My Criticism of Dr. Hovind's Ideas on Creation and Evolution
I'd like to start out by saying that it is obvious Dr. Hovind is a very intelligent man. However, his essay is full of inaccuracies. Some of these inaccuracies even seem intentional, which leads me to call Dr. Hovind's ethics into question. My purpose here is to disprove Dr. Hovind's claims. I'm not about to prove or disprove either Creation or Evolution, although I think it is clear that I am on the side of Evolution.
Dr. Hovind does have some interesting theories, specifically his comet theory. It's too bad that it's buried inside all the Bible-quoting and attempts at disproving Evolution. I'm not here to comment on his own theories, though. I'm here to contest his claims against Evolution. So read on. It's quite long, I admit. It gets off to a slow start, only because Hovind gets off the a slow start. The juicy bits are in the middle. Then it slows down again at the end, following the pace of Hovind's essay.
My words are regular, Dr. Hovind's are in italics. No, I didn't cut and paste his entire work. This thing would be a mile long if I had. I tried to stick to the relevant ideas as best as possible. Dr. Hovind begins by stating that humans have a few basic questions in life. He starts out:
"Who am I? Well, if you believe in evolution, you are nothing important. You are just a bit of protoplasm that washed upon the beach a couple of million years ago. Where did I come from? If you are an evolutionist, you came from a cosmic burp about 20 million years ago. Where am I going when this life is over? Don't worry about it. You will just go back to star dust."
Apparently if certain ideas are displeasing, that is reason to suggest that they are of dubious nature. This is something that I've observed from a lot of Christians. Hovind continues:
The Bible's answer is considerably different. Genesis 1:1 says, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Now, if God created it, then He is the boss. He makes the rules. If God wants to say in His written word that women should dress modestly then he has the right to say that. If you go to the beach in Pensicola, Florida you will see that it is "bare season" all the time there. Just because there is a little sand and water around, it doesn't make it right to dress immodestly. The Bible says a lot of things, like, "Children, honor your father and mother." If the Bible is the word of God, then we are in a lot of trouble. God is the boss. He is the creator.
Dr. Hovind is preaching already. Some way to "prove" an argument, eh? What does Pensicola, Florida and it's inhabitants' dress have to do with Evolution?
People ask me all the time, "Dr. Hovind, do you think that there is intelligent life on other planets?" I tell them, "No, I taught high school for 15 years; I don't believe there is much intelligent life here on this planet." The Bible says that Eve is the mother of all living. The Devil sis a liar! He told Eve that she would be just like God.
Interesting annecdote, but what is that supposed to prove? There are trillions of other solar systems in the universe and it's more than likely that somewhere there exists the same conditions as here on earth. But apparently making a joke about high school students erases all doubt that life exists outside our solar system. Also, he needs to stop using the Bible as a proof, because the Bible offers only circular logic ("The Bible is true because it is God's word. God exists because it says so in the Bible"). And saying that "so and so is true because it says so in the Bible" means less than nothing to someone who doesn't practice Christianity, which it seems this essay is addressed to. At this point, I'm hoping I'm not going to see pages and pages more of this God/Devil/Bible stuff, but I fear that I shall.
It's been demonstrated in laboratory tests that the brain doesn't even start to grow until kids are between 18 to 20 years old.
Does Dr. Hovind quote sources or what? Or does he expect his readers to believe everything he says on faith. Well yeah, I guess he does! As far as my knowledge goes, your brain stops developing even before 18 years. It develops most rapidly between birth and the onset of puberty.
He goes on to talk about lying and the Devil telling you lies and all that junk. He quotes Hitler: "If you tell a lie long enough, loud enough, and often enough, the people will believe it." I'm getting the feeling that soon he is going to be comparing evolutionists to Hitler. Let's read on.
Folks, that is exactly what has happened in the teaching of evolution.
I knew it! Hmm.. now that I think about it, I'm beginning to think his Hitler quote applies quite readily to Christianity. ::shrug:: maybe it's just me.
The Merrill Science- First Grade Science Book, states: "Earth has changed, since its formation four and a half billion years ago." (Merrill Science- First Grade Science Book, 1989 Teacher's Edition, page 46.) Wait a minute. Is the earth four and one half billion years old? No, it is not, but if you tell kids in the first grade this, they're going to believe you.
It's not? Why? Because you say so, and we're supposed to take that again on faith?
If repeat that in the first, second, third, and fourth grade, and continue that lie for 18 or 20 years in a row, he's going to believe you. It's Adolph Hitler's technique.
It's also Christianity's technique. Correct me if I'm wrong.
We have millions of people that have accepted the theory of evolution as factual. This is because evolution has been mixed in with science throughout their educational processes. Now, science is wonderful! I taught science. I love science, but evolution has nothing to do with science!
Okay, I'll give Dr. Hovind some credit here. He's smart enough not to distance himself too far from science. Of course, his purpose is to disprove evolution (I'm still waiting for something- anything- that disproves evolution), so he might as well say science is as wonderful as an ice cream sunday with a cherry ontop. It's too bad that evolution is, in fact, part of science and always has been. It's a scientific theory.
Since the world is here, there are only two choices. Somebody made it, or it made itself.
Maybe it just always existed? Just a suggestion.
If you can think of another, one please let me know. However, these are the only two choices: Somebody made this place or this place made itself.
Hey hey! I thought of another one! Me, over here! But wait, "these are the only two choices" so it really doesn't matter that I suggested a third one, does it?
Now, the devil does not want you to believe, "In the beginning God created..." He doesn't want you to believe that; so, he has very successfully attacked the first verse of the Bible with his big bang theory. How many of you readers have heard of the big bang theory?
Here we go with the devil again. The Big Bang theory is wrong because it is the Devil's theory. Hmm, that's pretty scientific. Maybe it's over my head. ;).
The Prentice Hall General Science Book states: "Eighteen to twenty billion years ago all the matter in the universe was concentrated into one very dense, very hot region that may have been much smaller than a period on this page." (Prentice Hall General Science Book, 1992, page 61.) All the matter in the universe squished into a dot smaller than a period on a page? That's one crowded dot folks to include all of the planets, stars, and people. How many of you remember that you couldn't breathe all squished and crowded together. It was awful, wasn't it?
First, many scientific theories don't sound plausible at first until you understand the reasons behind it. Second, the text book could be in error, which is not uncommon. Also, there are conflicting scientific theories about the Big Bang, and obviously Dr. Hovind picked up on the most unlikely-sounding one and stated it as the only theory. And anyway, remember the book said "may have been."
He goes on to present his interpretation of the Big bang Theory in an alleged conversation with a Berkeley professor. I think his concept of the theory is a bit clouded though. From recent scientific articles I've read, I think I've got a better handle on the Big Bang theory than he does. Though that's merely commentary, I know. Too bad I'm not a physicist! Anyway, he asks who made these laws of physics such as gravity. I'm wondering why someone had to make them. If matter existed, shouldn't we be able to deduce certain laws and formulae that govern it? Afterall, these laws are man-made. We try to fit formula to natural events that we measure.
I then said, "Sir, question number three. Doesn't it take energy to make something move?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Who supplied the energy? Who squished it, spun it, and exploded it, and who bought the gas to run this machine anyway? Where did the energy come from?
Dr. Hovind is making reference to Aristotle's "Unmoved Mover". The idea is that since everything in motion had to be set in motion by something else, God set the initial matter in motion. The problem with this is, it excuses the conclusion from the initial assumption. It's saying here we're assuming that nothing can be in motion without being set in motion by something else. Then to solve the initial motion problem, it says "hey, let's invent a being outside our assumption." So they invent God and claim that He set things in motion. But that's mere trickery. He broke the rules defining this problem. I could just ask- "If you first say that nothing can be in motion without being set in motion, what set God in motion?" I'd get the response "God is a supreme being and doesn't need to be set in motion." My response to that is, "hey you broke the assumption that nothing can be in motion without being set in motion, and you thus ruined the whole question. In fact, you completely evaded it."
In a frictionless environment, if a spinning object explodes, something happens to the pieces that fly off. Take the merry-go-round experiment for example, if the merry-go-round is going clockwise, the kids that fly off will be spinning clockwise. This is call the Conservation of Angular Momentum. One of the laws says in a frictionless environment, if pieces fly off a spinning object they tend to spin the same direction, because the outer part is already spinning faster than the inner part. If this whole universe started from a big bang, everything should be spinning the same way. If our little solar system is a microcosm of the macrocosm everything should be spinning the same way. However, everything is not spinning the same direction. These planets are not only going around the sun, the planets are also spinning around themselves. Each one revolves in its own day. Some are longer than others. Out of the 9 planets that we know of, at least 2 of them, Venus and Uranus, spin backward. Sir, if it all started with a big bang, how did 2 planets get to going backwards? Some of these planets have little moons going around them. There are 60 known moons in our solar system. Out of the 60 known moons, Mercury and Venus do not have any. Earth only has one of them. Out of the 60 known moons, at least 11 of them are spinning backwards, 4 of them are traveling backwards, and 2 planets have moons going both directions at the same time. Would you please explain that? Would you please explain that? Why do we have all of this retrograde motion in our little solar system, plus who knows what else in space? If it all started from a big bang, it should all be going the same direction.
Apparently Dr. Hovind conveniently forgot part of the law of conservation of angular momentum (heh heh, I picked up a physics book. Yay me). This law states that regardless of changes within the system, the net angular momentum remains constant. Angular momentum is completely free to change around within a system, as long as the sum of that momentum remains constant for the system, which is pretty much impossible to measure for the universe. Anyway, who says the universe is even a closed system? It stretches out to infinity, right? If the universe isn't a closed system, the law of conservation of angular momentum doesn't even apply! So his attempt to fool us with physics has failed. Sorry doc. Not only that, but new theories are arising that dictate galaxy, solar system, and planet motion since it was recently discovered that neutrinos have mass (they may compose up to half the matter of the universe, and may be what scientists refer to as "dark matter" which cannot be seen, but has an effect on visible bodies).
He said, "I don't know. How do you think it happened?" I said, "Very simple sir, in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, and God did that it way on purpose just to make the big bang theory look stupid." It is stupid! It is not science!
Mencken's Metalaw:
"For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution; and it is always wrong."
Just because religion presents a tidy little solution (without any facts or evidence) is zero proof of it's truth. As for Dr. Hovind's passionate commentary, it's just that: commentary.
Is the world billions of years old? You might say, "Everybody believes that the world is billions of years old." In the first place, everybody doesn't believe that. In the second place, even if they did, it wouldn't make it right. Majority does not make it right! The majority is frequently wrong. Do you know for many years they thought that the earth was in the middle of the solar system and that everything went around the earth? That's what everybody thought. The majority believed it, but it certainly didn't put the earth in the center. Majority of opinion is meaningless in an argument. They could all be wrong. For many years, they taught that heavy objects fall faster than lighter objects. Gallileo proved that teaching wrong. Did you know that this teaching was universally taught for 2,000 years? Everybody believed that heavier rocks fall faster than lighter rocks. It's true that a lot of people believe that the world is billions of years old, but it doesn't make it billions of years old just because the majority believes it.
Gotta love that bit about the earth being the center of the universe. The Catholic Church only recently admitted that Earth was not, in fact, the center of the universe. That is something scientists have known for a long time. How long before they admit evolution is right? BTW, people believe the given age of the earth because of actual experimental data, which is more than Creationists have.
This idea of majority of opinion being right is crazy. Those doctors that killed George Washington were sincere men. They were highly educated, intelligent, and dead wrong in what they believed. We have professors and teachers today that are very sincere and highly trained. They are sincerely motivated. I don't question that, but they are wrong when they teach that the world is billions of years old. The earth is not billions of years old!
I see what he's doing. Trying to use science's system of theory revision as an attack on science. Just because science is constantly critiquing and re-evaluating it's theories (good thing), Hovind thinks that science probably is wrong. The only thing is, by this method, science is constantly getting closer to the truth.
Pay close attention to this part, only because it is so completely stupid:
I'll give you an analogy to show you how this works. If you went scuba diving and found a sunken ship, an old Spanish Galleon, and on board that ship you found a treasure chest, you would open the chest up and say, "Ohoo! Wow! Gold coins! Yea! We're rich!" Well, wonderful, but before you become excited about that, let's think about it for a minute. If I asked you the question, "When did the ship sink?" you would say, "I don't know;, I didn't see it; I just found the box." I say, "Okay, let's see if we can figure out when the ship sank. If the coins in there have dates on them, and there is a coin in there dated 1700, right away you know the boat sank after 1700." That would make sense, wouldn't it? Certainly, it did not sink before 1700 or there wouldn't be a coin in there with the date of 1700. If you find another coin in there from 1600, that doesn't mean anything. We still know from the other coin that the ship sank after 1700. If you went through the chest and you found the youngest coin, it would be the limiting factor as to when the ship sank, not the oldest coin in the chest.
There are many ways to try to find out the age of this earth, but if just one of them shows it to be young, then it has to be young. I could take my Casio Data Bank watch, and carbon date the plastic, and say that it carbon dates at 14,000 years old, and that proves that it is 14,000 years old. No, it doesn't! You should find the youngest factor, not the oldest factor. This business of taking the age of the earth and proving it is billions of years old by looking at carbon dating, uranium lead, potassium argon, and rubidium, is all backwards. There is a lot of ways to PROVE that this world IS NOT billions of years old.
Say what? Is he kidding? He gave one example and then tried to apply it to something else, which is the inverse of his first example! He truly must think his readers are idiots! I think it's self-evident that the earth example is the exact opposite of the ship example. If I date something to 200 years ago, is that the age of the earth? If I date something to 1,000 years ago, does that not prove the earth is older? If I date something to billions of years ago, and this guy claims that the earth is a few thousand years old, doesn't my dating prove that obviously the earth has been around longer? Who is Hovind trying to kid?
Let's look at what the Bible says in Matthew 19:4. Jesus said, "And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female." He is talking about Adam and Eve. Jesus said the creation of Adam and Eve was the beginning. Wait a minute! If the world is billions of years old, then Jesus was clearly wrong, because it wasn't the beginning when He created Adam and Eve. Mark 10:6 says the same thing, "But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female." Romans chapter 5 says there was no death until Adam sinned. Therefore the creation of Adam and Eve had to be the beginning, so this business of the pre-Adamic civilization-the gap theory, is clearly unscriptural, unscientific and unnecessary as we will see. The world is not billions of years old!
More Bible-quoting. I especially like the conclusion "Therefore the creation of Adam and Eve had to be the beginning." Because the Bible said it, it's absolute proof and I'm supposed to accept that? He must be kidding. "This business of the pre-Adamic civilization-the gap theory, is clearly unscriptural, unscientific and unnecessary as we will see." Yeah, it's unscriptural, and all the better! Scripture and science have nothing to do with each other!
The dates in Scripture add up to about 6,000 years, not millions and billions. Somebody is wrong!
Yeah, it's you! Notice how he concludes that the earth is 6,000 years old. This is in disagreement with even other Creationists, who generally believe the earth to be just under 10,000 years old.
If you believe in evolution and that man has been here for millions of years, you have a serious problem and don't realize it. If man has been here for millions of years, there would be a lot more people. The fact that we only have five and one half billion people helps to prove the Bible is correct. Jesus said that the book is correct. He believed it from cover to cover. It's been 4,400 years since the flood, that's what the Bible says. Keep those numbers in mind, 6,000 years for the creation, and 4,400 years for the flood. Those are important numbers.
Dr. Hovind needs to do his homework. First, growth is exponential, as he probably knows. Therefore it remains low for a long time, and when it gets to a certain point, it begins to shoot up rapidly. Anyone who's looked a population growth graph can see that. Plus, for millions of years, man existed by a hunter/gatherer lifestyle. The earth could not support many people living this lifestyle, as food would have been too scarce. "For all but the last few thousand years of their two million years existence humans have obtained their subsistance by a combination of gathering foodstuffs and hunting animals." (Ponting, "A Green History of the World", 1991. pp 18). Wow, look at that, I cite sources. More from Ponting: "Fossils found from about 2-1.5 million years ago and called Homo erectus are recognised as being the direct ancestors of modern humans. But much earlier fossil remains reveal evidence of certain 'human traits', notably upright posture (as early as 3.5 million years ago) and toolmaking linked to the first stone tools about 2 million years ago. The distinguishing characteristic of Homo erectus is a large brain size of about 1,100cc (about three quarters of modern capacity). ... By about 30,000 years ago fully modern human types were widespread throught the world." And they say there's no fossil evidence of evolution. Bah!
Anyway, it took the (relatively recent) Neolithic Revolution and later the Agricultural Revolution to get more food from less land in order to support greater populations.
Let's look at some more facts from science-another coin from the treasure chest. The sun is burning! How many of you knew that already? As the sun burns, the sun is shrinking. Boyle Observatory in England has been keeping careful records of the sun's diameter for 300 years. It oscillates a little bit, but the general trend is that the sun is shrinking 5 feet every hour. That has been the case for the 300 years that it has been observed. Dealing with science that is observable, testable, and demonstrable, the sun is shrinking. Now this is going to be complicated. If the sun is shrinking that means it used to be what? That's right; it used to be bigger. Five feet per hour is the shrinkage rate; so, if you were to go back in time to an hour ago, the sun would have been 5 feet bigger. If you go back a few thousand years ago, there would be no problem. If you want to tell me that the earth is millions of years old, then we have a problem. Twenty million years ago the sun would have been very big at the current shrinkage rate assuming that it is a linear progression, or that it might be geometric, or logismic. I understand all of that. I taught mathematics and science. Either way, it puts a time limit on this model. If you excel 20 million years ago at today's shrinkage rate the sun would have been so big that it would touch the earth. This of course would have made life very uncomfortable.
Dr. Hovind doesn't cite his source for that 5 ft/hour figure, so who knows where he got it from. Considering his other information, I wouldn't trust it blindly. But not only that, if the sun is shrinking, it does not do so linearly. The sun is a sphere, with volume 4/3*pi*r^3. See that cubed variable? That means we're not dealing with a linear problem here. If it's volume were decreasing, it's radius would first decrease very slowly, then as the sun got smaller, would decrease more rapidly. So if in fact the sun is shrinking, the rate of shrinkage was much slower millions of years ago. Let's check something else. The radius of the sun currently is about 432,000 miles. According to Hovind's "scientific data" of 5 foot/hour sun shrinkage, the sun would reduce to nothing in about 52,000 years. But wait. Don't scientists claim that the sun has billions of years left in it's life? 52,000 is not even close to being on scale with what science dictates. And, since the shrinkage rate actually increases as time goes by, the sun would actually reduce to nothing in less than 52,000 years, using Hovind's numbers. Obviously his linear 5 ft/year figure did not come from science! In fact, I'm certain that it did not. The most that the sun could be shrinking due to gravity is 74 centimeters per year. That is a lot less than Dr. Hovind's 5 feet per hour. If the sun is shrinking due to the process of fusion, where some matter is being converted into energy, the shrinkage rate is still extremely small. In fact, 5 billion years from now, it will still be 99.966% of it's current mass! Don't believe me? Click here to see the math. Dr. Hovind is obviously making up his information and trying to pass it off as scientific fact.
If you want to tell me that the dinosaurs lived 70 million years ago, they would have fried. They would have been charbroiled. They would have been inside the sun. The world cannot be millions of years old. You will have to alter your theory to fit within a shorter timeframe than that.
LMAO is all I can say, and I feel sorry for the people who didn't check his numbers and actually believed this junk.
Let's take a look at some additional facts of science. Comets fly around the solar system, and comets are constantly losing material. You can't just keep losing and losing because pretty soon you will have a problem. It's kind of like your checkbook. You see; the Bible is very plain: if your out go exceeds your income, your upkeep will be your downfall. Astronomers guess that comets only last about 10,000 years and then they break apart. Now, that brings up a very good question. Why do we still have comets? They should all be gone! People ask me, "Hey that is a very interesting concept. Why do we still have comets?" I'm just a high school science teacher, but here is my theory. I believe the Bible. I believe about 6,000 years ago God created the heavens and the earth, and that is why we still have comets. Our universe is only about 6 or 7 thousand years old. Simple! That explains the comet. That explains the shrinking sun. It also explains the population.
Sorry Doc, wrong again. Comets only lose material when they pass close to the sun (or any star or hot body). Comets that went around the sun millions of years ago probably aren't around today. But nothing stops new comets from entering a rotation around the sun. Most comets come from deep space or from the Oort cloud. As their path gets near the sun, the sun's gravity grabs hold of it and sometimes alters it's course enough to put it in orbit. So we have new comets occasionally being introduced into the system continually. I'm beginning to wonder just what kind of doctor Dr. Hovind is. I don't think it's of science.
Scientists say, "It takes thousands of millions of years for stars to evolve from red giants to white dwarfs." You had better study your history. All of the ancient astronomers said that Sirius was a red star. Today it is a white dwarf. This occurred within 2,000 years not millions of years. Stellar evolution needs to be rethought. They say that it takes millions of years for these planets to cool off. Wait a minute! Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus are all hot, and yet they are rapidly cooling off.
Early astronomers had primitive instruments and I'm sure they had considerable difficulty categorizing stars. "Stellar evolution needs to be rethought." Why, because a high school teacher has an odd-ball theory? Stellar evolution is constantly being thought and rethought about anyway, regardless. Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus are all hot? Since when???? They are all freezing cold! And we haven't had accurate measurements of their temperature for very long at all, so how could you possibly know that they are rapidly cooling off??? You know what? I don't think this guy is even a doctor of anything!!
If we walked into a room and found a cup of coffee on the table that was boiling hot, I would say, "Don't touch that, it's hot." You would say, "Whose is it?" Then I would say, "I don't know. It's been sitting there for 4,000 years." It's so hot, yet it has been sitting there for 4,000 years. Don't you think that is a little far fetched? The planets are not billions of years old.
Small bodies cool FAR more quickly than immense bodies!!! "Dr." Hovind ought to know this! And you know what? I'm sure he does, which proves that he has less than pure intentions here. He's intentionally passing off false information in the hopes of getting people to believe as he does.
The moon goes around the earth. As the moon goes around the earth, the moon is getting further and further away. We are slowly losing the moon a couple of inches a year; no big deal; it's nothing to worry about. This is going to be complicated; so, read very carefully. If the moon is getting further and further away from the earth, that means that it used to be closer. Scientists will agree with that. Now, wait a minute! A couple of thousand years ago that wouldn't make a big difference. If you want to tell me that the earth is millions or billions of years old, you had better get your calculator because it makes for a serious problem. If you bring the moon back in closer, it would cause trouble because the moon causes the tides. If you bring the moon back in a couple of million years ago, the tides would have been so high that it would have drowned everything on earth twice a day. Everybody knows that you can only drown comfortably once a day. If you want to tell me that the dinosaurs lived 70 million years ago, then I know what happened to them. They got sick of drowning twice a day! Man, they quit! They gave up! They said, "This evolving is too hard; I'm not going to do this anymore!" The simple fact is: the earth cannot be billions of years old.
The moon is increasing it's distance at 1.5 inches/year to be exact. The moon is currently 238,800 miles from earth. Some simple calculations will tell you that 20 million years ago, the moon was 238,300 miles from earth, since in 20 million years, it would only have moved, well, exactly 473 miles. In fact, 4.5 billion years ago, the moon was still 132,000 miles from earth! Get out your calculator if you don't believe me! Maybe he's got something there with tides, if we're talking billions of years, but still a full 20 million years ago, the moon wasn't that much closer than it is now.
As the moon goes around the earth, it runs into the dust. Therefore, the moon is collecting dust on the surface, kind of like the way your windshield collects bugs certain times of the year. The dust on the moon is getting thicker, and thicker, and thicker. It is widely estimated as to how much. In 1954, Isaac Asimov calculated that there would be at least 54 feet of dust on the moon because the moon is billions of years old. They calculated the accumulation rate to be 1 inch of dust every 10,000 years. July 20, 1969, we landed on the moon. Before that, the surveyor probes went up and checked things out, so they knew that the dust wasn't there, but Armstrong proved it dramatically when he stepped on it. In 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped off the Lunar Lander Module, and he said, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Everybody cheered, but nobody heard the next two words that he spoke. The next two words that he said were: "It's solid!" The moon's surface was solid. The depth was only three-fourths of an inch thick. Well now, wait just a minute! If it takes 10,000 years to produce one inch of dust, and the dust is only three-fourths of an inch thick, that means that the moon is not 10,000 years old yet. So the evolutionists at NASA were thinking, "Where is the dust on the moon? I'll bet those Christians went up there and cleaned it just to make us look stupid." They don't need any help to look stupid; they're doing fine own their own.
First, there is lunar wind, which would obviously shift dust from out of certain areas and into others. Second, ever notice all the craters on the moon? (I'm starting to talk like him) It's been hit many times by asteroids, which have likely blasted "lunar dust" back out into space, especially since the gravity on the moon is very weak. And finally, if all this dust is collecting on the moon, who says it's going to just bunch up and be all soft for several feet deep? Obviously, if enough accumulates, it's going to form a sort of lunar soil, which is what it pretty much looks like when Armstrong made his footprints. I didn't see any "dust" at all, I saw lunar dirt.
They brought rocks back from the moon and tested them. They used eight different methods to see how old they were. They used uranium lead, potassium argon, etc., to find out how old these moon rocks are. They got eight different numbers; so, they threw them all out since they didn't match, and they picked the number that they wanted anyway. They don't know the age of the moon by carbon dating it, or by potassium argon dating.
Cite your sources! I'd like to see these conflicting figures. "Dr." Hovind would have us believe that scientists just want to believe false theories so they throw out evidence against them. Hardly! There are always scientists working to disprove existing theories to make a name for themselves. "Dr." Hovind thinks science is a religion because he himself lives within a religious paradigm and can't understand how those of us who don't work toward arriving at conclusions. Notice all the data that conflicts with his assertions that he ignores and throws away! In this regard, he's a hypocrite. So show me the conflicting data! Not only that, but you can't carbon date the moon, since carbon dating can only work on relatively new material.
The earth's magnetic field is getting weaker and weaker with time. It cannot be millions of years old. The magnetic field, by the way, is one of the things that they are not taking into consideration when performing carbon dating; because, the magnetic field is one of the things that prevents the formation of carbon 14 (C14.) If the magnetic field is weakening, then we are getting more C14 than they had 5,000 years ago-so it throws everything off.
First, who says the earth's magnetic field is getting weaker? As far as I know, it shifts, gets weaker, and gets stronger. But it isn't decaying, especially not by a linear amount. Also, what forms carbon 14 are cosmic rays unaffected by the magnetic field. So really, this whole magnetic field bit has nothing to do with anything.
Most people do not realize that every two and one half years we leap a second, because the earth is slowing down. Now, this is going to be complicated. If the earth is slowing down (and, it is,) that means that it used to be going faster. If you go back in time 6,000 years, Adam and Eve's day was 36.5 minutes shorter than ours. If you want to claim that the earth is millions of years old, you have a problem. Get your calculator and check it out. You want to tell me that the dinosaurs lived 70 million years ago. If they did, I know what happened to them. They were blown off the surface of the earth. The winds were 5,000 mph from the Coriolis Effect. The earth was flattened out like a pancake. The days and nights were about 20 minutes each. No, you are mistaken. The earth is not millions and billions of years old. The slowing rate of the earth proves that; it puts a time limit of some kind on it. Wake up, and smell the coffee. It can't be billions of years old. Now, you may need billions of years to make your theory to look reasonable. The scientific facts say: "No, it is not billions of years old."
Really, "Dr." Hovind is making this too easy for me. Maybe he ought to go back to high school and learn math. He says that the earth loses 1 second every 2½ years. With those numbers, we've lost 2,400 seconds in the last 6,000 years (the math here is real easy folks). So that would mean that 6,000 years ago, a year was 2,400 seconds shorter. Average out 2,400 seconds across 365 days and you get about 6.6 seconds a day. Days were 6.6 seconds shorter 6,000 years ago, not Hovind's 36.5 minutes. Who taught this guy to do math??? And all this is assuming, of course, that Hovind's 1 second per 2½ years figure is right. But by his track record so far, we can't assume anything he tells us is right. His last sentence makes me laugh out loud.
The continents are eroding into the sea; they are just melting away. At the present erosion rate, they will be gone in 14 million years. The oceans are filling in with sediments. Both of those numbers are much less than the 4.6 billion years they tell us for the age of the earth. It is not billions of years old. As the water runs off the earth, it brings salt into the oceans; therefore, the oceans are getting more salty every day. A simple one to watch and to clearly verify is the Dead Sea in Israel. It is easy to calculate the salt washing into the Dead Sea, and the volume of salt that is already in there. The calculations show the Dead Sea is about 13,000 years old. Wait a minute! If the world is millions of years old, why isn't the Dead Sea even saltier? See, the Bible has the best answer. About 6,000 years ago, God created the heavens and the earth. There are saltwater vents in the bottom of the Dead Sea, adding more salt than they realized. It is only now being recalculated to show 4,000 to 5,000, maybe 6,000 years old-not millions of years old. It is the same thing with the salts in the ocean. They are a little harder to calculate.
According to the theory of plate tectonics, the continents are being created at the same time they are slipping into the sea. Also, natural phenomena such as volcanoes help to add dry land to the earth's surface. The oceans are not getting more salty every day, or at least not much. There is only so much salt that can run off into the ocean. Just because they calculate the Dead Sea to be 13,000 years old proves nothing about the age of the earth. It just proves that the Sea was formed 13,000 years ago, by any number of methods. An ice age, perhaps. Also, remember not to trust this guy's numbers.
The Mississippi River is dropping sediments at the rate of 80,000 tons per hour into the New Orleans Delta. Wait a minute! They can measure the size of the Delta divided by the sedimentation rate. It comes out to be 20 or 30 thousand years for the whole Louisiana Delta. Hold it! If the world is millions of years old, why isn't the whole Gulf of New Mexico filled in with mud by now? It should be all full of mud.
Who ever said that the Mississippi River was formed when the earth was formed?? Obviously it wasn't! The continents themselves didn't even look as they do now millions of years ago.
Hovind goes on about oil, saying that it was formed when plants and animals got buried in the flood. At this point, I'm surprised he's not contesting the scientific belief that oil is formed from decayed plant and animal matter. Anyway, it takes millions of years for such matter to turn into oil, which is evidence that life was on earth millions of years ago. "Dr." Hovind shot himself in the foot by bringing up oil in the first place.
Scientists can take a ton of garbage and squeeze it into a barrel of oil in about 20 minutes in the laboratory. The oil is down there as a result of the people and animals that drowned in the flood, and it has only been there for about 4,400 years.
Since when can scientists turn garbage into oil in 20 minutes? I'd like to see the source of that information. I think "Dr." Hovind just solved both the world's pollution problem and fossil fuel problem at once. Just turn all the garbage into oil. Right.
The oldest tree in the world is the Methuselah tree in southern California. Dating trees is a funny science. You can get all sorts of answers. The textbooks state that the oldest tree is 4,300 years old. (Note: Didn't Hovind criticize these text books as having incorrect information?) Now that is interesting. If the world is millions of years old, why don't we have a tree some place that is 20,000 years old? Is it just a coincident that the oldest tree is 4,300 years old? I have a theory on that. I believe about 6,000 years ago God created the heaven and the earth. About 4,400 years ago there was a flood that destroyed the world. Therefore, to find a tree that is 4,300 years old fits fine with my theory. If you believe in evolution, it creates a little bit of a problem. If it is millions of years ago, show me an older tree.
First, because one hasn't been found doesn't prove at all that there was no life before that. That's an awful long time to expect a tree to have survived. Second, Hovind's numbers are off, the oldest living tree is over 4,700 years old. Third, they've discovered a single large fungi living underground, which is the world's largest living organism (1.6 billion square feet, about 200,000 pounds) and may potentially be older than the oldest tree.
Niagara Falls is eroding rocks off the edge, and it has been eroding for about 10,000 years according to textbooks. Why do they say that? They know that Niagara Falls causes rocks to break off the edge and it moves back. Until most of the water was diverted for a hydroelectric plant, the Falls were moving 4 or 5 feet every year. They know that. The Canadians even built a big concrete wall on their side to prevent it from eroding Canadian soil. They want to make sure that it erodes on the American side and not the Canadian side. Fly over it and see it for yourself. It's only 12 miles from where it started. At 5 feet a year, you can move about 12 miles in about 10,000 years. I have a question. If the world is millions of years old, why hasn't Niagara Falls eroded all the way back up into Lake Erie or clear over to California for that matter? Why is Niagara Falls where it is? I have a theory on that. Here is my theory. I believe about 6,000 years ago God created the heavens and the earth. About 4,400 years ago there was a flood. As the flood waters went down, half of that river probably washed out in the first ten minutes because there was a lot more water moving through soft sediment. Today it is hard rock and it's just a trickle compared to what it used to be. Therefore, 10,000 years for Niagara Falls really translates to 4,400 years plus one flood.
It seems "Dr." Hovind has a theory on everything, only his theory is always the same. Maybe "Dr." Hovind isn't aware that thousands of years ago an enormous glacier moved down over Canada and the upper USA, completely changing the landscape. What is now Niagra Falls probably looked nothing like Niagra Falls before the glacier.
In the first chapter, scientific evidence was presented that proves this world is not billions of years old. There are those that would like every child to believe that this world is billions of years old -- and it is not. They want children to believe that dinosaurs lived millions of year ago -- and they did not. This lie is a pagan religion being forced down the throats of our children. That pagan religion is evolution. I am often asked, "Why do you always refer to evolution as a religion? Isn't it a scientific fact that the world has evolved?" No, no, no! It is a far cry from a scientific fact.
Did anyone else see even a single conclusive proof that the earth is not billions of years old? I know I didn't. What I saw were a bunch of half-truths, tricks, and mathematical miscalculations. And again, "Dr." Hovind is making it evident that he does not firmly grasp the concept of the scientific method for arriving at a belief. It is a lot of things, but religion is surely not one of them.
Dinosaurs were nothing more than giant lizards in the garden of Eden. Dinosaurs lived with Adam and Eve. They were big lizards, and lizards never stop growing. This brings us up to the flood. If they were in the garden of Eden, the first 1,600 years of man's life on earth, what happened to them? Did Noah have dinosaurs on the ark? Certainly! You ask, "Dinosaurs on the ark?" The Bible says that he had seven of every "clean" kind, two of every "common" kind. The ark was pretty big. Let me give you some facts about the size of the ark. The ark measured approximately 450 feet long, about 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high.
First, there has not been a single bit of information that remotely suggested than dinosaurs and man coexisted. Not a single dinosaur found with a spear or human bones inside. Their remains are deeper in the earth than humans'. "Dr." Hovind has no evidence to back up his claim, and obviously deduced it from the tainted logic of his Christianity. And he has the nerve to claim that Noah brought two of each dinosaur on the ark?? One of the largest dinosaurs was Argentinosaurus huinculensis (yes I did some research), measuring 115 - 130 feet long. There are others that are equal to that or slightly smaller. But Hovind goes on to guess that Noah brought baby dinosaurs (which I'm sure were still quite large). Hovind says: "Furthermore, he only had to bring two of each kind, not two of each specie or variety. This is where people become confused." I think this is where Hovind became confused. Two of each kind means the same as two of each species. Creatures can only reproduce within their species (by definition), so he had to bring two of each species.
There are 250 subspecies of dogs in the world. Noah did not have to bring Great Danes, Chihuahuas, St. Bernards, and Dalmatians. All Noah had to bring was two of the dog kind. From those two generic mutts, dogs have diversified until we have the different varieties in existence today. The definition of kind in the Bible is more like our classification system of family. Two from each family of animals, which greatly reduces the number. I would say that the basic dog kind diversified after the flood into the Wolf, the Coyote, the Hyena, the Chihuahua, the Great Dane, the Doberman, and so on. These are all variations, not evolution! They are still the same "kind" of animal -- a dog kind of animal.
Now he brings up subspecies. Before, he said "species" and now it changed to "subspecies". No matter what linguistic tricks "Dr." Hovind wants to use, Noah had to have included two creatures of each species, because animals can only reproduce within their species. Of course he didn't need two of each subspecies. And notice how he caught himself when he realized his argument was leading towards evolution. LOL
He goes on and on about his kooky dinosaur theories, but that is hardly worth our time. He even says some dinosaurs where around at the time of Jesus (not even 2000 years ago!). But that's not all, he claims that an Italian scientist documented the killing of a dinosaur in 1572. Whoops, I'm sorry. He goes even further by claiming dinosaurs still exist today. They apparently exist unknown to the scientific community, and the whole world in general. Obviously Hovind needs his head examined. He says, "The Christian explanation is much simpler. Dinosaurs lived with man all along." If I were a Christian, I'd start jumping ship right about now. lol
Bah. He goes on for paragraph after paragraph with Bible quotes and talk of the devil at this point. Of course, that means nothing as far as scientific proof and will be disregarded.
He speaks of the Loch Ness Monster:
Now look! If 11,000 people claim that they have seen something, I would say that there is something to what they are seeing. Some of them are probably hoaxes, frauds, or wrongly identified. No question, they may have seen an otter, a duck, a log floating, or swamp gas. I know; I have heard all of those stories, but since 11,000 people claim that they have seen it, there must be something there. It is not just all wild-eyed radical people either. There have been some very reputable people that have claimed to have seen this critter.
But wait. Even more people claim to see UFOs, but as "Dr." Hovind pointed out earlier, there is no life outside of our earth. Even later, he says, "I do not believe that there is any intelligent life on other planets that can be proven scripturally because the Bible says that Eve is the mother of all living." So if their testimony can be disregarded, so can these Loch Ness Monster viewers (I can't even believe he's using the Loch Ness Monster to attempt to prove the Bible, through the existence of dinosaurs, no less). People also claim to see ghosts, Big Foot, etc. People also claim to speak with God or to be Jesus himself. Hmmm...is there any truth to these claims, "Dr." Hovind? I wonder how far he's willing to go in this line of thinking.
Hovind's entire Chapter 3 is literally nothing more than a bunch of preaching. I liked this line though- "My first reason why I believe in fire-breathing dragons is that the Bible plainly states it as fact." Hovind clearly has no basis for his beliefs other than "the Bible says so". This is why he is so ineffectual at disproving other beliefs: his own beliefs are unfounded. He probably thinks everyone's beliefs are unfounded.
The rest of the Chapter continues to deviate off topic. There is nothing at all that has anything to do with Evolution or Creation. Skip to Chapter 4.
Before the 1800's, almost everybody believed that the world was only six or seven thousand years old. They held to the creationist or the Christian world view of history.
Wrong. Christians have never represented "almost everybody" on earth. And hey, did you remember "Dr." Hovind saying this: "You might say, 'Everybody believes that the world is billions of years old.' In the first place, everybody doesn't believe that. In the second place, even if they did, it wouldn't make it right. Majority does not make it right!" Maybe you didn't, but I did. ;) I'm just wondering why "Dr." Hovind even brought this up since it obviously contradicts his earlier comments. But of course, Hovind sees all arguments as valid when they apply to his belief, and invalid when they contradict it.
The guide said, "Ladies and gentlemen, this layer of dirt is about 70 million years old." My twelve-year old daughter said, "Mister, how do you know how old that layer is?" He said, "Well honey, we tell the age of the layers by what type of fossils we find in them. This layer contains dinosaur bones, so it must be about 70 million years old." She said, "Okay, thank you sir." We walked around to the other side of the zeuglodon display, and the guide said, "Now, ladies and gentlemen, these bones that you are looking at are about 100 million years old." My daughter raised her hand again. She said, "Sir, how do you tell how old the bones are?" He said, "Well, the age of the bones is determined by which layer they are found in." She said, "Sir, when we were standing on the other side, you told us that you know the age of the layer by the bones found in them, and now you are telling me that you know the age of the bones by the layer in which they are found. Isn't that circular reasoning?"
Ah, so "Dr." Hovind is familiar with circular reasoning, is he? Hmmm.. then he ought to know that the Bible contains nothing but circular reasoning! Of course, he doesn't consider that due to his blind faith in it. Anyway, it seems he would have readers believe that geologists are idiots. Obviously they date layers by radiometric dating, as well as by comparing layers and fossils from excavation sites worldwide to refine their theories.
All over the world they find strange fossils called polystrata fossils, like the petrified tree shown in figure 4-4. This petrified tree is standing straight up running through many layers of strata. Now, hold on just a minute! If that bottom layer is 600 million years old and the top layer is only 5 million years old, there are only two choices: either that tree stood there 500 million years and didn't rot, or that tree grew through seventy-five feet of solid rock looking for sunlight. Which do you prefer?
The tree was petrified, do you know what that means "Dr." Hovind? It means that over time, minerals replaced the plant tissue, creating a solid rock out of a formerly living tree. Solid rock doesn't rot, so it's quite believable that this solid rock petrified tree stood there through several dirt layers.
You can crossbreed your corn for the next four-billion years, and all that you will get is a corn of some kind.
I suppose "Dr." Hovind has conducted such an experiment...?
Mutations are harmful, fatal, or neutral, or they are blended back into the population. ... Mutations are harmful or fatal. ... Mutations are harmful or fatal.
"Dr." Hovind repeats this several times in the next paragraph. He's wrong of course, since sometimes there are favorable mutations. How do bacteria become resistant to antibiotics? Favorable mutations!
He goes on to say how complex humans are, and how if you extracted all our DNA, it would go from here to the moon and back 5,000 times. Of course, no source is cited. That doesn't matter though, because he's including all the millions of copies. Each cell contains the same copy, which would certainly not reach that far. Here, he gets a little incoherent:
Do you know what the odds are of that happening by random chance? The odds are 1 x 10119,000. That is a big number, since there are only 1041 electrons in the known universe.
I'm not making that up, look it up if you want, but he said there are only 1041 electrons in the known universe. Want to run that by me again? I'm sure he doesn't believe that and wrote it mistakingly. At least, I hope so. Oh, and in his odds for DNA, it's terribly misleading. First, he's saying that those are the odds for not just one strand of human DNA, but all the DNA in all the cells added up to spontaneously generate (it didn't spontaneously generate anyway).
If you are one of those people that believes that evolution happened by blind chance, I would like for you to travel to Los Vegas. I could make some money off you.
Don't think that evolution is possible or that life could have evolved from non-life? Scientists have demonstrated in the lab that RNA (a simpler cousin to DNA) can generate on the surfaces of clays, and later can evolve. Don't believe me? Click here to read more about it.
They spent the entire hour boring the audience to death about amino acid sequencing. What they do is check the proteins in different kinds of animals, and then count the way the amino acids are arranged. It is like checking the letters in a word. For example, they would have an "H" first then an "A" second and an "N" third and a "D" last. Then they look at the proteins from the next animal to the calculate percentage of difference. Then they arrange them in charts. Did you know that you can look at the chart and the only difference between a man and a duck is 11 percent in the amino acid sequencing. We only missed being a duck by 11 percent. That's close man! We only missed being a rattlesnake by 14 percent.
He failed to note that the similarity between man and apes is something around 99.8%. I wonder why he didn't mention that. Anyone have any ideas? He goes on to give an irrelevant and idiotic comparison to things that have nothing to do with amino acid sequencing. It seems "Dr." Hovind likes to compare apples to oranges, as he makes many rediculous comparisons throughout this essay.
I am thoroughly offended at the next passage:
They call it, The Origin of Species. When they do that, raise your hand immediately and say, "Excuse me teacher, what is the rest of the title, please? I would like to hear the whole title of the book." Back in those days, they had long titles on their books. Here is the whole title of the book, The Origin Of Species By Means Of Natural Selection Or The Preservation Of Favored Races In The Struggle For Life. Favored races? Ugh, Oh! Charlie, that's not politically correct. You see, Charles Darwin's book came out in 1859. We still had slavery in this country. The Civil War didn't start until 1861. Racism was the driving factor that made the theory of evolution so popular in the 1800's. It was a great pseudo scientific way to justify racism. The European countries loved it because they were going to be colonizing the third-world countries. They were taking over these African countries and making them work all day for a penny a day. Then they were getting their diamonds, gold, silver, and rubies. It was racism! Charles Darwin was a racist to the extreme.
I don't know what "Dr." Hovind was smoking when he wrote this, but Darwin's book has nothing to do with slavery or racism at all. I'm sure he knows this, unless he truly does walk about in the little fuzzy haze he seems to exist in, but the book is about natural selection, and yes, favored species. The whole book is about those types of creatures that are evolutionarily favorable and how they survive and over time, the species evolves. Trying to make it sound racist is utterly rediculous and incredibly insulting! "Dr." Hovind ought to be ashamed of himself!
What happened in the name of evolution in the 1800's would shock you. The results that have come from that philosophy are just unbelievable.
What happened in the name of God would shock you a hundred times more. What's he talking about anyway? Who did things "in the name of evolution"? And as for the further racist comments he makes, I believe it was precisely Christians that went out to forcibly conquer, convert and enslave the other races of the world.
The Bible says if you receive that mark and worship the beast, you are going to be in trouble. Read Revelation chapter 14 and you will see how they will be tormented and punished. What has happened since then? In 1990, they begin putting little magnetic strips inside our paper bills. If you examine a five, a ten, or a twenty dollar bill while holding it up to the light, you will see the strip about one-inch in on the left side. This is to prevent counterfeiting, but there are other things that they can do with it. They can detect, roughly, how much money is in your pocket when you walk past sensors, based on that strip. That technology was developed back in 1985. That's old stuff now. They can check for drug dealers at the airports with these little sensors. They can say, "Ah, that guy is carrying thousands of dollars. We better find out why." Technology is far beyond that now.
Can we say paranoid? Where did this information come from? And if it were true, couldn't drug dealers just pass their wads o' cash under a strong magnet to scramble the code?
The rest of this chapter is more paranoid propaganda.
The second evidence that is given for pangaea is the idea that the continents are drifting. There is a little movement, but that doesn't prove that it has been happening for millions of years. It could have started one hundred years ago. Until recently, we haven't had the technology to measure such movement.
So the Hymilayas rose in a hundred years? The Mariana Trench or the giant ridge in the center of the Atlantic grew in a hundred years? I don't think so. We have the technology to measure backward to determine how these things formed.
He later claims there are no contradictions in the Bible. He tried to explain away one popular one. But there are hundreds more. If you don't believe me, click here to see more.
Regarding "Dr." Hovind's candle analogy for carbon 14: Again, he gives a seemlingly relevant analogy that really isn't relevant at all. We can tell how much carbon 14 starts with because we have new carbon 14 and it all decays the same. You can't guess how old a burning candle is because they come in all different sizes. This isn't discrepency doesn't exist for carbon 14. Plus, like he points out, a flame is affected by a number of factors. Radioactive decay, however, is not.
They brake off a piece and test it. They find the uranium-to-lead composition, and they say, "Oh! This bone is ten million years old. Something went wrong. Let's try it again." They get another sample, break it off, check for uranium-to-lead composition, and this time it shows to be only two million years old. They will say, "Something went wrong. The sample must have been contaminated. Let's try it again." They brake off another sample. They will continually test until they get an answer that is in the range that they are looking for which is 70 million years.
Wrong. I don't have the figures here, but you can look them up. The error in radiometric dating is far smaller than being on the order of tens of millions of years. What "Dr." Hovind described simply does not happen. Does he think the scientific community is a bunch of bungling idiots?
Nobody has ever proven the existence of another planet around any other star except the nine that we know of around our star, the sun.
Wrong again. They have. Maybe "Dr." Hovind's essay is outdated.
His essay just basically breaks down at this point. It would be nit-picking to continue.
In conclusion, I did not see anything that proved Evolution wrong. I also saw nothing (outside of Biblical quotes, which prove nothing) that proved Creation true. I saw misinformation passed off as fact. I saw analogies that looked relevant, but really weren't. I saw Hovind's many attempts to trick his reader or put forth half-truths. Most of all, I saw a lot of preaching. What purpose does preaching have in attempting to prove or disprove theories?
A lot of people got stirred up by this, but really, what is there to get stirred up about? Am I just not seeing it? I'll admit, I did a little research for some of it, but that's all it took. No great leaps of knowledge. Afterall, I'm just a college kid. I'm not claiming to have given the perfect rebuttal to Dr. Hovind's essay. I simply did my best to make corrections to Hovind's claims. Imagine if I had been an astonomer, a physicist, or a geologist!
Return to Free Thought