See? I told you that in addition to being a creationist, Ken Ham is also one of those far right culture warriors.
During the conference, I spoke on the state of the nation and said that we are observing Romans chapter 1 playing out in the USA right now. I have heard many people say that if America keeps murdering children in their mother’s wombs (over 50 million babies since the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973) and eliminating God from the culture (as by and large has been done in public schools and in the culture as a whole with the removal of crosses, nativity scenes and Ten Commandment displays from public places), then God will judge this nation. Well, I suggest that America is already under judgment, and a sign of this judgment is the increasing homosexual behavior (and the “gay” marriage issue) in the nation, reflecting that God is turning the culture over (as Romans 1:24 and Romans 1:26 describe).
I also declared at last week’s conference that the state of the nation actually reflects the state of the church. Frankly, I believe it is largely the church’s fault that the culture, from a Christian perspective, is collapsing and is coming under judgment. For example, there is so much rampant compromise in the church with its increasing acceptance of millions of years and evolution. This has led to generations of children in our church doubting and subsequently disbelieving the Bible. Today, two-thirds of them are walking away from the church by the time they reach college age. It only takes one generation to lose a culture, and we are seeing this happen before our very eyes.
The church is not influencing the culture in America as it once did. That is mostly due to the fact that the culture has invaded much of the church. Much of the church’s “salt” has become contaminated. And we know what God’s Word says about such contamination: it destroys.
But it’s not just happening in America! Our Western nations—once dominated by Christian thinking—are embracing sinful acts, such as abortion and homosexual behavior, and is now calling these evils “good.”
If you want to know where America will be in the not-too-distant future, look at the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe. The churches there are largely spiritually dead (though I rejoice in the small pockets of Christian life there). All across Europe, countless church buildings have been turned into stores, nightclubs, temples, etc. Sadly, America is on the same path.
Happily, America is on the same path. But right now he and Pastor Phelps and every tinpot preacher with a load of hate to deliver sound a lot alike, don’t they?
You can understand why they cling to something as gallingly stupid as young earth creationism: they see it as all of a piece, that the eternal salvation of their children and grandchildren is dependent on not just accepting the liberal Christian view that belief in the divinity of an ancient Jewish carpenter is necessary to appease an omnipotent and rather wrathful cosmic father. Think about it: that’s a rather petty and trivial thing to hang such an essential gift upon, so there must be more. And the more that they’ve accepted is the costly sacrifice of giving up science, hating gay people, forcing their women into domestic servitude, and demanding non-stop official public piety.
Of course, I can’t help but notice that most of the people forced to make the sacrifices are not the family patriarchs.
But this is also why it is not enough to just educate people about evolution. For most people, science is just this hard, boring thing that they take for granted that someone else will do; they aren’t going to be at all impressed with accusations that they’ve abandoned science or even common human decency. They are serving an almighty LORD. They believe they have the biggest, baddest, strongest, most demanding boss of them all.
The teaching of evolution in the schools is just one tiny symptom of the real problem, and that’s why I argue that to defeat this one aspect that annoys me personally and directly, we need to confront and diminish the nasty head of the beast: religion. Tear it down, and then we’ll be able to pursue real knowledge unfettered.
And as a wonderful glorious additional bonus, we also get greater equality and a reduction of prejudice. I have no illusions that eliminating religion will lead to paradise, though — more like, eliminating religion will knock down one more major barrier to progress.
Once again, their solution is to turn inward and become more doctrinaire. As in yesterday’s post, it’s good news – the more isolated they are, the more out of touch their ideas appear (kind of like the Republicans believing their own rhetoric). This makes the cdesign proponentsists stand out even to a casual observer
If you translate that from fundiespeak to English, it means; send Ken Ham more money!!! Saving souls is expensive and jesus’s self appointed servants always need…more money.
Well, Ken Ham is right. US xianity is dying. Killed off by people like him.
It’s a slow process though. US xianity on trend will go below 50% by 2030 to 2040. I probably won’t be alive then.
So they’re against iodized salt?
America murders at least five children a day who are already out of the womb. But he doesn’t seem concerned about that.
but evolution will be dead within five years
“murdering children in their mother’s wombs”
I thought Gawdawful was the prime murderer of c-in-their-m-w’s (depending on your measure of when a ‘child’ starts).
This would be bad enough but ideally they’d want to force all women into domestic servitude…
Where does this “50 million babies” trope come from? Does anyone have any idea what a more accurate number would be? My guess is this is some made up number a few orders of magnitude higher than the actual figure. It’s also nice to see baby conflated with fetus, yet again.
telamonides:
I suspect that is pulled from the same place that other extremely convenient statistics are obtained — pulled out of an arse.
I do find it interesting, though, that this number has not really changed in the last, oh, 10 to 15 years or so. When I was in high school, it was 20 million abortions. Then in the late 1990s it became 50 million. They must not update their fiction too often.
Reading these inspiring words from Ham and Solas has really cheered me up today. It would be wonderful to think that even that outlier-of-the-industrialised-world the USA might eventually slip the yoke, and of course it would be globally significant given the extent of the USA’s economic and cultural influence. Not holding my breath, but I might just live to see it …
Of course it won’t solve all problems, but as you say it would remove one more barrier to progress.
I’m well made up to hear it, pal.
I must admit to being a little pleased that Ken Ham singled out the UK and the rest of Europe here as the contemporary Sodom and Gomorrah – we must be something right if we antogonise reactiony xian fundies so.
Sadly, anti-abortionist would-be-woman-enslavers and homophobic bigots are not extinct (or even particularly endangered) species in the UK, but they certainly have less power here than in the US. That a decent number of Brits consider equality for homosexuals (we my even manage proper marriage equality one day) and the right of women to bodily autonomy to be essential freedoms and a moral good in their own right is one of the things that gives me hope for the future of this nation. That they wind up dear old Kenny is just a nice bonus.
Of course, the situation is worse than he realises – is he aware of what will come next after the social liberalism and the waning of toxic superstition? Before you know it, British accents will start spreading through the cities of the United States. Upper crust chaps will greet one another with ‘jolly good show, old bean!’ in the corridors of power in Washington DC, and New York will ring to Cockney rhyming slang.
Then we will inflict our food on you. Haggis will become inexplicably popular, and Yorkshire pudding and Cornish Pasties will be the toast of the town. Tweed, tartan and flat caps will become the new black, and a miniature Union Flag will come to nestle comfortably in the top right hand corner of the Stars and Stripes.
One morning, you will all start driving on the
properleft side of the road, and you will find yourself adoptingcorrect English spellingUK spelling and pronunciation conventions.And when you realise what is happening, your exclamation of surprise will come in the form of ‘Cor blimey gov’nor!’ or perhaps ‘steady on, old chap!’
Oh yes indeed, Mr Ham, the British are coming… *insert sinister laughter, preferably that of Benedict Cumberbatch, here*
@ Ogvorbis #9
Thanks.I doubt that they are referencing some valid statistic. There must be a lot of cross referencing of a few anti-abortion “fact” sheets adjusted over time. The problem I see with this meme is that it is the kind of thing that may influence those who may be on the fence about abortion rights (an odd way to characterize it, but there must be some people who are undecided about the issue). Given their undue influence with the media, this sort of “statistic” unfortunately leads to the erosion of women’s rights (their goal, to be sure).
“All across Europe, countless church buildings have been turned into stores, nightclubs, temples, etc.”
There’s a great Cuban(ish) bar/restaurant in a old church in Liverpool. Gorgeous space imaginatively transformed and being put to much better use than before.
Heck, here in Louisville there’s an old church that’s now a haven for craft beer lovers, so it’s not just Europe.
Mr. Hamm seems unaware that the Roman Empire didn’t fall until long after it had been officially Christianized to the exclusion of all other belief systems.
I’ve been to a few pretty nice bars in old churches. I propose we need more church turned bars in this country.
“Haggis will become inexplicably popular”
Not at all inexplicable, it’s delicious!!!!
@11
Oy, that,ll never happen you’re just talking rubbish
Ing:Intellectual Terrorist “Starting Tonight, People will Whine” @ 17;
:-)
Remember, Ken Ham belives in a magic man in the sky who created the universe by waving a wand only 6,ooo years ago – if he is prepared to buy into that, his gullibility may be sufficient to fear a cultural invasion by we denizens of Perfidious Albion…
richardelguru @ 16;
Strangely enough, some people go a little green around the gills when informed that traditional haggis is sheep offal cooked in a sheep’s stomach.
There is simply no accounting for taste I suppose…
;-P
If only, Mr. Ham, if only…
Sadly, though, as the choice of the New Old Man in Rome showed (no, not the Italian General Elections), the public in
GomorrahGermany still is inexplicably fascinated with the Funny Hat Fraction.Otherwise, I, too, am honoured to live in a bad example country as per Ken Ham. Hopefully, he’ll be right about his prediction for the US.
Världens lyckligaste folk
The Swedes are the happiest people in the world. Just saying.
*chortle* Temples?
Temples???
This is just so revealing about Ham’s fucked-up mindset. :-D
Telamonides:
I don’t know what the actual estimated number of elective abortions is, but the “50 million” figure is deliberately inflated by adding in all known miscarriages and medically necessary abortions. As is no shock to any of us, they’re lying.
Of course, no matter what the actual number is, it would be an irrelevant number. A hundred million embryos are not as valuable as a live baby*. Even they can’t sincerely argue against that.
*Well, they might argue against it if the baby was a girl…
“rampant compromise”. That says rather a lot about Ham right there.
Does Piglet-Poker even read what he writes? This is his own argument, restated:
“God is so angry over Womens’ Rights and Separation of Church and State that in revenge, He is making extra homosexuals* (like, a lot more than usual or something) and then causing people to respect them as equals.”
*Which of course negates his own position that it’s a choice.
Google *number of abortions since roe v wade 2013* The number is up to 54.5 million, and it’s this number to which fundies refer when talking about the “murder” of fetuses. When fundies make this declaration to me, I always ask how many of the millions are they going to adopt? The most common answer is that the mothers have to keep the resultant children. I say that millions of these are unwanted, do you really think that those children will grow up loved? “God’s will” is the answer I get.
The god of fundies is a horrible, wretched entity. If I feel safe enough, I tell the fundie acquaintance this. It usually falls on deaf ears.
I have come to the same conclusion myself and for the same reasons. I was once much more tolerant of religion even tried to believe once struggled with the internal conflict with what I knew to be true and what story I was supposed to think was true but depended on too much magic.
I grow increasingly less tolerant with willful ignorance and religious intolerance, prejudice as practiced by all believers. But as demonstrated by the furor over womens rights issues or A+ hold no belief that atheism or science will “cure” those problems so easily
uncle frogy.
Sara Robinson, a futurist and editor at Alternet, appeared on Thom Hartmann’s show a while ago. She posits that some 15% of the world’s population is authoritarian and considers that in their hierarchical world, women are inferior. Women’s rights and autonomous reproductive healthcare represents an existentialist crisis for these men. Nothing was said about how religious they tend to be.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX3Ch830GtY
Atheist men retain the prejudices of the larger culture. Without awareness and education, there will be more elevatorgates and hostility towards entities like Atheism +.
That whole screed hangs on Ken’s version of God’s word. And he’s incapable of seeing how hilariously/sadly empty that is.
I love the Guttmacher Institute for abortion information. From 1973-2008, there were “nearly 50 million legal abortions,” and a thousand or so a year since then.
Other fun facts: 37% of women obtaining abortions identify as Protestant, and 28% as Catholic. Mmm, smell that hypocrisy!
Icforevah, don’t forget the economic cost of all those unwanted children, and since this has been going on so long, all their children, and all their childrens’ children, and all their childrens’ childrens’ children. The anti-womens’ rights crowd almost completely overlaps with the anti-immigration crowd, so ask them if they think that the U.S. can’t handle 12 million working illegal immigrants who help keep food costs manageable, but that the nation COULD have handled 70 million+ additional births and all the government costs and bankrupt families that would result.
The godbots seem to forget that the main reason their dogma is being increasingly ignored is that it’s nonsense. The baby jesus may not have ever lived, the bible is a steaming pile of nasty mythical stories about some sort of god that doesn’t deserve worship or even acknowlegment, snakes don’t talk, virgins don’t give birth, hate is not a good thing. They need to change their sell if they ever hope to gain a following amongst the young. Horrible miusic won’t help.
“Temples”?
Yeah, my assumption is he was trying to throw a little islamophobia into the mix. I’m surprised “gay marriage parlors” wasn’t there.
burgundy @20 I think you mean a million per year. I have seen both a million and a million and a half for yearly figures–that would bring about the 54.5 million google gave for 2013, from your 2008 numbers.
coyotenose @30, I go for the personal, since I know no person arguing with me is going to say “Yes, I’m going to adopt if only these women would see things my way. I completely agree with you about the consequences of 50+ million additional to the population, but I’ve noticed that most fundies are mathematically challenged, so bringing up population numbers falls on deaf, ignorant ears.