Ken Ham, Motives, and Footprints
Someone stopped by and left a comment on a post I wrote about creationist Ken Ham. Since I’m going to write a response, I thought giving it some visibility would be nice rather than replying in the comments and having no one see it.
One thing that caught my interest in this post was your mention of the claims that are made by the young earth creationists of human and dinosaur footprints appearing together. If this was found and verified in the fossil record, would that have any influence on your beliefs?
OK, about Ken Ham, I’m not a huge Ken Ham fan, but I hear him occasionally on the radio when I’m driving. I have developed a certain amount of respect for him as a Christian who is fighting for what he thinks is right against a huge amount of criticism. I would truly be suprised if he was doing this just for the money as you are alluding to. I do not believe that he is intentionally deceiving people. You may think he is ignorant and clueless, but do you really think he’s a con artisit? OK, just had to get that off my chest.
I’ll reply below the fold.
Humans and Dinosaur Footprints Together?
This is an excellent question and one that I suspect many people are perhaps unaware of. The answer is — you bet. And not just my beliefs, it would turn biology on its head. If such a thing were truly found, the theory of evolution as it is understood now would be over.
About the only way I could reconcile the two (evolution and human/dinosaur footprints) would be if, amazingly, clear evidence came to light that dinosaurs (and there are many lineages of what the public popularly calls dinosaurs) extend forward in geologic time to overlap with humans. This would “fit” within evolutionary theory. But the point is that the gap is currently about 58 to 60 million years, with the last dinosaurs going extinct at the end of the Cretaceous 65 million years ago and the earliest “pre”-humans appearing between 5-7 million years ago, depending on how you draw that line. So that’s a huge gap between the two that would have to be accounted for.
Now the sticking point is that it would truly have to be solid evidence. There are fossils of human footprints. The most famous are at Laetoli, Tanzania of a mother and child Australopithecus afarensis (same species as Lucy) walking through volcanic ash 3.6 million years ago. (Pictures here and better information here).
There are not fossils of human and dinosaur footprints though, despite creationist claims to the contrary. (One need merely to consult Google to see just how many places these claims appear.) This is not a controversy. Every professional geologist and anthropologist view these claims as completely false.
Now About Ken Ham
I honestly cannot judge exactly what Ken Ham’s motives are. His salary in 2003 was $125,739 — hardly a millionaire, but also a very nice living. It’s a lot higher than most scientists get paid. I also view his actions with suspicion since he promotes his own videos and books at his numerous speaking events. The money’s not the real point though.
I do not, nor should I ever, question people’s understanding of scientific theories to determine if they’re worthy of attending the same church as I. Frankly, if someone down the pew from me won’t accept evolution, gravity, heliocentricism, or thermodynamics, I’m compelled to admit that this is not evil or sin.
If they simply don’t know about such things, I would hope that I would have great compassion and patience in speaking to them on what I know. If they actively choose to remain ignorant and have no desire to learn anything about these things, then I think they are dead wrong, particularly if they refuse to accept something that they know nothing about it. Surely you ought to understand something if you’re going to claim it’s not true. But at the end of the day, they have that right and as hard as it is for me, I want very badly to call these people brothers and sisters.
The problem is that as a scientist (or at least one in training), I feel compelled to draw the line somewhere. When the objections are no longer personal and religious in nature, but instead one goes around the country telling people things which just about any scientist would call lies, the line’s been crossed. It’s no longer just about an individual’s faith and what they will and won’t accept. Ken Ham, and other prominent creationists like him, actively distort science to convince people of their conclusions.
What about the benefit of the doubt?
When scientists have repeatedly discussed why Ham’s ideas (and other’s like him) are completely wrong and unscientific, and he simply ignores everything that’s pointed out to him, I can only conclude one thing. The truth no longer matters. Lying is an acceptable means to convince people of God’s reality. A person who cares about the truth should be humble enough to admit that 1,000s of scientists with advanced degrees might be worth listening to. But the scientific evidence is not at all what’s shaped Ham’s views. Anyone that claims this is being less than genuine. The conclusion — that the Bible is to be interpreted literally, the earth is 6,000 years old, that dinosaurs were around with people, etc — is not based on science. It’s based purely on religion. When Ham goes around in the name of science saying otherwise, there’s nothing left to do than say he’s not speaking the truth.
I am particularly pained by the rhetoric and methods he uses to attack evolution, including Christians who do not share his views. Read some of his stuff. He ties evolution to the root of every evil known to man. In this way, he further creates a false dichotomy telling people at his lectures that accepting evolution is accepting murder. It’s almost like a plan B. If people won’t accept his junk science, he’ll hope that fear and hate will motivate them. A rational discussion is simply not in Ham’s bag of tricks. I feel compelled to point that out, and directly reject his claim that I’m an evil person out to attack the church and weaken people’s faith.
So to sum up — the commentor asked if I really thought Ken Ham was a con artist. That is after all a much heavier charge than simply saying someone’s wrong.
Dictionary.com defines a con artist as “a swindler who exploits the confidence of his victim.” When one knows, as Ken Hams surely must, than the entire scientific community completely rejects their arguments, but goes around the country and reaches up to a million people a year with their message that science points to their specific interpretation of the Bible, I think that safely falls under the definition of con artist. They’re selling something that’s not true and banking on the fact that their audience too cares less about the evidence and the truth and more about a predetermined conclusion. And Ham doesn’t disappoint. He gives them precisely what they want to hear.
Thank you for addressing my comments. I’ve long been interested in the study of man’s orgins. As a Christian and a scientist this is a subject that comes up often. I’ve held various opinions over the years and at this point in my life feel like I could argue from a few different sides. The issue that I find most interesting, is the similarity between the reasoning of some of the young earth creationists and the atheistic scientists. So this is why I asked the question that I did about footprints, etc…
The subject of human and dinosaur footprints appearing together came up recently when I was traveling through Arizona. There is a place on an indian reservation that has many fossilized dinosaur footprints as well as eggs and coprolites. In the midst of the dinosaur footprints there are what appear to be human footprints. I asked the Indian guide about this and he said that some scientists from a university had examined these prints and concluded that they were most likely human. He also said they found it strange how these prints ended up alongside the prints that were 50 million years older. Now the ‘guide’ that we had was just a teenage kid and what he told us was obviously second or third hand. But if this line of thought of these particular scientists was portrayed accurately, I couldn’t help thinking of the similarities with many young earth creationists (being that if observations don’t fit the fiercely held model, come up with a far-fetched explanation that preserves the model). I see this a lot with young earth creationists, but I also see it occassionally with atheistic scientists. I guess one of my questions is if serious study would be put into these types of situations by ‘mainstream’ scientists, or would they be immediately discarded as they do not fit the established, and fiercely held, model. Could a scientist come forward with these types of findings (if he felt they were real) and be accepted by the community? I think additional scrutiny would be applied to findings such as these that are not applied to other findings. But that is just my opinion.
Most atheists are very reasonable people. Some of them hold their beliefs dogmatically, but my experience with people as been a positive one. As an example, a professor in our department summed up the whole issue by saying “I don’t have an axe to grind.”
I have yet to be persecuted by an athiest. I’ve had conversations and people disagree with me, but I’ve been treated respectfully. That’s not to say that I won’t run into someone who mistreats me, but it hasn’t happened yet. And most importantly, I’m not looking for it, expecting it to happen around every turn.
I have been persecuted by Christians though. Again, that’s one of my struggles. Whether they claim the title of Christian or not, meeting someone with an axe to grind is simply no fun.
As far as your comments on dinosaurs, footprints, and Arizona… Without knowing what you’re talking about, I would have no way to point you to further information. If by chance you’re referring to the Kayenta Formation of the Glen Canyon area, I came across a detailed discussion on Talk Origins. They also have a wealth of information on dinosaur / human footprints in general. (Talk Origins has a series of essays, mostly by mainstream scientists, which explain evolution and offer clear refutals of pseudoscience. If someone wants to learn about evolution, it’s one of the best places I know of).
Finally, I have to say without a doubt that a scientist could come forward with findings of humans and dinosaurs footprints. They need thick skin. Anybody that’s going to turn science on it’s head needs thick skin. Our ideas in science were hard won. Scientists have worked incredibly hard learning them and furthering them, and won’t throw their ideas away without good reason. But if the evidence is solid, I have absolutely zero doubt that other scientists would be won over.
Consider the following theories, now overwhelming accepted by scientists, which were very contineous to the point of being considered ridiculous when they first came out.
Endosymbiotic theory, plate techtonics (physists thought it laughable the idea that enough energy could exist to move continents), Big Bang, natural selection, and human divergence from apes 5-7 million years ago (prediction made on molecular evidence long before the fossils were known and at the time anthropologists believed a date of 1-2 million years was more accurate).
In every field, I’m sure there exists ideas that were thought untenable when originally proposed that are now accepted in mainstream science. This is one of the beautiful things about science. Despite the cantankerous people that sometimes work with it, it’s a transparent process.
Interesting discussion. The photographic evidence published on the web of various sites around the world of dino and human prints
apparently together are of varying quality, though some are pretty startling. If that’s all they had it would not be so much, but I’ve
seen a lot on ancient dino paintings on cave and rock walls - some in North America, ancient dino ceramic and terra cotta sculptures
from Aztec and Mayan age cultures, and ancient Peruvian textiles with dinos embroidered on them. Plus the point that
the word ‘dinosaur’ was not coined until 1841 when they started digging them up as fossils - before then they were usually called
dragons. On the historical face of it, it is true that there are dragons in the histories of every culture, so it is hard to say they were
merely mythical, though sometimes they exaggerate, like saying they could talk. Most of the accounts are presented as soberly
recorded events. Chinese dragons, your English knight rides out on his horse to fight the dragon, Spanish dragons, the Vikings
fought dragons, they are in the Greek and Roman histories. So, purportedly, commonly known until modern times. They say the
body style of a dragon is the long neck, long tail, big bulbous body - it’s a stylized dinosaur. One site, genesispark.org has a lot of
photos of dinos on ancient art, pottery, engravings and textiles.
Ray, I’ve replied to your comment here.