Whack A Hovind

 Lately I've been watching videos on "Dr. Dino" Kent Hovind, including his "Whack and Atheist Wednesday" videos. Kent Hovind is a Fundamentalist, Bible-believing creationist who believes the earth was created in 6000 years and that dinosuars lived with men. He believes Noah's flood, which version I'm not sure of, literally happened. He also believes evolution is the "dumbest and most dangerous" thing taught today and that it is a religion and not science. He has debated over 250 evolutionists and from what I have gathered he uses the same lines over and over again when debating them, ignoring their clear explanations and continuing with his polished script that keeps him on track. The goal of this post is to go through that script and show how Kent Hovind lies about evolution and how wrong his arguments are, despite his claim that he can't find one atheist with more than one functioning brain cell and that atheists won't be clear and honest on their position.

1) Hovind creates made-up terms so he can group abiogenesis (origin of life) and physical cosmology (origin of the universe) with evolution to create a strawman argument to more easily attack evolution. He calls abiogenesis chemical evolution and physical cosmology cosmic evolution. Throwing the word evolution in these made-up scientific terms allows him to group all three together when evolution means something completely different in all three scenarios, one discussing how the universe started as well as how planets and stars formed, another discussing how the first forms of life appeared through chemical processes, and the third discussing how speciation occurs through natural selection. While debaters are wanting to debate on how evolution is an adequate explanation for how new species form Hovind is attacking abiogenesis and physical cosmology, completely different subjects, and then refuses to discuss the Bible because that is "off topic". He says he did this because evolution is a "slippery term" and it needs to be more rigidly defined, despite the fact that it is simply discussing how speciation occurs through natural selection. Instead he made it a slippery term by making evolution refer to three completely different subjects.

2) He says evolutionists believe we came from a rock. There are a few different problems with this scenario. At times Hovind says the puddle that "sprang to life" was composed of minerals from dissolved rocks, at other times he says that the puddle was the result of rain coming down on the rocks for millions of years and then the puddle comes to life.  Going by the second explanation even "if" a puddle "came to life" on a rock that doesn't mean it came from a rock. If my mother and father had sex on a bed that doesn't mean I came from a bed. Another problem with this argument is that it again has absolutely nothing do with evolution but rather he is attacking abiogenesis. Even if evolutionists believe we "came from a rock" that has zero bearing on whether or not evolutionary theory is an adequate explanation for how speciation occurs. Really this point is just going deeper on his strawman argument from point one.

3) He says the geological column does not exist and that bones in the ground (fossils) can only tell you that something died. No, Kent, a fossil in the ground tells you that a species was alive at a certain point in time based on the age of the strata it was found in. That animal had to be a member of a species after all. It may not tell you it had offspring, as Kent claims a fossil cannot do, but it does tell you that it had to have parents, and those parents had to have parents, etc., and no a fossil won't tell you that it gave birth to something completely different than it because that isn't how evolution works, which leads into the next point. As far as the geological column not existing, well, I will leave that to common sense since it would involve getting into lots more fine detail about how the layers are formed and dated and I don't want to make this blog post so long no one wants to read all of it, but judge for yourself; Kent Hovind who has been using these false arguments already or thousands of professional paleontologists?

4) He uses the same worn argument that you never see dogs produce anything but dogs or humans anything but humans ad nauseum, and completely ignores explanations that this is not how evolution works. A species always gives birth to the same species and this does not contradict evolution through natural selection at all. Small minor variations or changes occur in individuals in a population that are advantageous for their survival. As a result these changes spread through the population until the entire population has the minor variation or change. This process happens over and over for millions of years and the changes gradually accumulate every generation until the descendant species is so different from the ancestral species that they would no longer be able to interbreed. This is when speciation occurs. Hovind is actually ironically agreeing with evolutionary biologists when he makes this worn out argument, no one has ever seen dogs produce anything but dogs. He just pretends it is debunking evolution when he is only attacking his own warped version of it. He also ridicules the idea that this process takes millions of years, as if making fun of it somehow makes it any less true.

4) Hovind uses a misrepresentation of punctuated equilibrium to claim that evolutionary biologists believe one "kind" of animal will give birth to a completely different "Kind". In a video I watched Hovind began by describing punctuated equilibrium as evolution happening very fast, which is a surprisingly accurate and honest description of punctuated equilibrium, but then proceeded to show a picture of a bird hatching from a reptilian egg. Punctuated equilibrium is NOT a different version of evolution, is still the process of evolution as described in point 4, it's just evolution happening at a faster pace, meaning the changes are spreading more rapidly through the populations and creating new species at a faster rate, and then this is followed by long periods of statis in which very few if any changes occur in the population of a species.

5) Hovind claims evolution is a religion. I don't really have to get into very much detail about why this is stupid, other than the fact that evolution is a scientific theory that is observed and discussed and experimented on professionally versus a relgion where adherents gather together in groups and worship a higher power or have some sort of creeds and doctrines that they believe and follow without the using the scientific method to test or falsify them, typically from a book like the Bible or the Quaran. This is just a weak attempt of Hovind's to discredit evolutionary theory by making up something completely untrue and then talking as if it is.

6) Kent Hovind uses faulty reasoning to discredit homology as evidence for evolution. The thinking behind homology is that if two species evolved from a common ancestor relatively recent you should expect to find the same or similar bone structures adapted for different purposes in each species, since they inherited this bone structure from their common ancestor. This is indeed the case, as birds, humans, whales, and dogs for example all have the same forearm structure with the same five digits (some of them are fused together in birds admittedly) at the end of it. The five digits are fingers for humans to grasp things, toes for dogs to walk, bone structure for whale flippers for swimming, and are a part of the wing structure for birds to fly. Hovind says common sense says common design proves a common designer. If there is a common designer however there is no adquate explanation for why the common designer would give the same forearm humans have for grasping things and birds use for flying to whales who live in the ocean, instead of giving whales the same skeletal structure as the fish that live in the ocean. There is also no adequate explanation for why birds would have the same forearm as humans since their limbs have a completely different purpose than human limbs do. The theory of evolution has adequate explanatory power for why this is while the argument of a common designer simply begs unanswerable questions, but Kent would never admit to this because it would put a hole in his narcissistic ego.

If I were to debate Kent Hovind these would be my terms for the debate: 1) We are discussing evolution not abiogensis or physical cosmology. The debate is whether or not evolutionary theory is an adequate explanation for how new species form. Any attempt to discuss the origin of the universe or the origin of life will be off topic. 2) Kent MUST answer my questions before we move onto another topic. Any attempt to change the topic will be cause for disqualification. 3) When I bring up a rebuttal point Kent MUST give a rebuttal to my point with no exceptions. Once we have both done our rebuttals we will move onto the next point and stay on topic.

It is my conclusion after watching debates between Hovind and listening to several of his "whack an atheist" vidoes that he is not misinformed nor willfully ignorant, he is a conman and a liar. He did go to prison for ten years for tax evasion and was arrestd for domestic abuse. I believe however that even moreso than the money he is feeding his narcissistic ego. He has his own "Dinosaur Adventure Land" park where his volunteers practically worship him and watch and cheer him on as he spouts lies about evolution during his "whack an atheist" videos, and you can see the smug look on his face before he even watches these videos as he's about to feed his ego and make his audience worship him even more. He has his minion volunteers that live at DAL and worship him. His entire ministry for the past 30+ years has clearly been built around feeding his narcissistic ego and nothing will get in his way, including the truth.