Do people like Ken Ham help or hurt Christian evangelization?

[RKO]

RKO,

What I found disappointing about this post was your statement that 'his claims (to ME, anyway) are ridiculous', but you provided not one quote from the debate to support your claim.

If you are going to disagree with the content of a debate, for the sake of thoughtful Christians, would you please provide quotes to demonstrate what you are opposing?

You state: 'to ask people to disbelieve all science'. Where in the debate did Ken Ham state this? Ken Ham has been a science teacher in the Australian high school system, so I know that he is not opposed to science. This article from the Sydney Morning Herald, 'In the beginning was the debate: But there were few converts' ( February 9, 2014) stated, 'Ham first conceived of the Creation Museum as a high school science teacher in Queensland, he tells Fairfax Media in an interview before the debate'.

I hope you understand why I'm asking you to provide documentation to support your claims.

Language like, 'I just can't hang', 'asking people to accept his claims on faith', 'his claims (to ME, anyway) are ridiculous', 'I won't go into that debate', and 'it seems to me', seem to indicate you are pushing your own agenda and it is opposed to Ken Ham's creationism.

I don't support Ham's view of the earth being 6,000 years old, but your lack of evidence raises some questions for me - questions about your presuppositional bias.

Oz

In short, no, I won't re-engage the debate between scientific research and YEC. That was not the intent of the thread. I simply stated my personal opinion in order to ask the main question of the thread, which was "does YEC hurt evangelism by it's being so difficult for MOST people to believe.

Perhaps it wasn't a good idea for me to introduce this question here. I stopped responding pages ago. As far as I'm concerned this thread can be closed or die out.

 

[jckstraw72]

RKO - as to your OP - no, I don't believe that people like Ken Ham hurt evangelization. He demonstrates a POV that says theology and tradition are worth fighting for, and that they are not so weak as to have to bend to the whims of science. what hurts evangelization is the exact opposite - the complete dominance of Darwinian materialistic thinking that has saturated our minds.

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

I agree. Whereas evolution has scant evidence and mostly theory and supposition, they speak as if there is 100% metaphysical certitude beyond a shadow of a doubt that these theories are facts. The creationist is willing to admit things are fuzzy with timelines and specifics, but doesn't speak as if every detail in Genesis is a scientific hard piece of evidence beyond discussion. At least Ham comes from the camp that is not willing to call theories hard facts just because some lab coats say it's so. Both views stem from religion one way or another---the religion of Christianity or the religion of, as Rus appropriately calls it, "scientism." But at least one side is willing to admit faith being the operant mechanism!

RKO - as to your OP - no, I don't believe that people like Ken Ham hurt evangelization. He demonstrates a POV that says theology and tradition are worth fighting for, and that they are not so weak as to have to bend to the whims of science. what hurts evangelization is the exact opposite - the complete dominance of Darwinian materialistic thinking that has saturated our minds.

 

[truefiction1]

In short, no, I won't re-engage the debate between scientific research and YEC. That was not the intent of the thread. I simply stated my personal opinion in order to ask the main question of the thread, which was "does YEC hurt evangelism by it's being so difficult for MOST people to believe.

Perhaps it wasn't a good idea for me to introduce this question here. I stopped responding pages ago. As far as I'm concerned this thread can be closed or die out.

Nothing hurts evangelism more than rough dogmatism, and nothing so vividly displays it more than passionate debates which bare clear testimony to its unrelenting hold on people.

 

[Gxg (G²)]

Nothing hurts evangelism more than rough dogmatism, and nothing so vividly displays it more than passionate debates which bare clear testimony to its unrelenting hold on people.

Real talk..

 

[rusmeister]

Nothing hurts evangelism more than rough dogmatism, and nothing so vividly displays it more than passionate debates which bare clear testimony to its unrelenting hold on people.

Real talk..

This is, unfortunately, not true, though I would agree on the adjective "rough". And I question how often the disagreements are actual debates.
We live in an age when a complete denial of TRADITIONAL dogmas has been replaced by MODERN dogmas, such as that truth is a personal and private matter.

People are thirsty for truth. There is a thing in them that desires both God and goodness, however faded. Truth IS dogmatic in nature, and it is the Truth that sets us free.

The Apostles preaching was quite dogmatic in its certainty of truth. The teachings of the Church are dogmatic in so passing them onto us.

The Church will evangelize by being what She always has been. There will always be sin, and there will always be the Truth.

Being certain that the seven days of Creation were seven consecutive 24-hr days is NOT a dogmatic teaching of the Church, but that death passed into the world by sin IS.

My response to the modern misunderstandings of what dogma is can be found in the last chapter of GK Chesterton's great book "Heretics":

Heretics -- Concluding Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy

"Whether the human mind can advance or not, is a question too little discussed, for nothing can be more dangerous than to found our social philosophy on any theory which is debatable but has not been debated. But if we assume, for the sake of argument, that there has been in the past, or will be in the future, such a thing as a growth or improvement of the human mind itself, there still remains a very sharp objection to be raised against the modern version of that improvement. The vice of the modern notion of mental progress is that it is always something concerned with the breaking of bonds, the effacing of boundaries, the casting away of dogmas. But if there be such a thing as mental growth, it must mean the growth into more and more definite convictions, into more and more dogmas. The human brain is a machine for coming to conclusions; if it cannot come to conclusions it is rusty. When we hear of a man too clever to believe, we are hearing of something having almost the character of a contradiction in terms. It is like hearing of a nail that was too good to hold down a carpet; or a bolt that was too strong to keep a door shut. Man can hardly be defined, after the fashion of Carlyle, as an animal who makes tools; ants and beavers and many other animals make tools, in the sense that they make an apparatus. Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some tremendous scheme of philosophy and religion, he is, in the only legitimate sense of which the expression is capable, becoming more and more human. When he drops one doctrine after another in a refined scepticism, when he declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded."

Note that being right does not make one popular. It can even get you crucified, literally or figuratively.

One can even be regretful and sympathetic in being right. But it is no cure to doubt the dogma.

 

[truefiction1]

The Truth is not dogmatism. It is something other.

 

[RDKirk]

First, let me apologize to any young earthers who may read this. I don't mean to offend you, but I just can't hang...

Basically Ken follows the Christian tradition of asking people to accept his claims on faith. However, his claims (to ME, anyway) are ridiculous. I won't go into that debate, but to ask people to disbelieve all science and to believe HIS interpretation of the bible, saying the earth is 6000 years old is tough to take. My church (and I BELIEVE the EOC) teach that Genesis should or can be taken to be an alliteration.
It seems to me that to ask people to believe something with so much proof against it based on a limited interpretation can actually hurt the cause of evangelization.

But then, I bet they said the same thing when the apostles talked about the resurrection.

The problem lies in someone spending an hour talking about the bible and never actually getting to the gospel of Christ.

The ancient Greeks already had a full pantheon and a rich philosophical heritage--but Paul did not try to first argue them into accepting Genesis before giving them the gospel.

Trying to convince someone to first accept Genesis before giving them the gospel is precisely the same as trying to make them first a Jew, then a Christian.

"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." -- John 10

Jesus' sheep will respond to His voice when they hear it...and defer everything else. But, my goodness, don't spend a hour debating someone without ever having given them the gospel.

 

[rusmeister]

The Truth is not dogmatism. It is something other.

TF, this completely misunderstands what I have said. I get your concern - we should not love dogmas because they are dogmatic. You are right about that. But we SHOULD love them because they are TRUE.

Is Jesus Christ the Son of God? Of course He is, and we all hold that as a dogma. We don't hold EVERYTHING dogmatically, but we DO hold that death entered the world by sin, and not in some symbolic way that really means only that it DIDN'T enter the world by sin, but literally, that is, as it is written, that death was not in the world until man sinned, and then it was. THAT is dogma of the Orthodox Church (and the rest of Christianity that actually is traditional) and it is TRUE. That which contradicts and denies it is NOT true, emphatically false. It is not otherwise.

 

[RDKirk]

Is Jesus Christ the Son of God?

Yes.

Even if we can't explain the precise mechanism by which someone can be the "Son of God."

This was the attempt by Athenagoras, speaking to Caesar in the mid-2nd century. defending Christians from the accusation atheism:

We are not atheists, therefore, seeing that we acknowledge one God, uncreated, eternal, invisible, impassible, incomprehensible, illimitable, who is apprehended by the understanding only and the reason, who is encompassed by light, and beauty, and spirit, and power ineffable, by whom the universe has been created through His Logos, and set in order, and is kept in being— I have sufficiently demonstrated. I say His Logos, for we acknowledge also a Son of God.

Nor let any one think it ridiculous that God should have a Son. For though the poets, in their fictions, represent the gods as no better than men, our mode of thinking is not the same as theirs, concerning either God the Father or the Son. But the Son of God is the Logos of the Father, in idea and in operation; for after the pattern of Him and by Him were all things made, the Father and the Son being one. And, the Son being in the Father and the Father in the Son, in oneness and power of spirit, the understanding and reason (νοῦς καὶ λόγο&#962 of the Father is the Son of God.

But if, in your surpassing intelligence, it occurs to you to inquire what is meant by the Son, I will state briefly that He is the first product of the Father, not as having been brought into existence (for from the beginning, God, who is the eternal mind [νοῦς], had the Logos in Himself, being from eternity instinct with Logos [λογικός]); but inasmuch as He came forth to be the idea and energizing power of all material things, which lay like a nature without attributes, and an inactive earth, the grosser particles being mixed up with the lighter.

The prophetic Spirit also agrees with our statements. The Lord, it says, made me, the beginning of His ways to His works. Proverbs 8:22 The Holy Spirit Himself also, which operates in the prophets, we assert to be an effluence of God, flowing from Him, and returning back again like a beam of the sun. Who, then, would not be astonished to hear men who speak of God the Father, and of God the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and who declare both their power in union and their distinction in order, called atheists?

 

[RKO]

Please take this comment in the spirit intended. This is where I leave this discussion, and am NOT trying to offend. But you really have to admit that the YEC is VERY VERY hard for most people to take seriously. This is overly simplistic, but I am a simple person. What makes it a little hard to take is the YEC's desperate struggle to find an explanation for things like evolution that meshes with their young earth story. In order to do that you have to ignore or spin a LOT of visible and measurable data. Everything in our history tells us that generally we can rely on what we can see and touch. Religion tells us to rely on what we can not see or touch. That's ok, I'm down with it, but there is a much bigger story that we have yet to learn. It is MUCH more spectacular than the idea that the earth is 6000 years old, and god put noah and the animals on a boat because he wan't to murder everybody else.
That is a weak, uninformed explanation for a much better reality that we have yet to learn.
That's what I think, anyway. I sincerely apologize to anybody to whom I offend by this. I am not trying to criticize your belief. I am trying to illustrate, in my normal guy simple minded way how very very difficult much of those theories are to take for most normal people like me. It just seems to me that Christianity is better served by saying that there are vast parts of this story that we do not and probably can not know in this life. These stories in Genesis, and the wild fundamentalist interpretations of it seem more an attemtp to be the "best believer" than they are a real attempt to find the truth. ( And I am limiting the definition of truth to those things we can KNOW> And not believe.)
Again apologies. I'm out.

 

[rusmeister]

Please take this comment in the spirit intended. This is where I leave this discussion, and am NOT trying to offend. But you really have to admit that the YEC is VERY VERY hard for most people to take seriously. This is overly simplistic, but I am a simple person. What makes it a little hard to take is the YEC's desperate struggle to find an explanation for things like evolution that meshes with their young earth story. In order to do that you have to ignore or spin a LOT of visible and measurable data. Everything in our history tells us that generally we can rely on what we can see and touch. Religion tells us to rely on what we can not see or touch. That's ok, I'm down with it, but there is a much bigger story that we have yet to learn. It is MUCH more spectacular than the idea that the earth is 6000 years old, and god put noah and the animals on a boat because he wan't to murder everybody else.
That is a weak, uninformed explanation for a much better reality that we have yet to learn.
That's what I think, anyway. I sincerely apologize to anybody to whom I offend by this. I am not trying to criticize your belief. I am trying to illustrate, in my normal guy simple minded way how very very difficult much of those theories are to take for most normal people like me. It just seems to me that Christianity is better served by saying that there are vast parts of this story that we do not and probably can not know in this life. These stories in Genesis, and the wild fundamentalist interpretations of it seem more an attemtp to be the "best believer" than they are a real attempt to find the truth. ( And I am limiting the definition of truth to those things we can KNOW> And not believe.)
Again apologies. I'm out.

Hey, RKO,
I thnk we get you have zero intent to offend. This is one reason why you are so welcome here!

Yes, if most people believe in a flat earth, then they will take the idea of a "globular" earth as a complete joke, and its adherents as fools.

Frankly, though, I can take your words and turn them back on you:

What makes it a little hard to take is the evolutionist's desperate struggle to find an explanation for things like the Fall that meshes with their old earth story. In order to do that you have to ignore or spin a LOT of Scripture and Tradition.

So while I am TOTALLY ready to concede that the Earth is not so young as some would have us believe, I cannot concede the ideas that in effect deny that man Fell and rather insist on the reverse: that he is gradally evolving/improving without any supernatural intervention.

It just seems to me that Christianity is better served by saying that there are vast parts of this story that we do not and probably can not know in this life.

I agree COMPLETELY. WHY, then, do Christian evolutionists insist that we MUST admit that the popular scientific ideas are TRUE, as true as Holy Tradition? If we cannot know, then it cuts both ways. And I think that regarding origins, that we can't.

 

[RKO]

Hey, RKO,
I thnk we get you have zero intent to offend. This is one reason why you are so welcome here!

Yes, if most people believe in a flat earth, then they will take the idea of a "globular" earth as a complete joke, and its adherents as fools.

Frankly, though, I can take your words and turn them back on you:

What makes it a little hard to take is the evolutionist's desperate struggle to find an explanation for things like the Fall that meshes with their old earth story. In order to do that you have to ignore or spin a LOT of Scripture and Tradition.

So while I am TOTALLY ready to concede that the Earth is not so young as some would have us believe, I cannot concede the ideas that in effect deny that man Fell and rather insist on the reverse: that he is gradally evolving/improving without any supernatural intervention.


I agree COMPLETELY. WHY, then, do Christian evolutionists insist that we MUST admit that the popular scientific ideas are TRUE, as true as Holy Tradition? If we cannot know, then it cuts both ways. And I think that regarding origins, that we can't.

Interesting point. I think you and I have a different idea of what the evolutionists interest in Christianity would be. My thinking is that for their own purposes, they simply ignore it. There are a lot of evolutionists I guess who seem to have a need to find explanations for things like the Fall. But in my thinking, their interest or need to do that comes from an uncertainty inside themselves, couched as a scientific pursuit. Not a true scientific pursuit.
But, as I said, I'm just a regular guy with questions, neither a scientist nor a theologian.

Having said all that, it seems to me that in the true pursuit of sciences like evolution, etc, that "Science" simply ignores religion because to them it is unproveable.

 

[ArmyMatt]

Having said all that, it seems to me that in the true pursuit of sciences like evolution, etc, that "Science" simply ignores religion because to them it is unproveable.

I think that is one of the issues that rus and jckstraw were pointing out earlier (at least in one of these threads), is that evolution from the beginning is equally unprovable and not verifiable. even if we see some massive naturally occurring macro change now, that in no way proves that macro changes are how we got here.