Christian evangelical extremist Ken Ham and his friends are apoplectic over Carnival Cruise Lines’ Super Bowl ad embracing evolution…. Ham - fresh off a stunning defeat in Kentucky, where the State finally figured out what progressives have been saying for a year, that he would discriminate based on religion in hiring for his proposed Noah’s Ark museum - had an entirely different reaction to the Super Bowl ad honoring our late, great president…. “Carnival Cruise Corporation—Blatant Use of Evolution for Super Bowl Advertisement,” Ham titled his retort on his Answers In Genesis blog, which is ironically titled, Around The World With Ken Ham.
Apoplectic?” Really? Seems a wee bit overly dramatic, don’tchathink? It was a TV ad, not an indictment of Ham’s ideology, an endorsement of Satanism, or anything else blasphemous and/or inflammatory.
Unfortunately for Ham, not everything is (or should be) required to be filtered through his narrow hyper-religious ideology and submitted for his approval. Or perhaps his hissy fit was merely indicative of a desperate need for attention? Ham simply doesn’t grasp that he doesn’t get to pass judgment as he does without opening himself to a fair amount of well-deserved ridicule
If anything, the ad was a paean to John F. Kennedy. The commercial’s voice-over was from a 1962 JFK speech:
“I really don’t know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, except I think it’s because in addition to the fact that the sea changes, and the light changes, and ships change, it’s because we all came from the sea,” Kennedy says in the voiceover. “And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea - whether it is to sail or to watch it - we are going back from whence we came.”
To interpret that as an endorsement of evolution over creationism would seem to be something of a stretch, but people like Ken Ham could somehow interpret hot dogs without mustard to be an insult to their faith. What Ham fails to acknowledge- or even recognize- is that you can believe in evolution and still harbor a belief in God (just ask Pope Francis). Slavish adherence to creationism is not required for membership in Christianity…and Ham is not the final arbiter on what is “Christian” and what falls short.
And as for Ham’s condemnation of Carnival Cruise Lines for wanting to create a “personal connection with consumers”…isn’t that the sort of thing that businesses- ANY business- wants to do? How is that evil or sinful…or has it just been WAY too long since Ham had any fun? Of course, Ham’s real problem might be his narrow world view:
“We see a connection to the world around us… Ham sees only sin,” [Hemant Mehta] says. “Turns out you can learn a lot when your library consists of more than just a single book,” Mehta concludes, pointing out that Ham has said the only book anyone needs is the bible.
It’s been said that Fundamentalism is the sound of a mind slamming shut to shield itself from opposing viewpoints. In Ham’s case, I have a hard time imagining how something that was never open in the first place could slam shut. And he might be well-advised to expand his reading list.
