Young Earth Creationist Ken Ham took to Facebook Wednesday to refute an atheist who responded to his challenge to explain how atheism could be positive for children. Ham, Founder and CEO of Answers in Genesis, described Luciano Gonzalez’s blog post response to his challenge as ultimately “meaningless.”
Benjamin Watson Helps Pregnancy Center in Big Way Because Life Is ‘Worth Fighting For’
On Saturday, Gonzalez responded to a tweet in which Ham challenged atheists to explain what positive message their worldview offers children.
What positive message would an atheist have for kids? Something like: "Kids, you're just an animal, there's no God, when you die you won't know you existed, decide your own rules for life, and treat others to benefit you. Life's ultimately meaningless." https://t.co/gqH1iacelT
— Ken Ham (@aigkenham) August 4, 2018
In a post titled “This Atheist’s Positive Message for Children,” the atheist Patheos blogger declared that a “world without deities has a significant impact on our role in the world and in the universe.”
“It means that every single person isn’t cursed to walk along a predetermined path where they at most make minor but already accounted for choices that do not alter the future but to decide their own fate and to make choices that will ultimately alter humanity’s future in ways they might not understand or ever even see themselves,” he continued. “It means that it isn’t wrong for boys to like boys or for girls to like girls, or for children to like both or neither.”
Gonzalez added that it’s also good for children to believe that there’s no God that allows children to suffer, or that elevates the human race above all other species.
It is positive, he claimed, for kids to understand “that humans are animals like gorillas, dogs, cats, elephants, and many other kinds of animals.”
“There is humility is understanding that we are not some special species chosen by a creator but rather a species that has adapted well to the planet … ,” he asserted.
Gonzalez concluded his post by touting all of the things atheism liberates children to do and experience apart from the constraints of religion:
“My positive message for kids is this: you have value and can change the world in ways that no one has ever predicted. You aren’t cursed because of who you find attractive, you aren’t sinful for being human. You are a member of a species that overcame the odds to become a dominant force on this world and to venture out into space. You are your own person and the most important decision you’ll ever make is not something as simple as whether or not you should believe in a deity. Your actions have power and you are responsible for your choices, the world isn’t fallen and you aren’t some horrible sinner.”
Ham shot back Wednesday, calling the atheist’s attempt at a “positive” message “meaningless.”
“This atheist’s ‘positive’ message for kids is nothing but a tirade against Christianity (which is the best he can do). He mocks those who believe in Adam and Eve, the fall, sin, and Jesus. Then, he borrows from a Christian worldview to make moral claims,” he wrote on Facebook.
“This atheist’s ‘positive’ message to kids is they can act like animals — and he forgot to say, ‘some animals even eat or abandon their young and others eat their mates,’” he noted.
“Of course, the ‘positive’ message this atheist didn’t tell kids is that it’s positively true that you will all die,” Ham wrote. “From an atheist’s perspective, you die, then know nothing, and will not even know you existed, so the article is meaningless — like atheism.”