Ham is Australian—a rare sort of Australian, in that he is religiously devout and completely humorless—but he possesses a specifically American talent, one on display in mega-churches and theme parks across the country, for staging emotion-saturated high-tech spectacles. And so his museum is filled with buff animatronic Adams and sexpot Eves (plastic breasts covered by waterfalls of extremely healthy hair) and writhing snakes and flying dragons and dinosaurs much larger than the average chicken. The museum’s core argument is posted near the main entrance: “The Bible is authoritative, without error, and inspired by God.” Its other message to the Christian tourist market is left unstated: the Book of Genesis, in addition to being the source of holiness and cosmic truth, is also a source of Epcot-quality fun. …
“Why shouldn’t we as Christians use the best technology we can?” Ham asked me, though I had not questioned Christians’ right to deploy Disney-level engineering in their museums. Ham is not only a creationist but an oppositionist. He knows that his ministry, Answers in Genesis, draws the scorn of sophisticates, and so he takes special delight in portraying himself as a rational Daniel in the lions’ den of militant secularism, the lions being the media and the scientific establishment and the ghost of Clarence Darrow and millions of liberal and even not so liberal Christians and pretty much anyone who disagrees with Ken Ham.
A certain sort of sophisticate just knows he is right about everything (cf Jeffrey Goldberg, magazine award winner), because he is so hot, he is cool.
Look, I am not a young Earth creationist, but this much I know is true: In twenty years, The Atlantic might not be here but the Bible will.
Because no one who made it into the Bible would be such a self-referential snoot as the author who puts himself on display here.
When people are dealing with facts and truth, they are usually more humble. For one thing, there are genuine, serious problems with current claims in many of the relevant sciences.
But the sophisticate wouldn’t have the wit to be usefully interested in those problems.
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