Dr Jonathan Sarfati is a leading writer and speaker for the Queensland-based Creation Ministries International (CMI) and helps edit two of its journals. He holds a PhD in physical chemistry from a recognised university and has published half a dozen papers in peer-reviewed science journals. He claims that CMI’s Journal of Creation is a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but the ‘peers’ are all Young Earth Creationists. He doesn’t seem to have undertaken any serious scientific work since 1996 when he joined CMI in Brisbane. During the last 12 years, therefore, he has been fully occupied in promoting the YEC religious position on a variety of fronts, very few of which have anything to do with his scientific speciality of infrared spectroscopy.

If Sarfati wants to continue referring to himself as a ’scientist’, he should in all honesty add the qualifiers ‘ex-’ or ‘former’. Like other religious and political enthusiasts – not all of them Christian by any means – he tries to impose a wholly stultifying straitjacket on the theory and practice of science. The question of whether a scientific hypothesis is or is not ‘biblically possible’ should be a non-issue, but Sarfati accords it central importance in his scheme of things. A ’science’ which lurches down that path is not worthy of the name.

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Filed in: Christian Right, Creationism, People

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Peter Stokes, Salt Shakers, email to supporters, 19 Dec. 2007:

IVF and surrogacy for same-sex and single people will indeed create a STOLEN generation … [Some] children … will be raised by two mums or two dads living in unnatural, dysfunctional relationships. Children [will be] born with three mums and a dad … or any other combination that surrogacy and/or infertility treatment social engineers can dream up!

[Speaking of dreaming things up, Pete, you seem to be doing a pretty good job yourself.]

More Peter Stokes, ibid.:

When [Salt Shakers] appeared on Ch. 9’s ‘Sixty Minutes’ program some years ago, one scenario involved a very immature homosexual who ‘desperately wanted a baby’.

['Immature', eh? Glass houses, Peter, glass houses.]

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Filed in: Their Own Mouths

The remarkable victory of Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party in the 2007 Federal Election brings to an end 11 years of conservative rule under John Howard. Much of the Howard government’s rhetoric revolved around claims of growth and national prosperity. But for many Australians there was a sense of unease during the Howard years with its singular emphasis on economic expansion and rampant consumerism which somehow failed to acknowledge our need for humanity and compassion in government.

We have published an article that explores the role and effectiveness of the Christian Right in lobbying for its political agenda, and the failure of Christian parties to make any significant inroads with the Australian electorate.

Read the full article: Righteous Indignity: Musings on The Christian Right and the 2007 Election

Filed in: Christian Right, Family Values, Politics

Women’s Forum Australia (WFA) is a conservative Christian lobby group, although it would strongly resist this description. Its leadership is and always has been drawn largely from conservative Catholics like Katrina George and Louise Brosnan and conservative Baptists like Melinda Tankard Reist and Johanna Lynch.

WFA is vehemently opposed to women’s access to abortion and other technologies that enable women to control their reproductive lives, e.g. access to RU486 and therapeutic cloning. They also campaign actively against voluntary euthanasia. When the organisation was first launched it described itself as ‘pro-woman and pro-life’, though in recent times this slogan seems to have been abandoned.

In recent months, WFA has deviated from its central anti-choice message by undertaking ‘motherhood’ campaigns against the sexualisation of young girls. This anti-pornography message is consistent with the attitudes of the religious right and does not disguise WFA’s fundamental objective: to restrict women’s capacity to make choices about their reproductive lives, in line with the most conservative Christian religious doctrines.

This article explores the group’s objectives, policies and personalities.

Read the full article (PDF): Women’s Forum Australia – policies and people

Filed in: Abortion, Voluntary Euthanasia

Margaret Court is unquestionably Australia’s most successful tennis player. Playing in the 1960s and 1970s, Court amassed over 60 Grand Slam titles including eleven Australian Opens, five US Opens, five French Opens and three Wimbledon singles victories. In 1970 she won the Grand Slam i.e. all four major singles titles in a calendar year.

Court is now a ‘Word of Faith’ Pentecostal minister in Perth. Preachers like Margaret Court think that if you sincerely believe in God’s Word, i.e. the Bible, and you claim what you take to be the promises of God with your mouth – yes, you have to speak your prayer out loud, as well as basing it on ‘the Word’ – God will most certainly grant your desire.

This article explores Court’s odyssey and the strange world of Pentecostal ‘healing’ ministries.

Read the full article (PDF): Margaret Court’s Word of Faith

Filed in: Christian Right, Pentecostalism

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Right to Life Association (Margaret Tighe), RTLA News, Nov. 2007, 1, re asking major party candidates about their views on abortion, voluntary euthanasia etc.:

Don’t allow them to avoid a proper response as to how they would vote [on these issues] if elected to Parliament. For example, some might say – ‘Oh, I’m a Christian’, or ‘I go to church’ or ‘I’d really need to look at the legislation first’.

[What a great idea, Margaret. Making MPs vote on laws they've never seen. It'd save so much time.]

‘Researchers find sexual orientation can change’, Family World News (Rev. Fred Nile), Nov. 2007, 11:

C. S. Lewis said that science produced by Christians would have to be ‘perfectly honest. Science twisted in the interests of apologetics would be sin and folly.’

[This would be one of C. S. Lewis's better ideas. What a pity that the Christian Right, especially the creationist contingent, have totally ignored it.]

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Filed in: Their Own Mouths

Elaine Nile, Christian Democratic Party, ‘Elaine’s Perspective’, Family World News, Sept. 2007, 5:

Here is good advice: ‘Always speak as one who learns and not as one who knows.’ … [Two paragraphs later] God’s Word does not support sodomy in any way, any time. It calls this lifestyle an ABOMINATION!

[Elaine is known far and wide for her consistency. Or perhaps that's some other Elaine.]

‘Prayer Points’, Family World News, Sept. 2007, 8:

Please pray for spiritual protection over [Christian Democratic Party leaders] Fred [Nile] and Gordon [Moyes] over the month. ‘See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, because the days are evil.’ Eph 5:15, 16.

[I've been praying that one for years but it never seems to do the slightest good, they still behave like fools. Maybe it's my delivery.]

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Filed in: Their Own Mouths

Peter Sellick, Deacon Associate at St Andrew’s Anglican Church, Subiaco, WA, ‘The same tired old arguments from the unbelievers’, Online Opinion, 31 Jul. 2007:

Inheritors of the scientific revolution, if they are to have access to the rich imagery of biblical narrative, must learn to hold these two things in their mind at once, that the [gospel] stories often could not have happened as they are told and that these same stories hold the key to our humanity.

[Back to meaningless obfuscation again. Peter, I think I'd better introduce to you to Steve Cornell. At least he's intelligible.]

Jubilee Resources International, Jubilee News, Aug. 2007, 2:

Try JESUS! If you don’t like Him, the devil will always take you back.

[Ascribing the virtue of forgiveness to Satan, eh? Careful, something like that could land you in hell.]

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Filed in: Their Own Mouths

Nancy Campbell, ‘From Our Home to Yours’, Above Rubies, Mar. 2007 (distributed Jul. 2007), 2, quoting from a letter she has received:

Thanks to your ministry I am a more patient and loving mother. I finally understand what it means to be submissive to my husband and have repented of my sins in this area. I am joyfully embracing my role as mother, teacher, wife, cook and housekeeper. We have repented of our sin of birth control and my husband had a vasectomy reversal in July 2005 …

[Ma'am, the only sin of which you need to repent is slavishly following the advice in Above Rubies.]

Nancy Campbell, ‘Standing Power’, ibid., 8:

The morals of this world are going downhill,
Against God’s Holy Word and His divine will,
No longer black and white, it’s now mushy grey,
God’s eternal absolutes many shun today.

[Please, Nancy, spare us your abysmal poetry. It just has to be satanically inspired.]

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Filed in: Their Own Mouths

Late in 2005, Ken Ham’s US branch of the multinational Answers in Genesis (AiG) creationist organisation cut most of its ties with Carl Wieland’s Australian group of the same name. The UK branch of AiG retained its close link with the Ham group while the much smaller Canadian, New Zealand and South African branches retained their connection with Wieland’s retitled ‘Creation Ministries International’ (CMI) based in Brisbane, Australia. For simplicity’s sake, I will confine myself here to discussion of the US and Australian branches of the organisation.

CMI has been particularly anxious to present its side of the story and a veritable Noachian flood of previously confidential information has poured forth from its website (see References). This is the second major schism in this organisation’s history and CMI has at last seen fit to publish important details about the earlier split. Opinions differ as to ‘what really happened’ and ‘who was to blame’ for each division, and this article is my two bobs’ worth.

Read the article: Creationism – a House Divided

Filed in: Creationism

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