“Creationists make it sound as though a ‘theory’ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.” Isaac Asimov

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Jeff Chalmers, a long-time TWW denizen, explains why he participates at TWW. Although he did not want me to wax eloquent, I would be remiss in not mentioning his day job. He is the Helen C Kurtz Chair in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in the William G Lowrie Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at The Ohio State University. He is married to an Internal Medicine physician, and they have three children. He is currently recuperating from an epic bicycle accident involving a car. (Lord- may he heal well.) All those who have read his comments know the faith and experience he brings to the TWW community.

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Why I participate in the Wartburg Watch

I have been a regular reader and sometimes contributor/commenter to the TWW for over a decade. I found TWW because of my specific reading of abuse in Calvary Chapel, CC, which led me to TWW ( I have a unique connection to CC, but not relevant to this post). I have a personal interest in issues addressed by the TWW because of my upbringing in an independent, fundamentalist Baptist, IFB (technically a GARBC) church and an Evangelical Free Church, and my attending an IFB school from 7 grade through high school. I subsequently attended a “liberal Christian college” by IFB standards and then a secular state and Ivy League schools for my further engineering studies. I have observed, if not experienced, many of the struggles described by Dee’s posts and various contributors. As might be imaged, the supposed “conflict” between science and the Bible is one of these chief struggles. I might add that a number of IFBs treated me in much the same way Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis, AIG, is known to treat people who question  “young earth creationism.” Further, these experiences predate AIG’s rise to fame.

However, reading the TWW and the various examples of abuse motivated me to reflect on my own background/experiences more seriously. Not only was I initially trained as a YEC, but I was taught that “secular humanism” has corrupted all science. But, what really jumped out from reading TWW was all of the abuse, and most alarming, the child sexual abuse. Then I realized that I had been right in the middle of this.

This specific journey began with the remembrance that I had an odd 7th-grade teacher, Walter R Barnhart, who, while further stimulating my interest in science, was also a hard-core YEC. He even took me hiking by ourselves, “looking for fossils.” (Today, there would be no way in the world I would let a teacher take my children hiking alone! )  After the  8th grade, I moved on to the associated Christian, IFB, High School, and I heard Walter R Barnhart was fired, and the only thing we knew about it was it involved some secret “moral issue.” I have since posted this story on my alumni, IFB high school Facebook page, and several other classmates confirm the firing; I remember his being perp-walked out in handcuffs, which was all hush. And, as far as I know, no further investigation. For example, no official ever asked me about our “hikes.”

This memory led me to put Walter R. Barnhart’s name on a California Megan’s website, and much to my shock, not only did he show up, but  I found several “mug shots,” from which I can confirm it is my 7th-grade teacher! Soon after, I was in San Diego for a conference, which allowed me to visit the El Cajon courthouse (Eastern San Diego County) and obtain his court records. This allowed me to subsequently find the following story in the San Diego Union-Tribune, which accurately reflects the court documents:

            Man draws 18 years in child-molestation plea bargain

            San Diego Union-Tribune, June 7, 1997.

A former set designer for Christian Youth Theater in East County pleaded guilty yesterday to seven counts of child molestation. Walter R. Barnhart was immediately sentenced to 18 years in state prison by Municipal Court Judge Lantz Lewis. Barnhart, 50, admitted molesting three boys, who were all under the age of 14 at the time. Most of the incidents took place on camping trips, said prosecutor Gloria Collins. Barnhart was originally charged with 17 counts of molestation. Collins said the plea bargain was arranged to spare the boys, who are now 16 and 17 years old, the further trauma of testifying in court.

“One of the victims has now relocated to Florida and wants to put this behind him,” she said. Collins said it is not believed that Barnhart met the victims through his work at the youth theater. Barnhart was also a designer for Christian Community Theater but was let go last October after the allegations became known. His attorney, James Pokorny, said yesterday: “Walt is not a perfect person.” “He is not proud of some of the things he’s done in the past, and he has now owned up to them and accepted responsibility for what he did,” Pokorny said. “Now he is paying the price for that.”

What this article does not say is that the molestation had been occurring for 3 to 4 years before his arrest. I have not found any more specific details except for each of the 17 counts, with a few sentences describing the felonious act. However, 1992 was approximately 18 years AFTER he was “removed” from my school! As of 2012, he is out of prison and on “Megan’s list.”

While at the time of his “removal” from my school (1973-74), there was no official statement, I do vaguely remember that my IFB middle school (which is in a suburb of San Francisco) had said that he had gone back to Southern California. Given my luck in finding things on the internet, I continued to search and found the following story:

Creation Theory Goes to a Graduate School: State-Approved Institute Teaches Bible-Based Beliefs and Attempts to Shoot Down Evolution

The Los Angeles Times, February 19, 1986 | GORDON SMITH | Smith lives in San Diego

SANTEE, Calif. — While working to obtain a master’s degree in geophysics, Bill Hoesch is studying such things as the Earth’s structure and the origin and age of the cosmos. But unlike most graduate students in earth sciences, Hoesch is learning that mountain ranges can be built in a day, fossils were buried in a worldwide flood, and the universe was created recently, perhaps as recently as 6,000 years ago.

Hoesch attends graduate school at the Institute for Creation Research, a private organization that advocates a theory of divine creation and actively tries to shoot down the theory of evolution.

The school which is approved to issue master of science degrees by the California State Board of Education’s division of private post secondary education is the only place in the country where students can obtain a graduate degree in science taught from a creationist point of view.

“I don’t separate my physical life from my spiritual life,” said Hoesch, 32, a tall, lean, square jawed, soft spoken man. “It’s important to me to reconcile my scientific beliefs with the Bible, but that doesn’t prevent me from being a scientist.

“I can’t prove that the Earth is 6,000 years old, but (evolutionists) can’t prove it’s 4.5 billion years old. . . .Sure, I’m biased, but don’t tell me (scientists) on the other side of the fence are not biased.”

The Institute for Creation Research is the brainchild of Henry Morris, a longtime leader in the nationwide creationist movement. Morris, a former university professor with a doctorate in hydraulics, founded the nonprofit institute in 1972 to publish creationist literature and work toward getting creationist theory taught in public schools.

The institute’s graduate school came into being in 1981. It offers master’s degrees in astrophysics, geophysics, biology, geology and science education.

Two months ago, Morris moved his institute from the campus of Christian Heritage College in El Cajon to a 21,000 squarefoot building in Santee. The spacious new building with wood furnishings and carpeted hallways also houses a creationist museum, which has displays that question the generally accepted theory of evolution and present arguments in favor of supernatural creation.

Morris called the museum “an educational tool, sort of like the Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater on a small scale. . . . We’d like to make as many people as possible aware that there is scientific as well as biblical evidence of creation.”

The school’s current catalogue explains the philosophy of “scientific creationism” in part: “Each of the major kinds of plants and animals was created functionally complete from the beginning and did not evolve from some other kind of organism. . . . The first human beings did not evolve from an animal ancestry, but were specially created in fully human form from the start.”

Given B Rating

Morris Krear, a consultant to the state board of education’s private postsecondary education division, said the board had given the Institute for Creation Research a B rating, meaning the school “has the facilities, teachers, and resources to provide a sound education, and a curriculum that is consistent in quality with other recognized and accredited schools” and is allowed to grant master’s degrees. (In the board’s rating system an A is given to only fully accredited schools; a C means that the quality of a school’s teachers and classes has not been reviewed thoroughly or compared to accredited institutions.)

The Western Assn does not accredit the Institute of Schools and Colleges, the primary accrediting agency for 300 private and public colleges and universities in California, Hawaii, and Guam. Thus, most accredited schools and institutions will not accept its degrees or class credits.

Krear explained that a committee authorized by the board visited the school in 1981 and determined that it met those criteria. The committee looked at such things as whether

“the body of knowledge presented is sufficiently challenging and whether the methodology used allows (students) to make discoveries.

‘Fine Teachers’

“They have some fine teachers at that school,” he added. “The law says a master’s degree (from the institute) is supposed to be the same as any other master’s degree.” Morris said he has no plans to apply for accreditation through the Western Assn. of Schools and Colleges, which he described as a “secular organization . . . pretty firmly committed to evolutionary theory.”

Public school teachers seeking to qualify for higher salaries would also find it difficult, but not necessarily impossible, to get credit for classes taken at the institute. Each school district sets its own policy; thus, the San Diego Unified School District accepts only classes from accredited colleges, while the Los Angeles Unified School District sometimes accepts classes from unaccredited institutions. (A spokeswoman said such classes are reviewed closely by district officials.)

Attracting Students

Despite these handicaps, the Institute for Creation Research is apparently attracting a growing number of students. Kenneth Cumming, the graduate school’s dean, said only 10 people have graduated since 1981, but 46 are currently enrolled. Only two classes are being taught during the current term; however, one has four students, and the other has one.

One student is Walter Barnhart, 39, a former teacher at private Christian high schools in El Cajon and Chula Vista. “I hold to a creationist viewpoint, and to be able to do graduate work within a creationist graduate school was a big help,” Barnhart said of his decision to attend the institute. Barnhart said he was raised in

“a biblical family” and obtained his undergraduate degree at Biola University in La Mirada, a private Christian university. There he was exposed to theories of creation and evolution that conflicted with a strict interpretation of the Bible. “I pretty much threw them out on my own, based on what you would call scientific evidences. . . . Also, they seemed to do violence to Scripture,” he said.

As a graduate student at the Institute, Barnhart studied fossil horses, which are often used as a classic example of gradual evolution.

“My final conclusion is that you’ve got a broad variety (of animals), but no interconnecting types,” he said. “We’re basically looking at a large variety of created types, which, probably following the flood or a disaster in historic times, were decimated down to the smaller variety we see today,” he said.

Hoesch, who obtained a bachelor’s degree in geology from the University of Colorado in 1981, said he enrolled in the institute’s graduate program about 18 months ago after undergoing “a spiritual conversion.” As a graduate student, he plans to investigate

“the possibility that large sections of (rock) strata . . . were not deposited over millions of years but were deposited rapidly, which is consistent with the theory of  worldwide flood.”

But Frederick Edwards, who, as executive director of the American Humanist Assn. in Buffalo, N.Y., has debated creationists half a dozen times, said

“the flood scenario just won’t work.” Among other things, fossils are often found buried in layers on top of one another, so that creationists “would have to theorize that the animals higher up were treading water so they’d be buried later.”

Straightforward Record

Edwards added that the fossil record for horses is “very straightforward.” The connections are not so gradual that you can see that one horse (species) led directly to another, but no one needs to claim that. The fossil record isn’t a precision instrument that allows you to measure changes on the species level. But each (horse) genus is so closely related that if you saw them standing together . . . you’d quickly see the relationships.

“Creationist arguments haven’t changed much since the 19th Century,” Edwards continued. “They’re based on a selective reading of scientific literature in order to create a harmonizing of science and a literal (interpretation) of the Bible.” Statements like that make the institute’s staff fairly bristle. “Evidence for a creator exists with or without the Bible,” insisted Richard Bliss, an instructor in general science.

The school’s faculty comprises 15 men, most of whom list graduate degrees among their credentials.

“All of us on the staff, with one exception, were trained as evolutionists,” Bliss said. “I began questioning evolution when I took a course on animal evolution as a graduate student and was challenged to question it.

“We hit evolution hard at this school, from both sides. We feel that in order to determine the strength of our own model, you’ve got to know what the other model is all about.” “This isn’t Bible school,” Cumming said. “We don’t teach Scripture in the class.”

The institute’s museum also presents evidence favoring creationist theory. One display claims that the footprints of men and dinosaurs were found preserved together in stone along the Paluxy River near Fort Worth, Texas.

Yucca Plants, Yucca Moths

Another features photographs of yucca plants and yucca moths, and notes that the plant’s seeds develop only in flowers pollinated by the moths, while the moth larvae feed only on the seeds. A sign reads,

“Natural selection cannot explain why each restricts its survival to the other’s fate, and chance mutations could not develop this kind of complex behavior. This kind of dependence between moth and plant points us back to a special act of creation.”

But Edwards said yucca plants and moths could evolve together little by little over eons since a change in one would create evolutionary pressure for change in the other. Such an argument does little to shake the faith of creationists like Hoesch. He noted that after obtaining his master’s degree, he wants to get a job in the oil industry. But the current slump in that industry has led him to contemplate teaching instead.

“I’d like to teach at a secular community college and let the students decide for themselves whether evolution or creation explains earth history,” he said. “You can believe we were all frogs in the bog, or you can believe we were created with order and purpose. The evolutionists appear to have a good case, don’t they? But I don’t believe it is a good case.”

From Wikipedia:

The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) is a Creationist apologetics institute in Dallas, Texas that specializes in media promotion of pseudoscientific creation science and interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative as a historical event. The ICR adopts the Bible as an inerrant and literal documentary of scientific and historical fact as well as religious and moral truths, and espouses a Young Earth creationist worldview. It rejects evolutionary biology, which it views as a corrupting moral and social influence and threat to religious belief.[4] The ICR was formed by Henry M. Morris in 1972, in Santee, CA (a suburb of San Diego)  following an organizational split with the Creation Science Research Center (CSRC). In 2007, the institute relocated from Santee, California, to Dallas, Texas. Morris, who died the previous year, said the move was intended to give the ICR a central national location, Dallas’ proximity to a major airport, and a larger population for their ministry.

Its work in the field of creation science has been rejected by mainstream science, but has been significant in shaping creationist thought in the United States by introducing creation science through fundamentalist churches and religious schools, and by engaging in public debates against supporters of evolution. The ICR also offers non-certified graduate level programs in Biblical Apologetics, including a minor in Creation Research.[8] In 1992, the ICR started the Museum of Creation and Earth History and hosted adventure tours, but it was sold to Life and Light Foundation in 2008.

I might add that Bill Hoesch, listed in the L.A. Times article above, is still active in YEC with articles on Ken Ham’s AIG website and other sites. In addition to receiving a Master’s Degree in 1987, Walter R. Barnhart has an article in Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal, CRSQJ, published in 2004! From the best of my research, if this is the same Walter R. Barnhart, it has to have been written and submitted from prison because, as far as I can tell from the California Registered Sex Offenders Profile Display, it says Walter Barnhart’s last release was 2012, and his only convictions were the 1997 ones listed above.

In an attempt to verify if the author of this CRSQJ is the same convicted and imprisoned Walter R. Barnhart, I sent an e-mail to the CRSQJ. This was their response:

From: Creation Research [mailto:crsvarc@crsvarc.com] Sent: Monday, February 27, 2017 2:37 PM
To: Chalmers, Jeffrey
Cc: ‘Dee Parsons’
Subject: RE: To whom it may concern.

Thank you for your inquiry. However, the Creation Research Society Quarterly does not investigate or maintain a personal background record of authors. Therefore, we can neither confirm nor deny the personal background of Mr. Barnhart. The dinosaur nesting article that you mentioned was submitted, reviewed, and eventually published. As with any science journal, the specific personal history of an author is not required for publication.

I apologize that I am unable to provide any further help to you on this matter.

Summary and questions

I wish I could obtain more details and verification, but given the large number of years that have passed and the fact that I currently live, effectively, on the other side of the country from where these events occurred, it might not be possible. However, the following summary and questions/challenges are still relevant.

1. Child sexual abuse by Christian leaders/teachers is not new! Walter R. Barnhart pleaded guilty to seven counts of child molestation. Based on the name, age, and my identifying him in a photo, it is my 7th-grade teacher at an IFB school. Further, I believe that he was attempting to cultivate me for such abuse in the 1972-74 time period.
2. My IFB school never thoroughly investigated Walter R. Barnhart since they never asked me if he did anything improper, and had they asked, I think I would have told them he took me hiking alone (there was always this odd, now the word is “creepy” aspect to it). Who knows if it would have gone further had he not been removed? Given over 40 years have passed, we will probably never know what really happened concerning his removal, and it is possible the school did the most it could at the time.
3. A person named Walter R. Barnhart, according to The Los Angeles Times, attended, and I have independent proof later received, an M.S. from the Institute of Creation Research. While I cannot conclusively prove that it is the same person as my teacher, the name, age, location, profession, and YEC interest correlate very strongly. What is most upsetting is that the L.A. Times article says he taught at a Christian School in El Cajon and  Chula Vista. Those are NOT  the Christian schools I attended, and he taught there between being removed from my school and pleading guilty to child molestation in 1997. Did he molest students at Christian Schools in El Cajon and  Chula Vista? Given the average number of victims by a child molester before being caught, statistics imply yes. Further, with an M.S. from the Institute of Creation Research, why was he not teaching when caught? Was he removed again without a criminal investigation?
4. A person named Walter R. Barnhart published an article in the Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal in 2004 on YECism, which has been challenged by individuals attempting to refute YEC. While I believe that scientific arguments should have no connection to the morals and world view of the holder (the validity needs to stand or fall on the science), many of us have been subjected to personal attacks on our faith and our moral character, by YECist when debating the scientific merits of YECism (I can provide many examples not just by me, but in print.) I find it ironic, at a minimum, that a strong advocate of YEC wrote an article while in prison for child molestation!
5. I challenge all of us to be on guard for molesters in our midst!!!
6. I am still personally processing all of this, but I have to admit that it further undermines my respect for religious leaders. Further, there is significant irony in my school’s “hypermorality.” For example, you could get kicked out for holding hands with your sweetheart on school grounds, yet we could have child molesters as teachers!
7. Most important, my heart goes out to Walter R. Barnhart’s victims… I have read the 17 charges, and they are not pretty…