Poor man. Ken Ham is being left behind by other creationists, which is of course not his failing, but of all those other faithless Christians. So he’s going to tell us where they are going wrong.
Many things have changed since we started the biblical apologetics ministry that became Answers in Genesis, in our home in Australia in 1977. The culture has changed. But God’s Word has not changed and never will. Man’s word of about origins has continued to change in various ways over this time..
This Bible record of creation rules out the evolutionary philosophy which states that all forms of life have come into being by gradual, progressive evolution carried on by resident (natural) forces. It also rules out any evolutionary origin for the human race, since no form of evolution, including theistic evolution, can explain the origin of the male before the female, nor can it explain how a man could evolve into a woman. But the bible has never changed in its statement that God made two genders: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27)
While we were still living in Australia, I read a report in 1977, that the Assemblies of God denomination had adopted a “Doctrine of Creation” which stated the following:
“This Bible record of creation thus rules out the evolutionary philosophy which states that all forms of life have come into being by gradual, progressive evolution carried on by resident forces. It also rules out any evolutionary origin for the human race, since no theory of evolution, including theistic evolution, can explain the origin of the male before the female, nor can it explain how a man could evolve into a woman.
If you’re like me, your jaw dropped at that claim that …no form of evolution, including theistic evolution, can explain the origin of the male before the female, nor can it explain how a man could evolve into a woman.
This is Ray Comfort levels of ignorance; we don’t argue that men evolved before women, or that the sexes evolved independently, or that men evolved into women. Those are creationist arguments. We all evolved together, our ancestors had male and female forms, and the first humans were the product of a gradual shift in populations. Anyone who tries to claim that evolution argues that the sexes evolved sequentially is abysmally ignorant, and this question about how women evolved from men is an example of a truly stupid question.
But why does Ham say the same thing twice? The first bit is quoting Answers In Genesis’s statement; the second is quoting the Assemblies of God statement, which AiG plagiarized. What he’s whining about, as he goes on, is that the Assemblies of God no longer claims that evolution can’t explain the origin of the male before the female, nor can it explain how a man could evolve into a woman
. Assemblies of God has abandoned a stupid claim, while AiG still holds to that idea, therefore, to Ken Ham, Assemblies of God has abandoned the truth of scripture! Worse, nowadays they’re arguing for more tolerance on scientific matters, and reject the dogmatism that is the foundation of Ken Ham’s beliefs.
“As a result, equally devout Christian believers have formed very different opinions about the age of the earth, the age of humankind, and the ways in which God went about the creative processes. Given the limited information available in Scripture, it does not seem wise to be overly dogmatic about any particular creation theory. We urge all sincere and conscientious believers to adhere to what the Bible plainly teaches and to avoid divisiveness over debatable theories of creation.”
Uh-oh. That is a direct attack on Answers in Genesis. Ham is going to forever insist on promoting deeply wrong and ignorant ideas, and he’s still clinging to Ray Comfort’s misconceptions.
The rest of us are sad that a helicopter drone on another world has failed or that children are being bombed to death, he is sad about this?
So much wrong in one sentence.
.1. It isn’t god’s word in the first place.
It’s a creation myth in the bible written down by a Hebrew scribe in 4th century BCE Babylon, based on even older versions of the myth.
.2. As a description of history and the real world, it is all wrong.
That is what is never going to change.
.3. God’s words, which are actually human words, changes all the time. The bible is full of contradictions everywhere and especially between the Old Testament and the New Testament.
It is all a big Rorschach ink blot that you can pick and choose from.
When the fundies want to change god’s words, they just issue a new translation of the bible, and rewrite it and then they all pretend that they didn’t notice that.
If men evolved into women, why are there still men?
s/abysmally argument/abysmally ignorant/
LOL. It’s actually an old Rabbinic midrash that Man+Woman were created simultaneously back-to-back — and what God did was to split them at the back.
(I posted this already years ago, but Ham doesn’t change his nonsense, so why should I?)
Source: Bialik, Hayim Nahman and Ravnitzky, Yehoshua Hone. The Book of Legends (Sefer Ha-Aggadah)
I didn’t think he was saying that we did. He was trying to say that evolution fails because it has no mechanism or explanation for the undeniable God’s word fact that man was created before woman. I guess he thinks we’re just looking the other way and whistling, hoping no one will notice that we can’t explain how that could be without a Creator, and it just doesn’t occur to him that we just don’t believe in his “fact” in the first place, so we don’t need to explain something that didn’t happen.
Oh who am I kidding, he knows all that, he’s just playing “gotcha” for his followers.
Ken Ham is a narrow-minded creationist clown, that refuses to adhere to
the truth of Genesis. The correct reading of Genesis 1:1 is the following,
since the science of geology has revealed Earth’s age:
About 4.6 billion years ago, God created this universe, starting with
the planet Earth.
Those of you that question that age for the universe, God advanced the
light from distant galaxies in order that original mankind could see
all of the wonders of outer space from his vantage point.
What Mr. Ham refuses to understand is that the seven days shown to
Moses were not linear. They were seven days, taken from seven
different weeks, which were the beginning of seven different time
periods.
That is why the land animals were made before mankind in chapter
one, and Adam was made before the animals in chapter two. Mankind
in chapter one was the third advent of humanity on Earth. Adam was
the first of modern mankind, the sixth advent that God had made. That
is why the sequence is different.
Surely by now belief in “creationism” and a belief that “holy” books describe the real world should both be classified as reportable mental illnesses?
#Ridana – I thought that too (and agree it is definitely part of it) but then you see Ray Comfort’s astonishing quote and you realize that maybe it’s not
Owlmirror @5:
Maybe so, but I think most people know that story by way of Plato’s Symposium?
I know that Ham doesn’t believe that women evolved after men — the problem is that he lies to say that biologists do.
We don’t.
I don’t think so, PZ. You’re misreading it.
Your quotation “…no form of evolution, including theistic evolution, can explain the origin of the male before the female, nor can it explain how a man could evolve into a woman.” is itself a bit of quote-mining.
The full quotation: “This Bible record of creation rules out the evolutionary philosophy which states that all forms of life have come into being by gradual, progressive evolution carried on by resident (natural) forces. It also rules out any evolutionary origin for the human race, since no form of evolution, including theistic evolution, can explain the origin of the male before the female, nor can it explain how a man could evolve into a woman.”
The claim is that the Bible rules out any evolutionary origin because no form of evolution can explain the Biblical claim that males were created before females.
The proposition is ‘Babble says X, but evilutionists can’t explain X’,
instead of ‘evilutionists say X but can’t explain X’.
The thing is, we can explain X.
raven @ #2
I’m curious about the evidence that the Genesis creation myth was “written down” in 4th century BCE Babylon by a Hebrew scribe? I don’t question that it’s a myth, and heavily borrows from existing myths of the region, but 4th century BCE seems kind of early and anchoring it to the so called “Babylonian exile”, which has a good deal of myth associated with it, might be problematic.
”abysmally argument”
Probably either “an abysmal argument” or “abysmally ignorant”.
Please purge my comment after correction.
You make surprisingly rare mistakes like this, considering how often and in depth you post, BTW.
My source was the first hit I got on a Google search.
If that isn’t reliable, then what is?
Haaretz is a newspaper in Israel so at least this is a Jewish source.
I didn’t go much further than this so that is all I know for now.
Haaretz isn’t the only source to claim a Babylonian exile authorship, at least on Google.
The main point here is that Genesis is a myth, probably not all that old, and probably based on even older sources.
@hzcummi #7
You are not using science. You are just as wrong as Ham.
The Universe is 3 times older than the Earth. That’s what the science says.
Adam never existed. No amount of verbal gymnastics will make Genesis true.
raven @ #16 — Frankly, I wouldn’t trust Haaretz anymore than I would trust Ken Ham in the timing of writing down anything in the Bible. That 4th century BCE timing is probably based on tradition. Although a more plausible one than the Moses tradition (1400 BCE per rabbinic tradition), which is what Ken Ham would say, it’s still a largely mythic tradition.
Here’s what Wikipedia says about the compilation of the Torah:
I wouldn’t trust Wikipedia either, but I might start there to look at the scholarship they quote. I’m no expert on this, but I would put my money on the Hasmonean period because that’s the point when there is a known group compiling religious texts in Judea, which they stored in caves near their compound. It’s also known that the Hasmonean leaders at the time were interested in promoting a religious tradition for various reasons, including political and financial, in particular the enigmatic John Hyracanus and his later successor, Herod.
But without “the origin of the male before the female” how do we justify our misogyny? And what’s next, non-binary people?
We can’t just keep changing stuff, new things are scary!
Informational:
Boy, that quote from Comfort is perhaps the greatest amount of stupidity per word I’ve ever seen. It’s kind of impressive in its own way.
I wonder how it feels to know less about science than a middle school student.
Men evolved before women? Huh.
If my vague and possibly mistaken memory serves, isn’t the embryological default human female with some then ëvolving” (ok developing) into males?
FWIW. The first Torah (OT) or at least first five books of it was supposedly found or written about by King Josiah and hsi preists in ancient Judah in circa 630 – 610 BCE :
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah#Book_of_the_Law
So invented by ancient Judean preists for political purposes to impose their monotheistic religious superiority maybe?
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” I’ve wondered about this quote in the context of transgenderism. I’m an English major and a longtime editor, so I’m pretty good at parsing a sentence. You could read this as God creating Adam in His image, with Eve’s creation from the rib elided as perhaps of secondary importance and not needing to be spelled out. But you could also read it as “the image of God …; male and female.” In Christ there is no East or West, but apparently in God there is both male and female. Has the transgender community, at least those who are of an Abrahamic faith, glommed onto this as an argument that they are not an abomination? Not that they should have to justify themselves.
SteveOr @ #24 — I’m as skeptical of the historicity of Kings, and its redactions in Chronicles, as I am of Genesis. Incidentally, the oldest pieces of Kings…mere scraps actually…were found in those caves I mentioned. That physical evidence is clearly from the 2nd century BCE. The oldest complete text is 10th century CE as with almost all ancient manuscripts. Lots of time to hone the narrative to support a particular political-religious position.
@larpar – #17
No celestial object that has been examined has been found to be more
than 5 billion years old. Using light rays as a barometer is misleading..
The bottom line is, secular science has its theories concerning our origins. It has
a prejudiced view of reality. However, those that advocate for a Creator are also
ignorant of what the true meaning of their source material, namely the book
of Genesis.
The truth is, that the seven days that were shown to Moses were not from Creation
Week as creationist organizations teach and believe. Chronologically, the
Fourth Day was first, the fifth day was second, the sixth day was third, then the
seventh, first, second, and finally the third day. The seven days were not linear!
@27
Barometers measure pressure.
Here are 4 things that have been examined and found to be older than 5 billion years old: https://www.livescience.com/james-webb-telescope-discovers-the-4-oldest-galaxies-in-the-universe-born-just-300-million-years-after-the-big-bang
Changing the order of events “that were shown to Moses” doesn’t help. For starters, Moses is fictional. Just like Genesis.
@ 26. robro : I wouldn’t say that everything in Kings is strictly historical with exaggerations and apocryphal stories being a likely component but there is at leats some archaeological and non-Biblical evidence for it being at least based on real historical figures :
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davidic_line#Historicity
#7 “About 4.6 billion years ago, God created this universe, starting with the planet Earth.” Um, say whaaaat?!
hzcummi
You are a blaspheming heretic and you will burn in Hell for all eternity.
@ 27. hzcummi :
Cosmic Microwave Background? I guess you’ll argue that’s not an object – ok. Well, our Milky Way Galaxy is an object and we know it is 13 billion years old. See :
https://www.livescience.com/how-did-the-milky-way-form
We know based on cooling temperatures and spectra that white dwarf stars like Van Maanen’s Star can be extremely old “..perhaps near or older than 10 billion years.” See :
https://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/V/Van_Maanens_Star.html
Then too there are ancient metal poor stars like HD 140283 dubbed “”the Methuselah star” which is at least twelve billion years old. See :
https://www.inverse.com/science/oldest-objects-in-the-universe
Among other things eg the billions of stars in globular clusters.
Secular science is based on evidence. Facts and reason. Why do you claim this “prejudiced” and what would your alternative be? Believing a book of myths from one of many thousands of religions and interpreting it as you decide? Why and what’s your reasoning and supporting evidence for doing that?
Arrogant and presumptuous of you but I think that’s often correct. A lot of believers in Creationism have a very poor understanding of their own mythology. Of course, multiple pick’n’choose and literalist interpretations of that mythology exist and there are many different translations and ambiguities. That’s one set of reasons why such scriptural approaches to cosmology fail as well as them being contradicted by modern science which has, again, supporting evidence that debunks the literalist and other creationist schools.
What is your basis and argument(s) for saying that? There are two clashing accounts presented in Genesis in differing orders and neither are other than mythological in nature, There ‘s no literal or scientific truth to Genesis at all.
@32 What he said…
While I am not into buddhism Dalai Lama once replied that if a central tenet of his religion went against proven science, the tenet would be wrong (yes, I know there is no evidence of souls existing, but it is hard to disprove such a nebulous concept).
For an explanation for the tangled heap of spaghetti that is the old Testament, see “The Memoir of God”.
The out-of-print copies are very expensive, but you might find it in a university library.
He is literally upset things have changed in 47 years. He expects the interpretation of an iron-age book about a bronze-age god to remain static forever.
So we have a narrow-minded creationist on this board accusing another narrow-minded creationist of being narrow-minded. What’s this board coming to, PZ?
10) @Nemo: Or via Hedwig and the Angry Inch. :D
@hzcummi , I’m Christian. I don’t accept any biblical based age or order of creation as being accurate! God created Nature and Nature tells scientists how the earth and universe were created and when. Since the Bible was written by men and natural phenomena was “ written” by God I trust Nature’s narrative more than I trust the Bible. Scientists only report back what Nature tells them about itself. The correct order is the 1Big Bang
2 the formation of hydrogen,
3 the formation of metal poor stars
4the formation of metal rich stars
5 the formation of the early earth
6 the formation of the moon from a collision with another smaller planet
7 surface water on the earth
8Early life about 4 billion years ago
9 Eucaryotes
10 vertebrates starting with fishlike organisms
11 amphibians
12 the Reptilomorpha
13 mammals
14 apes
15 protohumans
16 humans
Everything from 8-16 are cousins or other relatives
11a the Lobefins
I missed that one
Is it possible that Ken and Ray are mostly drunk. They remind me of the drunk driving videos I see on you tube. The drunks asks why they are being arrested the police officer says its because they were driving drunk. Than the drunk asks again why they are being arrested again the police officer informs them that they are being arrested because they were driving drunk. This goes on thru the whole video.
@brightmoon #39
“God created Nature…”
There’s no evidence for that, either.
StevoR @ #29 — As I noted, at least I think I did, there is scant evidence of the names of some of these kings outside the Bible. As you note, there are various artifacts such as seals, coins, stelae with names on them that correspond to the names in the Kings. Some of them are even preserved in the records of non-Judean artifacts. The first question is the authenticity of the artifact. Relics are a fairly big business throughout that part of the world, and so creating them is not unheard of. However, some are genuine. It’s not surprising that later people would know the names. In the Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultures, list of kings were a common form of historical record.
But the books aren’t just a list of names. The names come with stories, stories which might not be historically factual, and serve some other more current purpose at the time of writing. For example, the story that Manasseh was an evil king because he reintroduced polytheism when the Israelis had been monotheists from the time of Moses. The part of that formula about monotheism is patently ridiculous, because polytheism was around in the region long after that time. It’s much more likely that the story of Manasseh and his near successor Josiah discovering the writings, serves as an allegory for some later religious/political person.
Here’s another example of the slippery slope of history in ancient writings. Josephus in the Jewish Wars writes about the Hasmonean leader “John Hyracanus”. He was an important figures in Josephus’s story, because of his wars against his neighbors and forced conversion led to Herod. But who was that John Hyracanus. One of the books of Maccabees mentions a person named Hyracanus but not the Hasmonean leader “John” (not sure of his Hebrew name). Keep in mind that Josephus was a near contemporary of the Hasmonean period…essentially living at the end of it…and was Jewish so you would expect him not to confuse John the Hasmonean and some other character. Yet there it is. Perhaps it was a confusion introduced by some later copyist of Josephus’s works.
larpar @42:
Right, but (unlike contending the universe is only 5 billion years old), neither is there evidence against it. God of the gaps, if you like.
I don’t think Ken Ham is claiming we believe that men evolved before women, but that evolution is wrong because it doesn’t and can’t.
This is typical of him to try to claim his ideas are of equal value and import when they are not: Gosh, Genesis says for a fact man came first so every theory of evolution will need to explain this and they can’t. I’m acknowledging they can can try but I’m just stating God’s word as the fact it must be….
God’s word does not change. But our understanding of the Bible does. Modern Near East archaeology has demonstrated that the exodus and genocidal invasion of Canaan are priestly fables. There was no Egyptian captivity. No Exodus. No wandering in the wilderness. No 38 years encamped at Kadesh Barnea. No genocidal invasion of Canaan by Joshua. All faux history. And no Moses on the Mount receiving 613 laws from God. The last 70 years post WW2 of Near East archeology have not been kind to the Bible. And so much for the homophobic hammer verses of Leviticus 18 and 20. Debunking of creationism is not the only problem for Bible literalism.
cheerfulcharlie @ #46 — “God’s word does not change.” I don’t about any of god’s words but there are definitely changes…variations…in the words in the bible. In fact, Chronicles is thought to be a later edition of Kings. They are very similar but with some variations.
Actually there are a number of changes in the Bible as we know it from the Septuagint, to modern original language translations to variations from dead Sea Scrolls. Stashed of documents from Fayum, Egypt in the late 1800’s helped to fill in some misunderstandings of Koine Greek and understanding the new Testament.
So, lots of little changes over time. Not to mention findings from archaeology, as mentioned.
Ridana @38:
Yes, I very nearly left the lyrics to “Origin of Love” in that comment.
@hzcummi, #27
It’s kinda interesting that you’re willing to go OEC to that point, several orders of magnitude past YEC, but no further.
“The universe is at most 5 billion years old, but not one single second more than that! God could not have possibly made the universe older than that!”
Really?
And of course, your statement is obviously scientifically false. But why would you even think that it is true? Is it your position that any object that appears older that 5 gigayears is a deliberate but undetectable deception? The Hubble Ultra-Deep Field is secretly just shallow?
I suspect you intended “yardstick” in the metaphorical sense, rather than barometer. As noted, barometers measure pressure, and more importantly, by noting the change in pressure over time, show whether air pressure is rising or falling, and therefore whether a high-pressure front or low-pressure front is moving through the area (and will therefore affect the local weather). Yardsticks measure distance, and since the speed of light is finite and known, knowing how far away something is therefore part of how we know how old it is. Time is in close relation of distance (it’s not an exact equivalence because space itself is expanding, but that’s an additional complication).
But I’m baffled at your rejection of “light rays” as being valid for measuring the age of the universe. YECs reject the science of cosmology, of course, but they reject the whole thing. You seem to accept the laws of physics for measuring things that are 5 billion years old, but why do you think the laws of physics break down past that point? It’s all the same laws affecting light rays: Quantum field theory + General Relativity.
As far as I know, the only “prejudice” secular science has is that the universe as it appears is not a deliberate but undetectable deception. What makes you think otherwise?
It’s sad that you have to stoop to this implicit attack on the competence and honesty of all physicists and cosmologists.
So… the actual Sabbath should be on Wednesday? The author of Genesis 1 was so inspired that he got all of the events down correctly, but got the actual order of events wrong? That’s what you’re going with?
Your exegesis seems to be based on the fact that in Genesis 1, the sun is created 4 days after light is created. I actually suspect that the reason the author of that chapter did that is because, among other reasons, he was completely ignorant of optics, astronomy, and the biology of vision. We, in modern times, understand that the sun is the source of daylight, but in premodern times, some might have argued against the sun being the source of daylight, because daylight can be seen before the sun rises and sets, and light can be seen all over the sky when the sun is moving across the sky, and there is still light even when clouds obscure the sun. Nowadays, we understand these phenomena all result from sunlight scattering in the atmosphere, but before now, people didn’t know there was such a thing as an atmosphere, let alone that it scattered light.
The above isn’t entirely speculation, either — I seem to recall seeing a study about theories of vision among kids who had not yet been taught the science of vision. At least some came up with the idea that light was some sort of substance that was just all around during the day, while others independently reinvented the emission theory of vision.
Owlmirror @ 50, so Who’s on first, What’s on second and I Don’t Know is on third?
Yeah, that one was all over the map, now a massive clean-up is needed. :/
As for the study on theories of vision among kids, the light is all around during the day group would be the easiest, emission theory second easiest to educate, based exclusively upon shadows. Light isn’t going to be interrupted in only one direction, the source of illumination if it’s all around or emitted by one’s eyes and the shadow is in the wrong spot. Then, reinforce it with cheap penlights and let them have fun making shadows and discovering refraction with strategically placed prismatic objects for them to discover.
Really bake a few noodles with some beam splitters…
@Rob Grigjanis #44
Burden of proof, if you like.
larpar @52: Burden of proof cuts both ways. If I say “X exists”, and you disagree, go ahead and prove it. Hate to break this to you, but “there is no evidence for X” doesn’t cut it. I’m atheist, but science is agnostic.
@Rob Grigjanis #53
The proof that I disagree is that I said “I disagree”. If you propose X it’s up to you to provide evidence for x.
Science isn’t atheist, agnostic or theistic.
larpar @54:
Stupid word games. The first refuge of the ideologue.
If I propose that my partner loves me, it’s up to me to provide evidence for it? I’d say it’s up to me to say “fuck off”.