Thursday, April 21, 2016

NCBC Leaks No. 2

Concerning Fundamentalist John MacKay
Flying into the teeth of the evidence: Many fundamentalists believe that less than 6000 years ago 
people lived with carnivorous dinosaurs - except that they weren't carnivores at that time, they tell us!

I thought I had better publish the following item which I added as a comment to this post* on Network Norwich and Norfolk. It is topical because the main sanctuary of Norwich Central Baptist Church is currently being rented by John MacKay's fundamentalist Young Earth publicity and teaching organisation.

***

Yes, this article doesn’t make it clear that John MacKay is part of a fringe fundamentalist group who do not reflect the opinions of the majority of Christian scientists, evangelical and otherwise. 

But I would like to draw attention to some back ground on John MacKay. In the late 1970s John Mackay was a business partner of Ken Ham; they ran a business selling YEC literature. But according to the documentation I link to below there was a complex three way schism starting in the late 1980s triggered by the accusations MacKay made about Ken Ham’s secretary Margaret Buchanan. As a result MacKay fell out acrimoniously with his own organisation, now called Creation Ministries International (CMI). It seems that even today there is considerable rancour between CMI and MacKay. Also, CMI remain bitter about the way they were treated in the early 2000s by Ken Ham's start up, Answers in Genesis-USA. I needn’t go into details as those details are provided in the documentation I link to below. The revelations in this documentation are disquieting to say the least, quite apart from one’s opinion on Young Earth Creationism. As far as I'm aware the troubling questions surrounding this affair have never been satisfactorily cleared up

The British Centre for Science Education had a web article that is probably best read first as an introduction to the affair. My copy of it can be obtained here:


Some of the links in this article are orphaned but that doesn’t matter as I supply links to the requisite documentation below.

Creation Ministries International at the time of writing still have a web page on the affair. My copy of this page can be found here:


The original, if it is still available, can be found here:

hxxp://creation.com/regarding-john-mackay

Supporting documentation can be found at these links:



Answers in Genesis’ theme park manager, Ken Ham, has, it seems, come out on the side of MacKay. See this link:



Footnote:  * This post has gone as of 2 May so I have now linked to my own copy of the article