Why Public School Groups Should Visit Ken Ham's Ark

After roughly a year of inactivity, it's time for me to try to resume posting.  I'll kick off by issuing a retraction.  I never thought I'd say so, Ken Ham kind of has a point here.

It's okay to teach about religion in schools.  And as part of a class project involving this education, it's perfectly all right to show kids just how thoroughly detached from empirically-testable reality uncritical religion can become with a little trip to Ken Ham's park(*).

Unfortunately, our country doesn't currently have multi-million-dollar parks dedicated to the unusual claims of fundamentalist Islam, or the odd claims of fundamentalist Hinduism, or the strange claims of any other fundamentalist world religion; they'd be nice to have, so that school curricula that want to do this don't have to be afraid of being accidentally biased.  I'm sure Ham will get right on that.

Sarcasm aside, though, he accidentally nails the problem.  He wants to allow "classes [to] tour the Ark or museum in an objective fashion".  A responsible way to do this would mean bringing along information from physics, chemistry, biology, geology, archaeology, anthropology, and perhaps even a Christian who accepts some form of theistic evolution so that the kids understand exactly what Ken Ham and his organization are claiming, and they don't have to accept Ham's misleading teachings about what all of these people would say(**).

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(*) Or, you know, you could treat it like a trip to the zoo.

"Look, kids -- it's a Creationisticus australiansis in its natural habitat!  Little is known about this creature other than that it feeds on the donations and profits from overpriced admissions and merchandise fed to it by people of faith willing to agree to its lies.  I think it's laying its eggs!  If we're lucky, maybe we can hear it repeat one of its calls!"

"Ooooooo..."

[off in the distance]  "Were you there?  Were you there?  Were you there?"

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(**) In case it isn't clear: The findings of these sciences, and the beliefs of Christians who understand and accept evolution, are very different from what Ham teaches that they are.  If you accept Ham's claims about these sciences and these Christians, of course the scientists and those other Christians seem weird, misinformed, or willingly blind.  But this misrepresentation is really the only way his teachings can gain traction.

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