I downloaded alot of hovind mp3 talks who in spite of his rhetoric seemed to talk alot of sense.
Hovind relies on strictly verbal communication: live presentations, debates, audio tapes. He is very skilled at making his rhetoric sound sensible if a person is not very knowledgeable about the scientific background (or rather lack of it) behind his claims.
He studiously avoids putting much in writing, and will not engage in a written debate. In a written format, his claims can be researched at leisure and shown to be false.
So it would be good for you to listen carefully to those mp3s, taking notes of the points made, and then checking them out. You will find on analysis that most of his "sense" is style rather than substance.
I have never had a problem with evolution but it was nice to hear someone make the Bible sound so literal.
As a Christian myself, I have never understood the attraction of a literal bible. Didn't Jesus tell us "the letter kills"? That is certainly my experience of biblical literalism.
I guess the main thing to me is that God is at the origin of all things as Creator and He sustains all he has created whether by natural law or miraculous power.
Hey, any Christian (and Jew and Muslim) will go along with that. Doesn't have to be tied to a literal reading of the bible.
A few comments on some of the questions you addressed to rubistars.
"One thing I had a serious problem with was that they firmly declared that there were two kingdoms, plants and animals. I knew from my earlier class that this was wrong. I knew that bacteria and protists and fungi were in different kingdoms. This was my first dose of skepticism regarding creationists."
I'm not a scientist. Could you make it a little clearer what the problem is?
OK, you said you were converted from the drug culture in the 70s.
I expect that means you were in high school then or earlier and haven't studied science since.
So like myself, and many generations before us, you probably learned that all living things are either "plant" or "animal". That classification dates from the 18th century, (I think---whenever Carl van Linne lived---who devised the tradtional scientific system of classifying creatures into species, genera, families, orders, classes, phyla, kingdoms.) And it made sense before the invention of the microscope and the discovery of microscopic life.
But after a century or so of trying to shoehorn things like amoebas, ciliates, algae, and bacteria into the plant/animal slots, and of finding how different fungi are from green plants, a more realistic classification system, (called the 5 kingdom system) was proposed and has been largely accepted. In this system we have plants, animals, fungi, protists and monera.
Another system proposed still more recently is based on the type of cell found in living things. It divides the monera (the simplest cells without nucleus or organelles) into two domains: archea and bacteria, while everything else goes into a third domain -- the eukaryota--since they are all composed of one or more complex cells with a nucleus and several organelles.
Now classification is a human activity. Nature doesn't care how we divide up her creatures in order to make sense of what we see in them. An amoeba is an amoeba whether we call it a protozoa (animal) or protist. A mushroom is a mushroom whether we place fungi with the plants or give them a kingdom of their own. Classification is for our convenience, so if the 5-kingdom or 3-domain system helps us to understand species better, why not go with it?
What is the point of Hovind insisting that we can have only plants or animals when so many living things just don't fit comfortably into either of those slots?
"and then chose the first hominid that was fully human to be Adam and then the story went from there."
at what point does one decide true "hominidity"
No matter how you slice it, it is going to be arbitrary. Is true "hominidity" something that is physically visible? or is it a certain level of intelligence? or is it a spiritual quality?
Biology can only deal with the first of these, and since there is a fairly smooth continuum of development from ape to human characteristics, it is rather arbitrary when to begin calling hominid fossils "human". That, of course, is what one would expect if the human body has evolved from a primate ancestor.
Neither intelligence nor spirituality can be measured directly from physical evidence. The best one can do is use cultural criteria, such as tool-making (shows intelligent foresight) and ritual burial (indicates spiritual concepts).
and is there not a theological problem in that death came through the sin of the first man whereas in this case death existed before Adam?
Only if you subscribe to a theology which says that not only did no humans die before Adam sinned, but that no plant or animal life died either. The latter idea is not necessitated by either the creation stories nor Paul's letters. And it is contra-indicated by the command given to living creatures to "multiply and fill the earth" and by the indications that both humans and animals required the sustenance of food.
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