Ken Ham

For the American astronaut, see Kenneth Ham.

Ken Ham
Ken Ham in 2012
Born	Kenneth Alfred Ham (1951-10-20) 20 October 1951 Cairns, Queensland, Australia
Residence	Petersburg, Kentucky, USA
Alma mater	Queensland Institute of Technology (B.AS.) University of Queensland
Occupation	Young Earth creationist, Christian apologist, Evangelist
Organization	Answers in Genesis
Title	Founder, President, CEO
Spouse(s)	Marylin "Mally" Ham
Children	5
Website	www.answersingenesis.org

Kenneth Alfred Ham (born 20 October 1951) is an Australian Christian fundamentalist and young Earth creationist living in the United States. He is president of Answers in Genesis (AiG), a Creationist apologetics organization that operates the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter.

Ham advocates Biblical literalism, believing that the Book of Genesis is historical fact and the universe is approximately 6,000 years old, contrary to the modern mainstream scientific consensus which states that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and the Universe about 13.8 billion years old.

Personal life and education

Ham was born 20 October 1951 in Cairns, Australia. His father, Mervyn, was a Christian educator who served as a school principal in several schools throughout Queensland. According to Ham:

[My father] was always very adamant about one thing - if you can't trust the Book of Genesis as literal history, then you can't trust the rest of the Bible. After all, every single doctrine of biblical theology is founded in the history of Genesis 1-11. My father had not developed his thinking in this area as much as we have today at Answers in Genesis, but he clearly understood that if Adam wasn't created from dust, and that if he didn't fall into sin as Genesis states, then the gospel message of the New Testament can't be true either.

— Ken Ham (2008)

Ham first rejected what he termed "molecules-to-man evolution" during high school, and became influenced by John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris's The Genesis Flood in 1974 during college. Ham earned a Bachelor of Applied Science, with an emphasis in Environmental Biology, at Queensland Institute of Technology, and a diploma in Education from the University of Queensland.

Ham married his wife Marilyn ("Mally") on December 30, 1972. They have five children.

Career

See also: Answers in Genesis and Creation Museum

Ham taught high school biology in Queensland, Australia for five years using his diploma in Education. He left his position in 1979 and co-founded what was to be later known as the Creation Science Foundation (CSF) with John Mackay.

Ham worked for the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), a young Earth creationist organization. In 1994, with the assistance of what is now Creation Ministries International (Australia), Ham and colleagues Mark Looy and Mike Zovath set up Creation Science Ministries, later renamed Answers in Genesis. The Christian ministry specializes in young Earth creationism and promotes the belief that the initial chapters in Genesis should be taken as literally true and historically accurate. He then began raising funds to build the ministry. Ham rejects evolution and claims that proponents of Nazism, racism, drug abuse, abortion and male chauvinism have all used evolution to justify their beliefs and actions.

File:Ken Ham.jpg

Ham speaking at the Creation Museum in 2014

On 28 May 2007 the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum opened in Petersburg, Kentucky, a project which cost $27 million. The necessary funds were donated throughout the 1990s. It is about 70,000 sq ft (6,500 m²).

In May 2007, Creation Ministries International (CMI) filed a lawsuit against Ham and AiG in the Supreme Court of Queensland seeking damages and accusing him of deceptive conduct in his dealings with the Australian organization. Members of the ministry were "concern[ed] over Mr. Ham's domination of the ministries, the amount of money being spent on his fellow executives and a shift away from delivering the creationist message to raising donations." According to the CMI website, this dispute was amicably settled in April 2009. In 2008, Ham appeared in Bill Maher's comedy-documentary Religulous. AiG criticized the movie for what it called Maher's "dishonesty last year in gaining access to the Creation Museum and AiG President Ken Ham."

In March 2011, the Board of Great Homeschool Conventions, Inc. voted to "disinvite" Ham and AiG from "all future conventions," saying that Ham's words about other Christians were "unnecessary, ungodly, and mean-spirited statements that are divisive at best and defamatory at worst." AiG responded: "It is sad that a speaker and ministry, which stand boldly and uncompromisingly on the authority of God's Word, are eliminated from a homeschool convention."

Bill Nye–Ken Ham debate

Main article: Bill Nye–Ken Ham debate

In February 2014, Ham debated American science educator and engineer Bill Nye (popularly known as "Bill Nye the Science Guy") on the topic of whether young Earth creationism is a viable model of origins in the contemporary scientific era. Critics expressed concern that the debate lent the appearance of scientific legitimacy to creationism while also stimulating Ham's fundraising. Nye said the debate was "an opportunity to expose the well-intending Ken Ham and the support he receives from his followers as being bad for Kentucky, bad for science education, bad for the U.S., and thereby bad for humankind." Ham said that financial support he received because of the visibility of the debate would allow him to begin construction of the Ark Encounter theme park, which had been stalled for lack of funds.

Creationist beliefs

Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky

As a Young Earth creationist who believes in Biblical inerrancy, Ham believes the age of the universe to be about 6,000 years, and states that Noah's flood occurred about 4,400 years ago in the year 2348 BC. He says that the animals carried on Noah's ark produced the biological diversity documented by observational science on earth today. Ham also believes that non-avian dinosaurs co-existed with genetically modern humans. Ham accepts that natural selection can give rise to a number of species from an original population. Ham believes that despite opposing the teaching of creation in public schools, the government is imposing religion on students in science classes in American public schools, like for example, by encouraging them to "worship the sun".

As radiometric dating measures the ages of many terrestrial artifacts to be far in excess of thousands of years, Ham does not believe the technique is reliable. Since 1989 Ham has supported the asking of the rhetorical question "Were you there?" to scientists and science educators when discussing the origins of life and of biological evolution, stating that knowledge of events such as evolution and the Big Bang requires direct observation rather than inference. The Talk.origins archive lists the most common debunking rejoinder of this rhetorical question, that the evidence for evolution "was there" and serves as a reliable means to conclude what events occurred in the past and when. "If this response were a valid challenge to evolution, it would equally invalidate creationism and Christianity, since they are based on events that nobody alive today has witnessed".

Ham says that there is a difference between facts themselves and their interpretation, writing that the difference exist only in the way known facts are interpreted.

Reception

Old Earth creationists and the scientific community have emphatically and repeatedly criticized Ham and young-earth creationism. Answers in Creation, an old Earth creationist website, has called Ham willfully ignorant of evidence for an old Earth, and said that he "deliberately misleads" his audiences on matters of both science and theology. Astronomer Hugh Ross, an old earth creationist, has debated Ham and other Answers In Genesis staff regarding the compatibility of an old Earth with the Bible. BioLogos has also responded to Ken Ham's criticisms of its viewpoint.

Chris Mooney, of Slate magazine, sees Ham's advocacy of Young Earth Creation as an effort that will "undermine science education and U.S. science literacy." According to Andrew O'Hehir of Salon, the "liberal intelligentsia" have grossly overstated the influence of Ken Ham and those espousing similar views because, while "religious ecstasy, however nonsensical, is powerful in a way reason and logic are not," advocates like Ham "represent a marginalized constituency with little power."

Honors and awards

Ham has been awarded honorary degrees by five Christian colleges: Temple Baptist College (1997), Liberty University (2004), Tennessee Temple University (2010), Mid-Continent University (2012), and Bryan College (2017).

See also

• Creation–evolution controversy