimonious inference from the evidence.
A writing system or script is not the same as a language. We are communicating using the Latin writing system, but in the English language.
A text written in Phoenician script is not necessarily written in the Phoenician language.
So? English evolved across all England over time, and was influenced by Norse, Latin, and French. Is English “as a distinct language from these” questionable?
I suppose you could take being a splitter to the extreme and say that every dialect is a distinct language. Is that in fact your stance?
So what? Lots of ancient works were cultural/religious propaganda — the Illiad; the Theogony; the Aeneid; the Rigveda; the Icelandic sagas; the Shahnameh, and so on and so forth — whose languages “may merely serve the myth” of their special origins as put forth by those with a vested interest in that myth. Does anyone suggest that the languages of the texts of those works that we have now are not the languages they were originally written in? Would you say that about all of these texts, or is it only Hebrew?
Really, this extreme skepticism looks very strange. Are you getting this Hebrew-language denialism from any particular source, or did you come up with it yourself?
So you would be OK with saying that we aren’t writing in English, since English is also of “uncertain provenance”? Maybe we’re secretly communicating in Frisian or Luxembourgish?
Who can say?
Wa kin sizze?
Wien kann soen?
What’s Ken’s point, exactly? Assuming that everything he wrote is true, is there someone forcing him to mark the letter x?
sigaba@21:
That’s actually a pretty good question. Our Oz ones don’t have gender, even though they’re routinely used for proof of identity. I am assuming that Canadian licenses (like those Down Under) have photographs on them; even if they didn’t, I don’t see why gender is there.
That said, it is far from an uncommon demographic to request – though I am surprised that in 2016 there’s no “other” or “prefer not to answer” option.
@ 26 garysturgess
Mine does. It has DOB, Sex, and Height (and photo). Maybe it varies by state or maybe it’s because mine was issued ten years ago.
Silentbob@27:
Huh, height you say?
Western Australia, only date of birth. (Well, and my address, but I assume yours has that too). Judging by the expiry date it’s 3 years old; I don’t have any of my older ones to compare.
The Bible is wrong.
Problem solved.
“creeping moral crepitude”
He crept into the crypt, crapped, and crept put again…
not “put”, “out”
Wait wait wait–I thought society was collapsing because Trudeau raised taxes??
Now it’s collapsing because Ontario driver’s licenses allow a third option?
Geez, I didn’t realize society was so precariously balanced.
@sigaba #21:
Don’t know. German ID cards don’t have a sex/gender field. Better have a fainting couch ready when somebody shows one to Ken Ham.
(And German driver’s licenses are used only to show that you’re licensed to drive, not for off road identifications.)
@sigaba #21: Why does a drivers’ license even need a gender?
Well of course, in case the offender was mooning the cops at the time of the traffic violation and they couldn’t see anything else.
#12, Machineintelligence: Even better, there’s no reason to assume that the remaining difference is standard to the male side of things…so taking that literally, it means God’s a (insert your slang term for female genitalia here, I don’t want to insult the female parts by associating them with God.) Actually meshes up more with other creation myths that way anyway…
@3, THANK YOU for pointing that out…if taken literally MOST gods would be trans, as gender has no meaning to a non-corporal god, right? or to put it another way, what does a God need with eyelashes?
Bigoted christians hate the thought, but what if the “standard image” of the god is the woman, and the MEN are the abnormality? It’s not like they were above changing the wording of the stories to promote a bigotry after all…
It amazes me how someone as ignorant as Ken Ham can have any relevancy. Hopefully his latest piece of bible literalism aka “The ARK ENCOUNTER” will send him broke and he goes the way of Kent Hovind ie jail time for creative accounting on the public purse etc…
The Jethro Tull verse from Living In The Past I was thinking of, follows:
— emphasis added by (yours truly)
ack browsing JT lyrics bring too many up as relevant to the Ham Salad:
>blovkquote>Spin me back down the years and the days of my youth.
Draw the lace and black curtains and shut out the whole truth.
^^ oops. puzzle left for the reader
The Bible is true. Circumference of a circle divided by its diameter is three, just as it says in the good book. So let’s use that in our calculations. Show everybody that things work real good when stuff is translated from the Bible to the physical world.
Also there are four corners. We need new maps to show where they are and adjust GPS doodles to new coordinates. And stuff like that.?