The Ken Hamm stuff is disturbing on more than one level. Please issue rolls of duct tape when linking to it in the future.

1. Mangling the Bible into something it is not. “How did Noah fit dinosaurs on the ark? He took babies.” This claim is purportedly “biblical.” Wow. I must never have come across chapter 6.5 in my editions. It is jaw-droppingly fantastic that one could believe that one is being faithful to what the Bible says on the one hand and adhere to absolutely zero interpretive principles because you’ve got an infinitely malleable text on the other hand. Words fail.

2. The indoctrination of children into this disrespect for the Scriptures borders on abusive and is at least cultic. Teach them “here’s what you say,” not how to think or reason or freaking read for themselves.

3. So I put my biblical points first. Now to general revelation. asplode

...gathering the remains of my eyeballs and brain matter to finish the post…

4. Same hermeneutic, different text. Now we’ll take our totally unprincipled methods and apply them to empirical matters—yay! Isn’t this fun and easy, kids? If you’re creative enough, you can “explain” any evidence!

5. Let’s make sure our kids stay the hell away from godless knowledge and areas of study: anthropology, biology, earth & environmental science, physics, astronomy & cosmology, geology, paleontology, functional & evolutionary morphology, paleobiology,...

6. Jason, I have come to believe that one reason that spokespersons for the scientific community come off as arrogant and patronizing when dealing with stuff like Answers in Genesis is that it is almost humanly impossible to be patient and non-mocking when utterly silly “answers” are offered as serious alternatives to careful, peer-reviewed, published research. It’s like being in a Monty Python sketch where the characters actually take themselves seriously. How do you not come across as patronizing when challenged at this level of idiocy. To turn the tables, one might find it analogous when a christian informed in history has to respond to DVC lunacy. You know how historically ignorant these quasi-gnostics sound to orthodox christians? That’s how the Hammites sound to anyone remotely informed in the natural sciences.

7. If the christian scientific community has a genuine alternative to the dominant views in the many areas that do not support reading the first few chapters of Genesis as a work of chronological historiography, then they must be at least as aggressive in repudiating the Hamm stuff as Hamm’s group is in promoting their agenda. For example, I think ID proponents need to back off and take a sabbatical from the political efforts at getting their material taught in public schools and spend some extensive hermeneutical capital in establishing boundaries from the wingnuts.