Defeating "Dr" Kent Hovinds' claims.

A dear friend of mine claims that the mans theories are sound, and that his math works out. I'd like a thread dedicated to stopping these ridiculous claims. His first is this.The rate at which the earth is slowing down can be used to prove that the earth was spinning so fast life would have been ejected into space at the 4.5 billion mark. He uses simple multiplication to reap his answer, stating that the gradual slow down rate of the earth according to nasa means that *Rate* x *4.5billion* = *Incredibly high number*Is that not the dumbest math ever? I've shown him the complete math to figure out how long the day was, and did the actual mph conversion from that and came up with about 1800mph for 3.5 billion years ago. He says that's not how it's done. I'm not exactly what one would call "skilled" with math so keep it somewhat simple. I may be back to ask further questions, or require help to refute more dumb claims.

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Yes, it is.One site that discusses several of Hovinds arguement isHow Good are those Young-Earth Arguments: Hovind's 'Proofs' (continued)from there

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20. Presently, the earth's rotation is slowing down 0.005 seconds per year per year (Thwaites and Awbrey, 1982, p.19). At least Dr. Hovind doesn't use the horrendous rate of 1 second per year which Dr. Walter Brown employed as a result of a total misunderstanding of time keeping. I believe that Dr. Brown discarded that argument upon realizing his error, but don't expect it to disappear from the creationist literature. Only a towering optimist could expect that!

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The actual rate of 0.005 seconds per year per year yields, if rolled back 4.6 billion years, a 14-hour day. The subject is a bit tricky the first time around, and I'm indebted to Thwaites and Awbrey (1982) whose fine article cleared away the cobwebs.

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Let's do the calculation for 370 million years ago:

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((0.005 sec/yr) x (370 million yr))/Year = (1,850,000 sec)/Year
= (21.4 days)/Year

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Thus, at 370 million years ago, the earth had 21.4 extra days per year.

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The total days then per year were: (365.25 + 21.4)days/Year = 386.65 days/Year.

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(8766 hrs/Year)/(386.65 days/Year) = 22.7 hrs/day

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If you do the same calculations for 4.6 billion years ago, you'll get the 14 hrs/day given by Drs. Thwaites and Awbrey. Thus, there is no problem here for mainstream science. Indeed, the present rate may be too high:

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...the correct present rate of slowing of the earth's rotation is excessively high, because the present rate of spin is in a resonance mode with the back-and-forth

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motion of the oceans' waters in the ocean basins. In past ages when the rotation rate was faster, the resonance was much less or nonexistent, resulting in a much more gradual slowing of the rotation rate. The most recent calculations indicate that the earth could be 4 to 5 billion years old and not have been spinning excessively fast or requiring the moon to be any closer to the earth than 225,000 kilometers (140,000 miles).

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Hey, fork. (Welcome to EvC) A lot of your success with your friend will depend on your motives in the debate with them. If you simply want to find facts or information so that you can say that I'm smart, and you are ignorant! you will perhaps win the argument yet lose your friend as they retreat into the zany world of the creationists! I believe in God and I believe that God imagined/created me and all that is long before I or my species was evolved enough to even consider Him. However...

God gave us brains. We don't have to simply listen to every creationist argument out there! One won't go to "hell" for allowing for the possibility that God and Science can comfortably co-exist.

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Dr. Kent Hovind is not helping Science or Religion, IMHO.
He is causing a battle between two sides that could be in agreement! One can be a perfectly logical and disciplined student without insulting or alienating their Creator!

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God is a Belief. How sound that belief is rests on the individual, not on science. God does not have to be proven.

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Have your friend look into Kent Hovinds background from the viewpoint of his skeptics. Reassure your friend that although Hovind may be wrong on many if not most things does not detract from the validity of a belief in a Creator!

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You wanna make bridges rather than burn them, right?

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God is a Belief. How sound that belief is rests on the individual, not on science. God does not have to be proven.

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One should have some sort of solid foundation of evidence for their faith. But you are right, science probably isn't the place to find such evidence.However I will say that evolution and other naturalistic theories are perpetuated in an effort to remove God out of the picture. It saddens me when Christians show support for this kind of godless science.

When my grandmother was 60, she stood a proud 5 ft 7" tall. Twenty-five years later she had shrunk to a mere 4 ft 11". This means of course that she was born an 8 ft 3" long baby.Also, from the fact that her IQ of 110 at age 60 had fallen to just 65 when she died at 75, we may of course conclude that, at birth, she must have been a child prodigy with an IQ of 290.Don't you just love it when you can pretend that everything develops linearly?Oh, and another thing: It's a good thing then that there was no life to be ejected, isn't it?

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

You may well say it, that doesn't stop it being complete nonsense though.TTFN,WK

Then let me take this opportunity to cheer you up. There is nothing inconsistent with Christianity (most versions of it, anyway) and evolution. It should no more sadden you that Christians show support for evolution than it saddens you that Christians drive godless automobiles.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin

Well, I hope for your great-grandmother's sake that grandma used her incredible intelligence to figure out a way to make delivery easier.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin

Actually, it was a little gruesome: lil' granny thought it would be nice to use a caesarian to introduce herself to the world. From the inside out.

There is, however, a lot of conflict between evolution and the Bible.Taken at face value, the Bible's version of the emergence of life on Earth is a fairytale.The Christian groups who accept that there is no conflict between the Bible and evolution have to interpret genesis to fit their preconceived notions of how life emerged.It is funny that they can accept Genesis as allegory yet have problems that Jesus' resurrection is allegorical. Jesus simply did come back to life three days after He 'died', but Adam and Eve's adventure simply has to be a myth because it goes against all scientific evidence. But, dying and coming back to life three days later is completely plausible!If Christianity is compatible with evolution, then Christianity is also compatible with fairytales.Brian.

Please, PLEASE, pretty please open a new thread to support this position (I won't do it because I tend to avoid feeding trolls - if you're serious, you'll do the work). I even have a suggestion as to how:1. Select any current scientific discipline (for my tastes, I would prefer you pick one of the earth or life sciences, rather than physics or cosmology). Your choice.2. Elaborate on the methodology of "god science" (as contrasted to "godless science").3. Compare and contrast the methodology and results of "god science" vs. "godless science" and how each would apply to your chosen discipline. IOW, how "god science" provides better answers than "godless science".If you do, you'll be the very first ever. Note well: simply proclaiming that "godless science" is wrong without providing an alternative that gives at least as good results does not give us any reason to switch horses, here. If you have a methodology that works better, then this is your opportunity to present it and blow all those evil atheist scientists and "false Christians" out of the water. If you can't, then we'll just have to muddle (or is that Muhdle?) through with what we've got.

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However I will say that evolution and other naturalistic theories are perpetuated in an effort to remove God out of the picture.

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The scientific method is incompatible with supernaturalistic explanations for the simple reason that the supernatural cannot be observed, measured, nor tested. Here's an illustrative story:

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The Physicist and the Metaphysicist

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In the 1920s, there was a dinner at which the physicist Robert W. Wood was asked to respond to a toast. This was a time when people stood up, made a toast, and then selected someone to respond. Nobody knew what toast they'd be asked to reply to, so it was a challenge for the quick-witted. In this case the toast was: "To physics and metaphysics." Now by metaphysics was meant something like philosophy -- truths that you could get to just by thinking about them. Wood took a second, glanced about him, and answered along these lines: The physicist has an idea, he said. The more he thinks it through, the more sense it makes to him. He goes to the scientific literature, and the more he reads, the more promising the idea seems. Thus prepared, he devises an experiment to test the idea. The experiment is painstaking. Many possibilities are eliminated or taken into account; the accuracy of the measurement is refined. At the end of all this work, the experiment is completed and ... the idea is shown to be worthless. The physicist then discards the idea, frees his mind (as I was saying a moment ago) from the clutter of error, and moves on to something else.

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The difference between physics and metaphysics, Wood concluded, is that the metaphysicist has no laboratory.

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Science cannot deal with the supernatural and trying to resort to supernaturalistic explanations can only damage science. Therefore, science must restrict itself to working with naturalistic explanations and, as a result, it can only offer naturalistic answers about the natural world. Science can say and does not say anything about the supernatural.It seems obvious that you follow the false theology of The God of the Gaps, in which you believe in a puny impotent god who only exists and works within the gaps of our knowledge. That god is incapable of using natural processes and must live forever fearful of science as science closes those gaps and that god becomes ever smaller and punier. This is the theology I repeatedly see being used by ID and even by "creation science".OTOH, most Christians' God is Sovereign over Nature, Who is fully capable of using natural processes to do His Work and Who has nothing at all to fear from science.Sorry to hear that your god is so puny and impotent. You should consider switching to the Christian God instead.Recommended reading: Dr. Allan Harvey's essays, "A Personal View of the Evolution Issue" at No webpage found at provided URL: http://members.aol.com/steamdoc/writings/evolution.html and "Science and Christian Apologetics" at No webpage found at provided URL: http://members.aol.com/steamdoc/writings/apologetics.html.

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It saddens me when Christians show support for this kind of godless science.

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And yet you would rejoice when Christians resort to lies and deception in order to serve their god? With all the damage that does? (eg, driving more people away from Christ than you attract, thoroughly discrediting Christianity, making it impossible for most people to be able to ever consider becoming a Christian, proving Christianity to be a false religion (Matthew 7:20), doing the anti-religion atheists' work for them by disproving the existence of God yourself, destroying the faith of creationists when they discover that they'd been taught lies)That goes beyond sad and even beyond tragic.

I think you are reading too much into Muhd's words. While it is true that many creationists and IDists present their god as a god that exists in the gaps between all the discoveries we have made, I don't think Muhd is one of them. His claim that

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However I will say that evolution and other naturalistic theories are perpetuated in an effort to remove God out of the picture.

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tells me he has the typical misunderstanding of what scientists do.Just like most people in society, he probably finds his comfort into making up his mind about something and sets out to find evidence for whatever it is. For example, if he is convinced that the guy next door is a jerk, Muhd would go out and try to find every piece of evidence that suggests the guy next door is a jerk. Along the way, Muhd would probably find some evidence that suggest the guy next door is a nice person, but then since it contradicts what Muhd presupposes, the evidence is simply thrown out.In other words, Muhd has a misunderstanding that scientists are some sort of angry heathens who try to disprove god. Science, according to Muhd, science should simply toss out all evidence that have no relevence to proving the existence of god. It's a rather sad view of the progresses we have made since the Dark Ages.It's not that Muhd thinks his god exists in the gaps of knowledge. It's that he thinks the knowledge we have ARE the gaps between god.

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