Inherit the Windbags - John Mackay and AiG*

The Self Appointed Creationist Papacy

The purpose of this article is to provide the background to the split between Answers in Genesis (AiG) and its Australian foundaters (Who have renamed themselves as Creation Ministries) and indicates the extent to which the creationists can’t even agree amongst themselves.

It is based on evidence from John Mackay who was a partner of Ken Ham of AiG in the 1980s before Mackay split off to form his own outfit, Creation Research. At the moment Mackay has a very high profile in the UK because of his sneaky tricks in getting into UK state schools. (At the time of writing it is emerging as a national scandal.)

The evidence is in the form of an article written by Mackay in 2003.

Mackay appears to show that AiG was running a publishing scam where authors of creationist books had to submit them to AiG for approval. However, AiG charged the authors for what, in effect, is a bogus peer review amongst the nutters. If the authors refused to pay, AiG blew them out of the water with highly critical reviews.

Basically, authors had to toe AiG’s line and pay AiG for the privilege of doing so. This policy appears to have resulted in AiG breaking apart. The Australian arm looks set to continue the policy with AiG USA accepting all and any old rubbish, even that which contradicts their own loony views.

Answers in Genesis is a creationist movement that had, until recently, operations centred in the Anglo-Saxon world. Whilst headquartered in Kentucky in the United States, its Answers in Genesis International arm had branches in Canada, the UK, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. The largest of these branches was in Australia.

Indeed, the organisation has its origins in Australia. In the 1970s two Australians, Ken Ham and John Mackay, set up its forerunner. In 1987 Mackay split off from Ken Ham to create his own ministry, Creation Research, also based in Brisbane in Queensland. Ham’s operation in Australia remained in existence but Ham moved to the USA on secondment to another fundamentalist creationist organisation, the Institute for Creation Research (ICR).

In 1996, Ham split from the ICR to form AiG and his Australian operation was subsumed within it. The US arm was initially known as Creation Science Ministries until it and the Australian arm, adopted the name AiG in 1997.

Like Creation Research, the Australian arm was (and still is, in its current form) based in Brisbane, Queensland. Until 2006 the Australian operation looked to be the parent body of AiG with AiG USA as a subsidiary.

In recent years, the biggest single project of AiG USA has been the building of a creationist museum in the USA. This is not yet complete but has been funded out of AiG’s internal income rather than debt. However, despite the substantial costs of construction of the museum, AiG USA is now considerably larger than ICR which appears to have lost its drive under John Morris (son of its founder, the lying fraud Henry Morris). ICR is turning over about US$4m a year.

In early 2006, The US AiG arm split from AiG International with most of the latter renaming itself as Creation Ministries. The latter took with it the main operation in Australia and the operations in New Zealand, South Africa and Canada, leaving AiG with the US operation and an operation in the UK based in Leicester. The UK arm is still active.

What little information that is know about the split, the evidence here suggests that the US AiG arm objected to the way AiG overall acted as a clearing house for creationist literature. However, we suspect that clashes of personality played a major role as well.

What is less clear is whether those behind Creation Ministries were objecting to the huge amount of AiG’s income being spend on the museum. This is a long-term project which has yet to produce any “results”, however defined (new converts to creationism, income, etc..)

The anecdotal evidence suggests that AIG’s “clearing house” policy was having a detrimental effect on the income of what has become Creation Ministries.

The revealing information we have is an article by John Mackay dating back to 2003 in which he slams Ham and Carl Wieland of AiG. Wieland, an Australian now described as one of the “scientists” and Creation Ministries was then a board member of AIG in the USA.

(Wieland is not a scientist, he is a medical doctor. The best known “scientist” at Creation Ministries in Australia is Jonathan Sarfati who hold a PhD in chemistry and also holds joint Australian/New Zealand citizen ship. Note that the term scientist is CMI’s term. I can’t call them that. They are propagandists for their cause.)

I have only been able to find Mackay’s damning article, called “Creation Research (Australia) Rebuttal to AiG Criticism” on AiG at one, obscure, web site, and it isn’t immediately clear from that site that the article was written by Mackay.

The web site is that of the Twin Cities Creation Science Association (www.tccsa.tc) and the relevant web page for the Mackay article is at www.tccsa.tc/articles/p3.html.

It isn’t clear from the TCCSA web site what the context of Makay’s article is as one page, which may have been relevant, has been removed from the web site but it appears to centre on the TCCSA’s support for the 2nd edition of a creationist book called Unlocking the Mysteries of Creation by Dennis Petersen, published in 2002.

AiG had severely criticised the second edition but had given a very good review to the first edition published in 1996. Indeed, it appears that AiG was retailing the 1st edition.

Mackey attempts to explain the apparent turnaround. His language is strong. I have attached the full Mackay article to the bottom of paper. Much of it is a turgid rebuttal of AiG’s “creation science” in favour of Petersen’s view.

An important technical point is that the TCCSA article does not include Mackay’s name nor attributes it to Mackay. However, I opened the web page for it with Microsoft Internet Explorer and the tab at the bottom of the window states “Comments by John Mackay on Dennis Peterson’s book “Unlocking the Mysteries of C…”.

Confirmation that it was written by Mackay comes from the following extract from the article:

“This editor is old enough to have been involved in science studies, lecturing in geology, field work and creation studies for over 30 years, long enough to know that basically everything he learned at university as a “scientific fact,” including the latest models of atoms, geological geosynclines, biological theories on how evolution worked…”

Mackay holds a first degree in geology and, indeed, has been involved in creationist hocus pocus since the 1970s. He was a school teacher at an early stage in his career.

Mackay begins his article with fists flying:

”AIG/WIELAND have done it again and shame on them for it! They have managed to publicly savage yet another long-standing creationist author and in the process, throw another creationist publishing house into confusion and uncertainty by their actions. AiG/Wieland offers to do pre-publication reviews of any creationist writings for a price, with the claim that “dozens of valuable hours of their high powered staff” are expensive. But AiG has revealed a sad double standard in dealing with a competing creationist author (who had turned down their offer of “review for a price” and rejected AiG's offer of “taking over the publication with AiG having final editorial say”). They waited until the author's new book was published. Then, with no charge at all, they allocated their “high powered staff” the time to attack this publication then released their brutal review for free to the public – non-Christians included. Shame on them.”

AIG’s criticism of the 2nd edition of Petersen’s book was in the form of a 14 page pamphlet called “Leasing the Storm”. This piece of hocus-pocus can still be found on AiG’s web site at www.answersingenesis.org/docs2003/0113peterson.asp.

It isn’t clear from the web site who wrote “Leasing the Storm” but Mackay firmly puts Ham and Wieland at the centre of the action:

“Following the publication of Dennis Petersen's book “Unlocking the Mysteries of Creation”, Ken Ham, Carl Wieland and Answers in Genesis (AiG) produced a 14 page detailed criticism condemning the book, which they placed as a feature article on their publicly accessible website.”

Indeed. The AIG web page also includes a letter from Wieland to Petersen justifying the AiG’s actions.

In a sense, this is bizarre because it thus appears Wieland was involved in practices which led to the split of AiG from Creation Ministries, with Wieland becoming Managing Director of the latter. Moreover, Ham and Wieland have co-authored at least one book, Dinosaurs of Eden and Walking Through Shadows (http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/Answers_in_Genesis/host_bio.asp?show_id=95) although I can find no other reference to this book. It’s possibly one and the same as Ham’s book Dinosaurs of Eden.

They don’t appear to be buddies anymore.

According to Jim Lippard’s blog for the 6th March 2006 (see #_Hlt133034787#_Hlt133037410http://lippard.blogspot.com/2006/03/answers-in-genesis-schism-us-group.html) called

“Answers in Genesis schism: U.S. group goes solo”, “Wieland's group has made a point of publishing material critical of bad creationist arguments, on its website and in its technical journal. Ken Ham, on the other hand, has made a point of publishing and presenting bad creationist arguments.”

(Lippard, based in America, is well known amongst pro-science, anti-creationism circles.)

This shows that Ham was probably not the driving force behind the 2003 AiG criticism of Petersen.

However, Mackay’s conclusion to his article suggests that the Petersen affair was the start of the breakup of AiG:

“AiG made many thousands of dollars from selling Dennis Petersen's original “Unlocking the Mysteries”. However, it seems a change in their whole approach has led them to unleash such a storm of criticism at Petersen's new book, that what shows is not concern for peer review scientific accuracy, but anger from a self-appointed creationist papacy. Masterbooks/New Leaf Publishers (who publish many AiG books) must be really confused as they have just released their own cover edition of Dennis Petersen's new full color "Unlocking the Mysteries" and promoted it in their catalogue to book stores world wide.”

This apparent change in direction at AiG dates back to 2002. Lippard points out that three Australians on AiG’s US board in 2003 had stepped down by 2004 – these were Carl Wieland, Greg Peacock and Paul Salmon.

Also of interest in these board movements is the fact that John Thallon, an Australian accountant who helped lose the Creation Science Foundation thousands of dollars in a bogus investment (he was a victim, not a party to the fraud)), moved to Kentucky about this time and is on the US board as of 2004.

AIG Kentucky’s web site (www.answersingenesis.org) was heavily reliant on material from AiG in Australia until late 2005. Material was supplied by people such as Don Batten, Jonathan Sarfati and Carl Wieland. The US AiG site continues but Creation Ministries now has its own web site.

Finally, It also looks as if Mackay has considerable personal antipathy towards Ken Ham and, indeed, states in the following quote from the article that AiG are liars (“produce deliberate misconstructions and some falsehoods”)

“AiG made many thousands of dollars from selling Dennis Petersen's original “Unlocking the Mysteries”. However, it seems a change in their whole approach has led them to unleash such a storm of criticism at Petersen's new book, that what shows is not concern for peer review scientific accuracy, but anger from a self-appointed creationist papacy. “

Well, Mackay was working with Ham until 1987 so it looks clear that Ham’s management style has been at least partly behind what now looks to be two splits in his movement (1987 and 2006); three if you include his departure from ICR in 1994.

I also note that in December 2005 Creation Ministries (then AiG) launched an appeal for an expensive new office block (price Aus$981,000). It isn’t know whether this move was one of the reasons for the Creation Ministries/AiG Kentucky split.

In 2004, AIG in the USA paid out a total of US$1,668,000 towards the construction of its museum, out of gross receipts of US$12.49m. Of this, US$3.7m came from merchandising and other associated revenues. That included US$1.601m from sales of books, CD’s DVDs, etc.. The construction costs exclude costs internal to AiG in pursuit of the museum. (source: AiG US IRS Form 990 for the year 2004).

Background Notes
There is a lot of information about AiG and Creation Ministries on the excellent web site of the Australian John Stear at http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/AiG_cow.htm. Stear is a fierce and (in fine Australian style) blunt critic of the nutters. It details what it describes as the bloody mindedness of AiG in its handling of the split with Creation Ministries.

The main organisations that I have mentioned tend to have similar names which may confuse many new to the fundies’ fantasy world of creationism.

John Mackay’s Creation Research outfit (www.creationresearch.net) appears to be largely based in Australia and is a small operation. However, it also appears to have a base in the UK (Creation Research UK) which is actively involved in managing Mackay’s extremely controversial tour of the UK and his behind closed doors teaching of creationism in a state school.

The UK operation has a web site hosted at #_Hlt133041357www.amen.org.uk. For the purposes of his tour of the UK, Mackay is calling himself Internal Director of Creation Research. The Manager at Creation Research UK is an electrician called Randall Hardy. However, his own organisation appears to be called Amen.co.uk.

Mackay appears to be working closely with Creation Ministries (despite his obvious dislike for Wieland) and his web site (on 17th April 2006 stated that Creation research had teamed up with Emil Silvestru for a tour in Romania. This statement indicated that Silvestru (and Creation Ministries) were preparing the ground for Mackay’s visit to Romania in June 2006. Mackay claims in the statement that there is an organisation called Creation Research Europe.

Mackay’s web site wrongly states that Silvestru, a geologist, is with AiG. He is, in fact, full time with Creation Ministries in Canada.

What Mackay appears to have is not an international organisation at all but a series of unpaid agents mostly using PO boxes as contact addresses. I suppose that this might roughly be described as a ministry although I have no evidence to show that Mackay has any theological qualifications or has been ordained.

Just to confuse everyone, there is a web site at www.creationministries.org. This is a bunch of US nutters who appear to be unrelated to Creation Ministries in Australia whose web site is at www.creationontheweb.com.

Creation Ministries has branches in Canada, South Africa and New Zealand but (it appears) most of is people are in Australia. The New Zealand and South Africa branches look to each be one-man bands.

I don’t know why AiG UK remains part of AiG in the USA rather than Creation Ministries.

Incidentally, my own background is largely in satellite communications; one of Creation Ministries’ regular (part time) speakers is Dr Mark Harwood. He has long been a prominent figure in the Australian satellite communications scene, both at the engineering and management levels. Apparently, he has been a fundy since 1979. He’s basically an engineer but his 1st degree is in physics and maths. I must say that I was astonished to hear of his hard line and nutty creationist views and activism.

Another outfit I came across is the Creation Research Society (http://creationresearch.org). CRS is another vanity publishing operation for creationists “scientists” who can’t get their papers published in normal scientific journals. It’s independent from but has had a close association with the ICR. (Note that I take Creation Ministries, AiG and ICR to be vanity publishing houses for the nutters).

Dennis Petersen is President of the California-based Creation Resource Foundation (www.creationresource.org). I must say that his web site looked be poorly designed and, quick frankly, full of drivel. It looks to be a one-man band organisation.

Creation Research, Science Education Foundation (#_Hlt133048777www.worldbydesign.org ) is a small organisation, which appears to have never published any books.

The precise origins of AiG are a little more confusing than I detailed above. It appears that in Australia it was never a broad-based organisation. The web site at http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/14614.htm discusses the origins of AiG in Australia as the Creation Science Foundation. The web page referred to here is of John Mark Ministries (mainstream Baptist).

One author posting there claims to have looked at public records of the organisation held in Queensland.

These show that, indeed, Ham and Mackay where in from the start of the organisation in 1980. Both were directors, alongside John Thallon (now believed to be at AiG in the USA). The other directors were Tyndale John Rendle-Short (medical practitioner), David John Denner (teacher), Alfred John Maynard Osgood (medical practitioner) and Robert Stephen Gustafson (solicitor). At the time John Barry Mackay was described as a teacher but by 1984 was described as a missionary.

The Articles of Association limited to 100 the number of members of Creation Science Foundation. Thus it does seem that the operation was, from day one, wide open to control by a small number of people with little accountability to would be members.

Indeed, the Articles of Association showed that nobody could become a member of the Foundation without approval and so the incumbent board remain as a small group in complete control of the foundation's affairs.

I have no information as to why Mackay eventually split from Creation Science Foundation.

On the other had Creation Science Foundation does appear to have been effective in its evangelising of creationism– using the tried and tested method of keeping knowledge of their activities out of the general public domain. Anecdotal evidence suggests that CSF and later AiG kept a large library of videotapes for use on proselytising their hocus-pocus but copies where not available to the general pubic. It appears that pastors where big users of these tapes, targeting then at children and teenagers.

The Australian universities found out too late – the damage had been done. The first that the universities knew about the nutters was when 1st year science undergraduates started displaying total confusion about the basic facts of science such as how old the world was. Their knowledge of biology had come from creationist preachers.

The universities, were, by all accounts furious and started to look at taking legal action against the Creation Science Foundation. The potential action was based on the fact that it was using the word “science” in its name. CSF got round the threat by changing its name to AiG.

• This report is intended for public consumption and may be quoted freely but with the proviso that the name of its author, Roger Stanyard, is mentioned. He retains copyright.

Background Information
(Background information to Inherit the Windbags)