The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum Creation Museum

What Ham describes is more like Evidentialist apologetics, which focuses not only on God’s word, but archaeological, historical, and scientific evidence to support both the probable existence of God and the truth of the Bible, and refute the major objections to the same. Like John Frame, I don't believe that these arguments are good enough on the grounds that they start out by granting the assumption that human experience is intelligible without a complete acceptance of Scripture “alone”. Ham does this by stating, (1) Showing that the Bible and science go hand in hand, (2) Forcing the debater to logically defend his position consistent with science, (3) One can of course do this with numerous scientific examples, showing how the issue of sin and judgment, for example, is relevant to geology and fossil evidence, and (4) having a little thing called a scientific museum, which is kind of a dead give away to his apologetic method. This however does not mean the museum is useless, but merely that its apologetical method is somewhat flawed. At best, Ham attempts to mix the two apologetic methods (and like R.C. Sproul, some Classical, a defense that stresses rational arguments for the existence of God and uses evidence to substantiate biblical claims and miracles), which by definition does not make him a true Presuppositionalist. One of Frame’s required readings is the book, Five Views on Apologetics, by Cowan and Gundry. This will assist you in defining some of the apologetic methods further.

having a little thing called a scientific museum, which is kind of a dead give away to his apologetic method.

The important thing is to start with the Bible and know that anything that contradicts the Word of God is wrong, and that is what we have stated over and over in the Museum.

Answers in Genesis’ presupposition is that the God of the Bible exists and has given us His written, infallible Word, which can be relied upon in every instance no matter what so-called science or any scientist says. Where it touches on scientific subjects, it is completely accurate. An example is Noah’s Flood. The Bible states that it was worldwide. What would we expect to see after a worldwide flood? We see the evidence of a worldwide flood in the Earth’s rock layers and fossils on every continent, but that does not mean that we use these rock layers and fossils to prove the historicity of the Flood. We are merely observing and noting the consequences of it. We know that the Flood occurred and that it was worldwide because of Scripture.