Ken Ham is the president/CEO and founder of Answers in Genesis-U.S. and the highly acclaimed Creation Museum. He is one of the most in-demand creationist speakers in North America. Brad Harrub, Ph.D. serves as the director of Focus Press and co-editor of Think magazine. He spends 40+ weekends each year conducting Truth About Origins Seminars all across the country. They had the opportunity recently to sit down and discuss the importance of training children early, and teaching them the truth regarding the dinosaurs.

Brad Harrub: Ken, dinosaurs are huge with young people. In fact, they are often the very first introduction children get into the atheistic world of evolution. Why do you think evolutionists have been so successful with dinosaurs?

Ken Ham: Well I think dinosaurs have that monster appeal with children. There is a mystery about them as well. They don’t live today. Some of them were very, very large, and I think that fascinates kids. For that reason kids just love dinosaurs. Dinosaurs have really captured their imagination. Evolutionists have certainly capitalized on that in using dinosaurs to convince children, as well as moms and dads and others, about evolution and millions of years. They use dinosaurs to convince them the Bible is not true and to teach them evolutionary history. Really, we should be using dinosaurs to capitalize and teach our children the truth about these creatures and that there is no mystery about them.

BH: Absolutely! We are losing young people in droves because they drink the kool-aid and buy into the evolutionary myth regarding vast old ages. Evolutionists hook kids at a young age and then they grow up and can’t harmonize their beliefs with the Bible. Ken, do you believe that in some cases evolutionists are hiding or ignoring data because it doesn’t fit their theory?

KH: You know, that’s an interesting question about ignoring or hiding data. There has been some research recently by evolutionists, by people who certainly don’t believe the Genesis account of creation, showing that there are dinosaur bones that are supposed to be millions of years old, yet they have evidence of red blood cells, evidence of soft tissue—pliable—in them. These were featured recently on a “60 Minutes” program. This is interesting because this show is normally a very investigative program. Normally on this show when someone makes a claim, the reporters are asking questions, for example: “How do you know?” or “What are the implications of this?” They really delve into it. But it is interesting to note on this episode they didn’t do that. When the scientists showed the soft tissue and blood vessels to the reporter, they simply responded: “Wow, this is fantastic. Wow, this is interesting.” But the questions that should have been asked are “What are the implications? How could these be millions of years old? How could soft tissue last millions of years? This doesn’t make any sense. Can you explain this to me? How can you explain this to the world?” It is sad that they didn’t ask any investigative questions, but rather just accepted it. The implications are astonishing. When evolutionists are asked those questions, they don’t know how tissue could have lasted that long. It is not suppressed information in one sense, but in another sense, people aren’t asking the right questions. A lot of people don’t know what questions to ask, and the implications are quite staggering.

BH: Are you speaking of Mary Schweitzer’s work? I actually communicated with Dr. Schweitzer regarding this find.

KH: The main group this is coming from is Schweitzer’s group. She’s the one that discovered this under the dinosaur expert Jack Horner. That’s the main source, although I have read other reports where they are finding evidence of soft tissue in other dinosaur bones after they dissolve out the mineralization. However, as you know, Mary Schweitzer’s the one who has done most of the recorded research.

BH: In my communication with Schweitzer, the topic came up as to why this was not reported in other dinosaur fossils, and the answer was that they had never thought to look. It was almost an admission that evolutionary blinders had prevented previous scientists from making similar observations. The implication was “Why would we ever think that there would be soft tissue or blood cells in a dinosaur?”

KH: Well, that is exactly the same as when the particular group—Mary Schweitzer and Jack Horner—were asked about carbon dating. In fact, it was Jack Horner specifically who was asked—I’ve got the recording. There was a radio station personality who called them and offered to pay to get the fossils radiocarbon dated, but of course Jack Horner’s basic response was—and I heard this myself and have copies of the recording—“Well, we wouldn’t carbon date those because they are too old.”

BH: (Laughs). Of course.

KH: The point is you’ve already decided that they are too old to carbon date. Why not let them carbon date them since carbon dating can be used on tissue like that. Horner said there is no point because they are millions of years old. So there is another instance where they aren’t prepared to truly evaluate the evidence. As you know, creationists have used carbon dating on things that were supposed to be millions or billions of years old and have gotten younger dates. Carbon dating, by the way, for those who truly understand it, is only good for dating things thousands of years old, not millions of years. In fact, carbon dating should not work for dating something millions of years old because of the half-life of radioactive carbon would pretty much be gone after 100,000 years. There shouldn’t be any radioactive carbon left. So if something really was millions of years old it should not give a radiocarbon date. But the point is you do get radiocarbon dates for things that are supposed to be millions of years old which actually contradict the very notion of millions of years. That’s why some are interested in Jack Horner dating the soft tissue to see if they get a radiocarbon date indicating a much younger fossil. But he wouldn’t do it.

BH: I often have parents come up to me following a seminar expressing sadness and grief that their children have gone the way of the world. They frequently comment that they wished they would have had this information sooner. Ken, we both recognize that the earthquake in Haiti is fresh on everyone’s mind. If you were given a child from Haiti who had lost both parents—and it was your job to instill the truth about dinosaurs in that child’s mind—what would you teach them?

KH: You’ve got to start in the beginning. You start in Genesis—which means “beginning”—and teach them a history. One of the things we do with many of our books at the Creation Museum is start at the beginning. We teach them about the past, where we came from, where life came from, and where the universe came from. You must take that history and use it as a foundation for building our thinking to understand the present world. We can then do that with dinosaurs or any topic actually. For instance, we know that dinosaurs were land animals and we can find their bones. We know they were living creatures on this planet. Well the Bible tells us all land-dwelling animals were created on the sixth day of creation, alongside two people: Adam and Eve. So we know they lived with people. We know all the animals were originally vegetarian, according to Genesis 1:29-30.

BH: Ken co-authored a book recently titled Already Gone. The book focused on 1,000 young people who left denominations and have embraced the world. One of the most disturbing findings that came out of the book was that while many of the young people are physically in a church building until ages 17-18, they are already gone by age 11-12. Can you share with our readers where this disconnect is coming from?

KH: …What we found was that about 45% of the kids were already doubting and not believing the Bible in middle school, and another 45% were lost during high school. So what we found was this disconnect happened when they were young. What it came down to was homes and churches not teaching their children how to defend their faith—not teaching them general Bible apologetics or creation apologetics.

BH: Bottom line is it must start in the home. Ken, it’s always a pleasure. We spoke at the International Conference on Creationism together in Pennsylvania and I look forward to crossing paths with you again in the future.