{"id":25966,"date":"2014-09-06T07:09:25","date_gmt":"2014-09-06T11:09:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=25966"},"modified":"2014-09-06T07:09:25","modified_gmt":"2014-09-06T11:09:25","slug":"sleight-of-hand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/09\/sleight-of-hand.html","title":{"rendered":"Sleight of Hand"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-25967\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2014\/08\/The-fundamental-problem-with-Ken-Ham-and-his-ilk-1024x576.png\" alt=\"The fundamental problem with Ken Ham and his ilk\" width=\"457\" height=\"257\"><\/p>\n<p>The fundamental problem with Ken Ham and his ilk is\u2014and always will be\u2014not science, but biblical hermeneutics. That is, how one understands and interprets the Bible as sacred writ. The sleight of hand trick that the Creationist overlords play on Christian flocks is: if they can convince people to interpret Genesis literally and without critical thought (with stories engrained in Evangelicals in a cartoon manner from youth), then they have an easier time getting them to interpret the rest of the Bible this way\u2014from the Gospels to Pauline epistles to the Apocalypse of St. John.<\/p>\n<p>The quote from Arik Bjorn comes from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forwardprogressives.com\/christian-right-weekly-roundup-pastor-pillow-parable-empty-megachurch\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">the blog Forward Progressives<\/a>. The background image comes from <a href=\"http:\/\/michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com\/2014\/08\/31\/taking-darwin-and-creation-seriously\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Michael Roberts\u2019 blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The fundamental problem with Ken Ham and his ilk is\u2014and always will be\u2014not science, but biblical hermeneutics. That is, how one understands and interprets the Bible as sacred writ. The sleight of hand trick that the Creationist overlords play on Christian flocks is: if they can convince people to interpret Genesis literally and without critical [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":25967,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[1140,4563,6131,11422,14019],"class_list":["post-25966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-young-earth-creationism","tag-bible","tag-hermeneutics","tag-ken-ham","tag-sleight-of-hand","tag-young-earth-creationists"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Sleight of Hand<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The fundamental problem with Ken Ham and his ilk is\u2014and always will be\u2014not science, but biblical hermeneutics. That is, how one understands and interprets\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/09\/sleight-of-hand.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sleight of Hand\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The fundamental problem with Ken Ham and his ilk is\u2014and always will be\u2014not science, but biblical hermeneutics. That is, how one understands and interprets\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/09\/sleight-of-hand.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. McGrath\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/religionprof\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-09-06T11:09:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"James F. McGrath\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ReligionProf\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"James F. 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