#166: Ken Ham

Arguably the successor of Kent Hovind to the title of mackerel baron of the biblical creationist movement, Ken Ham is the well-known founder of Answers in Genesis (a pertinent description of which is found here, and also here). He originally hails from Australia (where all the kangaroos apparently floated after the Ark stranded in Turkey; see here). He is very diligent and shovels a lot of shit every day, completely delusional and utterly unable to distinguish fact from fantasy.

Also generally recognized as a human spambot that generates sentences with no regard for their truth or justification, their cogency with previous statements or any conceivable rules for good critical thinking, but in a completely predictable manner, such as in this case where the input cue is the term “atheist”. See this, and also this.

His favorite debate technique is a version of the Gish gallop known as the “Ham Hightail” which consists of jumping from point to point, ignoring all contrary evidence, and quoting the Bible whenever proof is required. Since the purpose is to retain the hold of those who already believe creationism is backed by science, if all else fails the hightail prescribes the “different worldviews” (i.e. atheist vs. moral) gambit.

Ken Ham and AIG also run the world-famous creation museum in Kentucky, a monument to ignorance, fundamentalism and denialism. The main purpose of the museum is to promote the idea that humans and dinosaurs coexisted peacefully before the Flood. The T Rex ate coconuts, and the reason animals ended up on different continents was that plate tectonics happened really, really fast after the flood. It “says quite a lot about Ham and his followers that they find a 4.5-billion-year-old Earth wildly implausible next to the notion of a tyrannosaur calmly grazing in a meadow.” Ken Ham and AiG seem to have failed to realize that the Flintstones is not a documentary. This is also pertinent, as is this.

Absolutely clueless and ignorant about science, Ham is also fond of dismissing any evidence on the grounds that the presenter is (purportedly) an atheist – a standard conspiracy theory trick, really.

He does, however, realize that Dembski’s old earth, intelligent design creationism is “bizarre", though not obviously for the right reasons.

Ham is also constantly complaining that scientists are unwilling to take him seriously. Go figure (He really, really doesn’t get it, though).

A couple of other examples: Ken Ham (feebly) claims that his Noah’s Ark claims are misrepresented.

Ken Ham on the Virginia Tech shootings (predictably).

Ken Ham on Tiktaalik.

Ken Ham applies double standards for Jesus.

Ken Ham fails to stay classy.

Ken Ham goes insane.

Oh, and Hitler.

And so on, and so forth. You get the gist.

Diagnosis: A clod, crackpot and (unintentional) con artist; seriously deluded and influential in the manner of Kent Hovind; Ken Ham is perhaps the leading advocate of traditional creationism and naïve biblical literalism. A threat to reason, sanity, intelligence and rationality everywhere.

#614: Brennan Dean

Being less crazy than Ken Ham is a poor measure for rationality. Brennan Dean gets that far, but only barely, and is pretty far away from seeing the light at the cave opening. Dean is a fundamentalist crazy and young earth creationist, and the founder of Great Homeschool Conventions Inc, an organization for people who keep their children out of public schools to avoid them being exposed to truth, reason and tolerance, and evolution.

Dean and his organization is perhaps most familiar to readers for disinviting Ken Ham, the grand man of young earth creationism in the US, “from all future conventions” because Ham was, in the eyes of Dean’s group, too intolerant toward opposing viewpoints for them (which they took to be in disagreement with a literal interpretation of the Bible by the way). It should tell you something about the lunacy of Ken Ham, since Dean and his group are truly, gibberingly insane themselves.

Diagnosis: A hardcore, organized fundamentalist. The fact that he is slightly less insane than Ken Ham does not mean that he is not a complete loon. He is.

#181: Kent Hovind

A.k.a. Dr. Dino

Kent Hovind needs no introduction, and plumbing the abyss of his cluelessness is probably not a hygienic enterprise, so we’ll restrict ourselves to the basics (and some examples). Hovind used to be the head of Creation Science Evangelism, a young earth creationist activist group. He also operated a small museum and amusement park known as "Dinosaur Adventure Land". In 2006, during the run-up to Hovind's trial for tax evasion, much of the park was shut down due to Hovind's refusal to secure a building permit. He was convicted on the tax evasion charges and is now serving a 10-year sentence.

Hovind has his doctorate in Christian Education from the diploma mill Patriot University. You can download his dissertation from this site (for instance); it was made public through Wikileaks and has become quite popular, so the server is often overloaded. It’s opening sentence, already established as a classic, is “Hello, my name is Kent Hovind”. In it he claims that “[i]n the twentieth century the major attack Satan has launched has been against the first eleven chapters of Genesis,” and goes on to display his deep understanding and erudite knowledge of modern biology by following it with “[c]hapter nine discusses the “best evidence” evolutionists have for evolution, that is, archeopteryx” and “I believe that dinosaurs are not only in the Bible, but the have lived with man all through his six thousand year history”, not to mention “The idea that evolutionists try to get across today is that there is continual upward progression. They claim that everything is getting better, improving, all by itself as if there is an inner-drive toward more perfection and order.” (More here, and here, and last but not least here)

Point is, Hovind views the manufactroversy between creation and evolution as an epic battle between God and his former chorus director, Satan. Evolution, you see, has been with us from the start: “When the people left the Tower of Babel, they took their false religion of evolution with them.” In fact, most opposition to Christendom concerns evolution: “the Islam religion accepts evolution very readily as a scientific fact because it fits so well with their teaching.”

Oh yes, Hovind believes the earth is 6000 years old, that the flood created Gran Canyon and that humans walked with dinosaurs. In fact Ken Ham, who shares these beliefs, has taken Hovind to task by creating a list of arguments against evolution a creationist should not use. They actually got into a dispute over that, since Hovind recognized several of his own trump arguments on Ham’s list. And that is Ken Ham. Of creation museum fame. When you are too ignorant of science for Ken Ham, then you are, well, rather ignorant. PZ Myers has attended one of his talks, and wasn’t particularly impressed.

So Hovind rejects the age of the earth, the field of astronomy, the entire field of geology, and has no trace of a clue about physics and/or radiometric dating. In fact, he is utterly ignorant of anything in science, has no time for evidence and is unmoved by facts. He doesn’t seem to mind, though. One famous example (among numberless) is his arguments against 'evolution' by trying to discredit the Big Bang, telling us that Big Bang violates the conservation of angular momentum because if everything came from a tiny spinning dot that blew up then everything would spin in the same direction; since some planets and moons in our solar system exhibit retrograde motion/rotation; this disproves the Big Bang, so evolution is impossible.

Other examples of his claims are that the Trail of Tears (1838) was a result of Darwin's Theory of Evolution (1859), that vaccinations are from Satan, that the New World Order was behind the Oklahoma bombings, that UFOs are “satanically owned and operated”, and that his commercial enterprises needn't file with the IRS in anyway or abide by legally issued warrants from same – even as a tax free organization in the unlikely event they qualify. With respect to this, Hovind claimed that as a minister of God everything he owns belongs to The Lord and he is not subject to paying taxes to the United States on the money he received for doing The Lord's Work (the judge in the case called his arguments “patently absurd”).

Hovind is well known for his "$250,000 Challenge", in which he states that he will pay $250,000 to anyone that can prove evolution. The conditions for “proof” are, well, Hovind’s own, and he has made it quite clear that it is logically impossible to meet his criteria (more here, and here).

An extremely fine resource on Hovind's studies can be found here. A nice, short summary can be found here. Note also this.

Kent has also lent his name to the Hovind, a unit of measurement which evaluates statements for kookery. Roughly, 0 is the score for a scientifically sound statement, 100 is for a lie that isn't even wrong. You can test your own Hovind here.

There are actually groups campaigning for Hovind’s release, such as this one (lead by one Adrienne Gilbert). Their main tactic seems to be praying, however, so they may be relatively harmless (here is another such call to prayer from the criminally insane Shelleytherepublican (Tristan Shuddery)).

Diagnosis: Hovind is a riot of insanity, ignorance, crackpottery, delusion, lunacy and idiocy. Thus, he has had rather far-reaching influence. His jail-time may have halted his career, and he seems to have grown even more unhinged during his time in prison. What happens when he is let out in 2015 will be interesting.

#1580: Don Elmore

Ken Ham is to many the ultimate symbol of religiously driven ignorance, anti-science fundamentalist crazy, but there are those who are crazier than Ken Ham – we’ve encountered a couple – although they fortunately don’t have Ham’s organization or influence. In fact, there are those who are so much crazier than Ken Ham that they attack Answers in Genesis from the right. Pastor Don Elmore of Union Kentucky, for instance, although he praises AiG’s tireless battles against reason and science, thinks they’re part of a humanistic conspiracy:

I am aware of the forces supporting “Answers in Genesis”, these being the same powers that are supporting similar multi-cultural anti-Christian organizations such as Alpha, Promise Keepers, The Full Gospel Businessmen’s Association, Billy Graham ministries, producers of many modern Bible versions, and a multitude of other ministries. These forces are the anti-Christian powers seeking One World Government under man, not God. The essence of my criticism is to show that “Answers in Genesis” supports the humanistic and unbiblical “Brotherhood of Man” doctrine (which also is a Hindu/Roman Catholic/Masonic/Jewish/Judeo-Christian and World-Church belief).

Of course, what really irks Elmore is miscegenation (oh, yeah):

For instance, less than 60 years ago, mixed racial unions were illegal in most of the states in the United States and other White nations. But now, they are tolerated as being supposedly within God’s plan. Under the influence and promotion of the Jewish-Masonic-Papal-Communist/Socialist controlled governments and media, Western Christianity has succumbed to the approval of race mixing, and we will be looking at what is behind this. The Bible abounds with evidence of God’s clear will that the races be separate in every way. “Answers in Genesis” mould all its answers around Judeo-Christian doctrines and traditions, and claims a different basis and definition of “race” from that which the Bible gives. Furthermore, there is evidence of Jewish Talmudic sources, or of what the Apostle Paul calls “Jewish fables”.

Whee. You can read the whole screed here, but you will never get those sanity points back. It should come as little surprise that Elmore is an associate of Mark Downey.

Diagnosis: Absolutely deranged. Possibly the craziest loon we have yet covered in our Encyclopedia.

#656: Tom Estes

Pastor Tom Estes is a creationist and blogger who has declared his blog “an atheist-free zone”. At the blog he displays his erudition and sense of logic (“This is why Biblically based logic and rationality will always work. It begins with God. It has a foundation that cannot be shaken” – take that, you who know what you are talking about when you think that logic and mathematics are based on axioms rather than empirical assumptions). So for instance, to the argument “Well, if God created the universe, than [sic] who created God?” Estes has a response: “there must be a reality that causes but is itself uncaused (or, a being that moves but is itself unmoved). Why? Because if there is an infinite regression of causes, then by definition the whole process could never begin – Do you see what I'm saying? It's all circular. If God was created, then someone had to create who created God, etc, etc, etc. And if that logic were true, nothing would exist.” Even a freshman struggling with Aquinas would be stumped by that one, methinks. (And in case you don’t see it, here is a hint: putting a problem in slightly different words is not the same as solving it).

He also claims that Ken Ham is able to disprove evolution without Bible-thumping (by using “sacred science”), but has apparently not seen AiG’s mission statement. Yes, Estes is a big fan of Ken Ham and the Creation Museum, but intellectually their arguments and claims still seem to blow his mind a bit.

Apart from that his blog contains the usual creationist canards – including the ones even Ken Ham warns against using, such as the myth that Darwin recanted on his deathbed.

Diagnosis: Exasperatingly dense godbotter, of the kind that even the AiG people would presumably be uncomfortable being caught associating with. 

#2363: Bob Unruh

Being a journalist for the WND is – as we have had ample opportunities to demonstrate – not exactly a sign of intellectual or epistemic virtues, but Bob Unruh is one. As you’d expect, Unruch is also a religious fundamentalist, conspiracy theorist and all-purpose science denialist. Since he doesn’t know or understand anything and doesn’t care (here is a commentary on Unruh’s coverage of the David Coppedge trial as an illustration of his standards), he is also rather versatile in his journalistic efforts. All his efforts are characterized by his trademark level of demagoguery and dishonesty, however.

Unruh is, for instance, an indefatigable apologist for creationism. An illustrative example of his work on behalf of creationism is his 2016 article, reported on here, on how Ark-Park and Creation Museum host Ken Ham mopped the floor with scientist Bill Nye in the debates between them, with Nye coming across to Unruh as a close-minded nihilist with an agenda compared to the humble and agenda-less Ham. Unruh has also brought Ham onboard as an expert witness for instance to comment on some 2015 Congressional “Darwin day” proposal (it is unclear which); Democrats ostensibly make such proposals “because they’re intolerant of Christianity and want to replace it with their own religion,” and “the resolution is a sign of the nation’s current move to suppress Christianity and promote beliefs such as evolution. While America was built on the Judeo-Christian ethic and worldview, secularists are becoming more and more intolerant.” Yes, we are aware that those are quotes from Ken Ham. Unruh is just unbiasedly reporting them. Come on. 

Another authority Unruh has appealed to is Ray Comfort; writing about Comfort’s remarkably silly introduction to his (Comfort’s) own edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species entitled “Nothing Created Everything”, Unruh claims that Comfort “debunks evolution” – indeed, the very subtitle of his article is: “Failure of natural selection logic documented in ‘Nothing Created Everything’.” But then, as Unruh “understands” it, the theory of evolution is the theory that life “randomly erupted from a puddle of sludge on some prehistoric landscape.” This is, hopefully needless to say, not the theory of evolution. (By contrast, according to Unruh, intelligent design is “the theory that the universe and life are too complex to have randomly erupted.” This is, hopefully needless to say, not an intelligent design theory – indeed, it isn’t a theory at all but just a denial of evolution.)

Unruh is also a global warming denialist, of the kind who thinks that short periods of cold weather and snow are devastating evidence against global warming. After all, why wouldn’t he think that, given his general level of understanding of facts, evidence and science amply illustrated above? 

Otherwise, Unruh is also central in the Clinton body count conspiracy movement, tirelessly connecting imaginary dots in incoherent ways (no, we won’t directly link to any of his many articles on the topic). He is also a birther.

And how surprised would you be if you are told that Unruh is vehemently opposed to marriage equality? He has, among other things (more detailed, though older, tally here):

-       Complained that dictionaries often include the word “homophobia” but never the word “homofascism”

-       Promoted the work and ideas of Scott Lively

-       Lied about Lively’s involvement in developing Uganda’s anti-gay laws, saying that Lively was merely doing “biblical preaching ... against homosexual behavior.” He has, for the WND, extensively mischaracterized other people’s criticism of Lively’s involvement, tellingly neglecting to link to what the people he criticizes were actually saying to ensure that you wouldn’t check.

-       Attributed fake quotes to Houston’s mayor after a Houston anti-discrimination ordinance was passed in 2014. 

Diagnosis: Liar for Jesus, propagandist and conspiracy theorist masquerading as a journalist. Insofar as we are talking about a journalist for the WND, it is unlikely that he will fool anyone but those already far down the rabbit hole. Still. 

#1099: Chris Rushton

Though creationism is supposed to stay out of public schools there are plenty of efforts out there to bring anti-science to kids. In Tampa, for instance, kids can attend a 13-week series called the Answers Academy Creation Study, targeted at homeschoolers, where they will hear insurance agent and homeschooling parent Chris Rushton give them proper religiously based denialist backing to (hopefully) withstand the onslaught of science-based and reality-based education they may encounter elsewhere. Rushton has absolutely no background in science, of course, but as he says: He’s read plenty of the material from Answers in Genesis, starting with Ken Ham’s book The Lie (the title is not intended to refer to its contents). From there, Rushton has acquired most of the necessary falsehoods and talking points to get his class going.

For instance, according to Rushton, there are two types of science: “There’s observational science; that’s the type of science that we can test with our senses: smell, sight, taste, touch. But there’s also what’s called historical science or origin science. That is taking evidences or facts and then interpreting the past. When you look at origin science or historical science, we have the same facts, the same evidence, whether we’re creationists or evolutionists. What’s different is how we interpret the facts. So, we look to see how observational science applies to the information we find in the book of Genesis. If you look at it with an open mind, you’ll see that observational science confirms what’s in the book of Genesis and that evolutionary ideas are not confirmed by observational science.” No, Rushton; historical sciences are observational. Theology isn’t. In the worlds of Ken Ham and Chris Rushton, however, “observational” means “evidence-based”, and evolution, history, astronomy and so on are therefore categorized as “no more evidence-based than the Bible”. Rushton’s contributions are assessed here.

Diagnosis: Not a big fish, but Rushton is one of many people doing their best to spread denialism and anti-science at a local level, and these people are exceedingly dangerous.