Ken Ham about learning to think.

Wontactmyage

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I found this inspiring

From Ken Ham,

When I first became a public school science teacher in 1975, we had the freedom to tell students about the bible & the account of creation.

As well as explaining to my students what the textbooks taught about evolution, I also shared with them evidence that confirmed the creation/Flood account in Genesis.

During one lesson, students told me they told their other science teacher what I had shared with them and she then taught them a different way to interpret the evidence that to them seemed to support evolution.

It was then that I realized it wasn't good enough just to teach these students what I believed about evidence, I had to do something which surprisingly seems to be lacking in education & that was to teach them how to think! Now that's radical!

I then explained that all evidence exists in the present & the presuppositions we have determine how we interpret evidence. All evidence is interpreted. So one had to look at the presuppositions/assumptions one had to understand why they were interpreting the evidence in a particular way.

I gave them a practical example. In their textbooks there was a chapter about scientists reconstructing the past from a group of fossils they had found. This find had fossils of aquatic & land creatures & plants. The scientists believed this had been a lake or pond & they used illustrations to show what this area may have looked like supposedly millions of years ago.

So I asked my students, what one thing do we know about the plants & animal fossils for sure? Do we know that when alive they lived with each other? Do we know that they died together? Do we know if they were buried together? Really, all we knew was they were buried together. We didn't observe them die. We didn't observe them living. I then asked if it was possible they lived in different places & could have been carried along by water & deposited where they were found. There was also no evidence showing clearly they all lived together.

Once the students were taught that all evidence is interpreted & they needed to search out a person's presuppositions to understand why they interpreted the evidence the way they did, it changed everything.

It wasn't the students who came back questioning me after this, it was the other teacher. She was really upset with me as she claimed I was stopping the students believing what she said. Of course this gave me a great opportunity to challenge this teacher concerning her evolutionary beliefs.

Sadly, most students aren't taught how to think about origins but what to think. And usually they're taught the evolutionary interpretations as fact. That's why we do something at the @CreationMuseum one doesn't find in secular museums. Before we walk people through the bible from Genesis to Revelation, we teach them that when it comes to the past one starts with God's Word or Man's word. We then illustrate in the exhibits how your starting point determines how you will interpret the evidence of the past. Once people get this key point in regard to how to think, it's like a light bulb going on & enables them to understand the battle over origins is a battle over different beliefs that determine different interpretations of the evidence.

This is why when I debated Bill Nye in 2014, I spent the first few minutes explaining the difference between beliefs about the past & interpretation of evidence in the present compared to using observational science in the present which involves direct observation & repeatable tests.

Some people were upset I didn't just present all the supposed evidence for creation. But if you do this without teaching how to think about evidence, the evolutionists will just reinterpret the evidence. That's why it is so important not just teach people what to think but how to think.

This then also enables one to teach about morality as the starting point one has determines how one interprets what right & wrong should be. How to think! That's very important.

Look him up. He has created the Ark in Ohio
 

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"Before we walk people through the bible from Genesis to Revelation, we teach them that when it comes to the past one starts with God's Word or Man's word."

When you think about it \ it's mans word that is written or at least imagination about how life on planet earth came to be is. Fossils tell a lot about the beginning of life on our planet. The word prehistoric is in our language for a reason. That period of time is written about even now as the evolution of living things is shown to be true.
 
Learning to think is not a bad thing. What would of made it more powerful would of been to teach the kids how to debate at the same time. The questions asked about the known facts regarding fossils could of been easily asked about creation stories and the debate process would of given perhaps a comparison of what a lay person can surmise about either. Then you could introduce science….
 
I get it, Ken Ham wants to stand in front of a public school class, and preach his personal religious views.
Spot on FuzzyBuddy. Ken Ham is (or was) an Australian. I too was a science teacher in Australia in the 1960s and 70s. Public schools at that time had visiting scripture teachers to teach religion (on an opt out basis) to the students and science teachers had no business teaching scripture in their classes. The syllabus did not teach evolution as fact, but as a theory that was well supported in various branches of science - biology, geology, comparative anatomy and so on. The same approach was taken with topics such as atoms, ions and molecules, continental drift and the dual nature of light, being both a wave and also made up of particles (photons).

Even when I began teaching in a catholic girls' high school in 1972 we kept religion out of the science lessons.

Ken Ham produced some very dubious video material that he tried very hard to distribute to public and school libraries. He managed to get some of it into local video libraries when they still existed. I made sure none of his nonsense was able to infiltrate my local Sunday School classes.

Ken Ham would do a lot better preaching the gospel values of the New Testament instead of trying to prove his young earth theory based on the biblical fable of Noah's Ark.
 
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Learning to think is not a bad thing. What would of made it more powerful would of been to teach the kids how to debate at the same time. The questions asked about the known facts regarding fossils could of been easily asked about creation stories and the debate process would of given perhaps a comparison of what a lay person can surmise about either. Then you could introduce science….
Interesting. Since I never had classes from him and I think critical thinking allows for debate.
 
After Googling "Ken Ham" and reading his background I could see that his definition of "learning to think" was basically to "learn to follow" the Biblical literalism that Ham embraces.
Christian apologetics probably consumes an amount of calories similar to observation/hypothesis/experimentation/and theory, but it's a stretch to imagine such thinking that begins with it's own conclusions could produce valid results. It's more like spinning wheels. "Learning to think" is an expression that lends itself to an unlimited amount of semantic interpretations to the extent that it can be used in a way that it actually loses its meaning altogether.

So when Ken Ham says he taught his students how to think, his claim can be disregarded as self deluded fantasy. Creationists coined the term creation science to infiltrate science classes in the public schools, but creation science is not science. It avoids the scientific method and does no field work. It's just religious fundamentalism and should be limited to Sunday school. It should not be considered serious scientific study.
 
That's not an exercise in thinking... it's an exercise in Googling, which gives the correct location as Williamstown, Kentucky.
Yes, and you had to think... where is this place and then think... maybe I should google it. At which time you had to think of your response. Think about it. You know I am right.

BTW, I am well aware of where it is, as I live 30 miles from it, as the crow flies. At least that is what I think.

The question being, what was the OP thinking, when saying it was in Ohio.
 
To believe in the Creation account, one must believe in a Creator that can create something from nothing. It is recorded that Jesus did this very thing in the feeding of the 5000 and that Jesus was “with God in the beginning” (John 1). I believe this by faith.

On the other hand, a large amount of faith is also required to believe in the evolution explanation. Believing in the evolution of the first life itself required more faith than even Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA had; he maintained that the first life on earth had to be transported in from outer space (the theory of Panspermia). See this paper at https://www.drywallinfo.com/TheCreationPaper/thecreationpaper.html
 
To believe in the Creation account, one must believe in a Creator that can create something from nothing. It is recorded that Jesus did this very thing in the feeding of the 5000 and that Jesus was “with God in the beginning” (John 1). I believe this by faith.

On the other hand, a large amount of faith is also required to believe in the evolution explanation. Believing in the evolution of the first life itself required more faith than even Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA had; he maintained that the first life on earth had to be transported in from outer space (the theory of Panspermia). See this paper at https://www.drywallinfo.com/TheCreationPaper/thecreationpaper.html
Francis Crick discovered DNA, which was a mechanism predicted by the theory of evolution. He did not discover the beginning of life, which is not even addressed in the theory of evolution. He is not the only scientist who has proposed life on Earth could have come from outer space. The beginning of life is still a mystery, however.

You see things from a perspective of faith. You believe in your version of creation by faith, so you conclude that believing in the big bang version also requires faith. This is the difference between religious faith and scientific rigor. Some of the most important theories in science, have been met with years of skeptical criticism, and were only universally accepted, after years of additional discoveries required discarding the original criticisms. Evolution.

In the case of the big bang, it was mostly rejected out of hand when it was introduced for the first time about 100 years ago. Since then, it has gained traction due to a clearer understanding of the universe, better telescopes, and new equipment. I don't accept it on faith. I think it's a good bet and requires more study, which is in progress as we speak. But faith would be an exaggerated perception in how science acquires knowledge.

Where you accept your religion on faith, and maybe even some areas of gained knowledge, I approach almost all ideas with skepticism. In fact, over the years I have discarded faith almost completely. But with enough credible evidence, I also relinquish an amount of skepticism and replace it with varying degrees of confidence, but not with faith. Faith is not in my toolbox of learning equipment.
 
Yes, and you had to think... where is this place and then think... maybe I should google it. At which time you had to think of your response. Think about it. You know I am right.

BTW, I am well aware of where it is, as I live 30 miles from it, as the crow flies. At least that is what I think.

The question being, what was the OP thinking, when saying it was in Ohio.
There are different levels of "thinking." You're right that it does take a little bit of thinking to decide to look up information, and even that is too much for some people.

Going back to the topic of this thread, accepting something on faith alone dismisses nearly all thinking, other than making the decision to not think and just accept the Bible as fact. Subconsciously, those who do that weigh the costs and benefits to believing things that in all likelihood are not true.

One of the benefits is, they don't have to think. Everything is explained in one book. There's no need to understand science, they belong to a community of believers, and their existential anxiety is alleviated.

The costs might be that they become subjects of ridicule, but they can be sheltered from that by living in a bubble where they're only exposed to information consistent with their worldview, so the costs are miniscule.

That said, my dog needs a walk and it's too early for philosophical thinking. :ROFLMAO:
 
Ken Ham is a proponent of presuppositional apologetics. Look up the Wikipedia article for a good intro. The founder of this style of apologetics is Cornelius Van Til. He said of his view, which presupposes the existence of God, that "the only proof for the existence of God is that without God you couldn't prove anything." His problem with science is that it presupposes some neutral ground upon which it then proceeds to build. Van Til denies the existence of such neutrality.

The problem for Van Til is his fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of science as failing to provide proof. As any scientist will freely admit, that is not a failure since only mathematicians provide proofs. Science is empirical and subject to change in light of new evidence and more explanatory theories. Christianity is anti-empirical since it is concerned with absolute, unchanging truth.
 


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