Ken Ham Calls Progressive Christians 'More Dangerous' Than Atheists After Criticism He's Driving Believers Away
Progressive Christians, or those who believe in evolution, are "more dangerous to Christianity than the atheists" are, says Creation Museum CEO and President Ken Ham. He made the argument in response to criticism that his insistence on Young Earth Creationism is driving believers away.
"Apparently they call this sort of thing 'Progressive Christianity.' I guess that means 'evolving Christianity' – whatever the secular world believes about where they came from, you accept that as infallible and then change their assumed fallible Word of God to fit! So sad," Ham wrote on Facebook Friday, as he was responding to a critical post written about him in the "Unfundamentalist Christians" blog about his upcoming debate with "The Science Guy" Bill Nye in February.
The blog, which expresses its beliefs in Jesus Christ and the Bible but rejects some traditional teachings on subjects like hell and homosexuality, argued on Thursday that young people are not dismissing the Bible because they are being taught evolution, but because people like Ham are "telling them what it (the Bible) says and means, rather than letting them seek that out for themselves."
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"Mr. Ham, they're leaving the church because of people like you: people who fervently create walls, erect barriers, establish rigid rules for what one must believe in order to be a Christian," the blog continued, arguing that Ham's version of Christianity is not about right practice but about "right belief."
"They're leaving the church because by essentially demonizing everyone who doesn't agree with you, you've made believing in Young Earth Creationism* more important than Jesus' explicit commandment to love God and neighbor."
In his post on Friday, the Creation Museum CEO called the article a personal attack against him, and said that it holds "man's word as infallible and God's Word as fallible."
"Any attack on the WORD is an attack on Christ the WORD," Ham insisted.
The much-anticipated debate between Ham and Nye in February, tickets for which sold out within minutes on Monday, will focus on the question: "Is creation a viable model of origins in today's modern scientific world?"
According to a December 2013 Pew Research Center poll, 60 percent of Americans believe that evolution is how the human species came to be, with 33 percent suggesting that humans have existed in their present form since the beginning.
About 24 percent of American adults, however, believe that a "supreme being" guided the process of evolution, while 32 percent say that evolution is entirely due to natural processes.
