Why Won't They Listen? A Radical New Approach to Evangelism

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 192 pages
• Published by: Master Books
• Edition: 1st Edition July 2002
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0890513783
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0890513781
• Book Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Weighs: 7 ounces

Product Review
A very valuable tool for anyone involved in reaching others for Christ. -- Roger Howerton, Assistant Editor, New Leaf Press/Master Books, July 24, 2002

Product Description
Ken Ham, one of the most in-demand conference speakers worldwide, has visited with people in many different countries on several continents, and he has found that people everywhere still have many things in common. One of these similarities is still the need for a Savior. Yes, the gospel is still preached around the world, but a part of the gospel has been cut out, causing problems. People are hearing a message, and there may be an enthusiasm for awhile, but true salvation does not seem to taking hold in most of these lives. Find out what’s missing, and how to deliver a full, effective gospel message in this explosive book by best-selling author Ken Ham.

Reader Reviews
"Why Won't They Listen? - A Radical New Approach to Evangelism" (originally titled "Creation Evangelism") allows Ken Ham - the Pied Piper of preposterous presuppositionalism, amateur-hour apologetics, and dementia-driven dogma - to reach for the umpteenth time into his fully fallacious fundamentalist bag o' fables and formulaic faith-based folly. His reprehensible evangelical ejacula enshrine an impoverished worldview that sacralizes stupidity, celebrates a communion of credulousness, and places the creation of the universe some 2,500 years after the Sumerians and Babylonians learned to brew beer. Gerrymandered genealogies, crackpot cosmologies, and dinosaurian deceit only highlight the absurdities in Genesis that bibliolatrous sycophants (such as Ham) routinely embrace even as they claim infallibility and inerrancy - qualities they denounce and deride in Popes - based on nothing more than the supposed possession of a magic booth that is a magic book because it claims to be a magic book. As Sam Harris notes: "We live in an age in which most people believe that mere words - Jesus, Allah, Ram - can mean the difference between eternal torment and bliss everlasting. Considering the stakes here, it is not surprising that many of us occasionally find it necessary to murder other human beings for using the wrong magic words, or the right ones for the wrong reasons. How can any person presume to know that this is the way the universe works? Because it says so in our holy books. How do we know that our holy books are free from error? Because the books themselves say so. Epistemological black holes of this sort are fast draining the light from our world." Among the dim-bulb deceptions in "Why Won't They Listen?" is the claim that red blood cells were found in a late Cretaceous T. rex (in Orwellian Ham-speak a 'missionary lizard') fossil some seventy million years old. Ham immediately declares victory over the non-existent yet necessary - for fund raising purposes anyway - evil secular humanist and Darwinist conspiracy and declares his cretinous creationist timeline of 6,500 years triumphant. Next time, Ken, read the primary literature - Schweitzer, Mary H., Mark Marshall, Keith Carron, D. Scott Bohle, Scott C. Busse, Ernst V. Arnold, Darlene Barnard, J. R. Horner, and Jean R. Starkey, 1997a. Heme compounds in dinosaur trabecular bone. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 94: 6291-6296 - before putting pen to paper. All the data supported the conclusion that the T. rex fossil in question contained fragments of hemoglobin molecules. "The most likely source of these proteins is the once-living cells of the dinosaur." No red blood cells, only protein fragments. Here is the abstract on the PNAS paper authored by Schweitzer et al: "Six independent lines of evidence point to the existence of heme-containing compounds and/or hemoglobin breakdown products in extracts of trabecular tissues of the large theropod dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex. These include signatures from nuclear magnetic resonance and electron spin resonance that indicate the presence of a paramagnetic compound consistent with heme. In addition, UV/visible spectroscopy and high performance liquid chromatography data are consistent with the Soret absorbance characteristic of this molecule. Resonance Raman profiles are also consistent with a modified heme structure. Finally when dinosaurian tissues were extracted for protein fragments and were used to immunize rats, the resulting antisera reacted positively with purified avian and mammalian hemoglobins. The most parsimonious explanation of this evidence is the presence of blood-derived hemoglobin compounds preserved in the dinosaurian tissues." The lead author of the PNAS paper, Mary Schweitzer, per an interview in Discovery magazine, happens to be an evangelical Christian who notes that "If God is who He says He is, He doesn't need us to twist and contort scientific data. The thing that's most important to God is our faith. Therefore he's not going to allow Himself to be proven by scientific methodologies." Creationists routinely accuse Schweitzer of collaboration, conspiracy, or worse: "It rips my guts out," she says. "These people are claiming to represent the Christ that I love. They're not doing a very good job. It's no wonder that a lot of my colleagues are atheists." She told one zealot, "You know, if the only picture of Christ I had was your attitude towards me, I'd run." Molecular paleontology - an exciting new branch of science - has been opened up by Schweitzer's insights and research; proof that workers of any religious tradition, or none at all, can be good scientists since science is based on methodological naturalism - not the medieval demon-haunted supernatural religious conceits Ham learned on his daddy's lap. Creationist-on-crack cultists like Ken Ham are the sworn enemies of reason and tolerance. They simply assert that evolution - and most of physics, chemistry, biology, geology, archaeology, and paleontology (among other scientific disciplines) are false. They implicitly advocate returning to a blood-soaked and savage morality where disobedient children are guilty of a capital crime, slavery enjoys a biblical warrant, sex between consenting adults results in public stoning, and genocide is ethically acceptable if their pathological deity ordains it - fully justifying Stephen Weinberg'sthat "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion." The comic book catechism (complete with cartoonish illustrations) of "creation, corruption, catastrophe, confusion, Christ, cross and consummation" pimped by Ham in "Why Won't They Listen?" is a holy wholly whole cloth creation of magical thinking that puts any Harry Potter book to shame. The corruption of history, science, reason and ethics necessary to sustain this catastrophe of harlequin hermeneutics breeds endless confusion and cynically crosses Christ with a reconstructionist (well to the right of fascism) worldview and political agenda. It consummates a cataclysm fuelled by religious fanaticism and intolerance - apologetics in the service of apocalypse. On September 24, 2007 the Barna Group, an evangelical polling organization, released a study that found "among 16 - 29 year olds ... a new generation is more skeptical of and resistant to Christianity than were people of the same age just a decade ago." Shrill shills like Ken Ham are directly responsible for this happy state of affairs - in "Why Won't They Listen?" nothing worth listening to is presented! If you enjoy the creationist comedy genre Ham's topically related The Lie: Evolution is equally silly and pointless (reviewed separately).