Saturday, July 23, 2011

Evidence of Ham’s Religious Extremism

In connection with my recent theme of YEC disdain for Christian academics, I note a blog post by Ken Ham dated July 20th and titled “Radio host Hank Hanegraaff supports evolutionary old earth proponent”. In the post Ham expresses his antipathy to William Dembski and Hank Hanegraaff who hosted Dembski on one of his shows. Recall that Dembksi and Hanegraaff are evangelicals who believe in the inerrancy of scripture. Therefore they are supposed to both have much in common with Ham as far as core faith is concerned. The following quotes from Ham's post are, however, evidence of his sectarian extremism and tells us what really counts as core faith with Ham – namely, YEC. (By the Way: I don’t go along with Dembski’s somewhat bizarre view of the fall).

Just to remind you, I have featured him in a previous blog post in which I indicated what Dr. Dembski has stated in his book The End of Christianity. Here are just a couple of outlandish statements from his book……

At our Apologetics Mega Conference this week, I showed video excerpts of Dr. Dembski and quotes from his books and other writings. I gave the conference attendees numerous examples of Christian academics who compromise God’s Word in Genesis; these Christian academics are sadly influencing the next generation of Christians with their teaching that undermines biblical authority.

It is so sad that such compromise with evolution and millions of years—and such an outlandish idea that God took animals and made them into Adam and Eve and gave them amnesia so they would not remember all the death and suffering in the world they once lived in—is being promoted by such a well-known radio personality. While I appreciate that Hank Hanegraaff had me on his radio program many years ago, I need to point out now that such outright compromise is undermining the authority of God’s Word.

I urge people to voice their opposition to Hank Hanegraaff and his promotion of this shocking compromise of the Bible, as he has pushed man’s religion of millions of years and evolution and has reinterpreted the clear teaching of Scripture in Genesis. Now, Hanegraaff has previously published a book against biological evolution, so it is perplexing to see him now promoting a man like Dr. Dembski who accepts many evolutionary ideas (Dr. Dembski is really promoting a type of “theistic evolution”)—and Hanegraaff is also accepting of death and millions of years of history before the Fall.

Even though there are many Southern Baptist leaders who are standing up for biblical authority (including a literal Genesis) in their seminaries, how disappointing it is that Dr. Dembski holds a position at one of the premier Southern Baptist seminaries in the country.

Interesting to see Ham identifying Dembski as a Theistic Evolutionist. I wonder what they would think of that on Uncommon Descent?

No comments: