Ken Ham Pulls out of Radio Debate

Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis had agreed to a debate on the Mike Rosen show on radio station KOA in Denver on October 11 between himself and Eugenie Scott (well-known anti-creationist and director of the National Center for Science Education).

Even though the host of the program, Mike Rosen, is known to be aggressively anti-creationist/anti-Christian in his philosophy, Ken had no problem agreeing to the debate with Dr. Scott.

Just two hours before the debate, Answers in Genesis found out that Mike Rosen had also asked Dr. Hugh Ross from Reasons To Believe to participate in the debate. Dr. Ross is a well-known progressive creationist-he promotes the idea of the Big Bang, billions of years of Earth history, local flood, soulless people before Adam and Eve, and so on. Dr. Ross opposes much of the teaching of creationist ministries like Answers in Genesis because of our stand on six literal days of Creation, no death, bloodshed and disease before sin, global flood, young Earth, etc.

As soon as we heard that Dr. Ross would be participating in the debate, we realized that this could end up being a very poor Christian witness for the secular community with two people representing Christianity but holding very different views (i.e., Ken Ham and Hugh Ross) and an ardent evolutionist/humanist (Eugenie Scott) who would agree with much of what Hugh Ross was stating in opposition to the literal creation position. In addition, the host would side with those against the literal creation position, so we recognized that this would not be prudent to continue with the debate.

Our ministry relations director, Mark Looy, called the host, Mike Rosen, and stated that we would be willing to go ahead with the debate if we could also have one of our adjunct scientists, Dr. Russ Humphreys, as a participant in this program to help even things up.

Mike Rosen refused to allow Dr. Humphreys to be a part of the program. Mark Looy then explained that Ken would be only too willing to debate Eugenie Scott or Hugh Ross individually on separate programs, but that we would not be prepared to continue under the current new circumstances. Mike Rosen refused, and so Answers in Genesis decided that it would be best not to participate.

It should be noted that it was Mr. Rosen who changed the terms of the debate after we had agreed for Ken to debate Dr. Scott.

It should also be stated that Answers in Genesis is willing to debate the topic of creation/evolution and the book of Genesis under conditions that are fair and agreed upon.

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