You too will be horrified when you read what was just written by Ken Ham (ol’ Hambo) — the ayatollah of Appalachia, the world’s holiest man who knows more about religion and science than everyone else. At the website of Answers in Genesis (AIG), his creationist ministry, he just posted Poll: Fornication, Homosexual Sin Okay; Wearing Fur Is Not. Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us for emphasis, and occasional Curmudgeonly interjections that look [like this]:
According to a new Gallup poll, more Americans (43%) said buying or wearing fur clothing is morally wrong than said sex outside of marriage (27%), divorce (18%), or homosexual acts (32%) were unacceptable. Well, you could sum up this poll with one verse of Scripture, “they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25).
This is the poll he’s talking about: Record-Low 54% in U.S. Say Death Penalty Morally Acceptable. Hambo doesn’t discuss the poll’s principle finding — the one in Gallup’s headline. He focuses instead on other findings. Okay, we’ll go along. He says:
The answers given to the questions in this national survey really reflect how arbitrary the standard for morality is in our nation. It also highlights how inconsistent and hypocritical people are!
People are inconsistent and hypocritical? Hambo explains:
If they reject the absolute authority of the Word of God regarding marriage, gender, sex, etc., then ultimately, they should allow everything [Everything?], as then morality is subjective and relative to each individual. But people still draw lines according to their own subjective opinions. … What a mess the culture is in because people are “lovers of self” rather than lovers of God!
That means you’re a mess, dear reader — unless you’re a supporter of Hambo and all his enterprises. He tells us:
Here are a few examples from the poll of this hypocrisy and the arbitrary nature of current thinking. While 72% say sex between an unmarried man and woman is morally acceptable [Gasp!], that number drops to only 38% if they are teenagers. Why? [Who knows?] That is completely arbitrary. And 44% say abortion is morally acceptable [Oh no!], while only 18% believe suicide is morally acceptable. So why is it okay to murder unborn children but not kill yourself? In a biblical worldview we can say both are wrong, but in a secular view this distinction is totally arbitrary.
Hambo sees the difference because he’s the most sensible man in the world! He continues:
Just over one in three (36%) say pornography is morally acceptable — but only 9% are okay with adultery. But, again, that’s completely arbitrary — it’s okay to look at and fantasize over explicit images and videos of women and men, but it’s wrong to go out and act on fantasies with others who are married? Without the ultimate foundation of God’s Word, morality is arbitrary and ultimately makes little sense!
According to Hambo, looking at porn is every bit as evil as engaging in adultery. Let’s read on:
If we want to make an impact on this nation, we must recognize the foundational nature of this battle. This isn’t really a morality war — it’s a war over two foundations (two religions): God’s Word and man’s word. If you start with God’s Word, you have a firm, unchanging foundation for your thinking. If you start with man’s word, you have nothing but ever-changing subjective human opinion to base your thinking on.
What’s your starting point, dear reader? Do you think like Hambo, or like a hell-bound evolutionist? He sums it all up and provides the solution in his final paragraph:
All these issues we’re seeing in our culture are just symptoms of a greater problem — a nation that has abandoned the authority of the Word of God and turned instead to human reason. [Human reason? Yuk!] To be effective in sharing the gospel and the truth of God’s Word, we must defend the authority of the Word of God, answer the questions of our day, and help people realize that because the Bible’s history is true, the Bible’s message of the gospel is also true.
Theocracy is the only answer. Why doesn’t Hambo step forward and become our leader?
Copyright © 2020. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
Most of these can be explained pretty easily by conservative evangelicals simply having no concept of “consent.”
SC asks,
“Why doesn’t Hambo step forward and become our leader?”
Damn good thing he was born in Australia, and is thus constitutionally barred from being our leader.
I believe rape, slavery and child abuse are morally wrong to name but three things that should be unarguable. The bible doesn’t. [Bleep] you Hambo
If the Bible really is God’s Word, (Ham never says how he knows this) then you might expect the Almighty would take steps to enforce it, instead of leaving it all up to Ken Ham. What was that about Noah’s Flood?
When did “the family” become an important concern to conservative Christianity? There is only one example that I can think of in the Bible of a non-dysfunctional family, in the book of Ruth. Of course, as Tolstoy suggested at the opening of “Anna Karenina”, unhappy families make for more insteresring stories.
“If they reject the absolute authority of …..”
Let me see if I understand this correctly. As long as I don’t buy Ol’Hambo’s logical fallacy he calls me a hypocrite.
Hm, I think I can live with this.
“that’s completely arbitrary”
So are Biblical morals, which after all have been used to justify World War I and inspired the pacifism of Jehova Witnesses.
@JimR: “explained pretty easily by conservative evangelicals simply having no concept of “consent.””
Nor having a concept of “happiness”, let alone that different people need different things to become happy.
So let’s consult America’s best Christian instead.
Blessed are the furriers as they will cover thy naughty bits?
They also don’t have a concept for natural selection. Over and over, they insist that evolution means that living things, including human beings, are the product of chance, when it means exactly the opposite. The very idea that sexual morality can be explained by natural selection cannot occur to them. They would fiercely reject it if it could.
Selection pressure 101: Human infants are born totally dependent on adult care. A decade and a half will pass before they are able to feed themselves from their own efforts, even in the simplest of hunter-gatherer societies. This is far longer – a quantum level more – than any other animal on the planet, and it only gets longer as human societies become more complex and mutually intradependent.
If the care is not provided for that period, the infant dies. If too many infants die, the species dies. All humans living today are alive because all of their ancestors actually did provide – somehow – that care for their offspring. It follows – it must follow – that provision of that care is naturally selected.
That’s why marriage in some form is found in every human society: the level of care needed is so high that it cannot be provided by the mother alone. Men are also selected for providing it. Why? Because if they don’t, their offspring don’t survive and their genes are selected out. Marriage assumes that the offspring of their wives is also their own offspring. Not invariably the case, of course; but that’s why adultery is deprecated so extensively – it profits only men who don’t provide that care, and that is not conducive to the species’ survival.
Two generations ago, into this immemorial pattern came the first form of reliable contraception that could be, and presently was, entirely in the hands of women. That must have extensive effects. Technology affects societies, that’s true. What else would you expect? Yet still the fact remains: to survive, infants require more care than one person unassisted can provide. We would therefore expect some changes to sexual morality caused by the freedom to choose, but the central institutions would remain.
Deprecating teenage non-marital sex is also thus explained, as is also its increase in acceptance IF effective contraception is used. Teenagers, almost by definition, do not have the resources to provide the level of care needed for infants. This is actually getting worse, as the time required to reach full social maturity and independence lengthens.
Co-operation and even altruism can be similarly explained as selected traits.
The point is that Ham and his ilk are completely blind to this. They can only relate to reality in terms of authority, dominance, dicta and compulsion. They’re authoritarians. To their minds, there must be an arbiter. It’s the rejection of arbitrary authority that really sticks in their craw. Read between the lines of Ham’s diatribe, above, and you can see the outrage. He is not really concerned with the results of, say, premarital sex; it’s the disobedience that riles him.
And that, in turn, is why Ham and those like him must never be allowed anywhere near actual power or real influence over a significant proportion of people. Let him run his phoney “attractions”. :Let him preach, foaming at the mouth if he likes. But rue the day he has any significant influence over the lives of any but a very few. And if he gains power, be afraid, be very afraid.
@Dave Luckett
Another thing to be explained is why people accept self-proclaimed authorities.
@DaveL: “adultery is deprecated so extensively – it profits only men who don’t provide that care”
Actually adultery in the form of serial monogamy benefits women in terms of producing fertile offspring. This obviously only confirms your conclusions.
TomS: Again I would propose natural selection as an explanation. We are selected for some level of acceptance of parental authority, simply because we need it to survive. Infants, as any parent will tell you, are completely incapable of self-preservation – they’ll drown themselves, or fall to their deaths or into the fire, or run into the traffic if not physically prevented, and later, constrained to obey parental rules. If they don’t, there is a higher chance that they won’t survive.
(I was shocked to read (Guenevere, Michael; Kaplan, Hillard (2007). “Longevity amongst Hunter-gatherers”. Population and Development Review. 33 (2): 326) that in the six hunter-gatherer societies for which reliable demographic data was available, only 57% of neonates survive to the age of 15 – and that this figure was consistent across all of them.)
There is therefore selection pressure for conformity with authority. It is also true that there is selection pressure for innovation and risk-taking. These are in tension; but it is not surprising that for a population within human societies, the former is predominant.
FrankB: Again I accept your correction. I should have written “the only men it (adultery) profits are those who don’t provide that care, and that is not conducive to the species’ survival”. As you say, the rest follows.
Big Gods
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/349/6251/918.full
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1043-4?proof=trueMay%252F