BACKGROUND PAPER 1

 

Jeremy Griffith, Tim Macartney-Snape and
The Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood (FHA)

 

Jeremy Griffith BSc is an Australian biologist, philosopher and thinker who presented his powerful insights on the subject of the human condition in his four books, including the Australasian bestseller A Species In Denial (2003).

 

Tim Macartney-Snape BSc AM is a twice honoured Order of Australia recipient, noted public speaker, and the first Australian to climb Mt Everest in 1984, a feat which was achieved without the aid of oxygen and via a new route. He summited Everest again in 1990 by climbing the mountain from sea level on the Bay of Bengal.

 

The Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood is a Sydney-based research group founded in 1983 to develop and promote the work of biologist Jeremy Griffith. A registered charity in NSW, the FHA has six directors, including Jeremy Griffith and Tim Macartney-Snape, and over 100 members and supporters throughout Australia and New Zealand.

 

Biology

 

Charles Darwin explained the origin of the variety of life on Earth and connected humans with nature. But there biology stalled, unable to take the next step of explaining the human condition. It is this question that biologist Jeremy Griffith answers.

 

This understanding of the human condition explains the difference between human instincts and intellect and the effect that this difference has had on our behaviour. It describes how the anger and selfishness felt by humans is the result of an internal conflict between gene-based instinctive learning and the nerve-based intellect’s capacity to understand.

 

This conflict started two million years ago with the emergence of human consciousness. It causes people to live with an undeserved sense of guilt characterised by competition and aggression. The FHA argues that once this burden of guilt is lifted through understanding, it makes possible our species’ psychological rehabilitation. In doing so it enables humanity to mature from an insecure adolescence to secure adulthood—hence the name, the Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood.

 

Publications

 

Since the publication of Jeremy Griffith’s first book Free: The End of the Human Condition in 1988, support for his work has been growing in the scientific and general communities. Beyond the Human Condition, published in 1991, received impressive commendations from eminent scientists in Australia, New Zealand, Africa and elsewhere.

 

Published in 2003, A Species In Denial, including a foreword by Templeton prize-winning biologist Emeritus Professor Charles Birch, has become a bestseller in Australia and New Zealand and received widespread acclaim. In 2004, Griffith wrote and circulated a synopsis for a proposed documentary series, The Human Condition, which has attracted commendations from over 100 scientists and thinkers worldwide.

 

Griffith has just completed his fourth book, The Great Exodus, to which Professor Harry Prosen, former president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, has written the foreword in which he says “there has never been a more important book”.

 

These books can be downloaded from the Publications section of this website.

 

BACKGROUND PAPER 2

 

History of complaint about Four Corners

 

In 1995, the Reverend Dr David Millikan approached and obtained the cooperation of Jeremy Griffith, Tim Macartney-Snape and the Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood (FHA) to participate in an ABC-TV Four Corners program in what was said to be a journey of exploration of Jeremy Griffith’s explanation of the human condition.

 

During production, the FHA became increasingly alarmed about the intended nature of the program and sent more than a dozen letters of appeal to the ABC before the broadcast aired, complaining that, among other things, they had been mislead by Reverend Millikan. These appeals included a half-page ‘open letter’ to then ABC managing director Mr Brian Johns published in The Australian newspaper.

 

Complaints

 

Following the broadcast on 24 April 1995, a complaint was sent to the ABC about the program’s deliberate misrepresentations, requesting an apology — to no avail.

 

A formal complaint subsequently filed with the ABC’s Independent Complaints Review Panel in 1996 was withdrawn after the panel stipulated that all rights to take legal action in relation to the program be relinquished.

 

On 23 September 1996, a 900-page complaint was submitted to the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA).

 

On 4 February 1998, after a two year investigation, the ABA found the Four Corners program to be ‘inaccurate, unbalanced and partial’ in what was the strongest ruling ever made against the national broadcaster.

 

On 8 July 1998, the ABA took the unprecedented step of recommending to the ABC that it would be ‘appropriate to apologise’. But, despite not exercising its right to challenge the ruling, the ABC refused, which left the FHA no alternative but to consider defamation proceedings.

 

Legal Action

 

In April 2001, two sets of proceedings were commenced in the NSW Supreme Court seeking redress: one against the ABC, Reverend Millikan and others; the other against Reverend Millikan, John Fairfax Publications and Tony McClelland in relation to a 1995 article written by Reverend Millikan which appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald.

 

In May 2003, a NSW Supreme Court jury found that both Mr Griffith and Mr Macartney-Snape had been defamed by the Four Corners program.

 

In September 2005, a NSW Supreme Court jury ruled that the FHA had been defamed in the 1995 Herald article. At this time, Tony McClelland apologised and withdrew the ‘untrue and hurtful’ allegations directed at the FHA and its directors. McClelland had been a prominent detractor of the FHA’s work during the 1995 media attack.

 

A four-week trial will commence on 14 March 2007 to determine defences and damaged in the proceedings against the ABC.

 

For more background on the matter please visit www.worldtransformation.com/persecution.