"Disclosure Day": The Religious Longings Behind Spielberg's Belief in ETI Visitations

 

                                                  

                                               The Final Official Trailer for Disclosure Day

                          Steven Spielberg's Extended Interview with CBS Sunday Morning

                                                       Steven Spielberg's AP Interview

                                  The Trailer for The Age of Disclosure (2025) Documentary

                                  Three Declassified Videos of UFOs Released by the Pentagon

Stephen Spielberg's new movie, Disclosure Day, has had its first weekend in the theatres.  Spielberg directed and produced the movie.  He also wrote the story that was turned into a screenplay by David Koepp.  The music is by John Williams.

This is the fourth of Spielberg's science fiction movies on extraterrestrial intelligences (ETI) visiting the Earth.  It was preceded by Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), ET, the Extraterrestrial (1982), and The War of the Worlds (2005).  So this theme has stretched across Spielberg's entire movie-making career.

Disclosure Day has two sides to it--action and contemplation.  The New York Times reviewer--Manohla Dargis--describes the action side as "a feature-length chase involving some likable, enigmatically connected people who are racing toward a shared destiny while evading powerful forces."  But she also sees the contemplative side of the movie--"sober interludes that touch on belief, reason, trauma, self-governance, the common good, and higher powers."

This shows the cinematic genius of Spielberg in combining thrilling action that appeals to a popular audience and contemplative moments that appeal to those who like pondering the big questions of human life in the universe.  Dargis conveyed the popular excitement in the movie when she reports that she scribbled in her notebook I am having so much fun.  But she also saw in the movie that Spielberg "has something to say about the world and our place in it."

These two sides are presented in the final trailer, which moves between fast-paced action scenes from the movie and clips of Spielberg speaking about how the disclosure of ETI visitations to the Earth could deepen our understanding of the cosmic meaning of life in the universe.

Here I'll begin by saying something about the active and contemplative sides of this movie.  Then I'll raise four questions suggested by the movie.

ACTION

Spoiler alert: I'm recounting the plot here.

The movie begins in the middle of the chase that will stretch throughout the movie.  Cybersecurity specialist Daniel Kellner (played by Josh O'Connor) has been chased down by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), the head of the Wardex corporation, who is leading his Wardex agents in trying to capture Daniel.  Daniel escapes and goes into hiding at a convent with his girlfriend Jane Blankenship (Eve Hewson).  

Later, we learn that Daniel has stolen a piece of extraterrestrial technology and extensive files of photos and videos of human-alien contact collected by the Pentagon dating back to 1947.  The Wardex Corporation is a secret arm of the U.S. government charged with holding these files and making sure they are never revealed to the public, because it is believed that if they were ever made public, this would create a mass panic reaction around the world that would undermine all social order.

From the beginning of the movie, we hear news reports in the background of military and political movements around the world that are leading to a nuclear World War III provoked by North Korea.  We see mobs of people at gas stations and grocery stores stocking up supplies in preparation for a global nuclear holocaust.

In Kansas City, television meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) is preparing for work when a cardinal flies into her home, briefly observes her, and then flies away.  This stirs up her latent psychic abilities for intuitively understanding the thoughts and experiences of others and for speaking in languages she has never learned.  During a live weather broadcast, she begins speaking in an unknown language.  Footage of the broadcast goes viral.  People at Wardex identify the language as extraterrestrial, and so Wardex agents quickly go to Kansas City to chase down Margaret.  After she is hospitalized by people who fear she has had some kind of mental breakdown, Margaret is almost captured by Wardex agents, but she intuitively understands that the agents are out to kill her, and she escapes and goes into hiding.

Daniel reveals the stolen files to Jane.  He explains that Wardex has been experimenting on captive aliens to understand their mental and biological powers, and they have also been reverse engineering their technology so that humans can use it.  

And indeed, Noah Scanlon has learned how to use an alien device to give himself telepathic powers.  He uses this to get into the mind of Jane (Daniel's girlfriend) to discover that they are hiding in a motel.  Jane escapes with another alien device.  But Daniel is captured.

Margaret has visions of Daniel and follows him to the secret site where the Wardex agents are holding him.  Margaret and Daniel escape when Margaret uses her empathetically telepathic powers to persuade the agents to stand back and let them leave.  But one of the agents has not been controlled by Margaret.  He chases down Margaret and Daniel and rams his car into theirs, so that their car is lodged into the side of a passing train.  Daniel pulls Margaret out of the car just in time for them to climb onto the train and make their getaway.

Margaret and Daniel are rescued by a team of Wardex employees who have decided to become whistleblowers under the leadership of Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), who has been working with Daniel.  Hugo has brought Margaret and Daniel into a secret warehouse.  There's a reconstruction of Margaret's childhood home in the warehouse.  Hugo tells her that to understand what has been happening to her, she will have to go into the house and recover her suppressed memories of how the ETIs contacted her as a child.  Inside the house, Margaret remembers that she and Daniel were abducted by ETIs as children and subjected to experiments that gave them their supernormal powers.  She also learns that the unusual animals that have appeared to them throughout their lives are ETIs who assumed animal form so that they could observe them without scaring them.

Margaret also remembers that as a child she and Daniel entered a Gingerbread House, as if they were Hansel and Gretel of the Grimms' fairy tale.  My wife and I were confused by this scene when we saw it because it didn't seem to fit into the story.  But now I think it evokes a lot of themes in Spielberg's movies.  Children are open to the magic of fairy tales in a way that adults are not.  And for that reason, they are more open to empathetic contact with ETIs than are adults.  Remember that in Spielberg's ET, it's the children who befriend ET, and they save ET from the adults from the government officers who want to capture and exploit ET.  Moreover, the story of Hansel and Gretel, like many of the Grimm fairy tales, is indeed a very grim story of how children are vulnerable to being betrayed by adults--parents who abandon them in a forest to starve and witches who want to eat them--and therefore children must be clever and resilient in helping one another to escape the harm from adults.  

We also know from Spielberg's The Fabelmans that he suffered from his parents' divorce and his mother's betrayal of his father by having an affair with his father's best friend.  We also know from that movie that Spielberg became a "fable-man" through making movies as a way of working through some of his childhood problems.  He waited until his parents died to make The Fabelmans.

But let's get back to the ending of Disclosure Day.  Margaret and Daniel, along with the whistleblowers, break into Margaret's television studio in Kansas City to make a public broadcast of "Disclosure Day"--dumping all the photographic and video files that Daniel has stolen into a broadcast that can be sent out to news broadcast outlets around the world.  Noah Scanlon and his agents try to blow up the power grid for the television studio.  But Jane arrives and gives her special extraterrestrial device to Margaret, who uses it to restore the power.  Noah feels defeated, and he decides to stand back and watch.

The television transmission spreads around the world's broadcasting systems.  We see people in all countries stunned by the images of extraterrestrial contact with humans and the work of governments in covering this up.  We also see news that as an effect of this broadcast, political and military leaders are pulling back from nuclear war.

The whistleblowers roll into the television studio a cage that has one of the extraterrestrials, who is freed from the cage.  He is a humanoid figure--a large head on a thin bodily frame with two arms and two feet and walking bipedally.  He whispers something to Daniel, who passes it on to Margaret.  Margaret prepares to broadcast the message to the world by saying, "Listen."

CONTEMPLATION

That's the end of the movie--leaving us wondering what the message from the extraterrestrial could be.  But I'm sure many audience members were like me in picking up the hints in the movie that the extraterrestrials have been empathetically watching humanity become ever more divided by conflict and now moving towards nuclear war.  Presumably, the message from the extraterrestrials to the world would be the message that Spielberg himself has intimated--that the discovery that the universe is filled with extraterrestrial intelligent life that feels empathy for all of humanity should move us to extend that circle of empathy to make peace rather than war on the Earth.

Spielberg suggests this message in what he has said about this movie in the final trailer and in various broadcast interviews over the past few weeks.  In the trailer, he says:

I am much more inclined now than when I made Close Encounters to believe that we are not the only intelligent civilization in the universe.  How will this change us?  I think for the better.  It will remind us of the capacity for empathy and that there is something bigger out there than just ourselves.  I used to say to myself wouldn't it be wonderful if all of this turned out to be true?  Wouldn't it be wonderful for people to know all of this is true?

In his recent interviews, Spielberg has said that his sense of wonder about the universe--about what there is "out there"--began in his childhood.  He tells the story of sleeping in his bed in his New Jersey home when he was somewhere around 6-7 years old.  His father woke him up and told him he had to go somewhere in the middle of the night.  He was confused by this.  His father took him to a park where people had spread out blankets so that they could lay down and look up at the Perseus meteor shower.  Spielberg remembers this wonderful sky show of falling stars.

He also remembers his father's collection of science fiction magazines of the 1950s like Analog, which started his interest in science fiction.

Then, after his parents moved to Arizona, he had a telescope in his back yard where he could study the stars and the planets in the night sky.

Spielberg has said that what convinced him that eyewitness sightings of UFOs were conclusive evidence for ETI visitations of the Earth were the series of articles in The New York Times beginning in 2017 about how the Defense Department was hiding the evidence from the public, which led to testimony by military officers to Congress in 2023 about a secret government program to cover up this evidence (Cooper, Blumenthal, and Kean 2017).

Spielberg is silent, however, about the fact that in response to a congressional mandate, the Pentagon issued a 63-page report in 2024 that investigated all of the government programs for studying UFOs from 1945 to the present and concluded that these UFO sightings provided no clear evidence for ETI visitations of the Earth (Barnes 2024).  Now, of course, Spielberg might say that this report is part of the government's continuing cover-up of the truth.  But to substantiate that charge, he would have to show that there really is conclusive evidence for ETI visitations.

EVIDENCE?

Do you see a triangle here?  If you do, your brain is filling in the gaps in information to "see" a triangle where none exists.  This is the famous "Kanizsa illusion," named after the Italian artist and psychologist Gaetano Kanizsa.  This could explain some of the triangular-shaped UFO sightings that Spielberg takes as evidence for ETI visitations.  (Here my thinking has been influenced by Michael Shermer's new book Think [2026: 198-226].)

Leslie Kean was one of the co-authors of the 2017 New York Times article that so impressed Spielberg.  She is a journalist who has been one of the leading advocates for UFO sightings as evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence visiting the Earth.  In 2010, she surveyed this evidence in her best-selling book UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record.  Remarkably, she began the book by admitting that roughly 90 to 95 percent of UFO sightings can be explained:

Examples of phenomena sometimes mistaken for UFOs are weather balloons, flares, sky lanterns, planes flying in formation, secret military aircraft, birds reflecting the sun, planes reflecting the sun, blimps, helicopters, the planet Venus or Mars, meteors or meteorites, space junk, satellites, sundogs, ball lightning, ice crystals, reflected light off clouds, lights on the ground or lights reflected on a cockpit window, temperature inversions, hole-punch clouds, and the list goes on!  Yes, the vast majority of reports can usually be explained by one of the above, but of course it's only the ones that can't that we're interested in (12).

So she has to point to the few cases that cannot be explained in one of these ways as demonstrative evidence for UFOs of extraterrestrial origin.

She begins her survey of the evidence "on very solid ground" with "one of the most vivid and well-documented UFO cases ever"--a two-year wave of UFO sightings in Belgium that began on November 29, 1989.  Over two-thousand cases were reported.  Belgian Colonel Wilfried De Brouwer described the first night of the wave: "Hundreds of people saw a majestic triangular craft with a span of approximately a hundred and twenty feet and powerful beaming spotlights, moving very slowly without making any significant noise but, in several cases, accelerating to very high speeds" (17).

As Shermer suggests, there might have been three sources of light in the sky (such as small planes) that appeared triangular to people on the ground as their minds filled in the space between the lights, as happens in the Kanizsa illusion.  Kean does not consider this possibility.

Moreover, it's strange that with thousands of people reporting these eyewitness sightings, almost no one took a photograph of what they saw, even though film cameras were widely available to Belgians at that time.

Kean does report, however, that on April 4, 1990, at 10:00 p.m. in the town of Petit-Rechain, one person with a camera did take a photograph, which was published in a French magazine.  Kean reproduces that photograph in her book.  Here it is:

Kean reports that experts carefully studied the original color slide, and their major findings were:

• No effect of infrared radiation.
• No indication of any tampering with the slide.
• The camera was stable, but the craft was moving slowly and had approximately a 45-degree bank when the picture was taken.
• The rotation of the spotlights did not occur around one central point.
• The middle light is very different from the three other lights.
• The lights are positioned symmetrically with respect to the structure of the craft.

She also reports that the experts concluded that the picture could not have been faked (30).  This became one of the most famous pieces of evidence for extraterrestrial UFOs.

But then in 2011, one year after the publication of Kean's book, a man by the name of Patrick Marechal explained in an interview for a Belgian TV channel how he had created the photo as a hoax: he cut a piece of styrofoam into a triangle, painted it black, embedded flashlights in each corner, hung it from a string, and then photographed it. 

HAPLESS ALIENS?

In many of Disclosure Day videos of ETIs, we see ETI corpses being recovered from spaceship crash sites.  If the ETIs are so superior in their intelligence and their technology, why are they so often crashing into the ground?  It doesn't make sense.

And why is it so easy for the humans to capture them alive, hold them in captivity, and torture them through brutal experimentation?  The ETI at the end of the movie is brought into the TV studio in a cage.  If he's so smart and so powerful, why did he allow this?  Why didn't he kill the humans holding him captive?

This meek submission of the ETIs to their human captors in this movie is especially strange because of the contrast to Spielberg's War of the Worlds, in which the ETIs are aggressive in conquering and killing the humans.

In his recent interviews, Spielberg has said that he's changed his mind--that he no longer accepts H. G. Wells' depiction of extraterrestrials as bellicose enemies of humanity.  But he is vague in explaining why he changed his mind.  He does invoke his theme of empathy.  But he doesn't explain why we should assume that extraterrestrial intelligences will be empathetic in their caring for human beings--particularly, when they're so badly mistreated by human beings.

A THREAT TO RELIGIOUS FAITH?

Disclosure Day also raises the question of whether the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligent life coming from distant planets beyond the Solar System would threaten religious faith, and particularly Christianity.  I have written about this question in previous posts.

The question is whether the plurality of worlds in the universe can be reconciled with the central doctrines of Christianity--particularly, the Story of Creation and the Story of Salvation.

The Genesis account of Creation says nothing about extraterrestrial life in the universe, although it does of course speak of divinities and spiritual beings (such as angels) as living in the heavens.  The Earth is identified as the only planet in the universe.  And the Moon is the only moon in the universe.  The stars do not have any planets orbiting around them.  Moreover, Genesis seems to present a geocentric cosmology with Earth at the center.  That's why Galileo got into so much trouble with the Church in defending the Copernican heliocentric universe.

But then we could say that God gave us the Bible not as a science textbook but as a book to tell us what we need to know about salvation.  Or, as Galieo put it, the Bible tells us "not how the heavens go," but "how to get to heaven."

In Disclosure Day, Sister Maura (Elizabeth Marvel), the Abbess of the Monastery of St. Clare of the Dawn, is asked about whether the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence would contradict the Creation Story.  She responds by asking why God would "make such a vast universe, yet save it only for us," which seems to be speaking for Spielberg.  At the end of the movie, when the "Disclosure" is broadcast around the globe, we see Sister Maura watching the broadcast, and she smiles in an expression of wonder at God's creation.

And yet, many Christians--such as the creationists affiliated with Ken Ham's Answers in Genesis--will argue that the Bible clearly implies that the Earth is unique in the universe--that it was made for humans to inhabit and call home--and that God did not create alien life on any other planet (Faulkner 2015).

There is another theological question here that never comes up in Disclosure Day--whether the existence of alien life would be compatible with the Story of Salvation.  This is the story of how Adam's sin put a curse on all humans, how Jesus was incarnated to become the Savior, and how His resurrection creates the promise of redemptive salvation for all of humanity.  If Christians discovered that there really were extraterrestrial intelligences on distant planets, wouldn't they have to wonder how they could be saved?  Did Jesus go to those planets to save them?  Or is it possible that they don't need to be saved because Adam's curse did not affect them?

A SURROGATE FOR RELIGIOUS FAITH?

Rather than being a threat to religious faith, belief in extraterrestrial intelligences can be understood as a form of religious faith.  Disclosure Day suggests that in many ways.  For example, Margaret shows many of the traits of the Christian mystic--such as speaking in languages that she does not know.  On the Day of Pentecost, Christians filled by the Holy Spirit spoke in foreign languages that they did not know.  Margaret can do this because she is filled by the ETI Spirit.

If there is a natural desire for religious transcendence--as I have argued--then we should expect that even many atheists will long for some kind of religious experience--or what I have called atheistic religiosity.  This has been manifested in recent years in some surveys of religious belief where a growing number of people identify themselves as "spiritual but not religious."  They don't belong to any traditional religious institutions, and they don't believe in traditional religious doctrines.  But they still long for some kind of spirituality.  On Rebecca Goldstein's "mattering map," these people belong to the continent of the "transcenders": they believe that they matter because they matter to some transcendent intelligence in the cosmos.  For traditional religious believers, that transcendent intelligence is God or some kind of divinity.  For the believers in UFOs, that transcendent intelligence is the extraterrestrial intelligence that comes from a distant planet.

Clay Routledge is a psychologist who has studied the belief in extraterrestrial intelligence as an expression of the "religious mind" (Routledge 2017; Routledge et al. 2017).  Routledge argues that many studies have shown that traditional religious belief satisfies our natural longing for meaning or significance in the universe.  When we think about how small and unimportant we seem in the grand scheme of things, we look for some way to give our lives some cosmic significance.  Religious belief satisfies that longing by giving us stories about how supernatural beings are watching over us, and how they will rescue us from death and extinction. 

Studies have shown that traditional religious believers are less inclined to believe in extraterrestrial intelligence than are atheists and agnostics.  The likely explanation for this is that since atheists and agnostics lack the religious faith that gives their lives some cosmic significance, many of them will choose to believe in UFOs and alien visitors, because then they can say that "we are not alone" in the universe, and there are superintelligent beings out there who are watching over us, who feel empathy for us, and who will save us from extinction by delivering their message to all of us from a TV studio in Kansas City.

That would explain the revelatory way Spielberg speaks about Disclosure Day: "Wouldn't it be wonderful for people to know all of this is true?"

REFERENCES

Barnes, Julian E. 2024. "Pentagon Review Finds No Evidence of Alien Cover-Up." New York Times, March 8.

Cooper, Helene, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean. 2017. "Glowing Auras and 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious UFO Program." New York Times, December 16.

Dargis, Manohla. 2026. "'Disclosure Day' Review: Spielberg Plays His Greatest Cosmic Hits." New York Times, June 11.

Department of Defense. 2024. "The Department of Defense All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office: Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP)."  Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense.

Faulkner, Danny. 2015. UFOs and ETs: A Biblical and Cultural Exploration of Aliens. Petersburg, KY: Answers in Genesis.

Kean, Leslie. 2010. UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record. New York: Three Rivers Press.

Routledge, Clay. 2017. "Don't Believe in God? Maybe You'll Try UFOs." New York Times, July 21.

Routledge, Clay, Andrew A. Abeyta, and Christina Roylance. 2017. "We Are Not Alone: The Meaning Motive, Religiosity, and Belief in Extraterrestrial Intelligence." Motivation and Emotion 41:135-146.

Shermer, Michael. 2026. Truth: What It Is, How to Find It, and Why It Still Matters. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

If Humans and Chimps Are 15 Percent Genetically Different, What Difference Does That Make?

Think about how often you've heard it said that the genetic difference between human beings and chimpanzees is only slightly more than 1 percent, and therefore humans are 99 percent similar to chimps.  It is also said that this proves that chimps--and also bonobos--are our closest living evolutionary relatives.  This seems to be confirmed by the fact that chimpanzees and bonobos are more genetically similar to humans than to gorillas.  This 1 percent difference between humans and chimps fits the evolutionary timeline of five to eight million years since humans and chimps diverged from their last common ancestor.

But now an article published last May in Nature (Yoo et al., 2025) reports that a complete sequencing of ape genomes shows that the genetic difference between humans and chimps is a lot greater than 1 percent--more like 15 percent!  And yet perhaps I shouldn't say this article "reports" this because if you read the main article, you won't see this claim of a 15 percent difference.  You have to go to the Nature website and print out the "Supplementary Data" for the article, and even then, you have to work through the technical jargon to find the 15 percent difference.  Casey Luskin has posted a helpful article at the Discovery Institute website that digs deep into the "Supplementary Data" to uncover this remarkable finding.  You would think that such a surprising discovery would be prominently announced in Nature and in press releases: "The Chimp-Human Genetic Difference Is Not 1% But 15%!"  I think Luskin is right to suggest that the editors at Nature must have worked hard to hide this finding because it refutes the popular claim about "only a 1% difference" separating humans and chimps.  

Luskin says this refutes one of the "icons of evolution," as Jonathan Wells called them--that is, widely believed assertions about evolution that the proponents of "intelligent design theory" and "young-Earth creationism" deny.  It's not surprising, therefore, that creationists like Ken Ham have cited Luskin's article as proving that the creationists are right to deny that there is any common evolutionary ancestry linking humans and apes.  Ham explains that Bible teaches us that God created the "ape kind" and the "humankind" separately and created humans as a unique kind made in the image of God.

And yet I don't see that this newly discovered "15% difference" provides any support for the intelligent design theorists or the creationists in their denial of evolutionary science.

But first we need to understand how this new research allows us to calculate genetic difference and similarity.  The title of the article in Nature is "Complete Sequency of Ape Genomes."  The emphasis is on "complete," because the first human and ape genome sequences were incomplete.  They excluded extremely repetitive sequences and large-scale structural differences such as inversions and duplications of genomic sequences.  So the first reports of only 1% differences between human and chimp genomes were based on incomplete drafts of the genomes.  But now the complete sequency in this article allows for a fuller comparison of similarities and differences in the sequences.

The authors found two kinds of differences--"gap divergence" and "single nucleotide variation" (SNV).

Luskin prepared this figure to illustrate the difference between "SNVs" and "Gaps" between two genomes.  Gaps represent nucleotides or segments of nucleotides that don't exist in one of the genomes.  SNVs represent places where the nucleotides are different for the two genomes.  In this illustration, we have 30 nucleotides of the target genome with 3 SNVs and 9 gaps relative to the query genome.  So SNV divergence is 10%, and gap divergence is 30%, which means a total divergence of 40%.

If you go to the Supplemental Data for the Yoo et al. article, you will see that Figure III.12 shows the SNVs in comparing the genomes for humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans--the four "great ape" species who belong to the Hominidae family.  When the human genome is the "target" genome, the "gap divergence" for the gorilla genome is 27.3 percent, for the Sumatran orangutan it's 16.5 percent, for the bonobo it's 14.4 percent, and for the chimpanzee it's 13.3 percent. 

Figure III.11 shows the SNV divergences, which are 2 percent for the gorilla, 3.6 percent for the Sumatran orangutan, 1.6 percent for the bonobo, and 1.6 percent for the chimpanzee.

If we add the gap divergences to the SNV differences, we get these total degrees of difference between human and ape genomes: 29.3 percent for the gorilla, 20.1 percent for the Sumatran orangutan, 16 percent for the bonobo, and 14.9 percent for the chimpanzee.  That's how we get the estimate of almost 15 percent difference between the chimp and human genomes, which is a lot higher than the purported 1 percent difference.  

It should be noted that these comparisons are for the 44 non-sex chromosomes in the human genome--that is, excluding the X and Y chromosomes.  As compared with chimps, the human X chromosome has a 4.4 percent gap divergence and 1.1 percent SNV divergence, while the human Y chromosome has an amazing 56.6 percent gap divergence and 3.9 percent SNV divergence.

Although this new research shows that the genetic differences between humans and apes are greater than had been previously reported, this does not deny the evolutionary story of the common evolutionary ancestry of humans and apes.  The genetic similarity between humans and apes is still very great--85 percent!  And humans are more genetically similar to chimps and bonobos than they are to orangutans and gorillas, which supports the claim that chimps and bonobos really are our closest living evolutionary relatives.

ALL IN THE GENES?  OR FOUR DIMENSIONS OF EVOLUTION?

There is an obvious problem here, however.  All of us have seen chimpanzees in zoos.  And many of us have seen bonobos if we have gone to zoos in San Diego, Milwaukee, or Cincinnati that have bonobos.  Those zoos often have displays that say something about the 1 percent difference between humans and chimpanzees.  Now those displays might have to be changed to read 15 percent.  But even so, when we look at those apes and compare them with humans, it's very hard to believe that the difference is only 1 to 15 percent.  It's simply not true that humans and apes are 85 percent the same.  The gap between the mental achievements of human beings and those of the apes is staggering.

Most human beings don't believe that evolutionary genetics can fully explain that gap, and that's why so many people reject the science of evolution, and why so many believe that the superiority of the human mind over the ape mind can only be explained by the supernatural work of an Intelligent Designer or Divine Creator.

They are right to believe that evolutionary genetics cannot fully explain the achievements of the human mind.  But that's because genetics is only a small part of evolutionary science.  As I have indicated in some previous posts, there are four levels of evolutionary inheritance--genetics, epigenetics, culture, and symbolism (Jablonka and Lamb, 2005).

The genetic inheritance system is the foundation for the Neo-Darwinian theory of evolution. But genetic reductionism and determinism fail to see how gene action depends on the complexity of interacting causes within the genome, within cells, within organisms, within groups of organisms, and within ecological circumstances. Except for a few single-gene genetic disorders, "genetic astrology"--the idea that genes directly control specific traits--must be dismissed as foolish.

The epigenetic inheritance system is evident in the differences between specialized cells. Brain cells, liver cells, and skin cells are very different, although the nucleus of each cell has the same genome. Their differences are epigenetic, rather than genetic, because they have arisen through their developmental history in which there were different patterns of gene activation and interaction within the cell. This developmental information is passed on as these cells divide to produce more cells of the same kind. It is possible for evolution to occur through heritable epigenetic variation even without genetic variation. Just as a musical recording transmits interpretations in musical performances of a musical score, so does an epigenetic inheritance system transmit interpretations of the information in DNA, so that there is a Lamarkian inheritance of phenotypes instead of genotypes. One version of such inheritance that is now under active study is DNA methylation: strands of DNA are chemically modified during development, and these modifications can be transmitted through reproduction.  The chemical modification in epimutation is not in the DNA itself but in the chromatin marking. Methylated DNA has a small methyl group attached to some of its bases. The pattern of methylation influences which regions of DNA are expressed. The different kinds of cells in the human body have the same DNA, but the different patterns of methylation regulate the expression of DNA.

The behavioral inheritance system is the transmission of information among animals through social learning. For example, among some animals (including human beings) mothers transmit food preferences to their offspring, because information about what mother is eating is transmitted either in the womb or through suckling, so that the offspring inherits a preference for that food. More complex forms of social learning come through animal culture. For example, some chimpanzees can discover how to open nuts with a stone and then pass on this practice within their group so that it becomes a social tradition. Different communities of chimps in Africa have different cultures based on distinctive profiles of traditional practices transmitted by social learning. As opposed to genetic evolution, cultural evolution is not blind but targeted to functional change.

The symbolic inheritance system is uniquely human because it shows the qualitative leap that defines our humanity as based on our capacity for symbolic thought and communication. Other animals can communicate through signs. But only human beings can communicate through symbols. The evolution of human language was probably crucial for the evolution of symbolism. Symbolic systems allow us to think about abstractions that have little to do with concrete, immediate experiences. Symbolic systems allow human beings to construct a shared imagined reality. These symbolic constructions are often fictional and future-oriented. Art, religion, science, and philosophy are all manifestations of human symbolic evolution. 

To explain why humans are somewhat similar to the great apes and yet radically different from them, we have understand how all four levels of human evolution have shaped human beings to be the unique animals that they are.

COMMON DESCENT OR INTELLIGENT DESIGN?  OR BOTH?

Although Casey Luskin is an advocate of intelligent design theory as the best alternative to evolutionary science, he stresses that he is not pointing to the new estimate of 15 percent difference between humans and chimps as evidence that refutes evolution.  As long as the five to eight million years since humans and chimps diverged from their last common ancestor is enough time for this 15 percent difference to evolve, then the evolutionary story of common ancestry is still defensible.  

But still, Luskin suggests, intelligent design theory has a better explanation for this genetic similarity--85 percent--between chimps and humans:  "Functional genetic similarities between humans and chimps could be explained by common ancestry or by common design.  Common ancestry is not the only way to explain genetic similarities.  Intelligent agents can re-use functional code in different designs.  Common design can explain shared functional genetic similarities just as well as common descent can."

There are two mistakes in Luskin's reasoning, however.  First, he mistakenly assumes a dichotomy between common descent and common design, as if they were mutually exclusive.  As I have noted previously, one of the leading advocates of intelligent design theory--Michael Behe--argues (in The Edge of Evolution) that the genetic similarity between humans and chimps is evidence that human beings evolved from primate ancestors shared with chimpanzees.  He explains that intelligent design is required to explain the emergence of the higher taxonomic levels of life (kingdoms, phyla, classes) but not the lower levels (orders, families, genera, species).  This means that the evolution of species could be fully Darwinian.

Behe is an intelligent-design evolutionist, because he insists: "The possibility of intelligent design is quite compatible with common descent, which some religious people disdain.  What's more, although some religious thinkers envision active, continuing intervention in nature, intelligent design is quite compatible with the view that the universe operates by unbroken natural law, with the design of life perhaps packed into its initial set-up" (166).  Luskin refuses to recognize Behe's position.

Luskin is also mistaken, however, in assuming the plausibility of the arguments for intelligent design.  He thus ignores my objection that the arguments for intelligent design are fallacious in two respects.  First, intelligent design reasoning depends completely on the fallacy of negative argumentation from ignorance, in which intelligent design proponents argue that if evolutionary scientists cannot fully explain the step-by-step evolutionary process by which complex living forms arise, then this proves that these complex forms of life must be caused by the intelligent designer.  This is purely negative reasoning because the proponents of intelligent design can offer no positive explanation of their own as to exactly when, where, and how the intelligent designer caused these forms of life.  

The second fallacy is the subtle use of the fallacy of equivocation--in the equivocation between human intelligent design and supernatural intelligent design.  We have all had the experience of seeing how human intelligent agents create artificial products by intelligent design.  But it does not follow logically from this that we have all had the experience of seeing how supernatural intelligent agents create artificial products by intelligent design.

CREATED BY GOD IN HIS IMAGE?  OR EVOLVED IN THE IMAGE OF PRIMATES?  OR BOTH?

Ken Ham (2025) argues, on the contrary, that even if we have not seen with our own eyes God creating everything out of nothing, this has been revealed to us through the Bible; and part of that revelation is that God created all the "kinds" of plants and animals separately, and He created the "chimp kind" to be utterly different from the "humankind," which was created in His image.

But as I have said in my previous posts on Ham and his two museums in Kentucky--the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter--he mistakenly assumes that he is conveying the clear meaning of the Bible and that the Bible's clear teaching is incompatible with Darwinian evolution.

The Bible says nothing about God creating apes and humans as separate "kinds."  The Book of Genesis never mentions apes.  Actually, in the whole Bible, the Hebrew word for "ape" appears only twice (I Kings 10:22, 2 Chronicles 9:21), and never in the context of creation.  And while Genesis speaks of God creating plants and animals "after their kind," it never identifies human beings as a "kind."  Consider Genesis 1:26--"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness."  The phrase "after our likeness" takes the place of "after their kind," suggesting that in being created in the likeness of God, man is not bound by a "kind."  So there is no Biblical basis for Ham to speak of "humankind."

Moreover, the Hebrew word min that is translated as kind in the King James Bible is ambiguous.  In the Latin translation of the Bible, min is translated as the Latin word species.  Consequently, for almost two thousand years, Biblical believers assumed that God's creating "kinds" meant that God created each "species" separately, and that each species was eternally fixed.  But then after Darwin published his Origin of Species in 1859, in which he argued against the "theory of special creation" that God had created each species separating, some Christians began to believe that the created "kinds" in the Bible referred not to "species" but to some higher level of taxonomy.  Then, in 1941, the Christian biologist Frank Marsh coined the word baramin (combining the Hebrew words for "created" and "kind") as the best term for "created kind."  He argued that a "created kind" was not at the taxonomic level of "species" but at or near the level of "family."  This allowed Biblical believers to accept Darwin's theory of the origin of "species" by natural selection while also believing that God had created the "families" of plants and animals to be fixed and separate.  So, for example, we could say that God originally created the "family" of the finches, but within the limits of that "family," the separate species of finches endemic to the Galapagos Islands evolved by natural selection to be adaptive to those islands.

Notice what this means for the taxonomic classification of human beings.  If the "kind" of human beings refers to their taxonomic "family," then in modern taxonomy, human beings belong to the "family" of Hominidae, which includes chimps, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutan.  Even the young-earth creationist Todd Wood (2010) accepts this Hominidae classification of humans with the great apes, although he identifies the "human holobaramin" as the genus Homo.

This idea of "created kinds" was crucial for Ham in solving an old problem with Noah's Ark.  If the Ark carried all the "kinds" of land-based plants and animals, how could the Ark be big enough to hold all of the land-based species--which could be numbered in the millions?

Ham's creationist researchers have solved this problem by calculating that among these land-dependent vertebrate species, there are fewer than 1,400 known living and extinct kinds (that is, families).  This allows them to estimate that Noah had to have fewer than 6,744 individual animals on the Ark.  Once these animals left the Ark, speciation by natural selection within kinds could create all the living and extinct species that we know today.  The Ham's Ark Encounter is designed to show how as many as 6,744 animals and 8 human beings (Noah and his extended family) could survive on the Ark for almost a year.  But notice that this is a speculative reading of the Bible that never defines "kind" in this way.  This is not the clear meaning of the Bible, as Ham claims.  Indeed, if you go to the Ark Encounter in Kentucky, you might notice one display that speaks of the need for "Arktistic license" in making up details in the story of the Ark that have no basis in the Bible.

Since the Bible is so obscure in its creation story, and since so much of that story sounds like a figurative folk tale that was not meant to be a literal account of natural history, many Christians (like C. S. Lewis, Francis Collins, and Deborah Haarsma) have decided that the Bible could be read as allowing for theistic evolution or evolutionary creation.  According to this conception, God created the universal laws of nature at the beginning of the Universe, but then He allowed all the forms of life to emerge by natural evolution.  God is the "primary cause" of everything.  But the evolutionary process unfolds through the "secondary causes" of nature.  Even Darwin himself accepted this metaphysical conception of "dual causality" that reconciles belief in God as First Cause with acceptance of evolutionary science.  At various points in the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter, there are displays that acknowledge that many if not most Christians accept some version of this theistic evolution.

But what about the creation of human beings in the image of God?  If the "image of God" refers to the God-like intellect of man, then we might argue that the extraordinary mental capacities of human beings could have evolved through the evolution of the primate brain.  I have argued that the evolution in the size and complexity of the primate brain passed over a critical threshold so that now there are 86 billion neurons in the human brain, and of that total, 16 billion are in the cerebral cortex, which includes 1.3 billion neurons in the prefrontal cortex.  That emergent evolution of the brain created the uniquely powerful human mind.  We were created in the image of the primate brain.

Even if we are only 15 percent genetically different from chimps, we are different in kind from chimps because we have the mental capacities for language, morality, and symbolic abstraction that they do not have at all.  That's the difference that makes all the difference.

REFERENCES

Behe, Michael. 2007. The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the  Limits of Darwinism. New York: The Free Press.

Ham, Ken. 2025. "Study Finds Chimp DNA Is Not '99% Identical' to Ours." Answers in Genesis. Ken Ham Blog. May 27. Online.

Jablonka, Eva, and Marion J. Lamb. 2014. Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life. Revised edition. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Luskin, Casey. 2025. "Fact Check: New 'Complete' Chimp Genome Shows 14.9 Percent Difference from Human Genome." Science and Culture Today, May 21, online.

Wood, Todd Charles. 2010. "Baraminological Analysis Places Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, and Australopithecus sediba in the Human Holobaramin." Answers Research Journal 3: 71-90.

Yoo, Dong Ahn, et al. 2025. "Complete Sequencing of Ape Genomes." Nature 641: 401-418.

The Falsity of Thomas Jefferson's "Prayer for the Nation." Does Mike Johnson's Appeal to Divine Providence Deny the Separation of Church and State?

 

                Mike Johnson's Speech After Being Reelected Speaker of the House of Representatives

Yesterday, Mike Johnson was reelected Speaker of the House of Representatives.  In his acceptance speech, he summarized the major points of Donald Trump's MAGA agenda for the Congress; and in doing that, he insisted that the election of Donald Trump and the new Republican Congress was an act of divine providence.  He explained: "I don't believe in luck or coincidence.  I believe in the idea of providence."  As evidence that the belief in God's providential care for America is part of America's exceptional position in the world, he read what he identified as Thomas Jefferson's "Prayer for America," and he said that Jefferson had said this prayer each day of his eight years as president, and every day thereafter until his death.  In the video above, this comes at around 14 minutes into the speech.  You can also read the text of the speech at Johnson's congressional website.

Johnson identified Jefferson as "the primary author of the Declaration of Independence," in the context of noting that the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence would occur during the term of this 119th Congress in 2026.

Here's the prayer:

Almighty God who has given us this good land for our heritage. We humbly beseech thee that we may always prove ourselves, that people mindful of thy favor and glad to do thy will bless our land with honorable ministry, sound learning and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord and confusion, from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties and fashion into one united people, the multitude brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues endow with thy spirit of wisdom, those whom in thy name, we entrust the authority of government. That there may be justice and peace at home, and that through obedience to thy law, we may show forth thy praise among the nations of the Earth. In times of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in thee to fail, of which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

Johnson then immediately claimed that the election of the Republican Congress was an "act of providence," and that it was "providence that spared President Trump from the assassin's bullet."  In this way, he suggested that God miraculously intervened to save Trump's life so that he could be elected president.  I have written previously about this belief that Trump is God's Chosen One--like God's choice of Cyrus as the Messiah for Israel.

This raises at least two questions.  Is Johnson correct in identifying this as Jefferson's prayer?  And is Johnson's invocation of God's providential care of America compatible with America's fundamental principles?  Or does it contradict the Jeffersonian principle of separating church and state?

The answer to the first question is clearly no.  As indicated by a statement at the website for the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, there is no evidence that this prayer was written by Jefferson.

Moreover, that Jefferson would not have written such a prayer is clear from his refusal as president to proclaim any national day of prayer for the country.  In 1808, Samuel Miller (a minister) sent a letter to Jefferson asking him if he would be receptive to a request from some ministers that he issue a presidential proclamation of a day of "fasting, humiliation, and prayer" before God.  Jefferson replied by saying that he would have to refuse such a request because it would violate the First Amendment's provision that "no law shall be made respecting the establishment, or free exercise, of religion."  He did indicate, however, that since the First Amendment applies only to the national government, a state government might have the right to issue some such proclamation of a national day of prayer.

Apparently, Jefferson believed that a presidential prayer for America like that attributed to him by Johnson would have violated what Jefferson had called the "wall of separation between church and state" in his letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802.  He was responding to a letter from the Danbury Baptists congratulating him on his election in 1800 and endorsing his affirmation of "religious liberty--that religion is at all times and places a matter between God and individuals," and therefore that civil government has no rightful power prescribe religious belief.

As I have indicated in some previous posts, this puts Jefferson on the side of Roger Williams in asserting the "wall of separation" of church and state against the theocracy of John Winthrop.  I have also argued that Jefferson's God in the Declaration of Independence is "Nature's God"--or Spinoza's God who is immanent in the laws of Nature--and this God is not a transcendent God who miraculously intervenes in natural history in answer to prayer.

If this is correct, then Speaker Johnson's political appeal to divine providence violates the American principle of separation of church and state.  It's notable that in his speech, Johnson mentions "seven core principles of America," which are "individual freedom, limited government, the rule of law, peace through strength, fiscal responsibility, free markets, human dignity."  But notice that separation of church and state is not included.

What should Johnson say in his defense?  Unless I am overlooking some documentary evidence for Jefferson's "Prayer for the Nation," Johnson would have to admit that he was wrong about this.

But even if Johnson was wrong about attributing this prayer to Jefferson, Johnson could argue that the religious doctrine of divine providence really is an American political principle.  After all, even if the only reference to God in Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence was "Nature's God," it is revealing that the revisions of the Declaration coming from others in the Continental Congress added three more references to God--"by their Creator," "appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world," and "with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence."  

Doesn't this show that America's God is more than just Jefferson's Spinozistic God of Nature--that America's God is a Creator, Judge, and providential Protector of America?

And yet isn't it interesting that we don't see any of this talk about God in the Constitution?  In his speech, Johnson refers to the oath of office prescribed by the Constitution: "we're all going to take an oath--the same one oath, for one nation, and under the banner of one great American flag."  But he is silent about the exact language in the Constitution prescribing this oath: all officers "shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States" (Article VI).

As I have pointed out, this part of the Constitution has been vehemently criticized by Christians who have said that this allows the offices of government to be filled by "godless" people.  Johnson says nothing about this.

Another problem for Johnson is that he does not explain how he can be so sure that he knows the truth about God and God's will for America.  As I have indicated in a previous post, Johnson is a Young-Earth Creationist who is a follower of Ken Ham, and who therefore believes that God created everything exactly 6,000 years ago, and so the Darwinian science of natural evolution is false and morally degrading.  The fundamental difficulty with this is that he believes that God has revealed this truth to him through the Bible, even though most biblical believers disagree with this.  So, the Holy Spirit has failed to clearly convey God's revelation to all believers.

Remarkably, in his first speech as Speaker of the House, when he was first elected, Johnson suggested that his becoming Speaker was ordained by God:  "I believe that scripture, the Bible, is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority. He raised up each of you. All of us. And I believe that God has allowed and ordained each and every one of us to be here at this specific moment. This is my belief."  

Well, okay, this is his belief.  But how does he know that that this is a true belief coming from the Holy Spirit?  Other Christians in the tradition of Roger Williams would say that the New Testament does not support the kind of Mosaic theocracy found in the Old Testament, that New Testament Christianity demands a wall of separation between church and state, and therefore that it is blasphemy to say that God has chosen Donald Trump to be President.  How can Johnson be sure that these Christians are wrong? 

The New House Speaker--Mike Johnson--Is a Young-Earth Creationist. Can He Solve the Problem of the Holy Spirit?

                       The Holy Spirit Depicted as a Dove in the Apse of Saint Peter's Basilica

Over the years, I have written many posts on Ken Ham's Young Earth Creationism--the idea that a literal reading of the Bible shows that the world was created by God in six days about 6,000 years ago, and therefore that the Darwinian science of evolution is false.  Most recently, I wrote about my visits to Ham's Creation Museum and Ark Encounter in northern Kentucky, which replicate God's creation of the world and Noah's Ark.

Many of my friends have questioned me about why anyone should take Young Earth Creationism so seriously.  Well, now I have a quick answer:  Have you noticed that on Wednesday the House of Representatives chose their new Speaker of the House--Mike Johnson--who has been one of the leading proponents of Ken Ham's Young Earth Creationism?  Yesterday, the Huffington Post published an article about Johnson's active support for Ham's work.

Johnson is an attorney with a constitutional law legal firm--Freedom Guard--that provides legal representation for Christian organizations like Ham's Answers in Genesis.  In particular, Johnson defended Ham's legal right to ask for sales tax refund incentives under the Kentucky Tourism Development Act for the Ark Encounter.  When the yearly sales tax revenue at the Ark Encounter exceeds a specified amount, a certain portion is refunded to Ham's organization, which provides subsidies of millions of dollars a year.  In the courts, Johnson has argued that this does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because it conforms to Supreme Court opinions that have held that as long as a state law confers benefits in a neutral manner, religious organizations that qualify under the law can receive those benefits, because the state is not officially endorsing any religious teaching.  Moreover, Johnson has argued that in promoting Young Earth Creationism, Ham's organizations are exercising their rights to freedom of speech and religious liberty under the First Amendment.  Johnson has also defended in federal courts the right of Ham's organizations to require that those hired to work for them must sign a statement of Christian faith.  The prohibition of discriminatory hiring in the Civil Rights Law of 1964 does not prohibit this because there is an exemption for religious organizations.

But I am wondering if Johnson can resolve the fundamental theological and philosophical problem in Ham's position, which I call the problem of the Holy Spirit.  Johnson has said: "The Ark Encounter is one way to bring people to this recognition of the truth, that what we read in the Bible are actual historical events."  How does he know that this reading of the Bible is "the truth"?  Traditionally, Christians have assumed that God sends the Holy Spirit to guide Christians to the correct interpretation of Revelation in the Bible.  Jesus promised that God would send the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth to guide Christians to the truth (John 14:15-16:15).  But since the most pious Christians disagree about how exactly the Bible should be applied to the creation/evolution debate (as well as many other issues), the Holy Spirit has failed to guide them to the truth of Revelation.

The "Starting Points" exhibit at the Creation Museum states the fundamental claim underlying both the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter:  creationists and evolutionists observe the same evidence in the natural world, but they reach different conclusions from that evidence because they start with two different worldviews--the naturalistic evolutionist worldview and the biblical creationist worldview.  The evolutionist assumes that everything in the world emerged through a natural process of evolution, and then he interprets the evidence as supporting that conclusion.  The creationist assumes that the Bible is a divinely revealed teaching that tells the truth about God's creation of the world according to the literal history of creation in Genesis, and then he interprets the evidence as supporting that conclusion.

According to AiG, there is no way to scientifically prove which worldview is true because of the distinction between observational science and historical science.  "Observational science deals with testing and verifying ideas in the present.  Chemistry experiments in a laboratory and the ongoing study of a medicine's effectiveness in treating a particular disease are examples of observational science.  Historical science involves the interpretation of evidence from the past that now exists in the present.  A paleontologist's narrative of a fossilized creature's habits and an astronomer's explanation of a star's formation are examples of historical science."  The "interpretation of evidence from the past" in historical science depends on one's choice of a worldview, which cannot be tested or verified through observational science.

Anyone who carefully studies the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter will see that they implicitly admit that the distinction between the two worldviews is a false dichotomy, because it falsely assumes that there is one and only one naturalistic evolutionist worldview and one and only one Biblical creationist worldview, and that there is no evolutionary creationist worldview.

Some of the exhibits recognize that "many Christians" have rejected Young Earth creationism in favor of Old Earth creationism or Theistic Evolution as more compatible with the Bible.  Ken Ham has even said that "most of the church" denies Young Earth creationism.  Now, of course, Ham and AiG say that these Christians are mistaken in their interpretation of the Bible.  But that's just the point: the Bible is open to different interpretations in the dispute over creation and evolution; and therefore, there are different Biblical creationist worldviews, and some of them support evolutionary science.

Can the new Speaker of the House explain how we resolve this problem, so that the Holy Spirit will guide all Christians to "the truth" of Young Earth Creationism?

And if he can do this, will this support Young Earth Creationism as a Biblical foundation for MAGA Republicanism and a new American Christian Nationalism?

Remarkably, in his first speech as Speaker of the House, Johnson suggested that his becoming Speaker was ordained by God:  "I believe that scripture, the Bible, is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority. He raised up each of you. All of us. And I believe that God has allowed and ordained each and every one of us to be here at this specific moment. This is my belief."  Is this the work of the Holy Spirit?

My Debate with Ken Ham: Darwinian Morality or Biblical Morality?

When I toured the Creation Museum, I was reminded of the debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye at the Creation Museum in 2014, which was the subject of a post.  I was also reminded that I had once debated Ham in 2009--not in person but on the online website of Forbes magazine.  February 12, 2009, was the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth.  An editor at Forbes invited a number of people to write essays for the occasion.  I wrote an essay entitled "We Are the Moral Animals," in which I argued that Darwin had explained the natural grounding of morality in evolved human nature.  Ham wrote an essay entitled "Darwinian Dangers," in which he argued, on the contrary, that Darwin had destroyed the grounding of morality in Christianity by denying the moral uniqueness of human beings as created in God's image.  This shows the true motivation for Ham and other creationist scientists.  Their primary concern is not the truth or falsity of the science but its moral consequences: we should accept Biblical science because it supports morality, and we should reject Darwinian science because it corrupts morality.

At the Creation Museum, Ham begins his attack on evolution's moral dangers in the "Starting Points" exhibit.  Are Human "Races" Equal? is the question for one display (CMS, 15).  For the "Naturalistic Evolutionist Worldview," the answer is: "While most evolutionists reject racism, their philosophy is inherently racist."  To support this, the display quotes Stephen Jay Gould saying that "biological arguments for racism" have been common.  The same quotation appears in Ham's Forbes.com essay.

For the "Biblical Creationist Worldview," the answer is: "All human beings are made in God's image and are descendants of Adam, so there is no basis for racism from a biblical perspective."

Although there have been "biological arguments for racism," they have never been properly rooted in Darwinian evolutionary science and evolutionary moral psychology.  As I have pointed out, Darwin was a vehement opponent of slavery who wrote The Descent of Man to show that all human beings were equally human as members of the human species.  Ham and the Creation Museum are silent about this.

They are also silent about the fact that wherever the Bible speaks about slavery, it endorses it.  The Ark Encounter does have one display with the question, Was the Bible Used to Promote Racism?  The answer is: "Sadly, some professing Christians have misused passages of the Bible to spread racist ideas, such as slavery based on a person's skin tone or the notion that 'interracial' marriage is sinful" (AE, 101).  "But what does the Bible really teach on these matters?"  They answer with four verses about all of us being created in God's image, all one race, and all loved by God.

But they cannot cite any Biblical passage that directly condemns slavery.  And they are silent about the many passages that endorse it.  As I have indicated, those who defended the Biblical basis of slavery (like Fred Ross) wrote meticulous studies of the Bible to show that it consistently supported slavery.  To the claim that God's creating men in His image makes all men equal, Ross responded by pointing out that the "image of God" teaching is compatible with a divinely ordained hierarchy among human beings.  

For example: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" (Gen. 1:27).  Far from creating all men equal, Ross observed, God here created humanity as "male and female," so that they are not equal in body and mind.  God made the woman "out of the man" (Genesis 2:23); and He made "the man the image and glory of God, but the woman for the glory of the man.  For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man" (1 Corinthians 11:7-9); and he made the woman to be the weaker vessel (1 Peter 3:7).   Moreover, just as wives are to obey their husbands, and children to obey their parents, slaves are to obey their masters (Ephesians 5:22-24, 6:1-5).  Insofar as slaves are inferior in body and mind to their masters, the slaves are naturally better off being ruled by their masters.  

Ham and the Creation Museum make no attempt to refute this scriptural argument for slavery.  Instead, they have silently corrected the Bible by reading it through the lens of their natural moral sense, which Darwin explains as a product of human evolution.  Their knowledge that slavery is wrong comes from that natural moral sense not from their reading of the Bible.

They also silently correct the Bible's moral mistakes by refusing to even mention those many places where the Bible endorses immoral violence.  For example, in a display on "God's Promise to the Nations," they reproduce Rembrandt's painting of Abraham preparing to kill his son Isaac; but they do not explain that this murder of a child was commanded by God (Gen. 22).

Similarly, while they refer to the Israelites being commanded by God to fight against the Canaanites (CMS, 55), they are silent about God ordering a "curse of destruction," in which the Israelites would slaughter everyone, including women and children, but keep alive the young virgins so that the Israelite men could rape them (Deu. 20:10-18; Numbers 31:7-20).  Previously, I have written about how Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have condemned this religious violence in the Bible as immoral.  Ham and the Creation Museum do not do this, because in doing so, they would have to admit that the Bible's moral mistakes need to be corrected by our natural moral sense.

The Bible Is Not a Book of Natural History: At the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter

 As I toured the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter, and as I read the AiG guidebooks for these two creationist theme parks, I asked myself, Is this Young Earth creationist history of the Earth the clear teaching of the Bible?  Again and again the answer was No.

DINOSAURS

The first thing one notices outside the entrance to the Creation Museum is a large replica of a dinosaur.  As soon as one enters the Museum, you see the Dragon Legends exhibit, which teaches that the many dragon legends from around the world must be evidence that ancient people fought against dinosaurs, because the dragons look so much like dinosaurs.  In the Main Hall of the Museum, a large variety of dinosaur replicas are displayed.  This is supposed to teach visitors that "according to the Bible, man and dinosaur lived at the same time, and these marvelous creatures were originally created as vegetarians (Genesis 1:30)" (Journey Through the Creation Museaum [JCM], 15).  There are over 30 dinosaurs in the Creation Museum.  At the Ark Encounter, there are dinosaurs on the Ark to represent the 85 kinds of dinosaurs said to have been on the Ark (JCM, 71).

So what is it with dinosaurs?  This seems strange given that the Bible says nothing about dinosaurs!  According to Genesis 1:30, "to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so."  AiG wants us to believe that "every beast of the earth" must include dinosaurs.  But it was not until 1842 that Richard Owen coined the word "dinosaur."  And although people had previously identified dinosaur fossils as "dragon bones," it has been only in the past 200 years that these fossils have been studied scientifically.

AiG quotes from Job 39--41 as describing Behemoth and Leviathan as giant animals that could have been dinosaurs (Creation Museum Signs [CMS], 6-7).  But this seems unlikely since Leviathan is identified as fire-breathing and as having multiple heads (Psalms 74:14).  At the "Dino Den" exhibit, AiG describes many genuses and species of dinosaurs, but all of this comes from modern science, and none of this is found in the Bible (CMS, 192-99).

AiG cannot deny the fossil evidence for the existence of dinosaurs, but it must deny the evidence that all non-avian dinosaurs went extinct about 66 million years ago, long before human beings emerged, because this would contradict what the Young Earth creationists say about the 6,000-year history of the earth and the creation of both the "beasts of the earth" and Adam on the sixth day of creation.  They have to argue that dinosaurs and humans coexisted, until the dinosaurs went extinct sometime after Noah's Flood (CMS, 13).  They do this without being able to cite any clear references to dinosaurs in the Bible.

Apparently, the Holy Spirit saw no need to convey any divinely revealed teaching about the natural history of dinosaurs.  

IS THERE A "NATURALISTIC EVOLUTIONIST WORLDVIEW" OPPOSED TO THE "BIBLICAL CREATIONIST WORLDVIEW"?

The "Starting Points" exhibit at the Creation Museum states the fundamental claim underlying both the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter:  creationists and evolutionists observe the same evidence in the natural world, but they reach different conclusions from that evidence because they start with two different worldviews--the naturalistic evolutionist worldview and the biblical creationist worldview.  The evolutionist assumes that everything in the world emerged through a natural process of evolution, and then he interprets the evidence as supporting that conclusion.  The creationist assumes that the Bible is a divinely revealed teaching that tells the truth about God's creation of the world according to the literal history of creation in Genesis, and then he interprets the evidence as supporting that conclusion (CMS, 12-18).

According to AiG, there is no way to scientifically prove which worldview is true because of the distinction between observational science and historical science.  "Observational science deals with testing and verifying ideas in the present.  Chemistry experiments in a laboratory and the ongoing study of a medicine's effectiveness in treating a particular disease are examples of observational science.  Historical science involves the interpretation of evidence from the past that now exists in the present.  A paleontologist's narrative of a fossilized creature's habits and an astronomer's explanation of a star's formation are examples of historical science" (CMS, 20).  The "interpretation of evidence from the past" in historical science depends on one's choice of a worldview, which cannot be tested or verified through observational science.

Anyone who carefully studies the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter will see that they implicitly admit that the distinction between the two worldviews is a false dichotomy, because it falsely assumes that there is one and only one naturalistic evolutionist worldview and one and only one Biblical creationist worldview, and that there is no evolutionary creationist worldview.

Some of the exhibits recognize that "many Christians" have rejected Young Earth creationism in favor of Old Earth creationism or Theistic Evolution as more compatible with the Bible (CMS, 80, 83-84).  Ken Ham has even said that "most of the church" denies Young Earth creationism (Six Days, 29).  Now, of course, Ham and AiG say that these Christians are mistaken in their interpretation of the Bible.  But that's just the point: the Bible is open to different interpretations in the dispute over creation and evolution; and therefore, there are different Biblical creationist worldviews, and some of them support evolutionary science.

WHAT IS A CREATED "KIND"?

One of the most fundamental disagreements among Biblical creationists has been in the interpretation of created "kinds."  When the King James Bible speaks of God creating living creatures "after their kind" (Genesis 1:21), "kind" is an English translation of the Hebrew word min.  In the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible--the Septuagint--min was translated by the Greek species, corresponding to the English word species.  This led most Biblical creationists, up to the middle of the 19th century, to assume that the Bible was teaching that God had specially created every species eternally fixed in its form so that it could not change, which denied that there could be any evolutionary development of species.  

But then, in 1859, with the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, it appeared that Darwin had shown how his theory of natural selection could explain the natural evolution of species from ancestral species, and thus refuted the Biblical creationist doctrine of the created fixity of species.  Some creationists responded by suggesting that the Hebrew word min was "imprecise," and that it could be understood not as species but as equivalent to some higher level of taxonomic category--perhaps "family."  As I have previously indicated, creationist biologist Frank Marsh in 1941 coined the word baramin (combining the Hebrew words bara [create] and min [kind]) to denote "created kind."  One could then argue that what God created in Genesis 1 were "kinds" rather than "species," and that there can be evolutionary speciation within a kind, but there cannot be any evolutionary change of one kind into a new kind.  So, for example, the creationist can concede that Darwin correctly saw that the various species of finches in the Galapagos Islands had evolved by natural selection to be uniquely adapted to the Galapagos, but that all of these species were within the general "kind" of finches as created by God.

At the Creation Museaum and the Ark Encounter, the "baraminology" of Marsh is identified as the "updated view" of Biblical creationism as opposed to the "outdated view" of fixity of species (CMS, 19, 31, 33, 35, 95, 134-40; AE, 14-26).  But notice that they cannot cite any Biblical text that clearly endorses the "updated view" as correct.  Here, again, the Bible is not concerned with providing a precise science of natural history.

One reason that AiG has adopted the "updated view" of created kinds is that it helps them to answer the question, How could Noah fit all the animals on the Ark?  God told Noah: "Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth" (Genesis 7:2-3).  The meaning of "clean" versus "unclean" animals is unclear, but "clean" could refer to those animals considered appropriate for animal sacrifice.  In any case, if every "kind" means every "species," the number of animals from every species would be too great to fit on the Ark.  But if "kind" means "family," that drastically reduces the number of animals that had to be on the Ark.

Moreover, AiG assumes that most fish and invertebrates and most non-animals (such as plants and bacteria) could survive the Flood, and therefore they did not have to be taken onto the Ark.  AiG estimates that there are about 34,000 species of known, land-dependent vertebrates in the world today.  But among these land-dependent vertebrate species, there are fewer than 1,400 known living and extinct kinds (that is, families).  This allows AiG to estimate that Noah had to have fewer than 6,744 individual animals on the Ark.  Once these animals left the Ark, speciation by natural selection within kinds could create all the living and extinct species that we know today (AE, 28-33).  The Ark Encounter is designed to show how as many as 6,744 animals and 8 human beings (Noah and his extended family) could survive on the Ark for almost a year.

The human intelligence required to think through all of this is impressive.  Young Earth creationists are very clever people.  But notice that most of this is purely human speculation that has no clear support in the Bible.  AiG quietly admits this in a couple of the Ark Encounter exhibits that refer to their "Ark-Tistic License" or "Artistic Interpretation" in working through the details where the Bible says nothing.  (It is worth noting that these exhibits are not included in the Ark Signs guidebook.)

SHOULD BIBLICAL CREATIONISTS DEFEND GEOCENTRIC ASTRONOMY?

Another example of "artistic interpretation" in both the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter is that they assume that the Earth is a spherical planet revolving on its axis while orbiting the Sun in a solar system with other planets orbiting the Sun (CMS, 120, 144-45; AE, 58-64, 119).  The Bible never teaches this. 

They say that the Bible "includes passages that imply a round earth" (AE, 119).  But they do not cite those passages.  In fact, while the Hebrew word for Earth in the Old Testament (eres) appears about 2,500 times, and the Greek word for Earth in the New Testament (ge) appears 250 times, never in these 2,750 instances is the Earth ever identified as spherical.

On the contrary, from the beginning of the Bible, the Earth is said to be a flat disk in a three-tiered cosmos, with the Sun, the Moon, and stars moving around the Earth, but with no planets and no moons other than the Earth's moon (Genesis 1:1-10).  Like the cosmology of ancient Near Eastern cultures, the cosmology of the Bible has the Earth in the middle, the heavens above, and the underworld beneath the Earth.  The Earth in the middle was a disk-shaped land mass surrounded by a sea.  The Sun, the Moon, and the stars were embedded on the surface of a "dome" or "firmament" that turned around the Earth; so that the Sun, Moon, and stars would rise above the Earth in the morning and sink below the Earth at night (Genesis 1:16-17).  Paul refers to this three-tiered cosmos when he said that "at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth" (Philippians 2:10).  Remarkably, this verse is quoted at the Creation Museum, but without recognizing that it points to a three-tiered cosmos (CMS, 79).

Indeed, some creationists insist that a truly Biblical creationist worldview must be geocentric, and therefore must reject the heliocentric astronomy of Copernicus and Galileo as contrary to the Bible.  Gerardus Bouw, who has a Ph.D. in astronomy from Case Western Reserve University, is one of the leading creationist geocentrists.  Danny Faulkner, a creationist astronomer at AiG, has tried to refute Bouw's arguments for Biblical geocentrism.  But Bouw has responded by pointing out that Faulkner ignores those Biblical passages that clearly indicate that the Earth is at the center of the cosmos--the same passages quoted by the Catholic Inquisition in condemning Galileo for advancing a Copernican astronomy that denied the truth of the Bible.

In Joshua 10:13, God ordered the Sun and the Moon to stand still for a full day: "And the Sun stood still, and the Moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. . . . So the Sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day."  Surely, the literal meaning of this verse is that the Sun moves around the Earth.  As Bouw pointed out to Faulkner, God could have said "And the Earth stopped turning so that the Sun appeared to stand still," but He didn't.  If we're going to say that the language of Joshua 10:13 is meant to be interpreted as figurative and not as literal truth, then why shouldn't we interpret the creation story in Genesis as figurative imagery that is not literal history?

In apologizing for the Catholic Church's condemnation of Galileo, Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis have admitted that Galileo was right to say that the Bible is not a scientific book of natural history because it teaches us "how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go."  And adopting that Galilean principle of Biblical hermeneutics has allowed the Popes to accept a theistic evolution that sees no conflict between the Bible and evolutionary science.  

Why shouldn't the creationists at AiG follow the example of the Catholic Church and give up Young Earth creationism in favor of theistic evolution?