.Hello,

This is a look at one of Hovind's Truth Radio programs. I randomly chose December 10th 2003.
http://www.drdino.com/cse.asp?pg=truthradio#December

Hovind's site seemed to have trouble, so I only downloaded 41 minutes of the 50 minute show, but that will be good enough. Since I'm not used to looking at spoken works, we will see how this goes. The snippets might be kinda small, but thats just me not wanting to type as much. :) I'll try to give time stamps for the quotes, which are in blue from Hovind.

1)
"Anybody that believes they came from a rock, needs some real serious help" 2:17

Its good that evolutionists don't believe we came from rocks then. Although, creationists do believe that we were made from dirt, so maybe Hovind has a point there. ;)

abiogenesis, which is not part of the theory of evolution, does not say that life came from rocks, but from a "pool" of chemicals, that form the most basic building blocks of life.


2)
"I think there's basically three types of people, those that believe in creation, those that are not sure, and those that believe in evolution." 4:31
"see you don't just come to the creation side because then that involves a creator, which might involve some rules, like the thou shall nots, thats exactly what they are trying to avoid." 4:57

Here we have Hovind calling the majority of christians atheists that don't want rules. Not the very best thing to say.
This shows that Hovind is not truly debating evolution vs creationism but christianity vs atheism. He has falsely linked creationism with christianity and evolution with atheism. When in reality not all christians are creationists and evolution does not equal atheism.

It should be noted that although he uses "creation" it really should be "creationism." Creation is the belief that god created. Creationism is a How god created, just like evolution.


3)
"before the common Era"
"This is the subtle way they try to leave christ out" 7:29

In a way he is right, there are many non christians that don't quite like using christian references. It makes sense, how many christians would be comfortable saying "Before Mohammed?"

However there are some christian scholars who also have turned towards CE and BCE because evidence is mounting that Jesus most likely was not born on years 0, but in BC. So, the year 1 BC is not 1 year before christ. You would think that since Hovind is dedicated to "truth" that he would want to stay truthful and stop claiming jesus was born on 0 AD but before that.


4)
"Now carl I would change that, ever constructed up to that time. Ok, there have been quite a few wooden boats by the chinese apparently constructed much larger than Noah's ark, after that time." 8:05

This is a good example of why spoken presentations, such as spoken debates, aren't science oriented. Hovind has thrown this fact out without anything to back it up, which is much more fitting in a spoken atmosphere than one that is written.

The Ark was 450ft to 500ft long. So I searched around to see if his claims were true. I found that there was a chinese flagship that was supposed to be 400ft long. All I could find were writings about the ship and no actual pictures of it. The only other evidence I found was the find of a large rudder post, that if fit on a traditional ship would suggest a size of over 500 ft long, but no evidence that it was actually part of a traditional ship.

So, there is very little evidence that there were "quite a few wooden boats" that were "much larger" than Noah's ark, and none have been found.


5)
"Evolution is a useless theory, it really hasn't done anything to even help out science" 8:47

This is not true.
Evolution is the bases of modern biology and has aided in the creation of drugs (the good kinds). It has also been used by people like boeing to create parts of their airplanes. In the future we may see evolution used even more in the creation of products or in the fine tuning of those products.


6)
"they haven't found any evidence [for the theory of evolution]" 9:06

This is a false claim.
There really are only three possibilities here,
1) He does not understand what the theory of evolution is.
2) He has not looked for any evidence.
3) He does not want to find any evidence.

I would say a little bit of all three are correct especially number one. A quick search on www.pubmed.com reveals something much different than no evidence. Then there are sites like www.talkorigins.org that are also teaming with evidence, although some like to wave away talk origins by claiming its biased.


7)
"He [Carl] says, "I have offered kent hovind the opportunity... ... to reply hosted on this site. so far he has ignored the offer." well carl, let me explain why, I have other things to do, ok. I don't think you want an answer anyway, number 1, number 2, nobody cares what you think." 9:23

I thought this was telling. Hovind also uses the excuse that he can't type fast. Yet his webpage is full of text documents. Its a nice excuse but thats about it.

Hovind is right though, the audience he wants to get out too doesn't care what Carl says. Scientists on the other hand, do care a great deal about what Carl says, as trying to falsify a theory or a claim is very important in science.


8)
"The fact is, the word evolution does have 6 meanings, They want to limit this to biological evolution... ...If you don't have a theory that goes back to a beginning, you don't have a complete theory."22:31

Yep, the Word has 6 different uses (well, it actually has many more) but the theory of evolution, has a specific definition. This does not include the big bang, stellar evolution (just because it has the word evolution in it, does not mean its part of the theory), or abiogenesis. These are all separate theories and they stand or fall on their own. For example, lets say abiogenesis is wrong and god popped the first pieces of life onto the earth, this does not mean evolution is wrong.

Hovind has made a strawman by trying to string all these theories together and claim they are the theory of evolution. These different theories aren't even part of the same branch of science. The Theory of evolution is biology and when I took high school biology, I don't ever remember the section on the big bang, but maybe I was sleeping that day. :)

No one has ever said evolution is a "complete theory" that goes back to the beginning of the universe, again Hovind is making stuff up.

It also should be said that his claims that there is no evidence for the big bang, or abiogenesis are wrong. There is plenty of evidence for the big bang, and we are collecting new bits everyday. Abiogenesis is much weaker than all the rest, but is still pretty feasible.


9)
"They are teaching macro evolution, which says dogs and bananas have a common ancestor."24:05

Macro evolution says no such thing. Macro evolution is part of the process of how a dog and a banana can share a common ancestor. Evolution does say a long long time ago, Dogs and Bananas had a common ancestor, this would be the same ancestor that all animals have with plants.


10)
"we don't observe it [macro evolution] so its no longer science"26:12

Sure we do. Macro evolution is speciation and it has been observed to happen. Not to mention all the evidence that it happened in the past. Of course, I bet Hovind is really talking about his version of Macro Evolution, that says no "kind" can change into another "kind."

This is the "kind" game. Hovind later says that a 5 year old could group all the animals into their kinds, yet I have never seen a specific explanation by Hovind of what a kind really is. A specific explanation is important in science. This arbitrary definition of kind is great for creationists as it allows them to move it around so that they can't be wrong.

An example, lets say I have an animal that seems like its an in-between of Dogs and Cats. Without a definition of kind, Hovind can just say, "well its obviously a dog" and then go back to claiming that "there are no changes between kinds." So, without a definition of Kind (which again, he says a 5 year old could do) his version of Macro evolution means nothing.

In reality, any classification beyond species is a man made classification. And no one has ever been able to show the mechanism that would prevent a species from changing so much from the original, that it would become something completely different.

11)
"empirical evidence does not constitute scientific proof, because nothing in science is proven, only understood based upon known evidence." [said carl] I think what they have tried to do here, in the last 20 years, they have tried to redefine science, and really we cant know everything... ...thats retarded." 27:30

Hovind misunderstood what the site was explaining. In science we can not prove something 100%. We can get close, but never 100%. why? because we are not gods, and understand we don't have all knowledge.
Hovind's argument asks us to "Prove it", but since we don't have 100% knowledge, we cant "prove" it. We can and have gotten very close though.

The irony here is that they just attacked a christian argument against strong atheism. The argument basically is that no one has 100% knowledge, and thus no one can truthfully say "I know god does not exist." Hovind just said that it is possible for someone to know something 100%, and thus someone could be truthful when they "I know god does not exist" oops. :)

Final Thoughts
This was the first time listening to Hovind, and I have to say he came across very rude and childish. From releasing the name of Carl even after reading that Carl didn't want it released, to making fun of his grammar, and telling him that no one cares what he thinks, etc. It felt very childish, like I was reading posts on an internet forum, not like it was being spoken by a professional adult. beyond that, his arguments seemed standard Hovind, as I have read before.


-Ari

Last Update 3/10/04

©04 Ari

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