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

Some time ago my colleague Brian Baxter wrote an article about creationist authors straying beyond their fields of expertise. Having now seen copies of Creation Ministries International’s (CMI) two latest periodicals - Creation and Journal of Creation magazines of Dec. 2006, I think Brian probably understated his case.

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Filed in: Creationism

John Mackay of the small Creation Research group always claims ‘another win’ when debating secular supporters of evolution. However, he’s much more downbeat after facing religious opponents. Here’s John in gloomy mood:

November’s Anglican irony as we were pitted in debate against a theological student (PhD), who as the resident theologian defended evolution and claimed Genesis was merely oral tradition borrowed from the pagan Babylonians … John Mackay defended the Scriptures as God’s infallible word.

The debate was topped off by the resident Anglican vicar telling everyone at the end it didn’t really matter … [This is] the position promoted by [Anglican] Moore College and St Matthias and most Anglican teaching institutions, which is almost always a very thin disguise for their belief that Genesis is NOT real history. Pray much for us as we combat unbelief inside and outside the church.

(Creation News, Dec. 2006, 4)

Terrible to see poor old John so depressed. Remember also that Young Earth Creationism as espoused by John Mackay is the Achilles’ heel of Australia’s Religious Right. When arguing with these people, always try to pin them down on this issue and watch them squirm.

Filed in: Creationism

This is a story about wheels within wheels.

Canadian Dr Darrell Furgason, a regular visitor to these shores, works with Christian Right leader David Noebel’s Summit Ministries in America. Furgason is as much to blame as anybody for the epidemic of ‘Christian worldview’ seminars currently on offer around Australia. His line is that everyone has to operate on the basis of some coherent ideology, most of which are very bad news:

If you’re not learning a biblical worldview, you’re learning another one, be it humanist, Marxist, Islamic or whatever. And that will affect your whole life, how you live your life. (Quoted in Carl Wieland and David Catchpoole’s interview with Furgason, ‘Islam and worldview: the big picture’, Creation (Creation Ministries International), Sept.-Nov. 2006, 52)

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Filed in: Christian Right, Creationism, People

Bill Muehlenberg (ex-Australian Family Association, current Secretary of the minuscule Family Council of Victoria) has a Christian right take on just about everything. I knew he was a creationist and had assumed he subscribed to the virulent version known as Young Earth Creationism (YEC) whereby the Christian god directly created the world about 6,000 years ago.

But writing recently about the global warming controversy Muehlenberg approvingly quoted a writer named William Kininmonth as follows:

For the past 10,000 years, the Earth has been near peak warmth in the climatic roller-coaster that has characterised the past million years. Yet only 20,000 years ago, great ice sheets covered much of North America and Europe …

A true YEC believer might just cope with the ‘10,000 years’, but definitely not the 20,000, and as for the million years - forget it! Pity that so many of Muehlenberg’s strong supporters are YECs, such as Tas Walker of Creation Ministries International, for instance. It’ll take a snowstorm of emails to sort this one out.

Filed in: Creationism, People

The recent schism between the Australian and American branches of the creationist Answers in Genesis organisation must have been a lulu. The Aussie branch, now re-named Creation Ministries International (CMI), clearly got the rough end of the pineapple and has now issued the following distress call:

Mag Still Available in US - Many former subscribers to [Australian journals] ‘Creation’ mag and the ‘Journal of Creation’ … are unaware (and we don’t know who they are) that these two quality periodicals are still available in the USA …(CMI email, 3 Apr. 2006)

In other words the American mob are trying to grab the entire US market for themselves and freeze out their old Aussie mates. Oh to have been a fly on the wall at the break-up meeting.

Filed in: Creationism

Have you ever participated in a Web vote on a matter of public interest? Perhaps it was run by a radio or television station or a newspaper or magazine. Many of the questions, usually seeking a yes/no answer, relate to issues canvassed in this blog e.g. ‘Should sex education be mandatory in Australian schools?’; ‘Should the government move to limit funding for IVF treatment?’ Naturally, these sorts of questions attract the interest of Religious Right organisations.

If you carefully follow the course of voting on these issues, you may notice that it often traces a particular trajectory. Take a recent Melbourne Age online poll on the question, ‘Do you support the proposed [Victorian government late-term] abortion regulations?’ (These regulations would implement a 48-hour ‘cooling-off’ period and mandatory counselling before a late-term abortion.) After about 2,600 votes had been lodged, ‘yes’ was running at 42% and ‘no’ at 58%. However, at the 3,000-vote mark, ‘yes’ had improved to 45%, while at 3,500 votes, ‘yes’ was up to 48% (the final score, as far as I can tell).

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Filed in: Christian Right, Creationism

Is the Bible a historically accurate document? Most people would probably give it at least some credence: ‘Well, there was Moses and Abraham and so on, and Israel and Babylon, and of course Jesus …’

Confining ourselves to the Old Testament (OT) for the moment, would you be surprised to learn that many scholars feel that it’s almost impossible to derive any firm historical information from this source at all? And that it consists of little more than pious fiction?

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Filed in: Biblical criticism, Creationism

I have been doing a little more research on the response of Religious Right groups to the recent catastrophe. Thankfully, in Australia we haven’t seen much evidence yet of support for the “Rapture craze” that has swept America (the “Left Behind” books etc.) so there is little discussion yet about whether the tsunami might have “end times” implications. The Rapture Index, a wacky “temperature” measurement predicting the nearness of “end times”, has gone up a bit, but hasn’t been updated since Dec 27. I do hope the author hasn’t been vanished ;-)

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Filed in: Atheism, Creationism