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Expert Liar

Entry 568, on 2007-07-05 at 19:32:56 (Rating 4, Religion)

I am currently listening to a podcast from the Infidel Guy. Its a debate with noted creationist, Kent Hovind. As I am listening to this I really wish I was able to get involved with the debate because practically everything he says is untrue. He's a very capable debater, but he relies on many dirty debating tricks because I think he knows he's wrong.

He indulges in constant rhetoric and misrepresents the opinion of his opponents. For example, he often refers to evolution as claiming that life came from a rock. Well no, it doesn't, and I'm sure he knows that. But who cares about the truth? He'll keep saying it anyway. He refers to archaeology and similar sciences as being fairy stories from long ago and far away. That's deliberately trivialising the study of the past and is totally misleading.

Then there's the lies. Well I presume they are lies, because if he knows anything at all about science he should know that what he says isn't true. He talks about various forms of what he calls evolution and explains why he thinks they aren't science. All of his statements are false. Here's some examples...

His first type of evolution, cosmic evolution, explains the origin of space and time in the Big Bang, but Hovind says science has never observed this. Wrong. The cosmic microwave background is the light directly from the Big Bang. When we look at the CMB we are actually looking at the Big Bang. As well as that there is convincing secondary evidence that the Big Bang happened. There are no alternatives which fit the observed facts.

His second type of evolution is chemical evolution and he claims that we can't explain the origin of elements beyond iron using fusion. This is true, but we know that elements beyond iron are created in supernova explosions. He says we never observe this happening but later quotes supernovae as a possible explanation for stellar formation. Lies piled on top of lies.

His third evolution type is stellar evolution and he claims we never see this. OK, we see stars in every stage of their evolution (which takes millions to tens of billions of years) and we see the more rapid evolutionary stages (formation, supernovae) actually happening. He offers possible explanations for stellar formation but they are easy to distinguish from the actual formation we really see. Another lie.

Next he lists organic evolution or abiogenesis which he dismisses with little comment. This is a difficult problem because it happened so long ago, and left no trace, but there are perfectly viable theories for how it might have happened and few scientists doubt that we will eventually discover how to make life in the laboratory. In fact the first steps have already been taken.

Hovind labels all of these as being non-scientific because he claims we have never observed them. First, we have observed most of them; and second, even if we hadn't seen visual evidence that doesn't make them less scientific.

The next types of evolution are what he calls micro and macro evolution. Most scientists don't distinguish between these because there is no difference. The big changes are just the result of accumulated small changes, so separating these two alleged types is meaningless. Of course, creationists find it useful and they are never beyond changing definitions to suit themselves.

Hovind talks quickly and throws a lot of comments in one after the other so the average person doesn't have time to appreciate that he's being mislead. When a real scientist debates him on a topic by topic basis Hovind is destroyed because his errors are so obvious.

In the podcast a caller mentioned the subject of endogenous retroviruses. When an endogenous retroviral insertion occurs in a germ cell, the change to the DNA is inherited by the individual's ancestors. Insertions are incomplete and random, so two species would never get the same pattern unless they were related. But related species do show the same patterns and the similarity is linked to the degree of connection through ancestry expected by evolution. Hovind's excuse for this? That we don't know enough about DNA yet to know for sure this is true. And his second excuse, which is even worse, is that we can't trust researchers because they are biased.

So there you are. When he is shown to be obviously wrong and/or ignorant (anybody with any knowledge of science can do this easily because he really knows very little science) he resorts to the old appeal to ignorance (we don't know enough yet) or the claim of a global conspiracy (scientists are hiding the facts). Yeah sure thing Kent. You might be able to confuse the naive Christian fools you usually talk to that way, but it won't work for the rest of us!

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