The lawsuits between Carl Wieland and Ken Ham have been settled out of court. In case you hadn't been following it, both were originally members of the same creationist organization in Australia; Ham emigrated and set up the American branch; they drifted apart and for years have been sniping acrimoniously at each other. It's been quite fun to watch, and I would have loved to see it move into a courtroom where all of Ham's sleazy tactics would have had wriggle in the light of day. What little we've seen has been very ugly.
Creation Ministries had for years criticized Answers in Genesis on Web sites and in e-mails for its financial dealings and its approach to creationist teaching. Wieland also accused Ham and others of trying to take control of his organization, stealing mailing lists and spreading false and vicious rumors about him and his ex-wife.
"It is astonishing that respected leaders of Christian organizations would stoop so low as to resort to gutter tactics of the kind mentioned here to besmirch the character of Wieland," wrote Clarrie Briese, who in 2007 led a commission of Australian religious leaders that investigated the dispute.
I have to disagree on one point: it isn't astonishing at all.
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Aww... poor widdle creationists.
I'm disappointed too. The drama could have been so much fun, and I don't watch soaps.
Broken link?
First link is borked. It goes to the Cincinnati Enquirer but the story is 404
Try this:
http://nky.cincinnati.com/article/AB/20090427/NEWS0103/904280359/0/NEWS…
I like the note their efforts to settle through a "Christian Mediator" ... failed.
Well Duh.
JC
No, no surprising at all. Lying and cheating for Jebus is more like S.O.P.
Christian fellowship at it's finest.
Australians tell me that Ham was a hillbilly from their version of backwoods Dogpatch.
Apparently his little toxic cult had a schism and accusations were traded back and forth that included charges of witchcraft and incest.
Whether any of this is accurate, who knows? It certainly sounds plausible. Witchcraft in those circles are things like opening a real biology book and surfing real geology websites.
He also IIRC, makes $140,000/year pushing snake oil in salary. Most likely at least that much in perks, bennies, and expenses. Executives have many clever ways of boosting their salary without it being taxable. Not saying all lunatic fringers are in it just for the money. But they don't turn it down and some are.
OK you all--I see that PZ has a new feature here called "trackbacks"--what's that?
Thanks!
I agree: not astonishing at all! There seems to be a trend that the louder and preachier that a "respected leader of a Christian organization" is, the more likely it is that he turns out to be either a liar, a thief, an adulterer, a blackmailer, or a closeted homosexual (I guess I could have just said "liar" and saved a whole bunch of words).
Really, is a schism in a religious organization all that surprising?
They need to go nail copies of their mission statements to each other's doors.
Heh, this is soap opera material. Perhaps a miniseries is in order. It could air on the SciFi channels since it involves fantasy.
Damn! I'm disappointed, too!
Ken Ham used the U.S. mailing list for Creation magazine (a Creation Ministries publication) to tell subscribers that Creation was being replaced by Answers magazine. I know because I was on that mailing list. Ham was supposedly working as the Creation Ministries representative in the U.S., but in reality he was setting himself up as a separate entity. Stealing the Creation subscriber base for Answers was just his most blatant move. Creation readers in the U.S. were given the clear impression that the magazine was being discontinued, not that it was being superseded by a rival publication.
I'm sure that deep in his heart Ken Ham figures it was all okay, because he was doing it for Jesus. You can break lots of commandments if you do it for Jesus.
Quick O/T, but thought y'all should know about this:
The once-great Terry Eagleton has devolved into a concern troll of the first water. He's now saying that since Dawkins and Hitchens (who he calls "Ditchins") haven't memorized every translation of the Bible and read the writings of every third-century theologian to put quill to paper, that their critiques are worthless. My response to this is as follows:
Go out there and have at him, kiddies!
Christian fellowship at it's finest.
Hey, JD, don't blaspheme against proper grammar; use the wonderful apostrophe (the only example of cases in the English language) correctly!
TIA,
"You can break lots of commandments if you do it for Jesus."
When Jesus says it it is a commandment and since they are listening directly to Jesus their morality comes from the voices in their head.
This is old news guys. Jim Lippard have reported this long before you guys heard about it.
http://lippard.blogspot.com/2009/04/aigcmi-dispute-settled.html
Here my take on it.
http://stupiddinosaurlies.org/aig-and-cmi-kissed-and-made-up/
of AIG and Creation Ministries?
Does not compute
Wow. I just did a browse by in the AnswersinGenesis evidence. That stuff is seriously funny. It's not written offensively. More like, "did. . did you really just say that?!"
It really is a shame it got settled. Two of the biggest creationist duddies butting heads. In THIS CORNER a mild manner doesn't get it while he tries to be bestest buds with science, and In THIS CORNER is the man known for his sleazy tactics as lying for Jesus and spreading misinformation.
LET'S GET READY TO RUMBLE!!!!!
The old Pharyngula post PZ linked has a link to a page that is now gone. For those of you following hyperlinks back in time to get the whole story like I did, here's a copy of the page that was removed from AiG after the scism
http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/hovind_response_from_aig.htm
@14:
Yeah, I don't get it - what is Eagleton, or least his reviewer, trying to say? Of course Dawkins and Hitchens go for some low-hanging fruit in their respective books. They also have a simple, fundamental point: it's all arbitrary, patently false nonsense - why believe it?
Sorry, just felt like a rant.
Phoenix Woman at #14:
It looks like Eagleton has written yet another Courtier's Reply.
Oh! Also the "arguments creationists shouldn't use" page used to have a lot more arguments and information on it!
Then
http://web.archive.org/web/20041011051423/www.answersingenesis.org/home…
Now
http://www.answersingenesis.org/get-answers/topic/arguments-we-dont-use
Well, religious ethics are as solid as creation science. So nobody should be surprised about the tactics!
Kimpatsu--
Thanks for your remark on apostrophe usage--I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels I've been smacked in the eye when I see "it's" used to mean "belonging to it". Seems such an insignificant thing compared to the big battles we have to fight here, but we also know that proper use and understanding of language is key: "it's ('it is') just a theory".
Wait ... Carl Wieland has an "ex-wife"? Doesn't divorce make baby jesus cry?
Wait ... Carl Wieland has an "ex"-wife?
Doesn't divorce make baby jesus cry?
The Anglican baby jesus or the Catholic one?
The Mormon one.
I think I speak for everybody here when I say that we would be astonished if they did anything else.
What the Dibblers said.
And enough with the "its"/"it's" gripes. They're completely different parts of speech (and writing) there's no way they could ever be confused. They even represent the same friggin' sound. STOP PLAYING GOTCHA!
Sheeesh - I'll have to stop using them, myself, in sympathy with ERV at this rate. Every time you pick an ortographical nit, God kills an apostrophe.
Wait, what's this about Carl Wieland's EX-wife? The former Margaret Buchanan was a cause celebre in this corner of the creationist world. About twenty years ago she was Ken Ham's personal secretary, but was accused of witchcraft (and of having sex with the corpse of her dead husband!) by John Mackay, who had learned all this through a process of "spiritual discernment". Mackay now has his own organisation, Creation Research.
Margaret Buchanan told her story in a booklet, available at http://aufiles.creation.com/images/pdfs/mackay/salem_revisited.pdf (scanned and non-searchable). She later married Wieland. I hadn't heard they'd split up.
I once went to one of Wieland's creation meetings, he comes across as sincere, intelligent and humble, not your usual creationist at all. He's probably far too nice to go head to head with a slimebag like Ham. It's a shame they've settled their differences, I prefer it when they're fighting with each other.
Let them fight each other and tear their house down from the inside.
Maybe they will see the irony.
Number8Dave: The Enquirer's reference to rumors about Wieland's "ex-wife" is in error; the rumors were about his current wife, the former Margaret Buchanan. Carl Wieland was previously married to another woman named Vicki; they divorced some time in the late 1980s.
What a pity - let's pray for the lawyers who have just lost their jobs.
Thanks Jim. And may I also say thanks for your coverage of the AiG/CMI split on your blog, which is where I first learned about the Margaret Buchanan affair.
On reflection I suspect this will only be a temporary lull in hostilities between AiG and CMI, there's just too much money in the global creationist industry these days. Carl Wieland's 'Softly, Softly' approach has been very effective in building up a substantial grass-roots support base for creationism in Australasia, and it's obvious that Ken Ham really wants a piece of it.