Ken Ham - Biography

Biography

Ken Ham earned a bachelor's degree in Applied Science, with an emphasis in Environmental Biology, at Queensland Institute of Technology and a diploma in Education from the University of Queensland. On 30 December 1972, he married Marilyn ("Mally"). The Ham couple have five children — four are married and one lives with them in the Cincinnati area and have ten grandchildren. In 1979, Ham co-founded what was to be later known as the Creation Science Foundation (CSF) in Queensland, Australia with John Mackay.

Ham worked for the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), a leading young-Earth organisation. In 1994, with the assistance of what is now Creation Ministries International (Australia), Ham and colleagues Mark Looy and Mike Zovath set up Creation Science Ministries, later renamed Answers in Genesis. The Christian ministry specialises in young Earth creationism and promotes the belief that the initial chapters in Genesis should be taken as literally true and historically accurate. He then began raising funds to build the ministry.

He has been awarded two honorary degrees: In 1997 from Temple Baptist College in Cincinnati, Ohio and in 2004 from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. On 28 May 2007 the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum opened in Petersburg, Kentucky, a project which cost $27 million. The necessary funds were donated throughout the 1990s. It is about 70,000 sq ft (6,500 m2)

In May 2007, Creation Ministries International (CMI) filed a lawsuit against Ham and AiG in the Supreme Court of Queensland seeking damages and accusing him of deceptive conduct in his dealings with the Australian organization. Members of the ministry were "concern over Mr Ham's domination of the ministries, the amount of money being spent on his fellow executives and a shift away from delivering the creationist message to raising donations." According to the CMI website, this dispute was amicably settled in April 2009. In 2008, Ham appeared in Bill Maher's comedy-documentary Religulous. AiG criticized the movie for what it called Maher's "dishonesty last year in gaining access to the Creation Museum and AiG President Ken Ham."

In March 2011, the Board of Great Homeschool Conventions, Inc. voted to "disinvite" Ham and AiG from "all future conventions" due to Ham's words about other Christians being "unnecessary, ungodly, and mean-spirited statements that are divisive at best and defamatory at worst." AiG responded: "It is sad that a speaker and ministry, which stand boldly and uncompromisingly on the authority of God’s Word, are eliminated from a homeschool convention." Ham hosts Answers. . . with Ken Ham, a 60-second program broadcast daily on radio stations and the Internet featuring Ham's commentary on issues.