Blog Archives
Book Review: Who Am I? By Martyn Iles, Executive CEO of Answers in Genesis
Martyn Iles, as many readers will know, was managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby until sacked by the Board in February 2023, was appointed Chief Ministry Officer of Answers in Genesis in May of that year, and in November was promoted to Executive CEO, working alongside Ken Ham, who remains as Founding CEO.
While still in Australia, Iles promoted right-wing causes in the name of individual religious freedom, expressed support on his YouTube channel for the claim that the 2020 US presidential election had been stolen, and in a Facebook post on January 21 2020, just two weeks after the January 6 insurrection, reaffirmed his admiration for Donald Trump. However, since joining Answers in Genesis he has, to the best of my knowledge, refrained from overtly political comment. In a Facebook post on March 17 this year he explicitly rejected the idea of a “Christian nation,” since being a Christian or not is a characteristic of individuals. Thus he has placed a welcome distance between himself and the extremes of US Christian Nationalism.
There is one important difference in style between Iles and Ham. Ham, in the tradition of Henry Morris and, before him, George McCready Price, argues that science supports his version of Bible-based Young Earth Creationism. Iles, however, does not even condescend to discuss such mere details. As he posted on Facebook in October 2022, “Truth is in the [biblical] word itself. Other things are true insofar as they conform to it.” Moreover, Iles is clear in his own mind that his understanding of the Bible, however far-fetched, is the correct one. So when he tells us what it means, he is speaking for God.
Read the rest of this entry
Leading creationist organisation appoints conspiracy theorist to key position
Posted on by Paul Braterman
by Paul Braterman
One month ago today, Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis appointed Martyn Iles, formerly director of the Australian Question Lobby, to the position of Chief Ministry Officer, ministry of course being Answers in Genesis’ core activity. Here’s why that matters.
Martyn Iles, a lawyer by training, was the managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) from 2018 until he was abruptly sacked by the ACL Board in February 2023. Accounts of his dismissal differ. Iles described it as a result of difference in strategy; the Board wanted to move in a more political direction, making him in his own words “not the right person for that vision. I have always been a preacher first and politician second (or third…)”. The Board’s chair, however, denied that there had been any such change.
Answers in Genesis (AiG) is the world’s largest Young Earth Creationist organisation. AiG has a full-time working staff of 1200 and, according to its 2021 tax declaration, assets of almost $82 million. It owns the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter in Kentucky as well as other major assets, and its massive outreach programme includes formal publications, Answers magazine, and an extremely active website.
AiG is the property of Ken Ham, like Iles a product of Australian’s extreme Christian fundamentalist community. It was set up in 1994 after complex and litigious manoeuvres involving Ham and his previous associates, Creation Ministries International based mainly in Australia, and the Institute for Creation Research (ICR). ICR itself had been set up by Henry Morris, co-author of The Genesis Flood, when disputes arose among an earlier generation of Young Earth creationists.
There comes a time in the life of every successful businessman (it usually is a man) when he starts to consider his legacy. Ham is now 71. The vigour of his early writing, which had attracted Henry Morris’ attention in the 1980s, has faded into stale repetitiousness, and his articles on the AiG website now describe themselves as produced with the help of research staff. It seemed at one time as if Bodie Hodge, his son-in-law, was his obvious heir apparent, but Hodge’s own writing is superficial and tedious. (Disclosure; both Ham and Hodge have attacked me by name in their writings.)
Iles is now, therefore, in an extremely strong position within the organisation, for which he has excellent credentials. He is a successful organiser and money raiser, and responsible for targeted interventions in Australian electoral politics. His Youtube series The Truth of It has a major following, and as we shall see is very good at what it does. Thus we can expect him to be a major influence on AiG in its direction and messaging, and to enhance its appeal and effectiveness. He has already been announced as a key speaker in next year’s homeschooling conference.
It is therefore a matter of some general concern that Iles is an extreme religious conservative, defines reality itself in religious terms, believes in male domination (while I was preparing this piece he told us that “A word like ‘independent’ is a direct assault on God’s design for women” and that a good woman is “Submissive to husbands. including imperfect ones”), is adept at promoting an intolerant agenda in the name of freedom of speech, has (ever so obliquely) inflamed concerns about vaccines, takes the historical truth of the early chapters of Genesis for granted, and thinks abortion should be illegal because God approves of population growth, among other reasons. Worst of all, he preaches that Christians must dismiss the findings of climate change science as “cultural Marxist rubbish,” because “God’s sustaining providence is crucial to our understanding of this world.”
For an example of Iles defending the indefensible, provided that the indefensible is based on religious belief, see his condemnation of Covid vaccine mandates.
To see him in unrestrained conspiracy mode, watch [1] his response to the World Economic Forum’s concept of a Great Reset, according to which we should use the pause imposed by Covid to rethink current industrial policy and its large-scale environmental impact. This notion offends against his core belief that the planet is in God’s hands, so that WEF’s concerns are fundamentally misguided. Like others, he presents the Reset concept, and the interest shown in it by governments, institutions, and major companies, as a conspiracy to do away with capitalism and democracy. Here, Iles is in lockstep with the Heartland Institute, a mouthpiece for the fossil fuel industry and for laissez-faire economics. As a sign of this conspiracy (and here I am reminded of Q-Anon) he points to the way in which the slogan Build Back Better, which occurs in the WEF literature, is echoed by politicians as diverse as Joe Biden, Boris Johnson, and Justin Trudeau, while as co-conspirators he identifies the entire climate change movement, as well as Black Lives Matter which, like other creationist writers, Iles describes as Marxist.
Iles’ full talents are on display in his The Truth of It YouTube, Climate Totalitarianism, which I recommend to students of rhetoric. Its thousand closely argued words are a masterpiece of misdirection, false dichotomy, strawmanning and vilification of opponents’ positions (the word cancer occurs four times); emotional engagement with the concerned, leading to a promise of reassurance and erasing of anxiety; imposing an intellectual superstructure (which he calls hierarchies of control) on the Bible and then using this superstructure to argue that mere worldly science can be safely ignored; slyly referring to fossil fuels by another name (mineral resources) as put there by God for humanity to use; and hinting at massive totalitarian conspiracies behind climate policy. All reinforced by dramatic phrasing, intonation, and gestures.
The title of the series, The Truth of It, prepares us for the message that anyone Iles disagrees with has been misleading us. The individual podcast title, Climate totalitarianism, casts the entire climate issue in terms of individual freedom versus governmental overreach, echoing his recurrent motif of a conspiracy of the powerful against the godly. And his opening sentence, “Well, it looks as if in the post-pandemic world, we’re going to be increasingly preoccupied with climate change,” describes a crisis over 50 years in the making as if it was just the next thing that they want us to worry about.
Iles then gives us two examples of net zero policy in action. Firstly, the enforced shutdown of Netherlands farms, early victims of the climate juggernaut (“there will be more”). I can find no reference to these alleged closures; the most relevant EU document that I could find sought, on the contrary, to reduce the loss of farmland, but no matter; our sympathies have been engaged with the alleged victims of the juggernaut, as have our fears, since we may be next. Secondly, eating bugs rather than red meat. Clearly, the net zero policy is unnatural, disgusting, and destructive.
Where do such misguided policies come from? From evolutionary thinking, of course. “I understand why they’re getting it wrong, because they basically believe that human beings arose on this planet quite by chance, and in time proceeded to go on a destructive, and a murderous, and exploitative, and a cancerous rampage, which must now be stopped.” (The word “cancer,” in connection with any concerns about human impact on the planet, occurs three more times in this presentation.)
If only our decision-makers would pay proper attention to the Bible! There they would find (Iles gives chapter and verse) that the descendants of Adam, and the descendants of Noah, were commanded to be fruitful and multiply, that Adam and his descendants were given dominion over everything on earth, and that God promised Noah that springtime and harvest would never cease as long as the Earth endures. Those who are worried about climate change have failed to recognise the hierarchy of control, according to which the planet was created to be adequate to human needs. It is humanity’s right, and indeed duty, to get to work and enjoy what has been made available, in the secure knowledge that caring for the planet as a whole is not their responsibility, but God’s.
Notice here the construction of a vast theological superstructure on a narrow biblical foundation, followed by the claim that this superstructure is itself biblical.
Like a judo player, Iles now uses the very force of the environmental argument as a reason for rejecting it. “If I thought we were here by chance, and we were just one of the gazillions of planets and we were just very fortunate to be in the position that we are in, I would think the future was pretty uncertain, and I’d get pretty nervous.”
Fear not. This nervousness is dispelled if we remember the hierarchy of control, and what God has promised: “Genesis is quite clear that what we see in the world around us was substantially put there for human use, and enjoyment, and sustenance, including plants, water, minerals, and animals.” The word minerals is the only reference in the piece to fossil fuels, but its significance will not be lost on his intended Australian primary audience.
Governments pursuing environmental goals are in an extremely stressful situation, he tells us, since they are going against fundamental human nature, and must use totalitarian methods to impose their will. But this stress is unnecessary, if we remember the divinely ordained hierarchy. Humankind is steward of the planet, but God is an even greater steward, and we should listen to His word.
The most alarming part of Iles’ sermon is what he does not say. He simply bypasses the scientific evidence that business as usual risks unacceptable damage to the environment. Implicit in his position is the acceptance that such things, if they happen, will represent the working out of God’s will.
For those who see us as approaching the End Times, as I suspect Iles does, this is merely spelling out the obvious. For the rest of us, terrifying.
***
Image from AiG site. I thank Dan Phelps for useful background information about AiG’s empire, and the Rev Michael Roberts for helpful comments.
1] Disclosure. Life is short, so once I’ve got the flavour of a presentation, I just scan the transcript.
Repost of https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2023/06/leading-creationist-organisation-appoints-conspiracy-theorist-to-key-position.html; also at https://rightingamerica.net/leading-creationist-organisation-appoints-conspiracy-theorist-to-key-position/
Newly appointed Chief Ministry Officer of Answers in Genesis is cause for concern
By Paul Braterman
June 12, 2023 14:00 MST
This is a synopsis of a fuller version that has appeared in 3 Quarks Daily.
Panda’s Thumb readers will be familiar with Answers in Genesis, its position as the most vocal and best funded of Young Earth Creationist organisations (assets in excess of $82 million; owner of the Kentucky Creation Museum and Ark Encounter), its links with the Cornwall Alliance and hence with the fossil fuel industry, and its use of biblical arguments to dismiss concerns about the current environmental crisis. In my own reading of AiG materials, I have detected a progressive repetitiveness and loss of vigour. I have also noticed worrying signs of openness to the suggestion that we are living in the Last Days, with all that that implies for the abdication of long-term responsibilities.
These worries are intensified by AiG’s appointment last month of the lawyer Martyn Iles, until recently Managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby, to the newly created post of Chief Ministry Officer. Ministry is after all AiG’s entire reason for existence, and Iles, a skilful orator, also has a track record of effectiveness in political interventions, and in fundraising. Ken Ham is now 71, and we can expect Iles, 34, to become increasingly important in shaping AiG’s direction.
Iles is an extreme religious conservative, defines reality itself in religious terms, argues from Genesis that God approves of population growth, preaches that Christians must dismiss the findings of climate change science as “cultural Marxist rubbish,” because “God’s sustaining providence is crucial to our understanding of this world,” and regards the World Economic Forum as part of a grand conspiracy bent on suppressing individual liberty.
You can see Iles at his most frightening in his YouTube video, The Truth of It, Climate Totalitarianism (notice the carefully crafted title of the YouTube series, as well as of this particular item). In this, he uses quotations from Genesis to claim that this planet was created for the benefit of mankind.
It follows that environmentalist policies are misguided. And where do such policies come from? From evolutionary thinking, of course. “I understand why they’re getting it wrong, because they basically believe that human beings arose on this planet quite by chance, and in time proceeded to go on a destructive, and a murderous, and exploitative, and a cancerous rampage, which must now be stopped.”
Like a judo player, Iles now uses the very force of the environmental argument as a reason for rejecting it. “If I thought we were here by chance, and we were just one of the gazillions of planets and we were just very fortunate to be in the position that we are in, I would think the future was pretty uncertain, and I’d get pretty nervous.”
However, “Genesis is quite clear that what we see in the world around us was substantially put there for human use, and enjoyment, and sustenance, including plants, water, minerals, and animals.” The word minerals is the only reference in the piece to fossil fuels, but its significance will not be lost on his then intended Australian primary audience.
Consider the logic of this argument. Restraint in resource use is unbiblical, and therefore uncalled for. Unbelievers have cause for anxiety, but for believers this anxiety is unnecessary, because God. I am forced to conclude that he sincerely believes that we are in the End Times, or, if not, that God will somehow intervene to save us from the foreseeable consequences of our actions.
To sum up, an eloquent preacher who is also a skilled political operative is rising to the top in the world’s most significant creationist organisation, while objecting in principle to concerns about what we are doing to the planet, because worrying about the planet is God’s job, not ours, and He will look after it all in His own good time.
Not good news.
Repost of https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2023/06/newly-appointed-chief-ministry.html
Answers to everything, according to God, according to Answers in Genesis’Chief Ministry Officer
Abused women should submit to their husbands. Also, it is ungodly to be concerned about the climate, because rainbows. Such, at least, is the advice of the leader-in-waiting of the world’s largest and most influential Creationist organisation.
When people tell you what they are, believe them. In the 2021 Facebook posting attached below, still available [1], Martyn Iles tells us exactly what he is, and since, in May this year, he became Chief Ministry Officer at Answers in Genesis, the $28 million dollar a year concern that runs Kentucky’s Creation Museum and Ark Encounter and has its own private jet, we ought to pay attention. All the more so since the announcement just one month ago that he is now the designated successor to founder and CEO Ken Ham [2]. So here are his answers to the burning questions of our times, given in full to avoid the risk of quote mining, with my own commentary just in case there is any ambiguity about what is being said. And he saves the worst till last, when he explains exactly how it comes about that people disagree with him, and how we should look on such disagreement.
The answer to gender identity – “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” [Gen 1:27]
I share Iles’ concerns about the use of extreme clinical procedures, but for the very opposite reason. I do not believe in rigid gender roles, and think that people should be free to live as they wish, subject to the rights of others, without the need for mastectomy or castration. Iles, on the contrary, thinks that gender roles are God-given and rigid (more on that below), and that for that very reason people should stick to the roles that they were born for.
The answer to sexual orientation – “And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man… Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” [Gen 2:22, 24]
It is difficult to know what to make of this.
How is this even meant to be an answer to someone who feels romantically attracted only to members of their own sex? But I fear that Iles will be unmoved by the observation of homosexual behaviour in numerous animal species, because he does not consider that we share a common origin with them.
The answer to racism – “since [God] himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth…” [Acts 17:26]
This on the face of it is unexceptionable. All humans share the same deep ancestry and deserve the same respect. However, as so often with Iles, there is a hidden agenda; Answers in Genesis is opposed to any kind of action to compensate groups that have been the victims of racism, on the grounds that such action is itself discriminatory and racist.
The answer to abortion – “God said to them, ‘Be Fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…’” [Gen 1:28]
Here as elsewhere (see e.g. the next item) Iles cuts through all the usual arguments by introducing a Bible verse, imposing his own interpretation on it, and using this interpretation to tell us what God wants. No need for further discussion. In this particular case, however, most of us would think that the commandment referred to has been more than fulfilled already.
The answer to climate alarmism – “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” [Gen 8:22]
Notice the question-begging language. However, he is not just attacking what he regards as excessive concern over the climate crisis, but denying on the strength of this verse that such a crisis could possibly exist in the first place. And this is the verse now quoted on every conceivable occasion by all the major creationist organisations, who are united in their opposition to fossil fuel reduction policies. None of them, however, seem to quote the parallel verse [Gen 9:11];
“I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
Both verses are very limited in what they promise, the second one explicitly so. Nothing here to promise stable or temperate conditions, or to absolve us of our own responsibilities. Drought and failed harvests play a prominent role in later chapters of Genesis, while in a biblical exhortation to look after what has been provided for us, Leviticus 25:4 says that every seventh year the land itself needs to rest and recover.
The answer to abuse – “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her… Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.” [Eph 5:22, 25]
This is presented, not merely as the recipe for domestic harmony on Iles’ terms, but as “the answer to abuse,” i.e. guidance on how people should behave when such harmony has completely and dangerously broken down. To tell an abusive husband to love his wife may be well-intentioned, though he will probably reply that he really does so already. To tell an abused wife to submit to her husband is to ask her to behave as so many women tragically do; to accept the completely unacceptable, at risk to her happiness, her health, and, all too often, her life. And when Iles says “submit,” he really does mean submit [3].
The answer to historic wrongs that cannot be undone – “forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” [Col 3:13]
We are dealing here with a question that is the subject of much recent debate. What obligations if any do those of European descent owe to the peoples whom they have abused or enslaved, and whose land they have stolen? The answer according to Iles is very simple. The victims should simply forgive those who have wronged them, and the problem will disappear. I should mention, to put his opinion in context, that Iles is a white Australian [4].
The answer to life – “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” [John 3:16]
I’m not sure how this verse would actually prove useful to anyone faced with major decisions. However, I note that this is the only verse he quotes from the Gospels. It is indeed relatively rare from creationists to quote the Gospels, apart from this one verse, and even rarer for them to quote any of the actual words attributed to Jesus [5].
But how does Martyn Iles describe those who disagree with him? The final section of his post tells us:
The contemporary answer for every one of these issues is Cultural Marxism… divisive, angry, vengeful rebellion and power-grabbing between warring identity groups.
God’s answers bring peace and contentment, if only we’d submit to them, and stop running away from them.
So, for Iles, disagreement is Marxism, just as for Tim LaHaye it was humanism, and for the creationists of the McCarthy era it was Communism. If we only listened to God’s answers to these questions, all the conflicts between different interest groups would immediately disappear. Any assertions that things may be a little bit more complicated than that are “divisive, angry, vengeful rebellion and power-grabbing.”
Rebellion, of course, is the gravest of all possible sins in his theology. It is the sin of Satan, from which all others follow. But Iles’ way of looking at it does raise an interesting question. If homosexuals, assertive women, proponents of reparations to historically disadvantaged groups, and those concerned about environmental degradation, are all into the business of power-grabbing, just who is it that they are grabbing power from?
***
1] The Facebook page is here, and I am commenting on the entry for 19 May 2021, screenshot below (fair use claimed), which can also be retrieved by keyword search (Iles is so prolific that I expect some culling is unavoidable. However, the Facebook page, like the Answers in Genesis website, is out of order, difficult to search, and with numerous duplications.)
2] Some of us wondered when Ken Ham took him to his bosom how soon Iles would upstage him, just as Ken Ham, decades ago, upstaged Henry Morris and the Institute for Creation Research, but I don’t think we expected things to start happening quite so quickly. It might also be significant that while on the Answers in Genesis website, Iles is described as Chief Ministry Officer of Answers in Genesis, on his own Facebook page Iles describes himself as “Answers in Genesis Chief Ministry Officer (USA) Managing Director (Australia).”
3] Iles, Facebook, 6th June,
A word like “independent” is a direct assault on God’s design for women… A woman who prizes strength in independence is a woman rebelling against her nature.
4] As Iles puts it on his Facebook page, entry for 4th September,
[R]econciliation is a once forever act. Warring parties are reconciled through repentance by the one and forgiveness by the other. That is when the past is treated as if it never happened, and a new day dawns. New wrongs may be addressed, but past wrongs may not.
The ‘reconciliation’ movement is far from that model. It is a grievance movement, pouring [sic] over sins of the past, resisting forgiveness. This opposes God’s very nature.
5] One exception is Matthew 25:41, “‘Depart from me, you who are cursed…”, Freely quoted in connection with the severity of God’s judgement, but never in its context about clothing the naked, visiting prisoners, that kind of thing.
This article was first published in 3 Quarks Daily
Answers in Genesis appoints dangerous climate change denier as Chief Ministry Officer
“Though some weather events result from conditions on a fallen earth, Scripture is quite clear that God is in control.” This carefully crafted tweet by Answers in Genesis a few days ago is almost certainly the work of their newly appointed Chief Ministry Officer, Martyn Iles. Since God is in control, human activity cannot be responsible for the state of the planet, and the suggestion that we should adjust our policies because of their global impact is not only misguided, but impious.
Temperatures may be higher than at any time since the origin of humankind, ice caps may be melting in Arctic and Antarctic, and the smoke from forest fires may be making the air in New York unbreathable, but all of that is beside the point, because such things are to be expected on a fallen earth. The underlying reason for global warming is not fossil fuel burning, but Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden. Thus the entire corpus of scientific evidence and climate observation is pre-emptively dismissed as irrelevant.
Notice that Iles is, despite the headline, not actually a climate change denier. He simply bypasses the question of whether climate change is happening, in order to move directly to the conclusion that if it is, we shouldn’t be trying to do anything about it. Because God. Such sophistical subtlety is central to his impressive rhetorical technique.
It would be wrong to dismiss such thinking as lunatic fringe. Lunatic, yes, but fringe, in the context of both Australian and North American politics, anything but. Over the past 20 years, a strong alliance has emerged, with its own special pseudoscience as justification, between young earth creationism, climate change denial, and conservative politics. There are, in the US at least, direct links between the creationist ministries, the fossil fuel industry, and influential right-wing think tanks. The alliance between evangelicals and climate change deniers played a major role in the election of Scott Morrison, Australian Prime Minister until last year, and of Donald Trump, both of whom did everything they could to block attempts to control carbon dioxide emissions. Similar alliances are at work in Alberta, and in Texas where the legislature is placing obstacles in front of the emerging renewables energy industry, despite its massive contributions to the State’s economy.
Martyn Iles, a lawyer by training, has been a major force in Australian religious politics. He was the managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) from 2018 until he was abruptly sacked by the ACL Board in February 2023. Accounts of his dismissal differ. Iles described it as a result of difference in strategy; the Board wanted to move in a more political direction, making him in his own words “not the right person for that vision. I have always been a preacher first and politician second (or third…)”. The Board’s chair, however, denied that there had been any such change.
AiG is the property of Ken Ham, like Iles a product of Australian’s extreme Christian fundamentalist community. It was set up in 1994 after complex and litigious manoeuvres involving Ham and his previous associates, Creation Ministries International based mainly in Australia, and the Institute for Creation Research (ICR). ICR itself had been set up by Henry Morris, co-author of The Genesis Flood, when disputes arose among an earlier generation of Young Earth creationists.
There comes a time in the life of every successful businessman (it usually is a man) when he starts to consider his legacy. Ham is now 71. The vigour of his early writing, which had attracted Henry Morris’ attention in the 1980s, has faded into stale repetitiousness, and his articles on the AiG website now describe themselves as produced with the help of research staff. It seemed at one time as if Bodie Hodge, his son-in-law, was his obvious heir apparent, but Hodge’s own writing is superficial and tedious. (Disclosure; both Ham and Hodge have attacked me by name in their writings.)
Iles is now, therefore, in an extremely strong position within the organisation, for which he has excellent credentials. He is a successful organiser and money raiser, and responsible for targeted interventions in Australian electoral politics. His Youtube series The Truth of It has a major following, and as we shall see is very good at what it does. Thus we can expect him to be a major influence on AiG in its direction and messaging, and to enhance its appeal and effectiveness. He has already been announced as a key speaker in next year’s homeschooling conference.
It is thus a matter of some general concern that Iles is an extreme religious conservative, defines reality itself in religious terms, believes in male domination (while I was preparing this piece he told us that “A word like ‘independent’ is a direct assault on God’s design for women” and that a good woman is “Submissive to husbands. including imperfect ones”), is adept at promoting an intolerant agenda in the name of freedom of speech, has (ever so obliquely) inflamed concerns about vaccines, takes the historical truth of the early chapters of Genesis for granted, and thinks abortion should be illegal because God approves of population growth, among other reasons. Worst of all, he preaches that Christians must dismiss the findings of climate change science as “cultural Marxist rubbish,” because “God’s sustaining providence is crucial to our understanding of this world.”
For an example of Iles defending the indefensible, provided that the indefensible is based on religious belief, see his condemnation of Covid vaccine mandates.
To see him in unrestrained conspiracy mode, watch [1] his response to the World Economic Forum’s concept of a Great Reset, according to which we should use the pause imposed by Covid to rethink current industrial policy and its large-scale environmental impact. This notion offends against his core belief that the planet is in God’s hands, so that WEF’s concerns are fundamentally misguided. Like others, he presents the Reset concept, and the interest shown in it by governments, institutions, and major companies, as a conspiracy to do away with capitalism and democracy. Here, Iles is in lockstep with the Heartland Institute, a mouthpiece for the fossil fuel industry and for laissez-faire economics. As a sign of this conspiracy (and here I am reminded of Q-Anon) he points to the way in which the slogan Build Back Better, which occurs in the WEF literature, is echoed by politicians as diverse as Joe Biden, Boris Johnson, and Justin Trudeau, while as co-conspirators he identifies the entire climate change movement, as well as Black Lives Matter which, like other creationist writers, Iles describes as Marxist.
Iles’ full talents are on display in his The Truth of It YouTube, Climate Totalitarianism, which I recommend to students of rhetoric. Its thousand closely argued words are a masterpiece of misdirection, false dichotomy, strawmanning and vilification of opponents’ positions (the word cancer occurs four times); emotional engagement with the concerned, leading to a promise of reassurance and erasing of anxiety; imposing an intellectual superstructure (which he calls hierarchies of control) on the Bible and then using this superstructure to argue that mere worldly science can be safely ignored; slyly referring to fossil fuels by another name (mineral resources) as put there by God for humanity to use; and hinting at massive totalitarian conspiracies behind climate policy. All reinforced by dramatic phrasing, intonation, and gestures.
The title of the series, The Truth of It, prepares us for the message that anyone Iles disagrees with has been misleading us. The individual podcast title, Climate totalitarianism, casts the entire climate issue in terms of individual freedom versus governmental overreach, echoing his recurrent motif of a conspiracy of the powerful against the godly. And his opening sentence, “Well, it looks as if in the post-pandemic world, we’re going to be increasingly preoccupied with climate change,” describes a crisis over 50 years in the making as if it was just the next thing that they want us to worry about.
Iles then gives us two examples of net zero policy in action. Firstly, the enforced shutdown of Netherlands farms, early victims of the climate juggernaut (“there will be more”). I can find no reference to these alleged closures; the most relevant EU document that I could find sought, on the contrary, to reduce the loss of farmland, but no matter; our sympathies have been engaged with the alleged victims of the juggernaut, as have our fears, since we may be next. Secondly, eating bugs rather than red meat. Clearly, the net zero policy is unnatural, disgusting, and destructive.
Where do such misguided policies come from? From evolutionary thinking, of course. “I understand why they’re getting it wrong, because they basically believe that human beings arose on this planet quite by chance, and in time proceeded to go on a destructive, and a murderous, and exploitative, and a cancerous rampage, which must now be stopped.” (The word “cancer,” in connection with any concerns about human impact on the planet, occurs three more times in this presentation.)
If only our decision-makers would pay proper attention to the Bible! There they would find (Iles gives chapter and verse) that the descendants of Adam, and the descendants of Noah, were commanded to be fruitful and multiply, that Adam and his descendants were given dominion over everything on earth, and that God promised Noah that springtime and harvest would never cease as long as the Earth endures. Those who are worried about climate change have failed to recognise the hierarchy of control, according to which the planet was created to be adequate to human needs. It is humanity’s right, and indeed duty, to get to work and enjoy what has been made available, in the secure knowledge that caring for the planet as a whole is not their responsibility, but God’s.
Notice here the construction of a vast theological superstructure on a narrow biblical foundation, followed by the claim that this superstructure is itself biblical.
Like a judo player, Iles now uses the very force of the environmental argument as a reason for rejecting it. “If I thought we were here by chance, and we were just one of the gazillions of planets and we were just very fortunate to be in the position that we are in, I would think the future was pretty uncertain, and I’d get pretty nervous.”
Fear not. This nervousness is dispelled if we remember the hierarchy of control, and what God has promised: “Genesis is quite clear that what we see in the world around us was substantially put there for human use, and enjoyment, and sustenance, including plants, water, minerals, and animals.” The word minerals is the only reference in the piece to fossil fuels, but its significance will not be lost on his intended Australian primary audience.
Governments pursuing environmental goals are in an extremely stressful situation, he tells us, since they are going against fundamental human nature, and must use totalitarian methods to impose their will. But this stress is unnecessary, if we remember the divinely ordained hierarchy. Humankind is steward of the planet, but God is an even greater steward, and we should listen to His word.
The most alarming part of Iles’ sermon is what he does not say. He simply bypasses the scientific evidence that business as usual risks unacceptable damage to the environment. Implicit in his position is the acceptance that such things, if they happen, will represent the working out of God’s will.
For those who see us as approaching the End Times, as I suspect Iles does, this is merely spelling out the obvious. For the rest of us, terrifying.
I thank Dan Phelps for useful background information about AiG’s empire, and the Rev Michael Roberts for helpful comments. Earlier versions of this material Appeared on Panda’s Thumb and 3 Quarks Daily.
1] Disclosure. Life is short, so once I’ve got the flavour of a presentation, I just scan the transcript.
Repost of https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2023/06/leading-creationist-organisation-appoints-conspiracy-theorist-to-key-position.html and https://rightingamerica.net/leading-creationist-organisation-appoints-conspiracy-theorist-to-key-position/
Primate's Progress 
