As we reported on Wednesday, televangelist Pat Robertson — for at least the second time — dismissed Young Earth Creationism as “nonsense” that is “making a joke” of Christianity.

Robertson made the remarks in response to the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham, the leader of the Creation Museum and Answers In Genesis.

One thing that made Robertson’s comment’s surprising is that his own Christian Broadcasting Network regularly features fawning stories about Ham’s Creation Museum.

CBN’s website even promotes an essay by Kelly Hollowell of Answers In Genesis, called, “Evolution – The Ultimate Compromise,” that attacks critics of Young Earth Creationism for supposedly undermining Christianity.

Many Christians believe that the world is very old based on fossil records that are presumably dated at millions of years. Indeed the dispute between an old earth and a young earth is hotly debated within the Christian community. Unfortunately, those who subscribe to an old earth theory do not realize the enormity of their compromise. The compromise is that as soon as one allows for an earth millions of years old, then one has accepted death, bloodshed, disease and suffering before Adam’s sin. In other words, the Garden of Eden would have been seated upon a mountain of dead animal bones. This doesn’t sound much like paradise. … Now if the world were millions of years old as suggested by evolutionists, blood was shed and death occurred before Adam’s original sin. This would destroy the foundation of the atonement brought by the death of Christ on the cross. According to 1 Corinthians 15:54, sin and death have been swallowed up in victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Thus the enormity of compromise is revealed. To believe in evolution undermines the entire gospel message of Jesus Christ. All Christians believe that Jesus Christ suffered physical death and shed His blood because death was the penalty for sin. Therefore, teaching millions of years of death, disease and suffering before Adam sinned, is a direct attack on the foundation and message of the Cross.

Yesterday, Ham himself went on the attack. He pushed back against Robertson’s “misinformed and deceived” denunciation of Bishop James Ussher, who helped devise the chronology system that inspired Young Earth Creationism, by saying that Robertson “couldn’t even get the time of Ussher’s life correct. Not the 1800s but 1581-1656.”

Ham called on God to “convict and open the eyes of Christian leaders and Christian college and seminary professors, so many of whom are as uninformed and deceived as Pat Robertson. God have mercy.”