Creation Ministries International (
CMI) is a non-profit young Earth creationist organisation of autonomous
Christian apologeticsChristian apologetics is a field of Christian theology that aims to present a rational basis for the Christian faith, defend the faith against objections, and expose the perceived flaws of other world views...
ministries that promote a
literalBiblical literalism is the interpretation or translation of the explicit and primary sense of words in the Bible. A literal Biblical interpretation is associated with the fundamentalist and evangelical hermeneutical approach to Scripture, and is used almost exclusively by conservative Christians...
interpretation of the Book of Genesis. The autonomous ministries are located in
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
,
CanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
,
New ZealandNew Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
,
South AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
, the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
History
In 1977, the Creation Science Association (CSA) was organised in Adelaide, Australia by Dr.
Carl WielandCarl Wieland is an Australian young earth creationist, author and speaker. He is currently the Managing Director of Creation Ministries International , a Christian apologetics ministry...
. In 1978 the organisation began the magazine
Ex Nihilo (from the Latin phrase
Creatio ex nihilo, meaning "Creation out of nothing"). Soon after, the Creation Science Foundation (CSF) took over production of
Ex Nihilo (later renaming it
Creation Ex Nihilo, and eventually simply
Creation). In 1984, CSF started the
Ex Nihilo Technical Journal for more in-depth analysis of creation issues (it was later renamed
Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, then simply
TJ, and now the
Journal of Creation).
In the mid-1990s,
Ken HamKenneth Alfred Ham is the Australian President/CEO of Answers in Genesis USA. He is a vocal advocate for a young Earth and a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis, and his cross-country speaking tours and many books make him one of the better known young-Earth...
, formerly of the Creation Science Foundation and then part of the
Institute for Creation ResearchThe Institute for Creation Research is a Christian institution in Dallas, Texas that specializes in education, research, and media promotion of Creation Science and Biblical creationism. The ICR adopts the Bible as an inerrant and literal documentary of scientific and historical fact as well as...
, formed an autonomous ministry in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. This ministry, along with the Australian Creation Science Foundation, were branded
Answers in GenesisAnswers in Genesis is a non-profit Christian apologetics ministry with a particular focus on supporting Young Earth creationism and a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis. The organization has offices in the United Kingdom and the United States...
(AiG); eventually, legally-autonomous Answers in Genesis offices were opened in
CanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
,
New ZealandNew Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
,
South AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
, and the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
.
In late 2005/early 2006, the US and UK offices had differences in operating philosophy with the Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, and South African offices and removed themselves from the international group. Since the US office managed the website for the entire international group and took the "AiG" name with them, the latter four offices were forced to rebrand under the name
Creation Ministries International (CMI). CMI retains its scientific and
presuppositionIn the branch of linguistics known as pragmatics, a presupposition is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse...
al (rather than evidential) emphasis.
In late 2006, CMI established offices in the UK and USA. Since then CMI has distributed
Creation magazine and the
Journal of Creation in the USA itself.
CMI publishes
Creation magazine as well as
Journal of Creation.
Creation has subscribers in more than 170 countries, with 60,000 copies of each issue produced.
Creation is published four times a year. The
Journal of Creation is published three times a year.
The Voyage That Shook the World
The Voyage That Shook The World is a 2009 dramatised documentary film commissioned by Creation Ministries International and produced by Fathom Media. It was released to mark the 200th anniversary of
Charles DarwinCharles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work On the Origin of Species.
http://www.ballymoneytimes.co.uk/churches/39The-Voyage-that-shook-the.5351195.jphttp://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2009/06/creationists_defend_darwin_fil.html
This 52-minute-long film includes interviews with scholars, academics and scientists covering a wide range of views including proponents of the
scientific consensusScientific consensus is the collective judgment, position, and opinion of the community of scientists in a particular field of study. Consensus implies general agreement, though not necessarily unanimity. Scientific consensus is not by itself a scientific argument, and it is not part of the...
on
evolutionEvolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
as well as proponents of
intelligent designIntelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a form of creationism and a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for...
and
young earth creationismYoung Earth creationism is the religious belief that Heavens, Earth, and all life on Earth were created by direct acts of the Abrahamic God during a relatively short period, sometime between 5,700 and 10,000 years ago...
. It features wild-life footage from the
Galapagos IslandsThe Galápagos Islands are an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed around the equator in the Pacific Ocean, west of continental Ecuador, of which they are a part.The Galápagos Islands and its surrounding waters form an Ecuadorian province, a national park, and a...
as well as on-location footage from
ArgentinaArgentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
,
ChileChile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
,
Tierra del FuegoTierra del Fuego is an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, across the Strait of Magellan. The archipelago consists of a main island Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego divided between Chile and Argentina with an area of , and a group of smaller islands including Cape...
and the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. The film's dramatised sequences were shot on location in
TasmaniaTasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...
,
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
.
The group has received criticisms for presenting the movie as a neutral documentary; one commenter called it a
Trojan HorseThe Trojan Horse is a tale from the Trojan War about the stratagem that allowed the Greeks finally to enter the city of Troy and end the conflict. In the canonical version, after a fruitless 10-year siege, the Greeks constructed a huge wooden horse, and hid a select force of men inside...
for Creation. The producers have also been criticised for allegedly lying to the interviewees and withholding the purpose of the film. Biologist
PZ MyersPaul Zachary "PZ" Myers is an American biology professor at the University of Minnesota Morris and the author of the Pharyngula science blog. He is currently an associate professor of biology at UMM, works with zebrafish in the field of evolutionary developmental biology , and also cultivates an...
wrote:
. . . if they actually had an honest message, if they could be trusted to present the opinions of the experts accurately, they wouldn't need to deceive to get people to contribute to their projects. As it is, all we can trust them on is their ability to mangle the facts. Doesn't this tell you something about the credibility of the creationist movement?
Legal controversy with Answers In Genesis
CMI's history is closely linked with that of its daughter ministry in the United States,
Answers In GenesisAnswers in Genesis is a non-profit Christian apologetics ministry with a particular focus on supporting Young Earth creationism and a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis. The organization has offices in the United Kingdom and the United States...
(AIG), founded by former Australian colleague
Ken HamKenneth Alfred Ham is the Australian President/CEO of Answers in Genesis USA. He is a vocal advocate for a young Earth and a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis, and his cross-country speaking tours and many books make him one of the better known young-Earth...
. A legal and personal dispute broke out between the Australian and US arms of AIG in 2005, involving claims of unethical dealing in the handling of magazine subscriptions and autocratic leadership on Ham's part. AIG, in return, accused the leaders of the Australian ministry of "spiritual problems", asking, in correspondence to the Australian CEO Carl Wieland, if he had issues with immorality, and enlisting a former enemy to exhume decades-old allegations of witchcraft and necrophilia against a CMI staffer (now Wieland's wife). These allegations are described in CMI's response, following extensive investigation of the accusations, with the involvement of many outside parties, as being 'without a single shred of evidence'. A more involved analysis of the situation is described in an account in the
Reports of the National Center for Science Education.
In March 2006, the ministries split, and the offices in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa, "by unanimous vote of their respective Boards, rebranded" as CMI. Only the US and UK offices still retain the AIG brand. A lawsuit was filed on 31 May 2007, by CMI in
Supreme Court of QueenslandThe Supreme Court of Queensland, which is based at the Law Courts Complex, is the superior court for the Australian State of Queensland and sits around the middle of the Australian court hierarchy...
against Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis, seeking damages and accusing "unbiblical/unethical/unlawful behaviour" in Ham's dealings with the Australian organisation.
CMI produces
Creation Magazine and the
Journal of Creation, formerly distributed by the US and UK AIG offices to their respective countries prior to the split. The Australian group maintains it was disconnected from all its American subscribers when the US office "announced on its web site (without telling us, the publishers) that it was ceasing to distribute both of these publications (and simultaneously announced its own magazine)." CMI further alleges in the lawsuit that AIG misrepresented their own magazine to subscribers as a replacement of
Creation. CMI is claiming $252,000(US) in damages for lost revenue by misleading and deceptive conduct in relating to lost subscriptions. The case also concerns use of the trademark "Answers in Genesis" within Australia, and alleged misuse by Ken Ham of his position as a director for the Australian group to cause it detriment.
Answers in Genesis has had little to say in public to these accusations, but in comments to news reporters Ken Ham dismisses them all as "totally preposterous and untrue". When a Christian publication attempted a telephone interview of Ken Ham and mentioned the dispute, he hung up. When the editor of that publication attempted to meet Ham at the opening of the Creation Museum, the response was "abrupt and aggressive" and the matter was again shut down.
In November 2007, CMI again updated their website to inform readers that, although the Hawaii talks resulted in a verbal settlement acceptable to both parties, AiG had subsequently reneged by substantially modifying the written result of the talks through the omission of major planks of the verbal agreement and the insertion of new, unagreed clauses (which were not specified) in a new written proposed contract.
Throughout early and mid 2008, AiG and CMI filed various legal documents with the
United States District Court for the Eastern District of KentuckyThe United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky is the Federal district court whose jurisdiction comprises approximately the Eastern half of the state of Kentucky....
. According to CMI the filing were for AiG to avoid "accountability under the Australian legal system before Australian courts. It has also ignored/rejected several previous offers by CMI of Christian arbitration under that Australian legal system.". In August 2008, AiG "objected to conditions" in a "relationship-restoring mediation" with a Christian judge, who then dropped out of the mediation.
In February 2009, the
United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth CircuitThe United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* Eastern District of Kentucky* Western District of Kentucky...
ordered Australian-based Creation Ministries International into arbitration in the United States with Answers in Genesis (as sought by AiG) over copyrights and control of affiliates in other countries.
In April 2009 the ministries reached a settlement and ended their dispute.