In my discussions on another thread where RichardG is acting like I am a young-earth creationist, I think I will use my story thread to point out that I am not a YEC. In 2006 I was invited to debate Henry Morris III at LeTourneau university in East Texas. ICR’s account of this debate can be found at ICR account
My account is below, written the day after the debate. Below that I will try to post my 15 slides of my debate years ago. I think they should disabuse anyone that I am a simple YEC like RichardG
Last night I had the debate with Henry Morris. When I arrived on campus, I met one of the guys who organized this. He told me I wasn’t the most popular person in the debate. He said that people had been calling him all day asking if Henry Morris was going to show up. (the callers obviously didn’t know that THE Henry Morris was dead). He said that no one was asking if Glenn Morton was going to show up. 
When I got to the building for the debate, I was getting my usual nightly stream of calls from China and was outside the building on the phone when Henry and his wife walked up. I finished the call and introduced myself… He was a pleasant fellow, rotund and looks a bit like his father. We had dinner with the faculty sponsers and I sat next to Henry and we had a great conversation. One thing will become important for later so I should note that I told him that I had had many christians call me names like, apostate, heretic and Son of Satan. He commented that that was too bad and people shouldn’t do that. (remember this). We had left our laptops set up in the presentation room while we were across the hall at dinner. When we came back into the room, I discovered to my horror that my computer was black screen unable to boot. But, I had happily put a copy of the talk on a CD so we used another computer and everything went well. Being the paranoid SOB that I am, I suspected someone did that, but, I no longer think that after talking to my IT guy. Just an unlucky coincidence. A friend who was there(who was a graduate of ICR & had had Henry as a teacher) and Henry both said the same thing–it must be a sign.
Before the talk, I had joked with the organizer that I was the ‘designated devil’. He was horrified at my joke, took me seriously and assured me it wasn’t like this. Then I found out that the moderator was a member of Henry’s Sunday school class. The introduction went something like this: ““On the Left, physically if not politically, is my good friend Dr. Glenn Morton, who used to be a young-earth creationist but he left the fold.”” On the right, is my good friend, Dr. Henry Morris, I know his heart as I am in his Sunday School class and he is a deep thinker.“” (that probably isn’t quite the quotation but it was something like that–Neutrality defined right there). I thought again of the ‘designated devil’ and for the umpteenth billionth time, I had to tell an audience that I didn’t have a Ph. D.
ICR had also sent a filming crew. The rather slimy guy who was running that with his son, wired me up for sound. Somewhere during my talk, my mike fell off my shirt and dangled at ground level where I kept stepping on the microphone. I don’t think they got a good sound track from me. I doubt they got a good microphone back. The dad was, what my friend called, a cub reporter. More later.
As I told y’all I was going to take a new approach. The format was that I had a 20 minute time to present, He then had 10 minutes to question me. He then had 20 minutes and I had 10 minutes to question him. After that the audience was able to ask questions for 30 minutes
*I have uploaded the powerpoint below.[…removed stuff on the size of my pdf which is below in .png form.
Now, I have given talks in front of YECs before, but they always have a hostile look on their faces. Last night, was entirely different. They were LISTENING and I could tell it. By taking a biblical literalist position and arguing that the Bible taught an old earth, evolution, the origin of life and the big bang (and cosmic expansion), they couldn’t claim I was the devil. I had laughed and joked with Henry in front of the standing room only crowd. I was fastidiously cordial (something very hard for me). I wanted them to see that I was a nice guy.
Early on I noted that I knew many atheists who are formerly young-earth creationists. This came back to haunt me a bit after the debate was over.
I would discuss a bit of theology, then show a picture from geology and hit them with the question, how does this happen with 4 ft per hour of sediment raining down upon the-(whatever).? Then I would go to the next slide and repeat the theology/geology cycle and end with, how did that happen with 4 ft per hour of sediment raining down on their head? This was kind of a push me–pull you approach.
By starting with the first point on the 2nd slide (that the historicity of the bible is important), they couldn’t accuse me of being the devil. They laughed at my slide on what planet was Abraham from, so I was able to get some humor into the talk. Humor humanizes.
When I was through, I was actually surprised at the level of applause I got. It was Henry’s turn to question me, he was clearly thrown off balance. He said something like ““oh my goodness what do I say to that.”” He was trying hard to come up with critical questions. One funny thing happened. His microphone didn’t work so I gave him mine. He then asked me how I was going to answer his questions. I simply said, ““You could give it back to me”” The audience laughed. He asked me whether it was the science that was driving me to re-interpret the Bible. I told him it was the Hebrew. He then challenged my re-interpretation by asking me if I had made up the new meanings. I noted that the Hebrew dictionaries gave me the meanings and I could chose an interpretation that would make the bible historical. I then turned to the audience and aske ““if we have two possible interpretations, why on earth would we chose the one which would make the Bible false.”” Henry then asked me what gave me the authority to re-interpret the Bible. I said, it was my desire to have a historical bible? He asked me nothing that I recall about the science (I want to see the tape because in the heat of these things everything is distorted–it is an alternate state of reality.)
Henry then made his presentation. There was no science at all. It was a stock presentation on why the Bible must be read as global flood, no death before the fall and frankly he went at it so rapidly that his bullet points were flashing up and disappearing like lightening bug flashes. I frankly couldn’t follow it and was worriying that I too would have trouble asking questions. I finally picked up on death before the fall and thought of asking him about the meteor craters in the geologic column as I had forgotten to speak to that picture when I was on that slide. He ran out of time and had to simply stop in the middle of his FEDEX salesman presentation. What I recall asking him was if no one died before the fall doesn’t this create a Wiley Coyote universe in which a meteor could fall on the coyote and he would pop back up after the impact. He said, something like meteors didn’t hit the earth then because the earth was perfect. I tried again. I asked if a cow ate grass that had ants and aphids on it would the cow be gentlemanly enough to let the poor creatures escape before chomping on the grass. He said that those animals don’t have the breath of life. That the life is in the blood, which, he said, they don’t have, but they have some goo. I then pointed out the slide I hadn’t spoken to and noted that there were 4.8 billion megatons of meteorite impacts during the flood year, if the geologic column was due to a one year global flood. I also noted that the world’s nuclear arsenals only have 13,000 megatons so if we are worried about that killing all life, how did Noah survive such an onslaught and if it was miraculous, why not simply say the entire flood was miraculous. He claimed that we didn’t find meteor impacts in the geologic column. I said that we do find meteor fragments in the geologic column. I can’t recall what he said then.
I then noted that the Haymond formation requires animals burrow something like 40 layers per day if it was deposited by a global flood and asked if they were on drugs. (audience laughed) I think he made the comment that we couldn’t know the rates because they were based upon the model and the assumptions and that their model was every bit as explanatory as mine. I asked him to explain the Haymond formation and he said he didn’t know what that was.
We had a few rounds about cellular death and apoptosis (which word I forgot and had to ask help from the audience).
Then the floor was opened for questions. I got a question about the whale standing up in diatomite. I wasn’t entirely happy with my answer (I guess I need to re-look at that). One young lady asked Henry what gave him the right and authority to interpret the Bible in the way he did? (a parallel to Henry’s question to me). He claimed that he was not interpreting it but was letting the words speak for themselves. I got a question about what the rainbow meant. I didn’t fully understand what the guy was asking but finally when I did, I said, it meant God wasn’t going to reduce us to 8 people again. The issue of why God is still causing local floods is still an issue. One guy asked Morris if we couldn’t make inferences about the past. Morris said yes but there were limits. That guy emailed me today and is disgusted with YEC.
I think the thing that won the debate for me was nothing I did. I told you I had a friend who was an ICR grad. He made a statement that he had started out as a YEC and then went into the oil industry (I hired him out of college 25 years ago). He told the audience that he was time agnostic now–it didn’t matter and he told the students to go where the data said to go. Then he asked Morris a question that he expected would be a softball for Morris. The question was: There are many theological issues over which christians disagree which are not fundamental to the faith. Can’t one be a good christian and believe in an old earth?
He expected a ‘yes’. However Morris said, ““It’s like being a Christian and an adulteror”” There was a massive collective gasp that went through the audience. All eyes turned to me to see how I would react. I sat still (thinking to myself what Huxley said to his friend at the Wilberforce debate–The Lord hath delivered him into my hands–I was also humorously thinking that I hoped he didn’t talk to my wife!). He said other stuff, but at that moment I couldn’t listen to what he was saying. When he was through, the moderator offered me a chance to respond. I simply said I didn’t know what I could say to that. To which the moderator said ““We know you aren’t an adulteror”” (which, thinking like a scientist who evaluates evidence everyday, I thought, How do you (moderartor), know?) My wife thought his remark a wee bit tacky. My friend, felt bad for me until afterwords when we talked, he began to see it as absolutely hilarious. It is ironic that the guy who was clucking his tongue about people calling me an apostate/heretic/son of satan would compare me, even if inadvertently with an adulteror! I told my friend that he had won the debate for me.
Afterwords, my friend, I and Henry were surrounded by questioners… One guy was giving me grief for claiming that former YECs were actually atheists, when one young man at this christian college spoke up and said that He would be one of those except that my web pages brought him back to the faith–which shut that other guy up. The ICR cub reporter/father came up to me and asked me about the atheist statement, that YECs had become atheist. He asked me if I thought they had ever been christians. I told him he couldn’t quote me on my views in those regard because I am in sales, not management. God sees the heart, I don’t and it isn’t my job to judge those peoples status. I told him that I was merely describing them as they described themselves. No telling how I will be misquoted by this cretan.
Afterwards, at a local Wafflehouse, I sat down with my friend, whom I have known for 26 years and who has no problem telling me my faults what he thought. He gave me some minor presentation suggestions, but then said, 'short answer, you cleaned his clock, but, I would be able to do it without any preparation!“”, which I took as a reason not to feel too confident of my debating skills! Honesty demands that I admit that I bribed him by buying his meal. He had driven 4 hours to come see this. But one of the important things, he said that he felt that my presentation was very accessible and understandable and let people see that the old earth could be Biblical. My friend isn’t an evolutionist, so I asked him about my lawn mowing analogy (on the slide). He said that it was a fantastic analogy (I don’t think I have yet converted him).
you can find my views on Genesis 1 and how to make it historical here
