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Inherit the windbags
John Mackay and Answers in Genesis

Roger Stanyard

Note: Answers in Genesis (AiG) has recently divorced itself from its Australian arm and is now called Answers in Genesis-USA. To avoid confusion, Answers in Genesis both past and present is referred to simply as Answers in Genesis or AiG.

The Self Appointed Creationist Papacy

This is a first part of a report on John Mackay, head of an Australian outfit called Creation Research (CR). Mackay is an Australian religious fundamentalist. The purpose of this section is to provide the background and indicate the extent to which the nutters can't even agree amongst themselves. The information I present here (perhaps) indicates some of the reasons why the main Australian creationists have, again, fallen out amongst themselves.

In this section Mackay appears to show that Answers in Genesis (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 creationists. 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 them 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 accepting all and any old rubbish, even that which contradicts their own loony views.

AiG is a creationist movement that had, until recently, operations centred in the Anglo-Saxon world. Whilst headquartered in Kentucky in the United States, its 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 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).

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