BILL MORGAN'S "AOLCREAT"

Entitled: "Creation vs. Evolution: What is the Better Explanation?"

Get a copy of AOLCREAT.

Bill Morgan is a creation science activist who has been active here in Orange County, California, for over a decade. Our two-year email correspondence started in May 1996, when I responded to Bill's offer in the newsletter of the Creation Science Association of Orange County, California, for him to email for free an essay he had written. I cannot locate the original offer, but in a later offer he described it as:

"... a paper I made on the subject of Creation vs. Evolution. It is geared to be very friendly to people who may be evolutionists or athiests.

"My goal is to present the reasons why I beleive the Creation Model is a much better explanation for what we observe than the Evolution Model."

I requested a copy and Bill emailed me his "Creation vs. Evolution: What is the Better Explanation?" as a "text" file, AOLCREAT.TXT. After I got around the minor problem of it not really being a text file, I soon found that it contained nothing new. Despite his training and experience in mechanical engineering (he is a licensed Professional Engineer) and his professed love for science, Bill's writings reveal many of the same misunderstandings of science and of the findings and methods of science that are to be found in the creation science literature. About the only favorable thing I can say about AOLCREAT is that at least it did not include Flood Geology or young-earth claims, even though Bill's other writings and a magazine interview (Bill Morgan Is Captain Creationist: The activist is waging a war against evolution, one lecture at a time by Adam O'Neal, OC Weekly, 30 August 2012) indicate that he is a staunch young-earth creationist.

Since I didn't have enough time to devote to a point-by-point critique as I had done for Bill's earlier work, "Weird Science", and since Bill had not had a chance to read that critique before writing AOLCREAT, I discussed a relatively new claim for him, protein-sequence probabilities -- despite his now knowing that that claim is wrong, he continues to use it; eg in a debate.

In time, I discovered that AOLCREAT had accrued a bit of its own history. One day, while using DejaNews to search for messages on another subject, I decided to see if Bill Morgan, had posted anything in the past. I soon learned that around the time that he had made his offer in the newsletter, Bill had also spammed AOLCREAT to several newsgroups, including (some names truncated by DejaNews):

Most of the responses I found were very angry with Bill. You see, the file, AOLCREAT.DOC, is 53,760 bytes long, which meant that it got posted as a *TWELVE*-part message. Just posting one 12-parter can generate flames, but to spam it over fifteen newsgroups, especially ones which have nothing to do with the subject, must have really fanned the flames.

But wait, there's more. Two individuals, god@boy.com and lady@love.com, apparently decided to "help" Bill out by spamming his AOLCREAT.DOC over yet another thirty-two (32) unrelated (except for one or two) newsgroups, including (again, some names truncated by DejaNews):

Romance? Professional football? Whatever were they thinking?

But wait, there's even more! AOLCREAT.DOC is a Word6 file; not a text file, but a binary file! According to some of the respondents, the result was a twelve-part garbled mess! A gross waste of bandwidth and unreadable to boot!

Nor did they learn the first time. It appears that Bill and/or company conducted yet another spamming in early 1997, which spawned yet another volley of flames. Even Christian ministers were flaming Bill.

Nor did I see Bill display any willingness to learn. Bill had mispresented AOLCREAT as a text file, but I immediately determined that it was no text file, but rather a Word6 file. I lost no time informing Bill of his error and I told him how to convert it to a text file in order to distribute it to a wider audience. He thanked me for my suggestion and completely ignored it; in June 1998, Bill send me "10CRE97.DOC", which turned out to be nothing but a renamed AOLCREAT.DOC, still in Word6 format! Furthermore, he had made absolutely no effort to correct any of the several errors that I had pointed out to him repeatedly over the previous one-and-a-half years. Nor was I alone in that observation: 

Subject:      Re: Creation or Evolution? You Decide
From:         chrislee@netcom.com (Christopher A. Lee)
Date:         1996/09/30
Message-ID:   
Newsgroups:   alt.bible.prophecy,alt.christnet,alt.religion.christian,alt.christnet.bible,a.bsu.religion,alt.atheism,talk.atheism,talk.origins
[More Headers]

[snipped by DWise1]

>
>Creation vs. Evolution
>What is the Better Explanation?
>
>
>   Hi.  My name is Bill Morgan.  I am a Registered Mechanical Engineer
>and I love science and learning about science.  I have been studying
>the Creation vs. Evolution for several years and have made this text
>file to present a clear, easy to understand case for Creation.  This
>case for Creation will be built using science.  
[snip]

This crap has been refuted on alt.atheism and talk.origins each time Bill 
Morgan posted the identical article. Yet he ignores the responses and 
repeats the same drek hoping that people have forgotten it from last time.

Come to think of it, as I was collecting messages, I never once saw one from Bill himself having been posted on the talk.origins newsgroup. I saw only his co-spammers post to talk.origins. This behavior is in keeping what I've seen Bill do often, avoid those who understand what he is saying and doing while he targets and hammers at those who do not. This agrees with my own experiences with and observations of Bill Morgan, that he can be very vociferous with inexperienced opponents, but then when he is faced with an experienced opponent he suddenly becomes very reticent as he beats a hasty retreat.

The only original thing about AOLCREAT was the inclusion of Bill's personal history. He claims that having been taught evolution had turned him into an atheist in the ninth grade, that all of the science courses he took in high school and college only reinforced his atheism, and that he had remained an atheist until after college when he was converted through creation science. His claim of having been an atheist figures prominently in his public talks promoting creation science, which he has delivered at several universities, colleges, and high schools (including at least nine public high schools);eg, the beginning of an article about a Bill Morgan lecture in the Daily Aztec (link to that article is broken):

The Daily Aztec

Friday, March 21, 1997

Former atheist, now creationist, gives lecture

Daily Aztec Staff Writer
@Byline:By GREG PAULL

The San Diego State University Bible Study Club sponsored a lecture Wednesday by a former atheist who is now a Christian and a creationist.

Bill Morgan, an Orange County mechanical engineer, lectured for almost an hour to more than 50 people at Aztec Center, pointing out what he sees as flaws in models of evolution.

However, I find Bill's claims of having been an atheist to be flawed:

  1. In his story in AOLCREAT, he describes himself as wanting to believe that evolution was telling him that his god did not exist so that he could give his hormones full rein and sink into depravity without any guilt or accountability; in other words, because of standard creationist misconceptions about evolution, atheism, and morality. In contrast, upon realizing that the gods do not exist, a real atheist then also realizes that he bears full responsibility for his own actions.

  2. In email to me, he claimed to have never stopped believing in his god:
    "But I honestly know that you know God exists but choose not to honor acknowldge or give thanks to God. Romans 1 says that and that was my case when I was an atheist, I prayed many times while an atheist."
    An atheist is one who does not believe in the gods. From what Bill described of himself, he was never an atheist, but rather had always remained a theist, even when he was trying to pretend to be an atheist. An atheist realizes that he does not need any gods upon whom to base his beliefs and that he must accept responsibility for his own actions. Bill's entire masquerade as an "atheist" was nothing but a theist's attempt to escape responsibility for his actions. Except for during his infancy, Bill never was an atheist.

  3. Nor can Bill keep his own story straight. In AOLCREAT, Bill says that he really didn't believe the hominid chart, but rather proclaimed himself to be an evolutionist just because he wanted it to be true so that he could indulge in depravity. Then in the September 1998 newsletter, Bill says that he became an evolutionist because of that chart. Why does Bill keep changing his story? That's the problem with telling nothing but lies; it's too hard to keep your stories straight.

So why does Bill still try to claim to have been an atheist, even though he admitted to me that he had never stopped believing in the existence of his god, that he constantly prayed to that god, and that he was only pretending to himself to be an atheist in order to give his hormones and his depravity full and free rein? Just because it sounds good? Because it helps him to establish his position: that evolution leads to atheism and depravity while creationism leads to Christ? That is what he claims, even though he knows that it is not true. Why is he not able to just tell the truth? Is telling the truth against his religion? Quite apparently so!

Oh, by the way, one of the critics of Bill's AOLCREAT, Matt Singerman [yotaxes@pipeline.com], commented:

"By the way, there is no such thing as a "registered" engineer. You get your diploma, and that's it. No registration process except if for private industry, which is not registration, but certification."

I asked Bill about that:

I would have to agree with Matt, though I have heard of a form of licensing for "Practical Engineers," which a technician with several years of experience and no engineering degree can apply for.

Why do you refer to yourself as a "registered mechanical engineer"? Or is this yet another simple, direct question that you will refuse to answer?

Bill responded:

A registered mechanical engineer is a PE a Professional Engineer which means I passed a licensing test (most engineers are not PE's).

I accepted his answer and suggested that, for his credibility's sake, he should add some of this additional explanation to his AOLCREAT, along with some explanation of the significance of that licensing. I have no idea whether Bill has done so.

Then in 2001 in the midst of Bill making several false accusations against me, the main one being that I had insulted his wife (in reality, I don't recall having ever mentioned his wife, but rather his false accusation was in response to my showing that he had insulted my wife -- many of his lies consisted of him twisting things around so that he would accuse me of having done or said what he had just done or said), and engaged in an orgy of sadistic mocking as I tried to get the matter resolved (mainly, I kept asking him to tell me what I was supposed to have said about his wife, which he refused to do). During that fiasco, he had introduced a "friend" to the discussion, a "Bill Bequette", who turned out to just be Bill Morgan's sockpuppet, a fake identity for him to hide behind while he engaged in far worse behavior that he normally did. One of the false accusations that "Bill Bequette" made was that I had slandered Bill Morgan about his PE licensing, which I clearly had not done as you can plainly see. That just demonstrates further Bill Morgan's low character.

So where can you get a copy of AOLCREAT? Back in 1998 you had a lot of options, but most of those have disappeared after 17 years. There are some Christian or creationist sites that still post it and which you can find by doing a search on some of the document's text, such as part of the opening line:

My name is Bill Morgan. I am a Registered Mechanical Engineer
Or you could do a search on either of the document's names: AOLCREAT or 10CRE97.DOC . However, I seem to recall not having very good luck with that.

Or you could just get it here. When Bill suddenly closed his AOL account in August 1998, I decided to provide it on my web site. I promise that AOLCREAT.DOC is the same document that I received from Bill and nothing's been changed in it. Since that's a Word6 document and you might not have a compatible word processor, I saved it as a text file, something that Bill should have done himself years ago (he refused to because he was too greatly enamoured with his formatting). Since the text file strips out the document's formatting, I also saved it as an HTML file so that you can read it on-line with the formatting intact.

Here are the three files:

  • Original Word 6 Format
    • This is the original document file I received from Bill, dated 06 May 1996, 0530h, 53,760 bytes. Nothing has been changed in it. Clicking on this link will cause the file to be downloaded to your computer.

  • Text Format
    • In order to create this text file version, I opened AOLCREAT.DOC in Microsoft Word and saved it as a text file. I changed nothing in the file. Clicking on this link opens the file in your browser, from which you can then save the file to your computer.

  • HTML Format
    • I also used Microsoft Word to save AOLCREAT.DOC as an HTML file. Then I edited that HTML file to add a header and a footer. Those are the only changes; I changed nothing in the body of the page, which is AOLCREAT. Clicking on this link opens the page in your browser.

    I haven't written a critique of AOLCREAT. I had already written a critique of another of Bill's tracts, Weird Science which Bill just ignored, so I didn't feel motivated. And we have Christopher A. Lee's report that AOLCREAT had been refuted many times and Bill just ignored them and would return to post the same old false crap again and again. However, I did refute a couple of his more glaring false claims as mentioned at the top of this page: his protein-sequence probabilities claim and his false claim that he had been an atheist.

    When I originally wrote this page in 1998, there were several critiques of AOLCREAT on-line, but that number has dwindled since then. I've seen some hidden away on forums where apparently Bill or one of his cohorts had posted it.

    Here are a couple critiques that I have links for:

  • Creation vs. Evolution: Christian Opinions Put to Rest " by The Liber8er
    • The witness and sometimes participant in my email correspondence with Bill Morgan was Mark, The Liber8er. As I recall, we met when I found his critique of AOLCREAT.

  • Response to the "Top Ten" list in AOLCREAT by Frank Steiger
    • Frank Steiger was, I believe, a retired engineer in Orange County, California. He had followed creation/evolution issue for several years and used his scientific training to respond to creation science claims. I think he was best known for his essays explaining thermodynamics and how creationists misunderstand it.

    I just read on his web page that he passed away on 29 July 2010. He had asked his family to keep his web active after his death. His daughter now maintains it:

    I had found his response to AOLCREAT in a newsgroup archive. I don't believe that it's on his web site.

    If you have any more to add to this saga, please email me (see link at bottom of page).

    Share and enjoy!

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    First uploaded on 1998 December 07.
    Updated on 2015 November 04.

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