Ham's Biblical "Blinkers"
John Stear, July 2003

KEN HAM ON EDUCATION: Biblical glasses - we need them!

Home Education Weekly News -- 11 July 2003

Christians need to understand that because the Bible is the revealed Word of God - and a record of history - we need to look at the world through the Bible's eyes. In other words, we should ALWAYS put on our "biblical glasses" in order to understand the world.

No, Mr Ham.  To understand the world you need to look at the evidence through scientific eyes, not Biblical "blinkers".  ["Blinkers" in this context refers to a pair of leather flaps attached to a horse's bridle to curtail side vision.] 

Let me give you a couple of examples. If you took your children to the Grand Canyon, and they asked you how the layers of rock and the canyon formed - you should immediately put on your biblical glasses and say something like this:

"Well, children, those layers contain billions of fossils. The Bible teaches there was no death before sin - therefore these layers couldn't have been laid down before Adam sinned. Also, the Bible tells us about a global Flood - this would've created layers burying lots of dead things."

Is that ALL you would tell enquiring children Mr Ham?  Even if "those layers contain billions of fossils" that's not evidence for a world wide flood.  If your biblical "blinkers" weren't welded to your face you could explain to the children that in between the layers you speak of  lies the Coconino Sandstone which is basically petrified sand dunes. It would be difficult to create desert-like sand dunes during a massive and year long flood.

And the way those fossils are sorted demonstrates clearly that there was no global flood. One need only look at the vertical structure of the fossil record to discover that  the fossils have been sorted with 100% precision by species. Do you know what the fossil record is Mr Ham?  And do you know what the fossil sequence is? It seems not. And the sad thing is that the children you "teach" will never know anything other than half baked science.

When scientists look at the many layers of sedimentation in the fossil sequence they see evidence of small life forms in the lower layers and the fossils of larger life forms in the higher layers. Mr Ham, if you consider that you're qualified to teach children all about the fossil record and the fossil sequence answer me this - why aren't the large dinosaurs in the lower layers? How did all those little fossils filter down to the bottom? All the dinosaurs are near the top but according to your flood "geology" they should be at the bottom.  Can you explain to the children why this is so Mr Ham? (See Floods & Fossils)

Leonardo Da Vinci, one of Henry Morris' "pious" scientists in Men of Science, Men of God (1982),  doubted the existence of a world wide flood, because he considered that "there would have been no place for the water to go when it receded".  He also noted that "if the shells had been carried by the muddy deluge they would have been mixed up, and separated from each other amidst the mud, and not in regular steps and layers -- as we see them now in our time".  Leonardo Da Vinci also commented that "rain falling on mountains rushed downhill, not uphill" and suggested that any "Great Flood" would have carried fossils away from the land, not towards it. He considered it impossible that one flood could have carried sessile (permanently attached or fixed) fossils such as oysters and corals 300 miles inland, or that they could have crawled 300 miles in the forty days and nights of the Biblical flood.  No biblical "blinkers" for Leonardo, even in the 1500s.

Here's another example: how do we explain dinosaurs? By putting on your biblical glasses, you can say LOTS about dinosaurs - they ate plants before sin entered the world,

Not so Mr Ham. While it's true that most dinosaurs were herbivores (plant-eaters) there is now mounting  evidence showing that many dinosaurs that existed 65 million years ago were carnivores (meat-eaters). A large coprolite (fossilised faeces) found in Canada is evidence of that.  Scientists who studied the fossil noticed the distribution of bone fibres and blood vessels in the bone indicated that the dinosaur, a Tyrannosaurus, had eaten a young dinosaur. 

two of every dinosaur kind were represented on a huge boat that landed in the Middle East, and so on.

The question is, could dinosaurs feasibly have been taken onto the ark.  Creationists like John Woodmorappe suggest that only juvenile pairs were taken which is contradicted in Gen. 7:2 which speaks of Noah taking "the male and his mate".  This indicates that the dinosaurs were sexually mature. As well, many animals need the care of adults in order for them to learn the survival skills they need in the wild.  Immature animals such as young dinosaurs would not have survived without adult care.  Of course this doesn't apply to all animals but those that don't require parental care tend to be animals that mature quickly and would have reached close to adult size within a year, spelling trouble for Noah and his family.

In order to avoid the embarrassing questions that have arisen about the many difficulties of housing two adult Tyrannosaurus', creationists have suggested that Noah took on board only dinosaur eggs.  I wonder how Noah knew which egg would yield a female and which a male.  How did he know that both were fertile?  And, if they were fertile, and since the eggs would certainly have hatched inside a year, how did the people on the ark  successfully raise the two vulnerable young hatchlings?  And, given the propensity for artificially hatched creatures to attach themselves to the first living objects they see, I wonder which of Noah's family was adopted by the young dinosaurs as their parent.  See Were the animals aboard the ark mature?

By building our thinking on the Bible - beginning with Genesis - we're putting on biblical glasses!

The problem with too much use of biblical "blinkers" Mr Ham is that the wearer tends to get used to viewing everything from a blinkered perspective.  That's why even those creationists who are qualified scientists must deny the science they learned in university and college when it refutes the "science" in the Bible.

Viewing the flood scientifically leads to only one conclusion.  The flood is a myth, and without the flood you and your creationist mates have little else to prop up your absurd claims.

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