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.”
Evolution is built upon a supposition - that creation exists by natural causes. Once the supposition is begun, evos look to nature to prove it.
This is circular reasoning----get the drift?
A little revisionist history, eh? Man, your memory must suck, because I posted this article to you just this morning, about ten hours ago:
"Since 1997, Hovind has engaged in financial transactions indicating sources of income and has made deposits to bank accounts well in excess of $1 million per year during some of these years, which would require the filing of federal income taxes," Schneider said.
Or, as the church of Peter calls them, heretics, specifically ones who seem to worship a book above their god.
He doesn't have "rides" in the back yard dude, unless you count the tire swing.
The IRS complained that SINCE 1997 his ministry, which includes voluntary offerings taken at churches, sales from the books and other materials he writes and produces and income from his Dino Land have earned $1 million. That's in 8 years time. And of course there is no mention of the funds spent paying Staff, and plowed back into the ministry.
Why would you lie about the guy so bad????
Seems like if any of you people had a clue you could attack the message instead of writing fiction and libel about the messenger.
And if you want to reach him, check his schedule and see when he will be in your town. Or call him.
You just demeaned one of my favorite anatomical features :-)
Thirty minutes, perhaps. It could have taken several hours. The waters from the deep (Genesis chs. 6 and 7) completely deluged the earth in 40 days.
Anyone who knows anything at all about the geology of the Grand Canyon can recognize this as complete lunacy.
Son, there are tens of thousands of laminar layers in the Grand Canyon. Countless of these layers have animal tracks, fossilized raindrop impressions, animal burrows, etc. in them. There's no freaking way that any of these things could be laid down UNDERWATER. Period.
And that's even leaving aside the hundreds of features of the Grand Canyon which were very clearly formed in the way that geologists say it was -- over a millions of years by a river eroding pre-existing strata, which themselves were laid down in separate eras under non-flood conditions. The evidence is vast and overwhelming for anyone who cares to actually check it out, which of course leaves out the creationists.
Here, for example, is a good example of the kind of "doesn't make any bloody sense to anyone with a working brain" stuff the creationists claim about the Grand Canyon, along with my observations on why it's entirely idiotic: My critique of AnswersInGenesis's Grand Canyon blather.
Creationist fantasies about the Grand Canyon being formed in a matter of days under a huge flood are just complete lunacy, and no one with a decent knowledge of the facts and a knowledge of geology beyond the gradeschool level could possibly fall for such twaddle. Deal with it.
Something taking place in a 30 to 180 minute time span within 10,000 years ago...God. Not difficult to comprehend.
Yes, very simple indeed to comprehend. Simple things for simple minds. Unfortunately, it flies entirely in the face of almost every known fact about the Grand Canyon and the laws of physics.
Something happening in a 10 million year period, billions and billions of years ago...Darwinian evolutionist. Wild guesses.
No, those are the conclusions based on vast and overwhelming amounts of independently cross-confirming lines of evidence, amassed by over a century of research by thousands of people. Those conclusions have faced and passed countless validation tests and potential falsification tests. They are as well-established and validated as any conclusion in modern science. Against that reality, the creationists have their wild imaginations, untested against reality (and in strict contradiction to the facts).
But hey, don't let reality stand in the way of what you *want* to believe, if that makes you happy.
Give it up, man; write a telling expose' of how teachers are forced to teach Darwinian TOE. You could sell a million copies to the nation's Cleti and retire to the beach. Leave FR and the world behind - or use the proceeds to further scientific research and parlay your stake into the next great fortune.
It's pretty clear he wants to treat the proposed debate as a political game rather than a way of advancing knowledge.
You bet...we lurkers are out here, reading everything...
Thanks for Sylvester, hes a sweetie...
Evo theory has cornered the market so to speak on new ways of looking at life on earth. Further, the gaps, illogical leaps, outright lies in the field of evolution has undermined what real science - a science not cahined to secularism - could be doing.
Name an "outright lie" please. State how it has "undermined" real science. Also, please state how science would be improved by adhering to a religion, name that religion, and please state specifically why it is better than all the other religions insofar as science is concerned.
Evos have decided that undermining Christian origin beliefs is their primary mission. Very sad that science has deteriorated to this low point.
Please don't quit your day job. Your mind-reading act leaves much to be desired.
Do you mean contrary to all of the evidence science has dug up that you support the global flood story, and you actually think the Grand Canyon is evidence for a few hours' flood?
Whew! And you guys think evos are stretching things!
D@mn! Are we in the Smokey Back Room already? Can we speak our minds now?
Sorry, dude, but that's outright bullshit. See post 622.
Libel, huh? LOL. Let him sue me. We'll see how he sticks with it if I subpoena his financials.
But you are that stupid. Like any good little evo - you obfuscate what is really going on here...the total trashing of evolution as a washed out theory for explaining anything!
I've heard that, but it's just as plausable as any ape to man theory or or fish putting their shoes on and walking right out of the ocean.
It's funny what evolution fail to realize about the flood that is factual. Almost every culture on earth has a story about one! So the theory of a global flood MUST hold just as much water as any evolutionary theory. ;-)
Dude, you've been on this thread all day - take a break. When you wake up in the morning, think marketing 101: there is a ready audience of Cleti who are waiting for a breathless expose' of how the TOE is one big hoax. You could write that book and join Hovid at the beach, laughing all the way to the bank.
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