and T RexDawkins's worst nightmare takes his literalist Biblical message on a tour of the UK
James Randerson, science correspondent
The Guardian, Saturday April 5 2008 Article historyAbout this articleClose This article appeared in the Guardian on Saturday April 05 2008 on p15 of the UK news section. It was last updated at 00:03 on April 05 2008. Creationist preacher Ken Ham is used to the problems that arise from combining what he reads in the Old Testament and what scientists tell him. He has no difficulty squaring six days of creation and 6,000 years of Earth history with evidence from fossils and geological dating - for him, scientists who think the world is millions of years old are simply wrong.
Ham, a US-based Australian, has been on a tour of the UK, and listening to him explain this week that most of the fossils on the Earth were left during Noah's flood, and that dragon legends are ancient memories of dinosaurs, it would be easy to dismiss him as a crank.
Scientific evidence suggests the Earth is around 4.5bn years old, the universe is around 14bn years old and dinosaurs died out 65m years ago, long before anything resembling a human evolved.
But Ham's ideas and his organisation, Answers in Genesis (AIG), are influential, especially in the US. In May last year, the organisation built the Creation Museum in Kentucky. Within eight weeks of opening, the $27m (£14m) attraction had clocked up 100,000 visitors. The operation in the UK is smaller but still significant, with an annual turnover of around £500,000. One report suggested it dispatches between 30,000 and 50,000 books, DVDs and videos each year.
For the last two weeks, Ham has been on a speaking tour of the UK. According to AIG, in Bedford he spoke at a packed Corn Exchange to 600 people. The Guardian saw him on Thursday in Leicester, where AIG's UK headquarters is located, bringing the literalist message about the Bible to about 250 people. The tour culminates in a "Creation Conference" today at Westminster chapel, an evangelical church close to Buckingham Palace.
After nearly two hours of the rapid-fire Australian, some people may find themselves transported into a parallel world where even the most preposterous ideas (just how did all those animals fit on the Ark?) start to seem plausible. Much of his trademark "science-lesson-come-sermon" is delivered as a kind of internal dialogue between a naive and petulant sceptic, and himself.
"What do you think Adam was doing while T rex was considering lunch?" asked one sceptic in the audience.
"Read the book," said Ham patiently. In Genesis, God decreed that eating flesh was not allowed. So humans, T rex and everything else in the Garden of Eden munched on foliage and fruit.
There were believers. Pam Wilson, 57, who works in social services , asked: "Why would God start the Bible with a lie?"
"The foundation of this country is crumbling. It is no longer a Christian country," said Susan Tee, a follower from Leicester who is a Christian minister. "There is no morality any more."
Ham's energy is astonishing. His first lecture, Defending Creationism in an Evolutionary World, runs to an hour and a quarter and is peppered with videos on DNA, dinosaurs and the like, as well as numerous invitations to buy his books. Then follows 40 minutes of Dinosaurs, Genesis and the Gospel.
Ham is like something conjured up in Professor Richard Dawkins's worst nightmares, a man so intent on sticking to the precise text of a book that he will shoehorn any evidence to fit the narrative. "We and our children have been indoctrinated to believe we can't start with the Bible," Ham told the enraptured crowd. How to explain radiological dating of rocks? Allege there are lots of dating methods and most don't support the 4.5bn-year age of the Earth. If dinosaurs shared Eden, why are they not mentioned in the Bible? They are, said Ham, but it calls them something else: Leviathan and Behemoth.
Detecting the Guardian's scepticism, Susan Tee asked why Jesus's message had been hard to swallow. "Either he's mad, he's lying or what he says is true."
Some would say the same about Ham.
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