Kent Hovind's debates, can someone help?

Here's some silly Hovind quotes you may find amusing:http://www.geocities.com/kenthovind/"The ancient horse is a Hyracotherium, which was originally called the hyrax, is still alive today in Turkey and in East Africa."The modern "hyrax" is actually a rabbit-like creature and bears no resemblance nor lineage to the equine ancestor "hyracotherium""In 1271 A.D. Marco Polo came back from China and reported that the Emperor of China was raising dragons to pull his chariots in parades. Now why on earth would Marco Polo say something like that just 700 years ago? Well, I think he probably said that because the Emperor of China was raising dragons to pull his chariots in parades.""If you are traveling down the highway at sixty miles an hour, and turn your headlights on, how fast is the light going from your headlights? Compared to you, it is going at the speed of light. Compared to someone on the sidewalk it is going at the speed of light plus sixty miles an hour.""If evolution is true, you could not know that it's true because your brain is nothing but chemicals. Think about that. ""I believe the Great Pyramid was built to be the Bible in stone. The Egyptians did not build it.""Therefore, there may not be any other stars in the solar system that have planets around them.""Obviously, several different colors of people exist on the earth that have distinctive characteristics, but they are the same race. [.....] One theory says that Adam and Eve were medium-brown, possibly because they were made from the earth.""You say, Brother Hovind, you don't believe in fire breathing dragons do you? Yeah, you better watch video tape number three; there really were fire breathing dragons."

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For example, until his recent coverage of the "Origin of Species" and the ultra racist views of Darwin as well as the influence he had on the thinking of Hitler, I was unaware of all this.

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I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that you have never read Darwin's "Origin of Species", Buz, am I right?So why do you take the word of someone with a diploma mill PhD, a record of tax evasion, and who believes in fire-breathing dragons regarding a book you have never read?Darwin was, in fact, quite anti-racist for a white man of his day, and just as you refuse to let anyone blame Christianity for it's misuse, I'm not going to let you blame Darwin for anyone's misuse of his theory.I hope you will use your new found interest in "Origin of Species" to actually read it! Conveniently, the entire text is available on line here:The Origin of Species by Charles DarwinPlease begin another topic if you would like to discuss Darwin's ideas in greater detail as you read.

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That doesn't necessarily make Hovind wrong and you right though since neither were there when it was formed.

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Imagine you are the last person alive on the planet, Buz.You go to sleep one cloudy winter's night.You wake up in the morning and you notice lots of cold, fluffy white stuff on the ground.Accoding to your reasoning, it's impossible for you to make any determination at all about how that snow got there.Nobody witnessed it, right?

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If you are traveling down the highway at sixty miles an hour, and turn your headlights on, how fast is the light going from your headlights? Compared to you, it is going at the speed of light. Compared to someone on the sidewalk it is going at the speed of light plus sixty miles an hour.

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Is one light ray emitted or are multiple rays being perpetually emitted from the radiating filament?

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Light isn't described as "rays" in physics.Light is described as waves and/or particles.Furthermore, the speed of light in a given medium is a physical constant, just like the speed of sound in a given medium is a physical constant.You know about the sonic booms that happen when an aircraft breaks the sound barrier? An observer on the ground hears the boom after the plane has passed because there is a limit to how fast sound travels through air.The speed of light is much, much faster than the speed of sound (actually, nothing can go faster than the speed of light), but the principal is the same.If a jet is travelling at mach 2, the sound the jet is making doesn't travel at mach 2 plus the speed of sound.It's less obvious, but still true at 60 mph both for sound and for light.The "red shift" you hear Astronomers talking about is like the Doppler effect, only with light, not sound.It shows a lack of understanding of the most basic high school physics for Hovind to say "to someone on the sidewalk that car's headlights appear to be "going" at the speed of light plus sixty miles an hour."It would be one thing if he was just some guy, but he is irresponsibly spouting his uninformed nonsense to lots and lots of people as if he knew what he was talking about.It is clear that he is completely uninformed of what he is pretending to be an authority about.

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With the snow there's no question as it is observed frequently. (GONG!)

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Ahhh, so you actually DON'T require a person to actually witness an event in order to determine that it happened.You DO believe that, even though not a single person witnessed how the snow got on the ground, you were able to INFER how it got there from the INCOMPLETE available evidence right?Gradual erosion and snowfall, are natural processes that we observe all the time.That means you will never, ever again say that we cannot INFER FROM EVIDENCE, because there were no eye witnesses, that some natural process ocurred, right?

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OK I see what you mean. I didn't open the link because I didn't have time to read a book. Nevertheless, Hovind is right in that most of the title has been edited out in subsequent editions. Is that correct?

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Buz, your quibbling over the title of the book seems very much like a adolescent attempt to obfuscate the issue.My copy of Origins has the whole, long, clunky, Victorian-style title on the front cover. Other copies have shortened versions on the cover and the whole title on the title page inside.Who the hell cares?Read the book yourself and then open a thread and discuss the details.If you don't read the book yourself, you are just letting Hovind do your thinking for you, and that is just lazy. Or, you could at least look up the parts Hovind talks about and read them in context.Don't let someone who believes in fire-breathing dragons and who has a degree from a diploma mill do your thinking for you.

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Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. It is possible to travel faster than the speed of light in various materials.

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Yes, I know, and I think I wrote that they were constants "in a given medium".I didn't want to get things too complicated in my description.

Enough about the speed of light and Hovind's cluelessness.I want to talk about his claim that fire-breathing dragons exist.Buz, do you think that fire-breathing dragons exist?

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I don't think so. Did they ever exist? With dinosaurs I suppose it might be a possibility with some kind of a blow torch effect which would not contact tissue of the mouth with no contact, but that's as far as I go. There is figurative texts in some Biblical passages depicting consuming fires in connection with living beings.

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Ahh, but it seems the case with Hovind that he thinks the bits in the Bible regarding those passages are not firgurative, but quite literal.I mean, he believes that the emperor of China was breeding fire-breathing dragons a few centuries ago.So, why do you think that Hovind is a source of accurate, reliable information when he says stuff like that? Could it be that he makes stuff up off the top of his head and then proclaims it fact? Perhaps the reason you doubt him about the dragons is because you know there really isn't any evidence at all for these make-believe creatures. Well, since you know even less about the "Origin of Species", having never read it, perhaps you might delay believing what Hovind is saying about it until you read the book.If he says such obviously outrageous and unsupported things regarding the existence of dragons just to convince an unknowing audience, perhaps he would say similarly outrageous and false things about "Origin of Species" to an audience who has never read the book, right?Do you really just go ahead and believe what anyone tells you just so long as they tell you what you want to hear?

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Schraf, I am saying I don't really know whether Hovind is correct about fire dragons or not. I've said that I don't agree with him about the young universe and some other, but by and large, I think he is quite credible in what he says in his lectures.

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You think he is quite credible, even though the two major Creationist storefront organizations discourage their readers from taking him seriously?You think he is credible, even though he can be and has been demonstrated to be incorrect and/or inaccurate regarding nearly every part of any scientific claims he makes?You think "Dr." Hovind is credible, even though he purchased his PhD from a diploma mill in an obvious effort to present the appearence of having studied long and hard to earn an advanced degree without actually doing the work?I guess your criterion of how to judge someone's credibility has more to do with their telling you what you want to hear rather than if they are actually worthy of respect.

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You people pick out a few items and discredit him altogether on the basis of these few. That's not good science either, imo.

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Um, no. There are many websites correcting and showing Hovind's lies, misinformation, and errors.Many threads on this site alone deal with his nonsense. Haven't you ever read anything that disagrees with him with the slightest bit of open-mindedness?

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As for the reading of Darwin's "Origin of Species," for that matter likely most of my posting opponents of Biblical debates have not read the entire Bible either, so imo, this is a bogus implication on your part that I don't know enough about Darwinism to state emphatically what I've said concerning the subject.

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But Buz, if you haven't read the Origin of Species, you have no idea if what Hovind is saying about it is true or not.So, no, I DON'T think you know enough about what Darwin's attitude about race was as recorded in Origins unless you read the relevant parts yourself.Remember, I suggested that you at least read the relevant parts of Origins if you don't read the whole thing. (Of course, I DO suggest you read the whole thing...)

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Have you read the Bible all the way, word for word, cover to cover, Schraf? If you have, you're likely a small minority of evos here in town who have.

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Nope, not quite all of it. I have probably read about 70%-80% of it. I couldn't quite make it through the geneologies and other really boring, laborious parts of the OT, but I have read the gospels several times.Have you read that much of anything by Darwin, Gould, Mayr or Dawkins?

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Having said the above, there's a big difference in the reading of a book and the long time study of a book in depth, so whether one has read a book or has become apprised on the subject matter of a given subject are both considerations to consider.

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Very true. A lot of what Hovind says and writes shows that he is clueless about much science and history.

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I judge Hovind on what he gives credible evidence for which is a lot more than what you're giving him credit for.

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OK, it's possible that all of us, including everybody at ICR and AiG, have misjudged him.Perhapstoy would like to present Hovidn's alleged well-documented claims to see if they hold up to scrutiny?I'd be happy to do all of the research if you present some of the claims you consider credible.

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Have you actually heard him lecture for two hours at a sitting?

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No. I have, however, read some transcripts of his speeches and also some radio broadcasts, and that's where I got the stuff about the fire-breathing dragons being bred by the Emporer of China.

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I've heard him on two hour segments on TV several times and much of what he says is very credible and interesting stuff which I believe anyone would be hard pressed to refute.

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OK, bring it on.Just list his claims and I'll attempt to refute them.

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I'm not including the fire dragons in this, btw, but I'm not discounting it altogether either. Nor am I including in this his claim that there are a few dinosaurs around. I don't think so, but believe he in sincere in his belief that there are some.

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So, sincerety in belief makes it OK for him to repeat things that aren't supported by evidence?

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I believe he is very sincere in what he believes, whether right or wrong.

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There "sincere believers" in all sorts of things, including UFO's, Astrology, the existence of fairies, and of all the religions of the world.The only reason you give Hovind the time of day is because he is telling you what you want to hear. The problem is, you don't know or care enough about the truth to find out for yourself if he is full of crap (as most people believe) or not.

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As to your question about my reading of Darwin, I've read very little except exerpts from time to time for research purposes, etc. Having said that, what have I said about him that you are ready to refute?

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That he was calling for the extermination of non-whites, or that he was any more racist than any other English Victorian Christian intellectual male.

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My take on Darwin's racism is that his version of evolution is inherantly racist, in that blacks were/are the lesser evolved types of humans, the blacks being more of the same color and having some features suggesting lesser evolvement. Would you agree?

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No, I don't agree.Where in "Origin of Species" does Darwin say this?(Aren't you basing your opinion on Hovind's claim that "Origins" is racist and that the Nazis used it?)Specifically, can you provide any support for your claim that Darwin's theory states that more color = less evolved?...not that Darwin would use the term "less evolved" anyway, because it is nonsensical in the context of natural selection.Just read the damn book, buzsaw, and learn a bit about what you are attempting to criticize.