We almost skipped this one from Ken Ham (ol’ Hambo), the ayatollah of Appalachia, because it starts out as a promotion for some books he’s peddling. The title of his post is Sneak Peek at Our World Religions and Cults Book Series and Conference.
Sounds boring, right? But midway through it gets entertaining. Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us for emphasis:
We are excited about the release of all three volumes of our unique World Religions and Cults book series.
Yeah, yeah. Skipping over that, Hambo says:
Volume three of the World Religions and Cults series focuses on a popular religion here in the West: atheism. Yes — atheism is a religion! It’s a belief system that has religious views about God, origins, what happens when you die, how you should act, and more. Honest atheists admit their view is faith (and obviously it’s a blind faith). An atheist’s attitude is not based on observational science but on faith. The absence of a creator, the nonexistence of God, and a belief in naturalism is their faith.
He’s said that stuff before, but then he adds something new:
Atheism is all around us. It’s practiced (and funded) in state schools and pervades the media, law, museums, textbooks, Internet, and science journals. People who claim that they’re not religious but make judgments about religious topics (e.g., the truth of the Bible, deity of Christ, existence of God, morality of adultery) have made a religious statement. Judgments about religious topics are religious statements.
Textbooks, science journals — a bunch of religious mumbo jumbo. Now it gets really interesting. Here comes Hambo’s evidence, with scripture references omitted:
Those who demand God to come and show evidence of Himself should know that He did come and He raised Lazarus from the dead. The Pharisees plotted to kill Lazarus. He healed a man born blind, but the Pharisees refused to believe he was healed. Jesus came, died, and rose from the dead, yet the evidence was suppressed by the authorities. They rejected the evidence. God tells us those who reject creation and the global Flood deliberately refuse to believe, regardless of the overwhelming evidence.
Wowie — Hambo has a whole arkload of evidence! He continues:
Secularists demand evidence, but then they usually just reject it. The Bible makes it clear that those who reject God reject obvious evidence He exists.
Don’t you feel silly, dear reader? One more excerpt:
Secularists claim they want evidence — but most really don’t. They would just reject or reinterpret the evidence based on their religion. They are willfully ignorant.
Hambo’s final paragraph is a promotion for his World Religions Conference, where “we will expose atheism for what it is — a religion!” Go ahead, click over there to read it all — if you have the courage.
Copyright © 2017. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
OK, Hambone, grab a god — any god, I don’t care which one — by the tail, drag him/her/it into my office and prove you’ve got one. Otherwise, bugger off!
Atheism is a religion!! *OOH* That must mean that it’s bad!!
I tweeted about this recently, in three volumes he seems to have forgot his own cult which should be under “first volume presents a clear and thorough analysis of counterfeit religions”
“we will expose atheism for what it is — a religion!”
I think there is some false advertising here since the 3 day conference has only one hour on atheism, just before lunch. How much exposing can one do in an hour?
Satanism gets an hour and half, just before the talk on Islam at the very end of the conference. I think someone’s agenda is showing!
One of the things that creationists actually excel at is projection. The Hamster is totally excellent at that.
If the Ol’ Hambo wants to call atheism a religion, then I’ll just call myself an agnostic (well, actually, just continue to call myself an agnostic).
So is Ham going to start saying that “not knowing” is a religion as well?
You see, Ham has so much money invested in pushing creationism that he just has to keep pounding away on his favorite theme. He’s gotta keep all those church groups renting those buses and thronging to the Creation Museum and the Ark Park. You can bet he’d like to make the journey to his creationist Meccas a religious obligation.
I can see his ad slogan now — “Go to Kentucky or go to Hell!”
But Odin shows up long after Jesus:
“The bagler-saga, written in the thirteenth century concerning events in the first two decades of the thirteenth century, tells a story of a one-eyed rider with a broad-brimmed hat and a blue coat who asks a smith to shoe his horse. The suspicious smith asks where the stranger stayed during the previous night. The stranger mentions places so distant that the smith does not believe him. The stranger says that he has stayed for a long time in the north and taken part in many battles, but now he is going to Sweden. When the horse is shod, the rider mounts his horse and says “I am Odin” to the stunned smith, and rides away. The next day, the battle of Lena took place.”
https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/link-suggestion/wpcd_2008-09_augmented/wp/o/Odin.htm
“People who claim that they’re not religious but make judgments about religious topics (e.g., the truth of the Bible, deity of Christ, existence of God, morality of adultery) have made a religious statement. Judgments about religious topics are religious statements.”
By the same reasoning, people who claim they are not atheists but make judgements about atheism (e.g. the truth or otherwise of the Bible, deity of Christ, existence of God, morality of adultery) have made atheistic statements. Judgement about atheistic topics are atheism.
Come on , Ken. Is this a roundabout attempt to tell us that you are secretly an atheist, or is it just a badly thought through argument?
Ham quotes the World Religions and Cults book series as the definitive authority on world religions and for the “fact” that atheism is a religion. Did Ham consult the religious studies academy’s latest and finest encyclopedic survey of the many peer-reviewed scholarly journals which focus on understanding religious traditions throughout the globe? Did academics who have spent lifetimes studying the world’s religions assure him that atheism is indeed a bona fide religion? No, when you are Ken Ham, you have superior expertise close at hand and even in the family! The author of the book is none other than Ham’s son-in-law, the renowned scholar Bodie Hodge. Bodie didn’t bother with earning any of those pesky degrees in religious studies or even sociology, anthropology, or philosophy. Much like his father-in-law, Bodie don’t play dat!
(I still think that The Bodie Hodge should be the name of the once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage which every devout Young Earth Creationist male must make to the Ark Encounter. And when Ken Ham finally goes to his reward and Bodie Hodge succeeds him–after a successful coup which deposes heir apparent Steve Ham–I can’t help but imagine a yellow brick road (paid by donors who pledge $10 per brick) which will lead the faithful into the very presence of the wizard himself. Yes, at last he will be “The Great and Powerful Hodge!”)
Anyway, I had opportunity to skim Volume I of the World Religions and Cults: Counterfeits of Christianity series. (How can a religion which precedes Christianity be a counterfeit of it? Don’t think so much!) I can’t really say that I was disappointed with the book because it was exactly what I had expected. Contempt and denigration permeated throughout, almost to a humorous degree. (No surprise there.) If you are a religion, Bodie’s comin’ fer ya! And he thinks he’s got you all figured out–except it reads like a really bad undergraduate term paper where the student sits down with the first few books he pulled off the library shelf and combines them in his own words into some sort of summarization.
Unfortunately, the books Bodie chose to consult must have gotten many of the facts wrong. Very wrong. I would expect Bodie to fall for gross generalizations of Buddhism which ignore the diversity of its traditions—but he even botches Western religious traditions and Christian variants. [As to less familiar eastern religions, Pure Land Buddhism would truly blow his mind if the Great Hodge ever took the time to discover that the humble Buddhist sinner who simply puts his/her faith in the Bodhisatva Savior will be able to acquire the enlightenment which he didn’t manage to achieve through good works and sacrifice, ya know, like the Buddha has done. I guess that would debunk one of Josh McDowell’s favorite claims. I’d love to see Bodie’s face when he discovers that one. In fact, Buddhism even has it own Catholic/Protestant schism, but I rarely meet a fundamentalist, self-designated “expert” on world religions who has yet to hear about that.] Yet, even with religious traditions more familiar to the average American, Bodie gets very confused. He doesn’t seem to understand Roman Catholicism at all. Sometimes he even confuses the atypical American brand of “occasional Catholicism” (among those who claim faithfulness to the church they don’t attend while often disagreeing with it) and the official papal doctrines coming from the Vatican chair. I guess those nuances were just too much pedantry for Bodie. A careful scholar he is not.
Clearly, Bodie and his co-author, Roger Patterson, (you know, the guy who actually wrote the book) didn’t bother to consult any evangelical scholars who actually earned PhDs in Comparative Religions–or even to ask them to proofread a draft of the book. You see, like his father-in-law, Bodie Hodge has a strong belief in inerrancy. His own.
That’s a nice sleight of hand by Hambo. If he says that a topic he is talking about is religious that means that anyone who disagrees with him is also religious. So every political and scientific subject becomes religious because Hambo said so.
God tells us those who reject creation and the global Flood deliberately refuse to believe, regardless of the overwhelming evidence.
Considering that the Hebrew text of Genesis says nothing about a GLOBAL flood, it’s hard to believe that God has told Ham & Co. that Christians who deny a global flood are “refusing to believe” the evidence.
“Did Ham consult ….”
Dear Third Prof (good to see you jumping around again), Ol’Hambo does not need to consult anyone. He has something better: prayer.
It is the “common sense” view of the world – if I can’t believe my own eyes and my own mind, then I can’t believe anything. What could be a better authority than my own mind, says Ham.
Prof Tertius: I thought your suggestion of the ark pilgrimage incredibly clever just based on the last name “Hodge” (Hajj) It took me a minute to realize the first name works well too “Bodie” (Boatie). I’d suggest calling it the “Boatie Hajj” (with that spelling), just to make sure there isn’t confusion.
A mechanical engineer and a high school biology teacher – just shouts authority on World Religions, no?
“God tells us those who reject creation and the global Flood deliberately refuse to believe, regardless of the overwhelming evidence.”
“Secularists claim they want evidence — but most really don’t. They would just reject or reinterpret the evidence based on their religion. They are willfully ignorant.”
Ham may be a shrewd businessman, but he certainly is gullible when it comes to evidence. His is an ancient text filled with errors and contradictions which he explains away based on his religion. He’s the willfully ignorant one. Atheism is no more a religion than Ham is open to real evidence.
Why do you think that he is gullible?
How many people has he convinced that he is relying on the Bible when he talks about so many things which are clearly not mentioned in the Bible?
Just to take one blatant example, obviously there is nothing in the Bible about tame dinosaurs. How can people think that he got that from the Bible?
Even people who think that it is ridiculous let him get away with saying that he’s following the Bible. That takes some talent!
Prof. Tertius & Troy:
Bodie Hodge/Boatie Hajj
(That’s beautiful, guys!)
My earlier comment bears repeating —
Ham’s tagline: “Go to Kentucky or go to Hell!”
Now let me see:
(1) Ken Ham wants public schools free (or compelled) to teach religion.
(2) He defines atheism as a religion.
(3) He doesn’t want atheism taught in public schools.
Ahem.
Actually, that’s unfair to the Hamster. He sees nothing wrong in teaching the Christian religion in public schools while excluding anything that contradicts that particular religion’s beliefs; it’s just that all those pesky court decisions make it unwise to say so. Well, there’s always hope that some future (or current?) president will appoint federal appeals-court judges and Supreme Court justices who see things the God-fearing way.
@Eric Lipps
His personal take on the Christian religion. I think that he might not be pleased by many versions of Christianity being taught. What would be the reaction when the schools start teaching that there are Christians who don’t think that it is right to interpret the Bible literally? Or that there are Christians who interpret other passages of the Bible literally?