Young Earth Creationist Kent Hovind Debunked: Full Refutation of his Anti-Evolution Arguments

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Aron
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Young Earth Creationist Kent Hovind Debunked: Full Refutation of his Anti-Evolution Arguments

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For reference, the video being debunked here is Kent Hovind's '100 Reasons Why Evolution is Stupid' video.
Here's a link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8DDIe_2cHM

If anyone doesn't know who Kent Hovind is, he's a Young Earth Creationist who thinks the earth was created 6000 years ago. Which is obviously wrong for quite a lot of reasons. Anyone who believes his dogma, please read this as I go over and refute pretty much every single point he has.

Summary Response to Kent Hovind's Main Arguments

Kent Hovind makes a few primary arguments trying to disprove evolution the big bang and quite a lot else. For the Big Bang, the main argument
Kent Hovind fails to make is that the Big Bang has no known 'off' switch. There's no explained reason in science as far as i know, for why the massive initial expansion rate suddenly slowed down to far far less than it originally was. That does not mean that there is no expansion of the universe as there obviously is given the evidence with redshift and the Big Bang may well have happened anyways since there's no better theory that I know of, Steady State intuitively seems to make more sense but it does not explain the redshift seen.
Here's a diagram of the big bang for reference.The troublesome part to explain is the sudden instant flattening of the expansion rate down to almost nothing, compared to its initial giant hyper accelerated expansion where it expands from one tiny point to giant areas of space.

Image

If inflation continued at the rate you see it going at the start of the universe, the universe would be a ludicrous degree bigger by now, and there probably would be no atoms, let alone stars or planets in existence due to how fast space expanded. Scientists will probably find an explanation for this later but it is a big issue in the big bang theory.

The formation of the stars and the earth all make sense and he doesn't understand anything there. However he does make a good argument after that.

Kent Hovind is right that scientists don't have an answer yet for how exactly Abiogenesis occured and the first life form emerged, but he just goes to the typical Christian 'Goddunit' conclusion from this data. A lot of arguments he makes against evolution with random examples that supposedly prove a fake fossil are basically just wrong.

Then there is one core argument that he gets partly right, the argument against Transitional Fossils. There obviously are transitional fossils but not as many as Darwin predicted. Kent Hovind assumes that this means evolution is all fake and deliberately misquotes Stephen J Gould to show this, more on that in the full analysis. But the idea in general that there are not enough fossils to justify Darwinian evolution is true, and the reason is that evolution has many 'jumps' where there are not 1 million transitional forms between one animal and one significantly different one. Evolution happens faster than Darwin thought it could. This is gone over in detail in the book Evolution 2.0 but basically the reason Darwin was wrong is he presupposed only random mutations and natural selection drive evolution. There is no statistical case for this showing that the rate of beneficial random mutations is high enough to overcome the damage caused by harmful random mutations, and it is basically just not proven at all.

The reality is it's been well proven that random chance does not explain this and the mechanisms involved with evolution. One is Transposition where cells rearrange their DNA to create new traits. Essentially they move around codons and change their position in the gene and are able to create completely new affects with this rearrangement.

Image

Another one is Horizontal Gene Transfer, where cells copy some of their genes over to other cells to give them a new trait, or copy a useful genetic trait from another cell or even a virus. For example if a bacterial cell gains antibiotic resistance it will use this to transfer its trait to all the other bacteria making them also immune.

Image

Then there is Epigenetics, Cells rendering inactive or active specific genes or codons to turn off a trait or turn one on, or turn off/on a gene to create a new trait that will emerge from the combined effect of that gene and other genes together.

Image

Another one is Symbiogenesis, a rare event when two organisms essentially merge into one symbiotic relationship where they cannot seperate. This is how the modern animal cell emerged with mitochondria entering the cell.

This image shows how plants got their chloroplasts through symbiogenesis:

Image

Finally there is Genome Doubling, a rare event in hybrids where they get the full genetic code of both parents rather than half of each, although hyrids are usually sterile. All of these evolution mechanisms show pretty apparent planned and intentional behavior.

If one of your cells steals a gene from a virus via HGT that lets it help fight it it will actively go out and transfer this to all the other cells. Immune cells attacking viruses do not go blindly one by one. Their numbers accumulate nearby until a sufficient group is prepared and then they all attack at once. There's all sorts of behavior like this that shows obvious coordination and order. To get to the point here, Kent Hovind's objection is answered by the fact that these mechanisms allow big quantum leaps in evolution, it's explained why there are not so many transitional fossils. It also answers the main argument that evolution does not create new genetic information when these mechanisms do obviously create new information and have been proven in the lab too, not just via guessing around what certain fossils mean.

He doesn't make that many other systemic arguments saying that something just could not have happened, rather than giving a random supposedly debunked example of evolution. But if you want to see pretty much every single claim he makes rebutted just read the full analysis below.

100 Reasons Why Kent Hovind is Stupid

First off he doesn't get how gravity works which is why he made all those arguments about the universe not being uniform, gravity pulls it in all sorts of ways after the big bang explaining all of these arguments. Scientists aren't totally sure yet which is why 'dark matter' is part of scientific theory, but Kent Hovind makes the typical Christian conclusion that if science doesn't have the full explanation it must be BS. Some planets spinning the other direction also makes sense for this reason, some other solar systems probably have far more variation in which planets spin which ways.

Kent Hovind asks what exploded in the Big Bang. It's not an explosion but a rapid expansion of space. For some reason, he doesn't ask the question of why space would suddenly expand so fast, or more importantly, how the Big Bang suddenly stopped expanding at the rapid rate it was expanding and slowed down massively. The Big Bang seems to explain the most evidence either way even with this issue in the theory though. He complains about how they revised the estimate down to be a tiny dot of space when that is just how science works, observations are made with greater precision so the model is refined.

At 8:39 in the video Kent Hovind makes this obvious blatant lie. If you look at the textbook page he references it is a deliberate misquote as you can see right in the video. It's talking about a nebula shrinking and spinning faster and faster, not the Big Bang. The Big Bang didn't work that way. Yes the Big Bang is also an 'explosion' in a way although it's technically an expansion but he is misleading the audience here by making them think it worked similarily to the described nebula issue. Maybe Kent Hovind somehow thought that worked as a reference for describing an explosion but if he did that just means he messed up big time. So he either made a big mistake or was a deliberate liar, take your pick.

There are actually a good deal fewer transitional fossils than you would expect but for a good reason, Evolution is faster than the random mutation and natural selection method Darwin proposed. Nonetheless there are obviously an abundance of fossils out there and it's easy enough to discern that evolution connected them, there just isn't an endless array of tiny gradual changes like you would expect if random mutation is the only possible cause of evolution.

He describes the tongues of woodpecker birds wrong. They don't wrap around the inside of their heads in some weird way. Then he describes a symbiotic relationship between termites and bacteria in their guts that help them digest cellulose and asks which one evolved first. What he doesn't realize is that symbiotic relationships can and do develop in real time in nature, it doesn't have to magically all have been created that way like he thinks. The termite probably survived without cellulose earlier and ate from non plant food sources. The bacteria that started a symbiotic relationship with the termite probably had something to gain from that symbiosis. Like having an animal to carry it around quickly inside of it and transport it so its species could spread to other animals and other locations.

The Big Bang is supposed to come from quantum fluctuations or something along those lines as far as scientists can tell but scientists aren't sure how that would work yet, or if it is due to parallel universes or something else. Scientists make the analysis that it happened based on data without having to know exactly why and how it happened yet. Kent Hovind makes the analysis based on a dogma that it HAD to be Young Earth Creationism and will not question that at all, while scientists questioned the Big Bang plenty. They just have chosen the Big Bang because it seems to make the most sense with the evidence so far. See the difference? Kent Hovind doesn't get what Religion means.

He is wrong that Evolution is the only thing here that's tax supported. Churches are exempt from taxes...Did Kent Hovind know that? He probably did but just didn't make the connection. At 13:55 he mis-explains the laws of the universe. They are more like Patterns of physics rather than Laws of physics, there doesn't have to be a 'law-giver'. Also Rupert Sheldrake has disproved that the laws of the universe are and have been absolutely constant in their exact effects for all times in his Ted Talk entitled "The Science Delusion". You can see it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKHUaNAxsTg

At about 15 minutes in Kent Hovind shows that he doesn't understand gravity. It's been a long long time since the Big Bang. It doesn't matter if the matter in the big bang was spinning when it exploded, all the matter that was sent out then pulled on the other matter with gravity. So of course matter in the universe is not evenly distributed. It also makes sense that a planet in the solar system could be rotating 'backwards', there is no law of the universe that everything rotates the same way, gravity could change planet's rotations and no law says they originally have to have been rotating the same direction either.. There could be solar systems out there with lots of planets rotating in different directions much more so than here. Gravity's effect after the big bang completely explains why there are big voids in space, there is no law saying that star formation happens evenly and uniformly all throughout the universe. The universe being 'lumpy' makes total sense.

Then he repeats the untrue statement that there are no observed star births to make up for star deaths, this is just not true. Also consider how bright a supernova is compared to the initial formation of a star. Less advanced telescopes could pick up a supernova but not a star birth. Although that doesn't matter because the best telescopes in the world are seeing plenty of star births.

The reason there are not that many super novas we see in the Milky Way is the ridiculous scale of cosmic time. Stars stay around for literally billions of years. However if you look at the rest of the universe there are a lot more because the universe is far bigger than the milky way. Here's an extract from wikipedia:

"Although supernovae are relatively rare events, occurring on average about once every 50 years in the Milky Way,[25] observations of distant galaxies allowed supernovae to be discovered and examined more frequently. The first supernova detection patrol was begun by Zwicky in 1933. He was joined by Josef J. Johnson from Caltech in 1936. Using a 45-cm Schmidt telescope at Palomar observatory, they discovered twelve new supernovae within three years by comparing new photographic plates to reference images of extragalactic regions"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_o ... bservation

Keep in mind we are not observing the whole visible universe we could be observing all at once. We only have so many telescopes out there looking at only so many regions of space. The amount we could be looking at if we had 100s more deep space telescopes like Hubble is vastly greater than the amount we actually are looking at, this theoretical amount completely dwarfs the amount we see.

He quotes Fred Hoyle as saying he has 'little hesitation in saying a sickly pall now hangs over the big bang theory". He really is cherry picking this quote. If he gave the full context he would tell everyone listening that Fred Hoyle invented the Steady State theory of the universe's expansion where the universe is constantly expanding and has always been creating new matter, no Big Bang involved. I can't see the scientific journal he wrote that in online via the internet, but he probably said it because he never believed in the Big Bang theory of the universe's expansion and thought his Steady State theory explained the evidence better. Kent Hovind deludes the audience into thinking this is just a random scientist who became doubtful of the big bang they believed in earlier and thought it was being disproved.

19:14 in the video he rebuts the earth being molten by quoting the Bible. Which isn't really proof at all. Then he switches to evidence claiming that radioactive polonium was found in rocks that are supposed to have been previously molten. First off putting aside his claim that these rocks were never molten, he hasn't proved that these polonium haloes allegedly found in the rocks were there for long enough that they have to have been there at a time when the rock would have been lava. The polonium getting stuck in these rocks doesn't mean it was always there, and the point when it initially got into the rock could have easily been a point in time when the rock was not lava. If you want to prove the whole rock cycle is somehow fake science then the first thing you need to do is show a rock that could not have gotten polonium into it in any natural way has recently emerged from the crust and would have been lava. Kent Hovind does not go into any specifics probably because he has no real proof of this and is just hoping people buy the vague idea.

After that he goes back to disagreeing with the origin of life and saying it's all impossible. He gets back to a specific point by saying that life could not have evolved because UV light destroys ammonia and in the experiment that was supposed to create life, the scientist deemed ammonia necessary and excluded oxygen from the experiment because it would oxidize the amino acids. He says ozone is needed to block the UV light but this may not be true. If oxygen didn't do it then the next best guess would be another gas in the atmosphere at the time was responsible. Or perhaps life evolved deep enough under the sea that the UV light didn't reach, rendering UV light not really a problem. I don't know what the exact composition of ancient Earth's atmosphere was but it was decently different from the modern one for sure. According to scientists the mass oxygenation of the earth's atmosphere only happened after life got around:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... tmosphere/

So it's safe to say that scientist probably excluded Oxygen from his attempted abiogenesis experiment not because he couldn't think of another way to make it work, as Kent Hovind makes the viewers assume, but because as far as science could tell there was no oxygen in the atmosphere at all when life arose. Which is a coherent explanation, even if Kent Hovind is completely right about amino acids oxidizing quickly in a modern atmosphere and preventing any new instances of abiogenesis, or at least abiogenesis anything similar to the one that happened before.

He admits that scientists thought there was no oxygen back then at 24:20 or so but his initial presentation of the facts makes it seem like the scientist adjusted things just to make it work. His contradiction that Ammonia is needed and destroyed by UV light could be wrong for the 2 reasons I said, either life evolving far enough under the sea that the UV light doesn't get through the water or some other gas just blocking out enough UV light.

25 minutes in he complains that the abiogenesis experiment was biased because the amino acid product was filtered out to not get sparked a second time. He thinks this is not realistic in nature. But for all we know it easily could be that some series of amino acids got created due to electrical input and just did not receive any more. Lightning is sporadic and you're unlikely to get hit by it twice. Sounds more like an attempt to imitate nature than to make it easier on the amino acids. As Kent Hovind says in the video yes the amino acids produced ended up bonding with tar and only 2 types were produced. Doesn't mean that it's impossible for these amino acids to emerge. It's like he thinks everything can be demonstrated in one experiment. Yes the experiment did not create life and Kent Hovind is right to say that it didn't but he's wrong to dogmatically assume that old earth conditions cannot have led to life.

The next point he makes is basically that Entropy alone poses a huge problem for the formation of successful proteins due to them unbonding and naturally dispersing. Normally most objects would not seem likely to become alive and in fact the most coherent hypothesis according to the model of entropy and passive unconscious movement of matter alone would be a universe with zero life whatsoever. Obviously this did not happen despite what seems like signifcant obstacles to the emergence of life, I don't claim science has the answers to how yet but clearly it happened one way or another.

He thinks self-replication in cells doesn't make sense since it would've been better for them to evolve immortality to avoid competition First of all just because he thinks it's better doesn't mean they realize it. Self replication has many benefits that immortality alone can't grant. If there was only one immortal cell and that was it, then if that cell dies the species is dead and none of its genes are left. Self replication or in the case of most modern animals, sexual reproduction, lets them maintain the race they are part of which can spread out to all over the place depending on how generalized the adaptations of the species are. Also animals of the same species or race will very often cooperate in quite a lot of species so his argument that there is an issue for competition over food isn't exactly true. One organism generally can't be all over the place all by itself so it's vulnerable to death due to its local environment or unlucky circumstances more than a species is. Immortality along with sexual reproduction would probably be more adaptive and generalized than sexual reproduction alone, a species with both these capabilities could use reproduction as merely a back up mechanism in case immortality failed for any members of the group. For example with reincarnation,this means reproduction would become obsolete in such a group once all the members of the group have been reincarnated and become immortal in their new bodies, other than either A:Creating new souls, if that's possible, or B:Reincarnating animals into being humans if that's possible. But that doesn't mean animals are necessarily going to achieve the adaptation of immortality just because it would be good for them.

31 minutes in he says he dislikes the idea that sexual reproduction eventually emerged rather than asexual reproduction but he doesn't explain a specific problem other than saying it's stupid.

32 minutes in he quotes Stephen Jay Gould who proposed the theory of Punctuated Equilibrium in evolution. Basically it's the idea that evolution is slow over time but from time to time makes a rapid quantum leap. This explains why there is plenty of fossil evidence for different stages of evolution but there aren't 1 million fossils of tiny little adjustments between any given animal. What Kent Hovind doesn't realize is this doesn't disprove evolution at all it just undermines the standard Neo Darwinian analysis that it's just random mutation and natural selection over time with
no direction or intent by the organisms whatsoever.

He misquoted that quote by Stephen J Gould, purposefully leaving two parts of it out and misleading viewers. He made it say this:

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages...has been a persistent and nagging problem for...evolution."

When it really said this:

“The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualist accounts of evolution.”
You still think Kent Hovind is not a con man? It's obvious he made a lie on purpose here after seeing the real quote. "Between major transitions in organic design" clarifies that Gould still believed there were major transitions proven by fossil evidence. "Gradualist accounts of" shows the specifics that Gould is saying there are problems with normal darwinian accounts of evoluion. This is why he came up with his theory of Punctuated Equillibrium, that evolution is slow but has occasional big jumps in progress which explain why fossil evidence doesn't have 1 million transitional forms.

So now that you've seen that it should be obvious that Kent Hovind deliberately lied and misled the audience into a cherry picked version of that quote. Yes it does show evidence against the normal darwinian evolution but it does not show that evolution as a whole is debunked somehow. Which would be ignoring all the fossil evidence and other evidence.

Kent Hovind after that just goes on for a while about his dogma that kinds can only produce the same kind. Which obviously did not happen with human evolution from primates, which definitely was not an example of hybridizaiton. But he is in denial so he won't admit any evolution from animals.

He's wrong that no new information can get added to the gene pool. Transposition does essentially create new information by letting cells re arrange the codons in the DNA which 100% changes the meaning of the entire DNA molecule. Creating new information. Just like re arranging the letters of the alphabet to create a new word.

He argued about horse evolution not being true and what do you know he managed to quote mine yet again producing a quote that was not in its full context, deliberately misleading the audience. Here it is: "Many examples commonly cited, such as the evolution of the horse family or of sabertooth 'tigers' can be readily shown to have been unintentionally falsified and not really orthogenetic". Did you notice that last word orthogenetic? If you look at the full context what is revealed is this person is not saying evolution is debunked. They think these fossils are debunked because they don't follow the pattern of evolution by Natural Selection. Look at this link for the full context of the quote and what he said right around it.

https://smoodock45.wordpress.com/2013/0 ... the-horse/

The "Moscow Truth" journal this claim that 'modern horses are found in same layer as ancient horses are' doesn't sound like an official source for sure. Also even if the ancient horse species was still alive as he claims that doesn't prove it didn't evolve, he doesn't seem to understand that evolution does not necessarily get rid of the original species.

The guy who claims 3 toed and 1 toed horses grazed side by side is a young earth creationist and obviously a biased source who probably hoaxed it. Since Kent Hovind makes a lot of quotes from old 1980s sources there's often no way to check it online easily and immediately find the debunking evidence.

40 minutes in Kent Hovind acknowledges that comparative anatomy shows similarity between the species. He attributes it to a common designer when this doesn't make sense, a common designer could pick and choose different anatomy for each species without having to make them the same. Having similar forelimb structure is more indicative of evolution than God magically creating all these animals out of nothing at will.

48 minutes in he complains about how evolutionists try to make their interpretation of facts the truth. When it's obvious he is doing the same thing in this part where he tries to debunk the grand canyon forming over a long period of time. Essentially his claim is that the Colorado river would have had to flow uphill according to his likely fake/false source. I'll see if i can find a source to debunk this obvious bullshit claim later but you should see the pattern by now of how he lies.

He misquotes yet again at 52:19 when trying to debunk the geologic column. If he read the whole quote he would find out it says this right after that:"Where sediments are missing, a break in the sedimentary record occurs. Breaks result in gaps in the record that may range from a few years to hundreds of millions of years. Breaks in the sedimentary record are called uncomformities." The point is that individual places can have breaks in the sedimentary record due to geological activity, that doesn't mean there is no geological column, but that it's unlikely you will find each and every layer all in one place all the time.

There is totally erosion between layers in the grand canyon what he is saying is just an outright fabrication. Look at this educational powerpoint:

https://www.uen.org/utahstandardsacadem ... rSheet.pdf

Quote:"Third layer comes after what appears to be a lot of erosion from the shale above it. "

54 minutes in he says the bones in rock layers are supposed to determine the age of the rock layers and the bones age are determined by which layer they are in. What Kent Hovind is not showing you is that for one we know the older layers are older because they are below the others and this is confirmed from knowledge of how the rock cycle works and brings in new layers of rock from lower in the crust. The other thing Kent Hovind doesn't mention there is how carbon dating can tell you the age of the fossils too.

He continues on with this not mentioning the rock cycle at all until he cites his claim that petrified trees are found running through multiple rock layers.At 57 minutes he cites a creationist journal of some kind that argues these couldn't fit in any way but a flood. This is not really true, these petrified trees had roots deep down and remained where they were, they couldn't have been transported to their current location in the sediment by a flood or their roots would've been torn loose. The assumption by young earth creationists is that the trees couldn't have petrified standing up before they fell down but that is ignoring something about how the layers accumulate. While the overall process of them building up is slow, that doesn't mean there aren't instances of a sudden fast deposit of sediment like in a mudslide or something similar where a tree can be quickly buried. Trees have roots anyways so they seem far more likely to get petrified standing up than any other organism, without needing to invoke a flood. Here's a source describing this issue:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/polystrate/trees.html

At 1:03 he makes the claim that carbon dating could only work for maybe 10 or 20 thousand years at most. First of all the problem even here for carbon dating is that creationists say the earth is way younger than that and carbon dating has shown many things to be 10'000+ years old. Along with showing the last ice age to have ended about 20 thousand years ago.

Here's a comment from a paleontologist on carbon dating:

http://www.thescienceforum.com/earth-sc ... ating.html
"I'm a paleontologist (geologist) and Carbon dating is rarely if ever used except in a few quartenary studies and even then it doesn't play much of a role. Carbon dating is more useful in other disciplines (anthropology, etc.) studying the recent past. Other radioactive techniques are used on the geologic timeframe....and again, not all that mainstream compared to using index fossils.

Carbon dating is fairly accurate. The issue can be deposition and what's being measured. It's akin to watching CSI when they somehow miraculously exclude the other thousand bits of DNA from the hotel room and perform tests in minutes on 'the right' sample and then just happen to have the 'immaculate conception' data base on hand.

If the methdology is done right then carbon dating is accurate. It's about physics and 'has to' be right. It's not the dating that's the issue but what's being dated. Sure, there might be an ancient garbage site but fire, etc. might have swept through a hundred times in the meantime...birds pooped...other animals flora died...stuff moved around by floods, storms, etc. How much integrity is there is the original material? "
TLDR, carbon dating is used for the recent past(in the tens of thousands of years not 100s of thousands or millions or billions) and other methods are used for farther in the past like other radioactive elements that decay much more slowly.Uranium's half life is so long that it's older than the age of the earth, making it possible to date the earth at billions of years old with just uranium:

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/inde ... %20slowest

Then he claims that the atmosphere has not reached equilibrium of C-14 which takes 30000 years so it must be <30'000 years old. The problem is that for this to be true you have to prove that the rate of C14 production and the rate of decay have been constant and do not change, if the C14 production could slow down or more decay could happen it becomes compatible with old earth as long as there were enough instances of slowdown of production or faster decay that the atmopshere got to its current state. It could have reached C14 equilibrium in the past possibly but that does not necessarily mean it will always stay in equilbrium. The proposed mechanism for how production of C14 could reduce or increase is variation in the earth's magnetic field which makes sense, the magnetic field strength would affect how much cosmic rays get into the atmosphere and convert N14 into C14.

https://infidels.org/library/modern/dav ... brium.html

At 1:07:00 he makes the argument that we can't tell how long a radioactive material has been decaying and if the decay rate has remained consistent. But that's not true, the decay rate will remain consistent without some outside force intervening somehow. That's the whole reason we use radiometric dating because radioactive materials have a predictable decay rate. The way we know how much there was of the element originally i believe is atomic physics. We know what the atomic weight of a certain radioactive isotope is so we can tell how much it originally had and when the starting point is. If we didn't have the table of elements yet it'd be impossible to know but we do.

https://www.reference.com/science/radio ... ce5f809c4f#

Carbon dating is not perfect like Kent Hovind makes it seem like scientists say it is but when it goes wrong the sources of those errors can be traced. The one he cites is living mollusks being seen as 2300 years or 2700 years old. The reason is that they were in an area with water that dissolved a lot of very old carbon into it and drank from that. Putting very old carbon into their bodies while they were still alive.

http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD011_3.html

Not going to bother to research every one of the 5+ examples of this same idea that Kent Hovind brings up. The general point of how the carbon dating could have gone wrong is the same, animals getting old carbon into them one way or another.

Same with the potassium argon dating examples he complains about.

The age of the earth has been discovered with greater accuracy over time. Scientists used to not have the same methods for measuring its age.

Embryology which Kent Hovind complains about at 1:11:20 is great proof of evolution. When growing embryos show traits of earlier animals it's obvious evolution happened. It's no wonder Darwin said this is the best evidence for his theory because it's easily verifiable and observable in a very direct and real time way. Little guesswork is needed if you see it happening unlike with fossils. It's only Creation Magazine claiming this guy who did drawings of embryos hoaxed it all. And guess what now we have direct observational evidence not just drawings, we can get photos and video of embryo development. Still a hoax?

Now he says that Archeopteryx is a hoax. He doesn't cite a source other than saying it was proven in 1986. Well i found out it was actually 1985 and this claim of a forgery was totally disproven, not only was the one described not a forgery there were 5 other ones they found. Oddly enough the one to claim it was a forgery was Fred Hoyle, the same guy who invented the steady state theory of cosmology.

http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Environment/N ... teryx.html

You may have noticed Kent Hovind's general style is to make 1 million claims someone must research and debunk, he focuses 100% on attacking the position of evolution via a million random examples but he does not attack its general principles. Or worse actually question the principles of the Young Earth Creationism hypothesis and its validity as a model for explaining observable reality. Once again this claim that Archeopteryx can't be a missing link because a crow fossil or whatever was observed in an earlier same time frame is just in some 1980s scientific journal publication not accessible via the internet. See the problem? How am i supposed to rebut something that i have no access to the source of? Also something you should note is the fallacious reasoning used for some of his examples. He says because there is a 130 million year old crow sized bird then archeopteryx could not have been the first bird but Archeopteryx was from 150 million years ago which is significantly older. My source:

https://www.livescience.com/24745-archaeopteryx.html

Apparently Archeopteryx was a relative of the first transitional dinosaur to bird according to a study referenced in that source.

1:18:16 Thanks Kent Hovind for referencing some good evidence for evolution. He mentions that feathers and scales are both made of the same protein which is pretty obviously good evidence for feathers evolving from scales. He just says it's a proof of 'same designer' when the evolutionary connection is obvious here.

Then he tries to debunk the documented shift with moths. Basically he just claims they made it up without citing a source. And then he says since there were dark colored and light colored moths from the beginning it doesn't prove evolution. It doesn't prove direct evolutionary change but it does prove natural selection. So technically this factoid fits in Kent Hovind's model of 'Micro Evolution Only' but he denies it anyway since it seems like evolution to him.

At 1:20:45 he argues that vestigial legs in whales are far far too small to ever be used. What that really means is that DNA is advanced enough for those vestigial leg genes that used to produce usable legs for the land based ancestors of whales to be kept in storage and rendered inactive in modern whales other than producing tiny legs that don't influence their movement at all. They are still available to be re-evolved later on if those whales descendants need to walk on land again. Rather than simply deleting the DNA for legs once it is no longer needed. His argument doesn't show that those whales didn't evolve from land animals, they obviously did as shown by their vestigial legs, it just means that DNA can be very good at storing information for potential later use.

He says lobe finned fish couldn't still be alive when nothing in evolution says they couldn't just because other organisms evolved from them, reminds me of the classic 'If humans came from monkeys why are there still monkeys?" question.

Apparently he thinks some dinosaurs are still alive. Lol.

Then he says two trilobytes were found inside what seemed like a human footprint. Supposedly scientists have debunked this according to the source i read. Look at the 2nd photo in this link. It looks like the heel line across the middle of the footprint wasn't really a heel line and it goes past where it should.

http://paleo.cc/paluxy/meister.htm

I'm inclined to believe there were definitely no humans stepping on trilobytes so i'm not going to do some super detailed analysis of that claim beyond looking at that picture.

After that he says graptolites are still alive when they are an index fossil for 400 million years ago. He does not seem to get that it is totally possible for a species that left fossils to still be alive. Even if it's from millions of years ago.

Then he says there was some sort of prehistoric creature like a dinosaur that washed up on the coast of california. I do not know if that is really true, it being from deep enough under the sea would explain it not being seen until now. But there certainly aren't dinosaurs roaming around the surface of the earth today.

At 1:27:52 he says evolution is built on faulty assumptions. He thinks mutations cannot make anything new. Random mutations like those caused by radiation actually tend to be issues, but other kinds of genetic change like those mentioned in Evolution 2.0(Transposition, HGT, Epigenetics, Genome Doubling and Symbiogenesis) do definitely create new information. Transposition rearranges the DNA in all sorts of ways and could easily make new 'code' allowing for entirely new functions, increasing genetic complexity.

Natural selection does exist it just does not do anything other than sort out those that fail to survive. By the way, quite a lot of the time a well evolved creature will get 'naturally selected' to die and have its species go extinct. These Natural Selectionist types tend to assume that the species that survives was necessarily the best one when quite a lot of the time that is not true. If anything, natural selection/The tendency for death to destroy many species, has destroyed so many species that it's debatable whether it's that good at all. Natural selection relies on death to sort out species, which overall is just deleting a lot of information and parts of the gene pool removing them from any potential later use. You see the problem here? Well i'm sure you do as you have doubts about evolution anyways. But every time you hear someone talk about natural selection just remember that it's mostly a sign of how much unique genes and biology is completely lost to history other than in fossils we try to study. Imagine if the lizards out there that are capable of regenerating limbs went extinct, then we'd never be able to know about them and possibly study them to figure out how limb regeneration could work and see if it's possible to apply to humans.

Anyway he just continues on for a while complaining about natural selection without bringing up much new. Kent Hovind is right to say that natural selection alone cannot justify evolution. The point that most people arguing about evolution miss is that for random mutations that are very rarely beneficial to benefit, there would have to be a statistical case for this. There would need to be common enough beneficial mutations that the species is able to effectively adapt and survive without being overwhelmed by the negative ones. It doesn't work that way and nobody's written a proof of this. "Random" mechanisms like cosmic rays just don't give anywhere near enough beneficial mutations to justify this. Other methods of creating new information like Transposition do actually work to adapt at an effective level and have been shown to occur scientifically. Look up Barbara McClintock's discovery of Transposition, she forced cells in plants to re arrange their DNA by giving them a problem they could not survive otherwise.

At 1:32:00 he realizes a problem with natural selection. In situations like the one Kent Hovind mentioned with a whale eating a ton of fish,
being the Fittest is utterly irrelevant if you happen to be in a position where the whale chomps on you. Sometimes the fittest will even be less likely to survive, like if the most adapted animal species stood out in some way and became a big target to other predators. Yes the example of mutating a ton of fruit flies with radiation and getting no good results shows that cosmic rays and other mostly random mutation causes do not produce evolution in any meaningful way. The 4% larger wings for fruit flies in the north is a totally valid example of possible evolution though if they need bigger wings up north.

Then he complains a long while about college making people quit Christianity. I don't need to go over this one, you already know how Christianity is very much an indoctrinating thing and it's all about making people believe or think they're going to be tortured in hell forever.

There is a quote he says is from Arthur Keith that is supposedly from someone else. This Arthur Keith guy died before the 100th edition of Darwin's book came out and that's where he supposedly wrote this in. See Wiki page for the reference. Yes Wikipedia is wrong sometimes but given that Kent Hovind doesn't even say where this quote is from(he only says Keith wrote the foreword to the 100th anniversary of Origin of Species, not that this quote is from that foreword) i highly doubt it and at any rate if you really want to know just go buy that edition and see for yourself that it's a lie. It is possible Kent Hovind just copied this idea from other creationists and did not originally make up this lie but who knows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Keith

After that he just goes on about Christianity and its bullshit doctrines. To him evil=disobeying God and evil is defined by breaking a rule not by something being right or wrong on its own.

It's euthyphro's dillemma. Also even if God had created the world it would not mean everyone has to obey God to be morally right. Even if God created everyone and was responsible for them existing it would not make him own them and make them his justified slaves..The very idea of being a created soul to serve God means you are nothing more than a means to an end for God to get what he wants out of you, you have no intrinsic value if all you are is a tool. In other words, if God could find someone to replace you you would be obsolete and no longer have a point in existing. See the problem? It just writes off everyone as mere worthless minions of God that exist for no purpose but to amuse him and follow his rules, since he doesn't actually need them anyways if he's Omnipotent.

Other stuff Kent Hovind spouts off here just shows how Christianity is totally anti-health and tells people they shouldn't keep money for themselves. Yes, being a billionare and owning 20 cars is retarded, but it is not wrong for people to seek a good house and a car and have a goal of owning their own house and not being a debt slave. While Christianity sort of makes people think that state of being as a debt slave is somehow OK, that it's just necesssary to be poor to be benevolent.

Anyway that's enough ranting about Christianity. With that I've finally responded to the whole video and addressed about 90% of all points. There were 3-4 examples i guess that i didn't spend time to try to research and debunk but i think i answered mostly everything.


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Re: Young Earth Creationist Kent Hovind Debunked: Full Refutation of his Anti-Evolution Arguments

Post by Winston »

Thanks @Aron. I'll pass it along to Kent Hovind. Or if you have the time, you can send him this link too. You ought to submit it to an anti-creation or pro-evolution blog or website. I'm sure they would love it. It's a bit out of my territory though.

However, can you watch the videos posted at this link and let me know what you think?

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=42447
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Re: Young Earth Creationist Kent Hovind Debunked: Full Refutation of his Anti-Evolution Arguments

Post by Winston »

Wow check this out. Our friend Aron Ra turns out to be a professional Creationism debunker and Evolution defender. lol. He has books and videos about it online. Here is a torrent of his ebook.

https://thepiratebay.org/description.php?id=20532734
Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism by Aron Ra EPUB

Religious fundamentalists and biblical literalists present any number of arguments that attempt to disprove evolution. Those with a sympathetic ear often fail to critically examine these creationist claims, leading to an ill-informed public and, perhaps more troubling, ill-advised public policy. As Aron Ra makes clear, however, every single argument deployed by creationists in their attacks on evolution is founded on fundamental scientific, religious, and historical falsehoods - all of them. Among their most popular claims is that evolution is a religion, that there are no transitional species, that there are no beneficial mutations, and that supposedly sacred scripture is the infallible word of God. Yet, as the evidence and data plainly show, each of these claims is demonstrably and unequivocally false. There is simply no truth to creationism whatsoever, and the entire enterprise rests on a foundation of falsehoods. This book explains and exposes the worst of these lies, and should be read by all who honestly care about following the evidence no matter where it might lead in pursuit of the truth.
His anti-Creationism video series.

https://thepiratebay.org/description.php?id=6714746
The Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

This an excellent series of educational videos by Aronra. In addition to providing a great deal of interesting information on evolution, these videos explore the various arguments used by creationists and the fallacies they contain..

1st foundational falsehood of creationism:
evolution = atheism

2nd foundational falsehood of creationism:
scriptures are the \\\'Word of God\\\'.

3rd foundational falsehood of creationism:
human interpretation = absolute truth.

4th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism;
belief = knowledge

5th foundational falsehood of creationism;
Evolution is a religious \\\'ism\\\'.

6th foundational falsehood of Creationism:
Evolution must explain the origin of life,
the universe, and everything.

7th foundational falsehood of Creationism:
Evolution is random.

8th foundational falsehood of creationism:
Mutations are rare and always harmful
decreases in genetic information.

9th foundational falsehood of Creationism:
No transitional species have ever been found.

10th foundational falsehood of creationism;
The evolutionary ‘tree of life’ is nowhere implied
either in the fossil record, nor in biology.

11th foundational falsehood of creationism:
Macroevolution has never been observed.

12th foundational falsehood of Creationism:
Creationism is scientific.

13th foundational falsehood of creationism:
Evolution is a fraud!

14th foundational falsehood of creationism pt1:
Creation is evident

14th foundational falsehood of creationism pt2:
Creation is evident

15th foundational falsehood of creationism pt1:
Evolution has never been proved.
It's still just a theory, not a fact.

15th foundational falsehood of creationism pt2:
Evolution has never been proved.
It's still just a theory, not a fact.
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Re: Young Earth Creationist Kent Hovind Debunked: Full Refutation of his Anti-Evolution Arguments

Post by Winston »

Btw Aron Ra's anti-creation video series is also on YouTube. Here's the playlist. There are 15 parts.

Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism - Playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 53A6F002CC

Aron Ra also debated Kent Hovind over YouTube. I watched some of it and it was nasty. A lot of time was wasted by Aron Ra's insults and ad hominem attacks on Hovind. They just debate semantics and insults, not substance or arguments or proofs. What a pity. Aron Ra was also quite rude and uncivilized to Hovind. He even put up a photo of Hovind's mug shot in jail for cheating the IRS, to make him look bad. That's very immature and uncivil. One should not try to make their debate opponent look as bad as possible by using an unflattering photo of them. That's a low blow below the belt. I was hoping they'd discuss issues and scientific arguments and proofs, not bicker over trivial semantics and name calling. What a pity. I'm surprised Hovind put up with it. He should have demanded that Aron either discuss the issues like a mature adult or not debate at all. I'm surprised Hovind is so tolerant.

Here's the nasty debate between them when they were on together. It's barely watchable since they argue about nothing for a long time, mostly due to Aron Ra's insults.



Here's the playlist of the back and forth debates between them.

Kent Hovind vs. Aron Ra Debate Playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... IFY7CcTZ3Z

Btw, check out these video responses from Hovind to Aron Ra. He totally nailed him and blew him away. It's funny. It's like watching an NBA professional basketball player vs. a kid. lol. Aron was trying to bat out of his league and looked embarassed doing it. lol. Hovind also looked funny in his Hawaiian style shirt while preaching his Christian fundamentalist rhetoric.

Aron Ra is nowhere near as good of an orator and speaker as Hovind is as you can see. Btw Aron Ra looks like a huge guy. His face and goatee looks like he could be a sorcerer or black magic wizard. lol. Kind of scary. And his body frame looks like that of a WWF wrestler, not the kind of guy you'd wanna meet in a back alley. Strange guy. lol





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Re: Young Earth Creationist Kent Hovind Debunked: Full Refutation of his Anti-Evolution Arguments

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@Neo and @MrMan what do you think of their debate and of Aron Ra? lol
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Re: Young Earth Creationist Kent Hovind Debunked: Full Refutation of his Anti-Evolution Arguments

Post by Winston »

Another guy who hates creationists named Professor Dave debates Kent Hovind below.



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Re: Young Earth Creationist Kent Hovind Debunked: Full Refutation of his Anti-Evolution Arguments

Post by Winston »

Dr. Kent Hovind whacks Professor Dave.





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Re: Young Earth Creationist Kent Hovind Debunked: Full Refutation of his Anti-Evolution Arguments

Post by Neo »

@Winston , I am not exactly sure if I want to watch or listen to a debate on creationism at the present moment. However, is the man pictures named Aron and is he the same man who spoke with us on this forum?
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Re: Young Earth Creationist Kent Hovind Debunked: Full Refutation of his Anti-Evolution Arguments

Post by Winston »

Neo wrote:
May 8th, 2020, 4:38 pm
@Winston , I am not exactly sure if I want to watch or listen to a debate on creationism at the present moment. However, is the man pictures named Aron and is he the same man who spoke with us on this forum?
Yes he is. He was here for a while a few years ago remember? He tirelessly debated without end on evolution and other topics. See his posts below.

search.php?style=11&author_id=30026&sr=posts

Well watch some snippets of those videos and let me know what you think. lol. It's mostly ad hominem attacks and character attacks rather than on issues or evidence. I hate that.

Isn't that Aron Ra guy so cold and stoic in his videos? He's kind of hard to listen to for some reason.
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