Creationism

This is the eighth in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I’ll add Walter Brown’s Center for Scientific Creation to the list. ...

This is the seventh in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I’ll add Walter Brown’s Center for Scientific Creation to the list. ...

This is the sixth in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I’ll add Walter Brown’s Center for Scientific Creation to the list. ...

This is the fifth in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I’ll add Walter Brown’s Center for Scientific Creation to the list. ...

This is the fourth in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I’ll add Walter Brown’s Center for Scientific Creation to the list. ...

This is the third in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I’ll add Walter Brown’s Center for Scientific Creation to the list. ...

After looking at Answers in Genesis of Kentucky’s financial results for 2005, several people have asked whether their decline is unique. (Though, due to my error in reading their 2005 Form 990, we now know that they have not seen a decline.) What I’ve decided to do in order to answer that question is to make a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, and the Discovery Institute. For good measure, I’ll throw in Walter Brown’s Center for Scientific Creation. I’ll then sum up in a final post. I’ve already posted about Answers in Genesis, and I’ll begin with the Institute for Creation Research since I’ve already got the numbers handy. ...

A link on the front page of the Creation Ministries International website under the heading “Affiliated sites” says “Alien Intrusion.” If you click on it, you are taken to alienintrusion.com, a site promoting a book by Gary Bates titled Alien Intrusion: UFOs and the Evolution Connection. The material on the website is extremely uninformative about what arguments and positions Bates takes in the book. A “Q&A” with Gary Bates begs off on supplying any answers on the grounds that “a one-line answer will not be satisfying because lots of people have already made their minds up without really looking at the evidence,” but the promise is made that “The truth is most certainly out there, and it is revealed in my book, but it is probably not what most people think.” I translate this as “I’m not going to reveal my position, so that I can get as many UFO believers as possible to buy this book thinking that it will confirm their views." The reviewers on Amazon.com are more forthcoming–apparently the book is about 75% debunking of the sort that would please skeptics like Philip Klass, Robert Sheaffer, or James Oberg, while the remaining 25% advocates a view that would be more pleasing to Norman Geisler–that UFO phenomena are a product of Satan and demonic influence. In short, Gary Bates seems to be following the path of Clifford Wilson, a Christian (and young-earth creationist) who wrote an excellent debunking of Erich von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods? titled Crash Go the Chariots, which was flawed by its inclusion of religious advocacy. Wilson also did his credibility no good by associating with the most inept of creationists, Rev. Carl Baugh, with whom he participated in running some diploma mills. If this is the direction that CMI intends to branch out in order to grow its ministries, I’m skeptical of their long-term success. UFOlogy has been in decline for decades, with UFO magazines and conferences falling on hard times, as can be seen in Jim Moseley’s Saucer Smear newsletter, an amusing gossip rag of the UFO field read by and contributed to by both believers and skeptics.

UPDATE (December 30, 2006): Please note that the 2005 Form 990 filing only covers January-June 2005 (as AiG changed to a July-June fiscal year in 2005), so the heading on this post is inaccurate. I’ve made an embarrassing mistake by failing to notice those dates on the very top of the first page of the Form 990, and I take responsibility for it. I apologize for the error. If you multiply each of the 2005 figures by two, you will get an approximation to the full-year numbers. While this still yields a decline in revenue from seminars, it shows an increase in overall revenue and donations–and an increase in many salaries, as well. I’ve just been reviewing the 2005 Form 990 filing from Answers in Genesis of Kentucky, the first one filed since its split from Creation Ministries International in October 2005. (I’ve previously commented on their 2003 and 2004 Form 990’s.) They have seen a huge drop in revenue, which appears to be largely due to a drop in overall donations from the public and decreased attendance at their seminars. They’ve been spending a lot of money on their creationism museum, and it looks like they are counting on it to be a growing, if not the primary, source of their future revenue. In response to this revenue decline, the senior staff have all taken significant cuts in pay. This drop in revenue is likely not attributable to the CMI split, since that didn’t become public knowledge until the end of February 2006. On to the details… In 2004, Answers in Genesis of Kentucky (AiG-US) saw $10,423,222 in revenue. In 2005, their revenue dropped to $5,429,923–a nearly 50% decline. The specific revenue numbers show that donations dropped from $7,754,247 in 2004 to $3,978,239 in 2005, program service revenue (from seminars and “charter memberships” in their creationism museum) dropped from $629,644 in 2003 to $270,350 in 2004, and gross profits from sales of inventory (sales minus cost of goods sold) dropped from $2,025,619 in 2004 to $1,124,438. This suggests a decline in interest in what Answers in Genesis is selling. The only positive changes in their revenue picture were in sales of non-inventory assets (including securities), where they went from a $12,683 loss in 2004 to an $822 gain in 2005, and in “other revenue,” where they went from $12,683 in 2004 to $13,798 in 2005. To get more specific, AiG-US saw $414,265 in event registrations, $116,403 in “royalties and other revenue,” and $98,976 in museum memberships in 2004, and $122,317 in “seminars” (apparently the same as event registrations) and $148,033 in “charter memberships” in 2005, so they have seen an increase in museum membership revenue. In 2005 “royalties” were listed as a separate income item, producing $39,119 in revenue, but it’s not clear if that’s an increase or a decline without knowing what “other revenue” contributed to the 2004 figure. This is a reversal from years of growth–revenue from donations in earlier years was $5,189,344 in 2001, $6,066,719 in 2002, $7,240,646 in 2003, and $7,698,294 in 2004 (this is the number reported in the 2005 Form 990; it is $55,953 lower than the above number from the 2004 Form 990). On the spending side of the ledger, total functional expenses went from $8,320,926 in 2004 to $5,038,225 in 2005. They have, wisely, considerably cut their salary expenses, from $926,837 for officers and directors and $2,852,301 for other salaries in 2004 to $369,068 for officers and directors and $1,918,300 for other salaries in 2005. Ken Ham’s salary went from $121,764 in 2004 to $60,000 in 2005; CFO James Hatton’s salary went from $81,000 to $42,500; General Counsel John Pence’s salary went from $93,115 to $46,500; VP of Museum Operations Mike Zovath’s salary went from $90,201 to $42,500; VP of Administration Kathy Ellis’s salary went from $86,068 to $39,500; VP of Marketing and Media Dale Mason’s salary went from $115,621 to $55,000; VP of Events Outreach Mark Looy’s salary went from $85,615 to $42,500; and VP of Ministry Relations Carl Kerby’s salary went from $65,112 to $40,568. COO Brandon Vallorani left the organization in September 2004 in events apparently related to the AiG/CMI split (about which I’ll write more at a later time), so his 2004 salary of $90,344 did not reappear in 2005’s expenses. Despite this substantial decline in revenue, AiG-US still had an increase in net assets. It wasn’t anything close to the $2,102,296 surplus they saw in 2004, but they still took in $391,698 more than they spent, bringing them to $11,673,847 in net assets (assets minus liabilities). They ended 2005 with $17,656,767 in assets (of which $14,311,948 is buildings and land) and $5,982,920 in liabilities. They have a cushion of $1,664,682 in cash and $2,602 in savings at the end of 2005, versus the $2,502,777 in cash and $10,104 in savings at the beginning of the year. Their inventories for sale have increased from $1,165,982 to $1,223,151, so it doesn’t look like they’re accumulating a huge backlog of unsold items. Their building is funded by a $3,500,000 mortgage from Fifth Third Bank, payable in three annual payments in 2005, 2006, and 2007; they made the first payment in 2005 and had a balance of $2,360,000 at the end of the year. One person associated with AiG-US who seems to have done better in 2005 than in 2004 is board member and audit review committee member Tim Dudley. In statement 11 in the 2005 Form 990, it’s reported that AiG-US purchased $485,565 in books and literature from New Leaf Publishing, the president of which is Tim Dudley. You can find AiG-US’s 2003 Form 990 here, their 2004 Form 990 here, and their 2005 Form 990 here. Anyone who finds anything else interesting in these, I welcome your comments. They still make a whole lot more money than the National Center for Science Education, to which I urge readers to make a financial contribution. ...

Ed Brayton’s detailed dissection of the Sternberg affair (see Ed’s post here and Steve Reuland’s here) has been responded to by Krauze at the Telic Thoughts intelligent design blog, including a response by Richard Sternberg. Ed Brayton responds quite ably.