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Thursday 5 January 2017

Ken Ham the Heretic: A recent Twitter outburst by the AiG head shows their sectarian, heterodox worlview

2017 opened with AiG leader Ken Ham railing against 'secular media' in a Twitter storm, Five tweets within an hour would certainly indicate Donald Trump level rage. What blasphemy would trigger such an outburst? Claims that archaeology has proven the Bible false? Assertions that Jesus never existed? Something even worse, it seems.

The Washington Post, in commenting on a soon to be released film that refers to Ham stated that his organisation believed that all the dinosaurs died out during the flood. Ham was infuriated by this outrageous slander  because AiG in fact believe that most of the dinosaurs were wiped out, except for those taken aboard the Ark, which eventually went extinct shortly after the flood due to a post-flood ice age. If you are struggling to see why this minor error is worthy of such a tirade of righteous indignation, then obviously you do not understand the gospel according to AiG.

My reference to Ham the Heretic in the post title is a direct allusion to biblical scholar Joel Edmund Anderson's book "The Heresy of Ham: What Every Evangelical Needs to Know About the Creation-Evolution Controversy" who states that
[t]he heresy of Ham that is actively “subverting, destabilizing, and destroying” the core of the Christian faith is the claim that a modern, scientific interpretation of Genesis 1-11 as literal history is fundamental prerequisite for the trustworthiness of the Gospel of Christ. It is the claim that if the universe is not 6,000 years old, if there was no historical Adam and Eve, and if there was no worldwide flood 4,000 years ago, then that would make God a liar, that would mean there is no such thing as sin, and that would mean Christ died for nothing. Such a message is heresy, and that message has subverted, destabilized, and destroyed the Christian faith of many people, has destroyed careers, and unfortunately, has taken root within a significant portion of Evangelical Christianity.

With their obsessive desire to make YEC the foundation of Christianity, AiG as Anderson argues is indeed subverting Christianity in a way that fully deserves the tag 'heresy'.

Anderson, in his latest blog post, elaborates on this point:
For example, you can find in AiG’s website the following article: 10 Basics Every Christian Must Know to Boldly Proclaim a Biblical Worldview. The “10 Basics” are these: (1) God created everything in six literal days; (2) radiometric dating is flawed; (3) variety happens within “created kinds;” (4) man is unique because he didn’t evolve from apes; (5) distant starlight doesn’t prove the universe is old; (6) there was a global flood; (7) there were dinosaurs on the ark; (8) all human beings are one race; (9) suffering and death happened because Adam and Eve ate a piece of fruit; (10) the truth of the Gospel is dependent on whether or not Genesis 1-11 is literal history.
Paul, writing in 1 Corinthians 2:2 declared that "I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." Conspicuously absent in this concise and eminently authoritative demonstration of a Biblical worldview are references to palaeontology, radiometric dating, taxonomy, palaeoanthropology, and geology. AiG, with their insistence that these ten points must be believed in order to proclaim a Biblical worldview are indeed guilty of heresy.


AiG heresy in cartoon form