Thank you for your support over the years. Humanly speaking, this is what makes our work possible.

Sorry, but the Answers Update is pressed for space and designed to inform our supporters. We do have a letters to the editor section in Creation magazine and our website also has a feedback section.

But sir, as we often point out, this is exactly the problem — we teach just ‘Bible stories’. But they go to public schools and hear fairy stories and Greek mythology and see the Bible as part of the same. More importantly, in ‘science’ they hear about millions of years and evolution. Instead, we should be teaching the Bible as history and give kids answers. The proof of the pudding is simply in the number of kids from Christian homes who go to public schools and apostatize soon after they start adulthood.

And the eyes of the child impress upon the brain of same child that there’s no way that the Ark could have taken all the animals on board. I’m not sure what interactions that you’ve had, but we often encounter people who simply claim that the Ark could never have fit all the animals on board, but when we ask ‘How big was the Ark?’ and ‘How many animals would have been required?’ they have no idea! So we reply, ‘So an unknown-sized Ark could not have held an unknown number of animals? How do you know?’ We have a number of intelligent, well educated speakers out on the road in contact with many thousands of Christians — all of them have become convinced that this image and the residue in people’s minds has had a powerful effect in making the whole Genesis account seem ‘fairytalish’.

This is facetious. Why not give them the Answers for Kids article from Creation magazine about the Ark which explains the Ark’s huge size in simple language and clear illustrations such as those on the right? It’s also important to show dinosaurs on the Ark, another feature conspicuously absent in the cute arks, otherwise kids are more likely to swallow the secular myth that dinosaurs died out millions of years before people arrived on the scene. We also find that our scale model of the Ark (built by Rod Walsh) is a huge hit with kids, including grown-up ones ; ). There are ways to use children’s language and imagery while still ensuring it does not perpetuate fallacy. Take, for instance, Ken & Mally Ham’s book A is for Adam which uses cartoon-type illustrations. Our objection is not to cartoon imagery per se.

Thanx, we appreciate it. Hope you don’t misunderstand our position following these explanatory comments.

I would not have thought so, since all we are doing is making it clear that when one thinks through the implications of one’s teaching, one should be using different imagery. The criticism is well-intentioned, as I am sure are the people who have been using that Ark illustration. We believe it is crucial to teach the Ark account as history (using imagery appropriate for age, as with the book mentioned earlier) and with realistic Ark sizing. In our experience, once most of these realise the problems, they are happy to change their illustrations.

I regret the somewhat intemperate language like ‘paranoia’. That has never been our position. We are a specialist ministry, however, and have clear evidence that many problems in society have their roots in a faulty view of origins, leading to the belief that there is no Creator to whom we must give an account. By pointing out the problem with the bathtub Ark images, we did not imply that they were deliberate schemes or similar. I am sure that it is quite unintentional — we tend to perpetuate what our culture has handed on to us.

See above. I respectfully fail to see how our article could be reasonably inferred to be an accusation of deliberately leading kids astray. I hope this explains our position.

(Dr) Jonathan Sarfati Scientist, author, speaker and apologist
Answers in Genesis (Australia)