Slightly Off-Topic: Mike Adams: Inherit the Windfall

Mike Adams has a new column on the continuing travails of Bryan College and its embattled president Stephen Livesay.  Bryan, if you will remember, made the news when twenty percent of its faculty left after being required to sign a statement of faith supporting young earth creationism and a literal Adam and Eve.  More recently, it allied itself with Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis, which I am quite sure was, as much as anything, politically motivated.

Now it seems that there have been some financial irregularities to go on top of the religious ones.  Adams writes:

The present crisis dates back to 2009 when one of the founders of the National Association of Christian Athletes (NACA) was accused of sexual molestation. A proposal was made to sell a property owned by NACA, which is known as the Fort Bluff Camp, for an amount of $2.5 million. This would have covered NACA’s debt at the time, which was $900,000. Thus, it would have left them $1.6 million in the black. This is where Bryan College President Stephen Livesay gets involved. This is also where the gross financial misconduct begins.

Livesay managed to defeat the proposal to sell the land with an alternate proposal to get rid of the then-existing 13-member NACA Board. Livesay proposed a new 15-member NACA Board be put in its place. Elevating audacity to a Zen art form, Livesay suggested the following composition for the new NACA Board: Nine new members from the Bryan College Board and six members from the existing NACA Board. Unbelievably, Livesay proposed that he would be the one to choose all 15 members.

It goes downhill from there.According to Adams and other sources with whom I have spoken personally, the board is now little more than a mouthpiece for Livesay.  The last person who would stand up to him resigned from the board last year, as Adams notes.  From other sources, it became known that, as of a few years ago, Stephen Livesay was paying himself over $300k a year as president.  This after telling Todd Wood and the CORE Institute that the college didn't have the funds to continue supporting the institute.  This is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.  I hope that Bryan survives.  We were down there for a summer institute last summer with my son, Marcus, and it is a very pretty campus and the people there were very friendly.

Todd Wood: Intro to Origins

The Core Academy has just finished putting together its Intro to Origins series of classes.  The topics are varied, including a discussion of the current creation/evolution debate, and sections on creationism and theistic evolution.  Each class is $50, and with four kids being home schooled, I just don't have the money for them. 

I have every belief that the science will be treated fairly and respectfully, if from a young-earth perspective.  There is a code on the site that will allow anyone interested to get a 25% discount for a set period of time.  I disagree with Todd on most things regarding the age of the earth and cosmogony but he has never treated the science shabbily. 

Update From Todd Wood

Todd Wood is now actively trying to save CORE and, even though he is still in the proposal and fundraising stages, it looks like his efforts may pay off.  He writes:

If you pray to the one true God, please pray for us now that these proposals will be well received and that God will guide us as we make even BIGGER plans for the future. If you don't pray to the one true God, well... keep watching, because I think He's going to do something amazing.

Because of his attention to the data and his honesty and integrity, his presence on the scene can only benefit the entire search for the truth in these issues and I pray that his efforts will succeed.

CORE is Defunct

Todd Wood has been ruminating about this on his blog for some time and now it looks like a reality: financial support for the Center for Origins Research at Bryan College is being withdrawn.  He writes:

On January 11, 2013, I had a meeting with Stephen Livesay, president of Bryan College. He informed me that due to a significant budget shortfall, the college would be discontinuing support for the Center for Origins Research effective June 30. He has offered to continue housing the CORE facilities, but there will no longer be any salary support for CORE faculty or staff. Since we have very little regular donation support, his decision basically means the end of CORE as we know it. You can read the official college statement on this closing at their website

I like reading Todd's work and, even though I have grave philosophical concerns about the fact that he can understand the immensity of the evidence for evolution and yet still reject it based solely on modern creationism theology, he always treats the evidence fairly and honestly. Nick Matzke, writing for Panda's Thumb has this to say about it:

Wood was almost the sole representative of critical thinking in the creationist movement. He also had the virtually unique trait of understanding what modern evolutionary biology actually said before opening his big mouth about it. I can’t think of a time when he quote-mined Gould’s punctuated equilibrium quotes or blamed Darwin for Hitler or used the other careless, bottom-of-the-barrel tactics ubiquitous with creationists of the ID or AIG varieties. And I can think of many times when he called shenanigans on creationists engaging in those sorts of sins.

Indeed, I remember his takedown of Fuz Rana's interpretation of the chimpanzee genome data. One particular quote was memorable:

I would recommend that no one accept any of RTB's arguments without fact-checking their claims first. I do not know whether these problems are due to lazy scholarship, ignorance, intentional deception, or ideological blinders. What I do know is that you cannot trust Reasons to Believe.

For a creationist to say that about an ID organization is quite something.  I hope that Todd continues to write and to post blog entries.  Whatever I think about his theology, he is a joy to read.