Were you there?

PZ Myers recently gave some sensitive, measured, and wise advice to a young religious girl.

This maniac must be stopped.

That might be going a bit far, but Ken Ham’s not happy with him. Ken is a prominent creationist, and blogged about a nine-year-old girl called Emma, who’d got in touch with Ken to tell him about a conversation she’d had.

Ken advises people, when confronted by cocky scientists or arrogant atheists who claim to know what happened millions or billions of years in the past, to ask if they were there to see it happen. Like the formation of moon rock, or the evolution of life. Did anyone see it happening?

PZ explained to Emma – in the kind and reasonable tones of, basically, a well-meaning teacher speaking to a child – why this isn’t really such a good question to ask. Questions in general are good, and he gave her kudos for speaking up, but asking whether a scientist was around to watch moon rock being formed several billion years ago probably won’t teach you very much. Obviously she wasn’t there.

But the scientists aren’t saying “I know this is how this moon rock formed billions of years ago because I was there to see it happen”. Even creationists don’t think scientists are that crazy. But then where did these scientists get their crazy ideas from?

Well, how about asking them that? When they make some declaration about evolution or ancient moon rock, ask them something you actually don’t know the answer to: How do you know? Now that is almost always a good question to ask.

To see why, imagine the situations were reversed, and a scientist was asking someone like Emma about Jesus. Emma could probably tell them quite fluently what she knows about God sending his son to Earth to save mankind. If the scientist then asked, “Were you there?”, what would Emma say to that?

She wasn’t there when Jesus lived, obviously. But she’s never claimed to be, and it would be a bit of a dead-end question. Whereas, if the scientists asked how Emma knows any of this stuff about Jesus, then she can point to the Bible where it’s all laid out. And now we’d be getting somewhere; now both parties have a better understanding of where the other is coming from.

PZ’s hypothetical open letter was thorough and well targeted. He also specifically stated that he had no intention of trying to send it to a child he doesn’t know who had solicited no such correspondence.

Ken Ham got to hear about PZ’s response, though, and by the time it reached his ears second- or third-hand and became further mangled by his own dissonance-laden brain, the headline became: ATHEISTS ATTACK.

First of all, if you can find anything in PZ’s post that can be called an attack against this kid, then maybe you can next turn your supernatural detective skills to the task of finding the Higgs boson and save CERN some trouble.

Secondly, the agglomeration of deliberate wilful ignorance in Ken Ham’s follow-up post is staggering. He doesn’t link to PZ’s post, and doesn’t seem to have read it. The word “apparently” features multiple times, and it’s clear from his mischaracterisation that he either hasn’t bothered to read it and thus has no idea what he’s talking about, or he’s an outright liar.

Emma’s mother fares no better. Judging by the words Ken quotes, she’s quite bewildered as to why so much anger and energy is being put into calling her foolish and “attacking the enemy”. By atheists who would very happily and gently explain everything that puzzles her, if she simply cared to read anything other than the Bible. But no.

Sigh.