Answers in Genesis is evolving: the Ken Ham era is coming to an end, and it’s becoming the age of Martyn Iles (although I bet Ham has kept some hooks in place to yank Iles off the stage if he does anything contrary). Their new front man is another Australian with a checkered history — he became a lightning rod in Australia with a rapid rise in popularity, but was not so successful at getting anything done. “Martyn was a fine preacher, but a poor lobbyist,” said a fellow Christian conservative, and then he was kicked out of the Australian Christian Lobby.
Now he’s back!
The fundamentalist Christian organisation Answers in Genesis (AiG), which got its start in Queensland, is closely associated with the new Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson. Led by the former Queensland schoolteacher Ken Ham, AiG is part of a movement called “young Earth creationism” that preaches a literal interpretation of Genesis.
Iles’ ascent to “executive CEO” of AiG was a swift one. He spoke at an AiG event in late 2022. Then in May 2023 he was announced as chief ministry officer of the organisation, as well as leader of its Australian office.
By November he had been promoted to executive CEO – with Ham in an “oversight role” as “founder CEO” – and was being groomed to take over one of the world’s largest creationist organisations. In 2022 AiG brought in about US$62m and held US$112m in assets, according to US tax documents. The ACL, by comparison, had revenue of about A$10m in 2022.
Let us all hope he repeats his Australian performance here in America, and flames out quickly. For now, though, he has nailed his colors to the mast with an article on the Answers in Genesis website. He is loudly anti-woke. He shares this position with some prominent conservative scientists, you know.
The person who understands and believes Genesis 1–11 is woke-proof.
Such is the enduring relevance of Genesis. It has the blueprints every generation needs.
Consider the focal points of woke ideologies—race, LGBTQ, identity, environmentalism, marriage, gender, abortion, truth, power—time and time again, the answers are in Genesis.
This is because “woke” culture is an attack on the way God ordered and designed creation.
It’s nice that he’s so clear. “Wokeness” is for racial equality, LGBTQ rights, respect for an individual’s identity, pro-environment, thinks marriage is a choice, regards gender is a continuum, favors abortion rights to protect the rights of women, wants to promote truth through education, and thinks power should be shared. Anti-woke Christians are against all those things. Being in favor of LGBTQ rights and science education and the environment, to name just a few examples, is an attack on the way God ordered and designed creation.
.
Great. We know where we stand. God is against everything the “woke” stand for. I guess I’ll just have to be against God.
Imagine the head explosions when such people discover that cesspool of woke-itude, the Gospels.
It’s the same old song. Over and over. Each and every time the marginalized and oppressed rise-up against their oppressors the faithful will lecture us about how all the “imagined” inequities and suffering are all part of some deity’s grand design and their god is always “good” regardless of how many nonbelievers he supposedly orders massacred for their sins. Who are you to judge Gawd’s perfect loving plan, mere mortal?!
They said it to the French and Russian peasants fighting for freedom. It was repeated by the likes of Cat-lick shits like Russel Kirk. It’s repeated by other Christian scum (WHOOPS! TAUTOLOGY!) who insist that “THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS” and “GOD COMMANDS WE SEPERATE THE WHITES FROM THE N******” and “THE WORLD IS ONLY 6000 YEARS OLD!”
This is part of why “Woke” folks like Karl Marx were so down on religion (besides the fact that the supernatural and afterlife is bullshit); the ones most eager to maintain the exploitation and slavery are the faithful. It’s why both capitalism and theism/supernaturalism must be PURGED from this planet before humans can finally start call themselves “free.” Both odious concepts are linked at the hip.
@Reginald Selkirk #1:
They already rejected most of the teachings of Jesus, long before hearing the word ‘woke’. It’s merely one of the ways that we know biblical literalists to be liars and hypocrites.
Actually Martyn Iles did what all the fundie xians do. Lie.
.1 Marriage in the bible is polygamous.
You can have as many wives as you can round up and as many sex slaves as you can afford.
Solomon, that hero of the OT, had 700 wives and 300 concubines.
Try that today and you would be doing decades in prison.
Polygamy isn’t often prosecuted but sex slavery is.
.2. Slavery is normal and accepted in the OT.
Exodus 21: 7 “When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. 8 If she does not satisfy her owner, he must allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. 9 But if the slave’s owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave but as a daughter.
You can sell your kids as slaves if you need a few dollars.
The bible is useless as a guide to living.
It doesn’t tell you what to do when you sell your 10 year old daughter as a sex slave and the cops arrest you, and you are sentenced to 20 years in prison.
“…race, LGBTQ, identity, environmentalism, marriage, gender, abortion, truth, power…”
Did they really just say they’re against truth? OMGWTF?
<
blockquote>Imagine the head explosions when such people discover that cesspool of woke-itude, the Gospels.
UGH! I am so fucking sick and tired of this Jesus-was-a-leftist shit.
There is nothing “woke” about the New Testament. No, not even the Gospels. Jesus made it plan that those who didn’t think he was the magical demi-god/god come to same the world from his own wrath, you were going to hell after you die. He denied women have the right to divorce. He called Canaanites “dogs.” Like all of humanity at that time, Jesus was a literal filthy, primitive, savage. He was a fucking monster and I hate it when liberals or atheists try to rehabilitate his image for the benefit of the stupid trash who still believe in religion.
@ 5
No, he’s claiming that the real, really real, actual, factual, capital “T” truth can be only be found in Genesis 1-11 AND NO WHERE ELSE!
It was up until Christianity came along. Then, like all ascetic doomsday cults, they suddenly became anti-sex anti-children because the Messiah says pleasure is a sin and his father is going punish who is enjoying it.
It’s a problem when your holy book is written by two separate, and often contentious, religions.
Creation Science Polka – Rudy Schwartz Project
As Micheal; Bakunin said in the 1880s ” If God exists, it will be necessary to abolish him “. I
I’ve known since I was 10 that the Bible has had words phrases paragraphs sections and entire books edited , added and subtracted over the centuries. Biblical inerrancy isn’t a myth, it’s a lie at this point!. And I consider what YECs and OECs do to be blasphemy because they’re lying about the Creation!
Actually, Akira, the New Testament is, at the very least, woke enough to make the bigots and reactionaries cling ever more tightly to the Old Testament, and make up any excuse they can for ignoring and disdaining the actual teachings of the guy they pretend to worship as their God.
And — more to the point — it’s woke enough that decent people, Christian or not, can use it to slam and debunk all the fascists and charlatans who use the Bible to justify their agenda.
Switch the first two letters of his last name around and you’ll get exactly what he, the Arseholes in Genesis crew, and their ape-faced boss spew out all the time – Lies!
I’m not sure what it would mean to be “against” fictional characters. I can certainly be disgusted by them, so maybe that’s my answer; and the god of the Hebrew bible, and much of the NT as well, is particularly disgusting.
@ 10
I know! Who voted for this clown and how can we replace him?
@12
Yeah, no. All either side has to do is claim that the other is wrong. Until Yahweh finally gives humanity some idea of what it actually wants, I’m don’t give a shit what any theist says.
@ 8. Akira MacKenzie & raven :
Obligatory Betty Bowers Biblical marriage clip – under 5 mins long & probly seen by most already but for those who haven’t..
Of course he comes from Queensland, the state other Australians call the “Deep North” Its populated with various right-wing Christian nutters, fascists who run for parliament while mowing swastikas in their lawns and a sundry array of mad-hatters, conspiracy theorists and once hosted an Australian chapter of the KKK on an army base. During the reign of a bible-bashing monumentally corrupt premier who could teach Trump how to actually steal an election the education minister tried to introduce flood geology into the science sillybus. He’ll be right at home under Hamster’s wing, or at least his right one.
billseymour @14, quoting PZ:
Seems quite clear to me that he’s “against God” in the converse of the very same sense in which goddists are “for God”.
God could clarify all this in an instant. Yet strangely he keeps hiding behind the “mysterious ways” excuse so many of his followers use to excuse large chunks of existence.