"Dr." Hovind refuted

[Cyberman]

Personally I don't care if Darwin sent little kids up chimneys, kept slaves and trafficked opium on the black market. None of that has any bearing on whether his model of evolution is right. As for the rest (the Earth would have been inside the Sun, etc), ask him to name the 'evolutionist' he allegedly debated. Because I will guarantee right now that either s/he was an invention of this guy built out of straw, or that said evolutionist was a total idiot. No wonder he calls bull.

[FallentoReason]

It's the most ignorant thing I've ever read. Most of the time I try and see past their argument and understand where they're coming from (because I used to be there once) but this guy is dribbling on as if he's been living under a rock. It seriously pisses me off, that religion can take hold of the mind and deny it the right to be enlightened by the advancements of our species.

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Personally I don't care if Darwin sent little kids up chimneys, kept slaves and trafficked opium on the black market. None of that has any bearing on whether his model of evolution is right. As for the rest (the Earth would have been inside the Sun, etc), ask him to name the 'evolutionist' he allegedly debated. Because I will guarantee right now that either s/he was an invention of this guy built out of straw, or that said evolutionist was a total idiot. No wonder he calls bull.

The most tragic thing isn't even to do with this alleged evolutionist he argued with. It's the fact that these creationists trot around with the outdated arguments without knowing it.

I gave him a small excerpt of a website that exposes this particular argument. It's already been refuted that you can't extend the 5 foot/yr shrinkage rate into the indefinite past -- there's no evidence to do such a thing. The website then goes on to highlight exactly what the problem with these idiots is:

"Scientific" creationism lives like the proverbial ostrich with its head buried in the sand; it has no effective mechanism to weed out error

They are living in the past.

[Cyberman]

I've just run that shrinking/expanding Sun thing through the Hovind calculator, based on the following (generous) criteria:

• Belief In Scripture: No doctrinal belief required = 0
  
  
• Scientific Illiteracy: No understanding or knowledge of area being discussed = 3
  
  
• Idiocy: Very funny in a very worrying way = 5
  
  
• Paradox: Statement is logical and self-consistent = 0
  
  
• Mendacity: Statement maker knows they are telling enough of a porkie to try to mislead a generally credulous audience = 2

This gives a Hovind Factor of 16 - "Partially Creotarded - Some very serious misunderstandings about reality, and a hint of zealotry beginning to rear its ugly head".

Even if we eliminate the mendacity factor and assume he was being totally honest, we still get a result of 8 Hovinds: "Pushing The Limits of Decency - starting to go beyond what is reasonable, but dishonesty or scientific illiteracy are becoming too obvious to ignore".

[FallentoReason]

This Hovind character is messed up in the head beyond repair...

Some guy just commented on Facebook and says "so what we've proven here is that atheists are just as close minded as fanatical evangelical Christians". Yeah, because showing that a Japanese river sediment sample with 100 000 varves represents at least 100 000 years of Earth history is close minded... did I make nature to be that way, or was it that way and I have no choice but to accept that? For F$&%'s sake!!!

[Cyberman]

The correct response to a statement like that would be "Well, at least you've found a way to feel superior to both; that's the main thing."

[FallentoReason]

The correct response to a statement like that would be "Well, at least you've found a way to feel superior to both; that's the main thing."

Hah! Crafty.

It turns out he was referring to a guy at the beginning of the 180+ comments and said that he thought my arguments were really well thought out.. he should have clarified...

[Jackalope]

Hovind's dissertation (or "book" as he likes to call it) rejects the formal, technical style expected of most mainstream Ph.D dissertations and other high-level academic work. Patriot Bible University does allow "a popular writing style" to be used.

Ahhh... and of course, we can't mention that without mentioning this:

Patriot Bible University (PBU), formerly known as Patriot University, is an unaccredited Independent Baptist correspondence school located in Del Norte, Colorado [2] which issues religious degrees only.[3] According to the State of Colorado, Patriot's "degrees or diplomas have no state recognition".[4] PBU is not accredited by any agency recognized by the Department of Education.[5] It has been called a diploma mill, lacking sufficient academic standards to award degrees.[6][7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Bible_University

[Baalzebutt]

Have any of you actually read Hovind's "dissertation/book"?

Fuck me.

First of all, it is one of the worst written, most poorly edited, unsupported, unsubstantiated piece of shit I have ever had the misfortune to read.

It is biased in the extreme and contains not a single footnote or supporting documentation beyond a few notations of quotes.

This man is not just a closed-minded zealot. He is a malicious, knuckle dragging idiot of the worst kind.

Frankly, its a good thing he is in jail. This man is flat-out dangerous. This is the kind of person society truly need to be protected from.

[thesummerqueen]

I didn't have to read it - Irreligiosophy read it out loud with commentary. That's the only way I recommend going through it, if you don't want a brain melt down.

[Baalzebutt]

I didn't have to read it - Irreligiosophy read it out loud with commentary. That's the only way I recommend going through it, if you don't want a brain melt down.

Got a link for that by any chance? I would love to see it.