Bombus pascuorum
Photograph by Marilyn Susek.
Photography contest, Honorable Mention.
Ark Park creator complains of bias and propaganda. He is a master of both
Reprinted from the Lexington Herald-Leader with permission of the author. Matt Young will be the principal moderator of the comment thread.
I read Ken Ham’s February 28 op-ed “Don’t believe ‘agenda-driven propaganda’ film about Ark Park” with much amusement and more than a bit of disgust. Mr. Ham’s complaints about the film “We Believe in Dinosaurs” are projections of his own behavior onto the film makers. He complains of bias and propaganda, which he is a master at, and misrepresentations and errors, without being able to provide a specific example of anything factually wrong. In fact, the makers of the film were careful to let everyone speak for themselves with very little commentary. This is clear to anyone who has actually seen the film.
Ham also complains about the use of dinosaurs in the film yet has ample space in his so-called museum depicting dinosaurs and promoting the insane ideas that they lived with people and that some of them breathed fire. Amusingly, the fire-breathing part isn’t mentioned in the wooden Ark-shaped building at his amusement park. Noah must not have had access to asbestos. Moreover, Ham has been referring to dinosaurs as “missionary lizards” during his preaching and fund raising for at least three decades.
Although the rank pseudoscience, pseudohistory and absolute nonsense promoted by Ham and his fake-science organizations are what motivate me to complain, I’m astounded by the brazen hustles that have been used to milk city, county, and state government out of money. This money whether it be rebates of sales tax, or the gratis things received by the Ark and mentioned below, ultimately are taken away from taxpayers.
Pandemic as opportunity
Andrew Fabich thinks that the “coronavirus outbreak is possibly the greatest outreach opportunity for the church worldwide” (as quoted approvingly in the Answers in Genesis website). Dr. Fabich, a microbiologist at Truett McConnell University, advises that “[t]he church needs to respond to the current situation sensibly and centered around the gospel. Here are some things we should be doing during this time of worldwide panic.” He lists three specific items:
Be very, very careful if you want to use science to prove something about religion
The tireless Dan Phelps (I shall soon run out of adjectives) sent this article [In the endless fight over creation versus science, what if both sides were right?] (https://www.kentucky.com/living/religion/paul-prather/article240835156.html), by Paul Prather, a columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader and a pastor at a church in Mount Sterling, Kentucky, about 50 km outside Lexington. The article is in stark and refreshing contrast to the kind of nonsense that comes out of another Kentucky entity, answers in Genesis.
Indeed, it was gratifying to see that Rev. Prather allows that science is completely compatible with his religion. The headline of the article is, however, misleading: Rev. Prather seems to know better than to think that creationism and, in particular, young-earth creationism are compatible with science. Nevertheless, he argues that you can believe in modern science, in particular, the Big Bang, and still hold a religious belief. I consider that to be an experimental fact, since I have personally observed top-notch scientists who were also religious.
Unfortunately, Rev. Prather bases at least some of his understanding on the book, Genesis and the Big Bang: The Discovery of Harmony between Modern Science and the Bible, by Gerald Schroeder. Rev. Prather claims to have lost his copy of the book and admits that he understood only about half of it. That is perhaps fair enough, since he is not a physicist.
I have had the misfortune to have read two books by Gerald Schroeder: the aforementioned Genesis and the Big Bang, and a later book, The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom, and I also cannot find my copies. I understood them in detail.
A novel feature with new information
If you scroll to the bottom of the front page of Panda’s Thumb, you will see that we have implemented a new feature, a list of the 8 most recent comments. (We can make that number bigger if needed). This should make it much easier for you find the new comments on PT posts, without need to scroll through all subthreads of comments or to have a email notifications mailed to you.
We hope to have more improvements soon. The highest priority among them is restoring all the old comments on earlier posts. These disappeared when PT moved to Github, but they still exist offline and we hope to find ways to restore them. Thanks particularly to our peerless leader Reed for guidance on all this.