by DWise1
Bill Morgan is a creation science activist who has been active here in Orange County, California, for over a decade. Bill and I had a two-year email correspondence from about May 1996 to August 1998.A definite pattern soon emerged in our correspondence. Even though at first Bill was very talkative, when I demonstrated my knowledge of the creation/evolution issue, he suddenly became very reticent and tried to disengage as quickly and gracefully as possible. When that failed, he would just plain refuse to respond to most of my questions, would respond with one or two words lacking any context, or else would respond with a standard creationist "unanswerable" question. In contrast, I would answer most of his questions. All of his questions were meant to stump me, to stop or impede the discussion, and to prepare me for proselytization, whereas all of my questions were meant to be answerable, to elicit information, and to further the discussion. Indeed, Bill would usually pose one of his questions in an attempt to change the subject away from his having to support a claim.
Towards the end, when I presented him with statistics of answered and unanswered questions, Bill had the audacity to claim that he had answered "100%" of my questions and that I had answered none of his, which anyone can plainly see is false. As usual, when presented with the facts and asked to support his own claim, Bill "Mr. 100%" Morgan ignored the question.
Bill's questions to me were never meant to be answerable. Their purpose is as part of proselytizing, whereby they are meant to put me on the defense, to knock my feet out from under me, or at the very least to discredit me and my position before others. In fact, when Mark, "The Liber8er", asked Bill why he had thrown an "unanswerable question" at him (origin of life), Bill replied that he had done it in order to make Mark "look stupid."
That type of question comes more-or-less directly out of the Christian-to-atheist example dialogs that appear in the fundamentalist literature and which are meant to be training tools for proselytization -- I had read so many of those tracts as a Christian-fundamentalism "fellow traveller" in the early 1970's through Chuck Smith's Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, CA. Bill has included a few in his own writings, such as his "QUESTIONS ATHEISTS HOPE YOU'LL NEVER ASK THEM:" section of Weird Science, and indeed the main part of Weird Science was a crude cartoon based roughly on Chick Pubs' original Big Daddy? (since rewritten by Kent Hovind), which itself was an example of a training script for proselytizing.
Bill had our dialog all planned out and, I think, much of Bill's frustration with me was that I refused to follow his script -- that he has to rely so strongly on those scripts and cannot begin to think outside the script is an indication of his own ignorance of the science involved and even of his own questions. I would answer his unanswerable questions, as directly and honestly as I could, to which he himself had no response. Furthermore, I would also explain to him what he was trying to do with his question. He often tried to claim that I had not answered his question, but he never ever answered my question of why he thought so. I have never seen Bill make any attempt to support any of his claims.
Listed below are links to pages that contain the text of Bill's questions, my response, and Bill's lack of response. The exchanges which followed reveal much about Bill's methods:
- "Do you think the earth is 4.6 billion years old? Why?"
I replied, "Because the preponderance of geological evidence shows that the earth has had a very long history." Then I linked him to one of my own web pages, GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF AN ANCIENT EARTH, which reposts something that I myself had written for CompuServe. Bill's "response" was to chide me with, "Do not hide behind some else's web page", even though I had very clearly identified it as my own writing. When I reminded him that I myself had written it, he ran away.
"Which life appeared first? Please answer that."
"Please give me the strongest piece of scientific evidence that the blue whale is related to bacteria." "So give me the strongest reason why you think bacteria are the ancestors to blue whales."
"You consider yourself "wise," yet believe in spontaneous generation. If you do not beleive in spontaneous generation please provide me witht eh best explanation you have for the origin of life. Can you? Will you?"
"How Can Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) Get to the Stratosphere If They're Heavier than Air?" "Why is the Ozone Hole Observed over Antarctica When CFCs Are Released Mainly in the Northern Hemisphere?"
"Does Most of the Chlorine in the Stratosphere Come from Human or Natural Sources?"
"Can you answer my simple question of how the R 12 gets 5 miles above the surface of the earth. The proponents endlessly teach what R 12 does to ozone, I have read that endlessly, but my qwuestion is how does it get there."
"Do you have a better explanation than the Garden of Eden for the origin of Meisosis reproduction? Do you beleive Mitosis reproducing animals are the ancestors of Meisosis animals?"
"If God exists, should the kids be taught about Him?" Bill's "response" to my answer to this question speaks volumes about him. I took the question seriously and I answered it fully, putting a lot of thought into it. Mark, "The Liber8er", commended me for "a very in-depth response". Bill's reaction was to ignore my answer and simply repeat the question, over and over again. Each time I replied that I had indeed answered Bill's question and I requested that he tell us why he thinks that I had not. As with all the many other times that I had requested Bill to explain why he rejected my answer to his question, he refused to respond to my request. Usually he would either run away from that discussion or he would try to change the subject by throwing yet another "unanswerable question" at me. But in this case, he simply repeated the question over and over again while ignoring my replies.
"What data caused the geologist to almost become an atheist?" (NOTE: Bill was referring to my having told him about creationist Glenn R. Morton and the ICR-trained creationist geologists that he had hired and who all suffered severe crises of faith when they had to work with hard geological data that they had been taught did not exist and could not exist if Scripture were to have any meaning
BTW, I corresponded with Glenn Morton in early January 2002 and he says that Bill Morgan had never contacted him. Why am I not surprised? )
"But what about at Judgment day? What would you say to God then?"
- "You said: 'Yet there are several fossils which show a gradation from Homo erectus to Neanderthal. So if the ICR still wants to classify Homo erectus as "100% ape", they have those "missing links" to contend with.'
"Please tell me specifically which fossils you are talking about."Now this was a legitimate question, though unfortunately Bill's reponse to my answer lived down to his low standards: he completely dropped the subject.
"Dave, what is an explanation for polystrate fossils?" (27 Oct 2000 17:29:13 EDT) This is a stranger question that is sadly so typical of how Bill operates. First, it almost appears that he was using it as yet another "rabbit trail" trick, though with quite a bit of effort, you could possibly make a connection between the question and our discussion of Kent Hovind, who uses polystrate claims. However, when I asked Bill for an example, he immediately back-pedalled, accepting responsibility for producing an example while effectively disavowing knowledge of any example and trying to change the subject by bragging how he has repeatedly exposed false creationist claims.
But then a few months later came the real corker: Bill had the audacity of accusing me of never having answered his request for an example of a polystrate fossil. That accusation was a complete and utter falsehood that flies directly in the face of all the facts: Bill Morgan was the one who had accepted responsibility for finding an example of a polystrate fossil claim, which he has never done! I immediately informed Bill of that and outlined in detail what had actually been said, when, and by whom. Bill's response was his typical act of dropping the subject completely and ignoring all follow-up questions.
"mr Wise.....give me your best explanation for the origin of life." (05 Oct 2000, 1522) Yet another sad, sad example of how Bill operates:
- First, Bill falsely accused me of having refused "ten times" to answer his question about the origin of life. In reality, he had not yet asked me that question any time that year (2000), nor could I recall his ever having asked me that question at all.
I later discovered that I was mistaken. Bill had tacked that question onto the end of his "spontaneous generation" question on 20 April 1998 and I had answered it at that time (see BILL MORGAN'S QUESTION: SPONTANEOUS GENERATION). I had also answered it several years earlier as part of my critique of his "Weird Science" cartoon tract.- Bill's immediate response was to demand an answer from me. My response to that was to quote Bill Morgan's own teachings about "rabbit trails", that we must not allow that dirty trick to be used but instead must refuse to answer a "rabbit trail" question until our own question has been answered.
- Bill tried to ignore his own teachings and pushed again for an answer, whereupon I quoted him to himself yet again and demanded that he answer my questions first (over 60 questions to him were and are still pending; read Bill "Mr. 100%" Morgan).
- This time, Bill stopped asking me directly, but apparently had his friend, Bill Bequette, whom I did not yet have over a barrel, to ask me the same question.
Though in the meantime I have come to realize that "Bill Bequette" was actually Bill Morgan hiding his identity behind a sockpuppet, which is an extremely dishonest practice. It also allowed Bill to fully express his sadistic tendencies.- Unfortunately, I was extremely busy at the time and could not respond immediately. Bill Morgan and Bill Bequette then launched into a series of mocking attacks against me for not having answered the question. BTW, Bill Morgan also teaches against mocking your opponents, even though he often resorts to mockery himself.
- By the time I was finally able to get back to that question, I had also discovered my earlier mistake and that I had already answered that question, twice! I informed both Bill Morgan and Bill Bequette of that fact and told them exactly where to look, namely both on my BILL MORGAN'S QUESTION: SPONTANEOUS GENERATION page and in my critique of his "Weird Science" cartoon tract.
- Both Bill Morgan and Bill Bequette ignored the facts and continued to mock me for "not answering the question." I immediately reminded them that I had indeed answered it long before they had asked and that I had told them exactly where to find it.
- Both Bill Morgan and Bill Bequette immediately dropped the subject and completely ignored my follow-up questions concerning the affair. How pathetically typical of them!
My response. [page under construction]
A decade and a half later and Bill Morgan hasn't changed a bit nor learned a thing, except he makes far less effort to try to cover up his incredible dishonesty.
This time around, he had more "unanswerable questions" that he tried on me and that I answered yet again. And yet again he refused to respond at all to my answers.
I will prepare pages for those email exchanges and post them here.
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First uploaded on 2000 July 05.
Updated on 2015 November 05.