Glenn Morton, 1950-2020

Faith & Science Conversation
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Hi all,

This is Dan Morton again, Glenn’s oldest son.

Knowing that he loved this community, I wanted to let you all know that my dad joined his Savior last night around 9:40PM CST. At that time, he was surrounded my his three sons and his wife, and was peacefully sleeping.

I also wanted you to know that he considered his engagement with this community, along with the insights he gained and theories he built and tested here to be among the most important in his life. Earlier, I’d posted that he finished and published his book. He fought hard to complete that book and, upon our getting it onto Kindle, he promptly fell asleep. He was mightily struggling for his last couple of weeks, but he would not rest (and sometimes wouldn’t even take his pain meds) while he was working on it. While he was in and out of consciousness over the last few days, publishing that book was his last real activity before yielding to the cancer that plagued him for 17 years and became especially painful over the last couple of years. I also noticed that he was posting here until he couldn’t post any longer.

More importantly to us, though, were his repeated words to us as his breath became labored. Whenever he saw my mom, my brothers, or I, he would repeat “I love you”. We love him too. He was a fantastic father who showed us faith by action, taught us to think, and encouraged us to live our best lives. He demonstrated love to us in so many ways – to our mom, to us, and to his grandchildren and daughters-in-law. We’re deeply grateful for the legacy he left us.

My brother Matt posted to Caring Bridge (here), and I’ll reply here with his obituary when it’s published.

Dan

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Thank you so much, Mr Morton. I remember well one of your father’s first posts–that among the most important things in his life, more than his studies, was that he had a family that he loved.

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I always enjoyed reading his essays. Wish I could have met him, and we are all the lesser for his passing.

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He will be missed. He was a person of great courage and integrity. Praying for peace and joy for your family.

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I’m sorry for your loss Dan.

I’m glad we connected from utterly different worlds.

(I felt the loss personally believe it or not, with hot eyes: I liked your Dad, and he moved me, simple).

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So sorry for your loss. Thank you for taking the time to provide this personal link between the forum interactions here and his life “out there.” Sometimes forums can be on the impersonal side, but your dad really allowed us to get to know him to a degree that doesn’t always happen in a virtual space. I appreciate his honesty and perseverance – sounds like he didn’t do anything halfway. Best wishes on the book, and I pray God’s peace will be with you all.

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Thanks, Dan. Your father is well-remembered around here for his many contributions - a tireless and determined individual to the very end it sounds like! Peace and blessings of Christ to you and your families.

-Merv

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Please accept my condolences too. Our conversations were usually a little to the side of his real business but he was generous and open in all his responses.

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I look forward to continuing our discussions someday in heaven. He will be missed.

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I am glad he remembered this forum fondly even though I know I irritated him often. The battles were certainly memorable to me.

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thanks Dan for letting us know. our thoughts are with you. I only found his comments here a couple of weeks ago and found it reassuring that someone else is actually providing the substance for something I was thinking for a long time.
Our biggest problem with the bible is the attitude of people about those before us, to belittle them that they were primitive and made up stories to comfort themselves with fairy tales. Thereby it is the followup generations that comfort themselves with fairy tales of them being in control resembling the everlasting repeat of that story of the beginning in the garden of Eden, the story of the fall in the feeble attempt to reject the authority of the author over the self, puberty in a nutshell.
Glenn is now back under the ultimate authority and I think he has done a great deal to help us to understand the stories from the past and i wish you all the best that you can, in honouring the legacy of your dead, help others to better understand those who came before usand the love they passed on from the source they got it from.

By the sound of it your dad realised in the end that what we should worry about in our debate of origins is not the origin of life - as that gets everyone confused into materialistic thinking, but the origin of love. By the sound of it he fulfilled his purpose in life and passed on to you what life is all about, to pass on the essence of love.

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My condolences. I remember his first reply to my Flood topic . He has really helped in my journey to finding answers.He always reminded us tk get right with the Lord. May he find rest in the Lords arms . Prayers for your family :pray:. May the good God guide you

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I’m so sorry for your loss, Dan. Word’s fail at times like this but I pray that Christ would be your and the family’s hope and comfort at this time - Just as he was for your dad. Although we came from different perspectives, Glen’s commitment to the word of God and his desire to honour it as such was an inspiration to me and no doubt to others. As he now enjoys his reward and the delight of his Saviour, our loss is his gain.

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I’m so sorry to hear that. I’ve read, interacted with, and sometimes sparred with Glenn for probably close to 30 years. Even when we disagreed he was a great person to have around.

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I’m deeply saddened by Glenn’s passing, but your words make me smile through the tears. We didn’t correspond much while he was trying to finish the book, so our last real exchange was early June, not long after he started hospice care. He felt the end approaching and spent a great deal of time mourning for his sins.

Glenn: As death gets nearer, one thinks a bit more deeply about one’s own sin and what needs forgiveness, both from me, and to me. … I don’t think Christians realize how sin is in the very air we breathe and culture we swim in. There are times I don’t think I realized how utterly infected I am by this world–and I am a believer. We have no hope but Christ.

After some back-and-forth, I ended with this: “You’ve mourned long enough for your sins. Do me a favor. When you feel death knocking at the door, remember the good times and the joy in your life. Try to go out with a smile on your face.”

I’ll miss my sparring partner, but a better ending couldn’t be written:

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I thank God for Glenn Morton and his insights into putting things together from Scripture.

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I’m really sorry to hear about Glenn’s passing. My condolences to the family.

As I’ve read his posts here on this forum, I couldn’t help getting the impression that he very much felt a sense of urgency in what he was writing. Throughout it all, one point in particular kept coming through loud and clear: don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. It sounded to me that Glenn was quite passionate about driving home to us that in discarding young-earth and anti-evolution teachings we need to remember to hold on to what is good, and that we don’t need to, and shouldn’t, lose faith over it all. It’s people like him, bringing a message like that, that I find strengthening and encouraging, and for that I am most thankful.

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” — 2 Timothy 4:7-8

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Glenn and I waged a debate on the old ASA listserv over Genesis that was often heated and lasted for months, but through our barbed responses we developed a mutual respect that became an enduring friendship. When I was in Houston I was staying at a friends house and invited Glenn to dinner. He brought a bottle of wine that he bought when he was in China. He was a great debater, a great mind, and a great friend. I will miss him.

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Dan,

No! I’m really sorry to hear this. I specifically came to Biologos a year ago as I was trying to find a way to reconcile the historicity of the Flood per Genesis to actual science. Out of all the posts I read, as he had a prominent and applied geological background, I found Glenn’s to be by far the most useful and compelling.

A few months ago, after a brief chat on the forums, I reached out to him directly by email. Not only did we discuss his theories on the flood and his finding about the specific one that took place about a million years ago, but we also conversed about our faith and life experiences. Like him, I also worked in the upstream oil and gas industry, and am based in Beijing. So, we shared about his experiences in China and the oil industry, traded blogs, even conversed a bit in Chinese!

Of course, he let us know that his health was failing, but I didn’t know it would be so fast. In his last email, he wrote:

“Hi XX, I much thank God for you because you are one of the few people who understand what I am trying to do and that means a lot to me. I have decided to turn the blog into a book, and am working hard on that right now. My editor comes back from vacation this weekend and I need to have the book ready for her, but I will read this before I go to bed. Oh, what the heck. read, read, read…”

I am so happy to hear he was able to get his book out before he passed. In fact, I just purchased it on Kindle and will read it soon. I’m a bit sad I didn’t get to interact with him more recently on his theories as I had recently been engorged in apologetics defense against the Ehrman/ Carrier/ Price crowd, which required a lot of reading and energy, but I planned to get back to the Genesis/ Flood apologetics afterward, with his theory as the most compelling.

God Bless to you and your family- Glenn was truly a great and humble man and I look forward to seeing his work and theories continue in the future. Even though I only shared a few emails with him, I will miss him greatly and am very sad he is gone. In our email correspondence, he was always kind and humble. As Paul advocated, he appeared to finish the race strong. His life was an inspirational Christian testimony to me and I’m saddened by the loss. God Bless.

-Rob L.

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I guess one further question to ask is, if we ever have any questions about his theories or writings, who should they be directed to?

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