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

Rev Dr Peter Barnes has been a strong advocate of Religious Right causes for many years now. He holds down jobs at the Revesby (NSW) Presbyterian Church and the Presbyterian Theological Centre and spends some of his spare time supporting Rev Fred Nile’s enterprises such as the Festival of Light and the Family World News (FWN) monthly journal.

Barnes strongly favours the physical punishment of children - ‘part of God’s plan to deliver souls from hell’, according to him (FWN, Mar. 1997, 9) - and is adamant that wives should ’submit’ themselves to their husbands (FWN Mar. 2003, 6).

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Filed in: Creationism, Fundamentalism, People

Whereas most modern researchers try to follow the evidence wherever it leads, conservative Christians (and the conservative adherents of many other religions) pursue lines of evidence only so far as this evidence does not contradict the basic beliefs mandated by their holy texts. In the case of conservative Christians, scientific research, educational research, biblical research - all of these are just fine as long as they don’t clash with the ‘foundational truths of scripture’. The ethical, but otherwise unfettered pursuit of knowledge is no longer the researcher’s point of departure. The Bible is the baseline.

Fundamentalist reasoning about subjects like evolution or biblical criticism is invariably specious at heart because it focuses on an irrelevant factor, namely the biblical baseline. Sometimes this is glaringly obvious, while at other times it’s quite well disguised.

Reading the arguments of the baseliners is quite unlike reading, say, Richard Dawkins, Peter Singer or Carl Sagan who generally attack the opposition head-on and with great rigour. Instead you’ll find enveloping clouds of non sequiturs, ad hominem positions, lots of circular reasoning, inventive insults and regurgitation of long-discredited ‘facts’, together with a final, ringing assertion that yet again, the Bible has been ‘proven true’. Conservative evangelicals’ point of departure doubles as their conclusion.

Read the full analysis of the biblical baseline: The Foolishness of God

Filed in: Biblical criticism, Fundamentalism

You might like to know some more about the people who support Bill Muehlenberg on his CultureWatch site, and even occasionally perform the difficult feat of outflanking him on the right.

I won’t bother for the moment with Jonathan Sarfati and Tas Walker, both of whom are senior staffers at Creation Ministries International (CMI), Australia’s leading Young Earth Creationist (YEC) group. Brief (and glowing) biographies are available for both of these gentlemen at the CMI site. Muehlenberg is uncharacteristically coy when it comes to defining his own position on creationism (YEC, Old Earth Creationist, Intelligent Design supporter etc.), but YECs like Sarfati and Walker are among his favourite people.

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Filed in: Abortion, People, Politics