Kent Hovind, a former high school science teacher turned creation science evangelist, said that evolution is the "dumbest and most dangerous theory on planet Earth" at a program in the Union on Dec. 6.
Posted on 12/17/2005 3:58:48 AM PST by PatrickHenry
A former high school science teacher turned creation science evangelist told an audience at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee last Tuesday that evolution is the “dumbest and most dangerous theory on planet Earth.”
Kent Hovind, founder of Creation Science Evangelism, presented “Creation or Evolution … Which Has More Merit?” to a standing-room only audience in the Union Ballroom on Dec. 6. The event was sponsored by the Apologetics Association, the organization that brought Baptist minister Tim Wilkins to UWM to speak about homosexuality in October.
Members of the Apologetics Association (AA) contacted biology, chemistry and geology professors at UWM and throughout the UW System, inviting them to debate Hovind for an honorarium of $200 to be provided to the individual or group of individuals who agreed.
Before the event began, the “No-Debater List,” which was comprised of slides listing the names of UWM science professors who declined the invitation, was projected behind the stage.
Dustin Wales, AA president, said it was his “biggest disappointment” that no professor agreed to debate Hovind.
“No professor wanted to defend his side,” he said. “I mean, we had seats reserved for their people … ’cause I know one objection could have been ‘Oh, it’s just a bunch of Christians.’ So we had seats reserved for them to bring people to make sure that it’s somewhat more equal, not just all against one. And still nobody would do it.”
Biology professor Andrew Petto said: “It is a pernicious lie that the Apologetics (Association) is spreading that no one responded to the challenge. Many of us (professors) did respond to the challenge; what we responded was, ‘No, thank you.’ ”
Petto, who has attended three of Hovind’s “performances,” said that because Hovind presents “misinterpretations, half truths and outright lies,” professors at UWM decided not to accept his invitation to a debate.
“In a nutshell, debates like this do not settle issues of scientific understanding,” he said. “Hovind and his arguments are not even in the same galaxy as legitimate scientific discourse. This is why the faculty here has universally decided not to engage Hovind. The result would be to give the appearance of a controversy where none exists.”
He added, “The faculty on campus is under no obligation to waste its time supporting Hovind’s little charade.”
Hovind, however, is used to being turned down. Near the end of his speech, he said, “Over 3,000 professors have refused to debate me. Why? Because I’m not afraid of them.”
Hovind began his multimedia presentation by asserting that evolution is the “dumbest and most dangerous” theory used in the scientific community, but that he is not opposed to science.
“Our ministry is not against science, but against using lies to prove things,” he said. He followed this statement by citing biblical references to lies, which were projected onto screens behind him.
Hovind said: “I am not trying to get evolution out of schools or to get creation in. We are trying to get lies out of textbooks.” He added that if removing “lies” from textbooks leaves no evidence for evolutionists’ theory, then they should “get a new theory.”
He cited numerous state statutes that require that textbooks be accurate and up-to-date, but said these laws are clearly not enforced because the textbooks are filled with lies and are being taught to students.
Petto said it is inevitable that textbooks will contain some errors.
“Sometimes, this is an oversight. Sometimes it is the result of the editorial and revision process. Sometimes it is the result of trying to portray a rich and complex idea in a very few words,” he said.
The first “lie” Hovind presented concerned the formation of the Grand Canyon. He said that two people can look at the canyon. The person who believes in evolution would say, “Wow, look what the Colorado River did for millions and millions of years.” The “Bible-believing Christian” would say, “Wow, look what the flood did in about 30 minutes.”
To elaborate, Hovind discussed the geologic column — the chronologic arrangement of rock from oldest to youngest in which boundaries between different eras are marked by a change in the fossil record. He explained that it does not take millions of years to form layers of sedimentary rock.
“You can get a jar of mud out of your yard, put some water in it, shake it up, set it down, and it will settle out into layers for you,” he said. Hovind used this concept of hydrologic sorting to argue that the biblical flood is what was responsible for the formation of the Grand Canyon’s layers of sedimentary rock.
Hovind also criticized the concept of “micro-evolution,” or evolution on a small, species-level scale. He said that micro-evolution is, in fact, scientific, observable and testable. But, he said, it is also scriptural, as the Bible says, “They bring forth after his kind.”
Therefore, according to the Bible and micro-evolution, dogs produce a variety of dogs and they all have a common ancestor — a dog.
Hovind said, however, Charles Darwin made a “giant leap of faith and logic” from observing micro-evolution into believing in macro-evolution, or evolution above the species level. Hovind said that according to macro-evolution, birds and bananas are related if one goes back far enough in time, and “the ancestor ultimately was a rock.”
He concluded his speech by encouraging students to personally remove the lies from their textbooks and parents to lobby their school board for accurate textbooks.
“Tear that page out of your book,” he said. “Would you leave that in there just to lie to the kids?”
Petto said Hovind believes the information in textbooks to be “lies” because his determination is grounded in faith, not science.
“Make no mistake, this is not a determination made on the scientific evidence, but one in which he has decided on the basis of faith alone that the Bible is correct, and if the Bible is correct, then science must be wrong,” he said.
Petto said Hovind misinterprets scientific information and then argues against his misinterpretation.
“That is, of course, known as the ‘straw man’ argument — great debating strategy, but nothing to do with what scientists actually say or do,” he said. “The bottom line here is that the science is irrelevant to his conclusions.”
Another criticism of Hovind’s presentation is his citation of pre-college textbooks. Following the event, an audience member said, “I don’t think using examples of grade school and high school biology can stand up to evolution.”
Petto called this an “interesting and effective rhetorical strategy” and explained that Hovind is not arguing against science, but the “textbook version” of science.
“The texts are not presenting the research results of the scientific community per se, but digesting and paraphrasing it in a way to make it more effective in learning science,” he said. “So, what (Hovind) is complaining about is not what science says, but what the textbooks say that science says.”
Petto said this abbreviated version of scientific research is due, in part, to the editorial and production processes, which impose specific limits on what is included.
He added that grade school and high school textbooks tend to contain very general information about evolution and pressure from anti-evolutionists has weakened evolutionary discussion in textbooks.
“Lower-level texts … tend to be more general in their discussions of evolution and speak more vaguely of ‘change over time’ and adaptation and so on,” he said. “Due to pressure by anti-evolutionists, textbook publishers tend to shy away from being ‘too evolutionary’ in their texts … The more pressure there is on schools and publishers, the weaker the evolution gets, and the weaker it gets, the more likely that it will not do a good job of representing the current consensus among biologists.”
Hovind has a “standing offer” of $250,000 for “anyone who can give any empirical evidence (scientific proof) for evolution.” According to Hovind’s Web site, the offer “demonstrates that the hypothesis of evolution is nothing more than a religious belief.”
The Web site, www.drdino.com, says, “Persons wishing to collect the $250,000 may submit their evidence in writing or schedule time for a public presentation. A committee of trained scientists will provide peer review of the evidence offered and, to the best of their ability, will be fair and honest in their evaluation and judgment as to the validity of the evidence presented.”
Wales said the AA’s goal in bringing Hovind to UWM was “to crack the issue on campus” and bring attention to the fallibility of evolution.
“The ultimate goal was to say that, ‘Gosh, evolution isn’t as concrete as you say it is, and why do you get to teach everyone this non-concrete thing and then not defend it when someone comes and says your wrong?’ ” he said. “It’s just absurd.”
This is looking mightily like the creationist argumentum ad You-can't-make-me-see-um. In the post to which you respond, I linked an example of a post which utterly eviscerated Hovind on the content of his lectures. That would tend to falsify any pretense that nobody is addressing Hovind's points.
I'm going to leave you to sort things out from here as an exercise for your mental development.
Ah. I didn't realize this previously, but some species of dogs have different chromosome numbers! And there are homologies in their chromosomes to other carnivores (e.g. cats) although the canids do appear to be monophyletic.
The pattern of phylogenomic evolution of the Canidae [Abstract]
Canidae species fall into two categories with respect to their chromosome composition: those with high numbered largely acrocentric karyotypes and others with a low numbered principally metacentric karyotype. Those species with low numbered metacentric karyotypes are derived from multiple independent fusions of chromosome segments found as acrocentric chromosomes in the high numbered species. Extensive chromosome homology is apparent among acrocentric chromosome arms within Canidae species; however, little chromosome arm homology exists between Canidae species and those from other Carnivore families. [...] In addition, painting probes from domestic cat (Felis catus), representative of the ancestral carnivore karyotype (ACK), and giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) were used to define primitive homologous segments apparent between canids and other carnivore families. Canid chromosomes seem unique among carnivores in that many canid chromosome arms are mosaics of two to four homology segments of the ACK chromosome arms. The mosaic pattern apparently preceded the divergence of modern canid species since conserved homology segments among different canid species are common, even though those segments are rearranged relative to the ancestral carnivore genome arrangement. The results indicate an ancestral episode of extensive centric fission leading to an ancestral canid genome organization that was subsequently reorganized by multiple chromosome fusion events in some but not all Canidae lineages.
ROFL!!! We'll add nuclear physics to long list of fields you're greatly ignorant about.
LOL!! That's been my whole argument against parading evolution as fact...
You miss my point. The point is that *you* rely on your *belief* about what evidence exists, *we* rely on what evidence *actually* exists.
Gee Wiz am I in a twightlight zone or parallel universe?
Yes, that seems likely. You're definitely in a world of your own.
Even your creationist friends at AiG disagree with you.
The mudflows choked the river and damned it up until the water backed up overflowed the mudflow and cut through it.
No, the mud dam piled up until it gave way, and the FLOWING MUD washed out over the pre-existing pyroclastic deposits and cut into them. Look at photos of the actual "canyon" walls sometime, you can clearly see that they're tuff (hardened ash), not mud.
That is what I am referencing. If I'm comparing one river system with another, comparing "gullies in ashe" with a dammed river is not a proper comparison.
Indeed -- my point exactly. Thanks for agreeing that your comparison is invalid.
Given that the river enters the canyon well below the top line of the carved sediment, that would be a miracle in and of itself;
So you're grossly ignorant of geologic uplift too, I see.
Your bluster and frantic accusations only makes quite clear that you have, yet again, failed to support your own claim. Clearly you can't. Typical of you.
Festival of the Tractionless Trolls Memorial Placemarker
We'll go from there.
Keep it one paragraph.
If you have an open mind you'll learn something.
Do you have an actual response to Ichneumon's argument?
Horse manure. You never responded to post #809 of that thread. Period. And while you did "respond" to the original post #142 where I pointed out your lie concerning the dating of two different parts of the same animal, YOU FAILED TO ADDRESS THAT POINT IN ANY WAY IN YOUR "RESPONSE". Your lie on that matter is *still* unresponded by you, and you *still* made that lie again after it had been shown to you that it *was* a lie.
The topic was dating something using "ice rings". The examples grabbed for were used as commonly referenced errors in dating. Any number exist so it's not as though my entire opinion on the matter is lost on either or both of the examples. There are plenty to go around as any honest person would admit. The examples merely highlight the point - that all the dates are arived at by assumption - not by technical know how. The assumption is the weakest link. And the assumption is usually that there is a constant involved - be it 14C accumulation, or radioactive decay rate, etc. With "ice rings" the matter of assumption is the time period represented by the layers of ice. The specific point being that in absence of accumulation data there is absolutely no possible way to KNOW what the layers represent. And the opposition did their level best to cloud that point. They don't want it made. As for lying, well, I'll leave that to you.
Blah, blah, blah. SON, CAN'T YOU EVEN READ AT A GRADESCHOOL LEVEL? No, the topic *wasn't* "ice layers", the topic -- which *you* introduced -- was your claim that two different pieces of "the same creature" had been dated at thousands of years apart.
As I documented and explained in detail -- to a degree that no one who isn't braindamaged could possibly have mistaken it for a discussion of "ice layers" -- was the fact that your source, Kent Hovind, lied when he said that two different parts of the same animal had been dated to thousands of years apart. THIS WAS A LIE. The source that Hovind himself "cites" in "support" of this lie QUITE CLEARLY SAYS THAT THE TWO SAMPLES WERE FROM DIFFERENT ANIMALS, COLLECTED AT DIFFERENT SITES. Period. It doesn't get any simpler than that. You repeated Hovind's lie, then after the lie was explained to you, you blew off the documentation of that lie and then turned around and LIED AGAIN about it shortly thereafter.
Hovind was caught lying, and you were caught lying *twice*.
Even *now* you can't face up to it, you just bluster and irrelevantly blather about "ice layers", which has nothing to do with the lie you were caught making.
Sheesh, what exactly is wrong with your brain?
Didn't have any takers on this, but just to report back... Five of the seven are dogs, two aren't.
NOT A DOG! It's a hyena. 
Doesn't really look like a dog, does it? But it is. It's Nyctereutes the Racoon Dog of Asia, a member of the Canid family. 
Atelocynus, the Small-Eared Dog (or "Zorro") of South America is also a dog, despite it's stocky build and weasel-like face. 
NOT A DOG! Ichneumia is a member of Herpestidae, that is a type of mongoose. 
DOG. Lycaon pictus, the African Wild Dog. 
DOG (believe it or not). Speothos is the very unusual Bush Dog of South America. 
DOG. Otocyon, the Bat-Eared Fox of Africa."Do you have an actual response to Ichneumon's argument?"
Is Ichneumon's argument one used to destroy the faith of young science students in the veracity of the Word of God? Does it recognize and honor the Creator of the universe?
Do you believe that there were "raindrop imprints" placed in sand in a laminar lay in the Grand Canyon before there was rain?
Was that the one where he insisted on spitting into the wind and tugging on Superman's cape, even though we warned him you don't mess around with Jim?
Prime coming up.
1600?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.