In Defense of Kent Hovind

Recently I was made aware of the sad news that Dr. Kent Hovind was arrested and imprisoned over income taxes. Reading the threads and posts here I thought that there should besome clarification as to what exactly Dr.Hovind has advanced in his seminars:

1). That Science did not 'disprove' the Biblical Genesis account of Creation or Noah's Flood; geological sciences did not disproiove it nor did biological or astronomical sciences either.
2). In viewing the whole seminar (several hours) I did not once ever hear Dr. Hovind claim that God and the Bible could be "proven" by science. On the contrary he stated (quite accurately) that true science (an examination of the empirical evidences and demonstrable models) that neither Creationism nor Darwinist Evolution could be "proven" one way or another (perhaps those who unwisely took him on in debates should have given this fact more consideration).
3). Dr. Hovind revealed the many holes in Darwinist "thought" and pointed out the many inaccuracies and outright lies (ie. the gill slits --admitted by other biologists as bogus) and demonstrated that in FACT Darwinist Evolution was as much a RELIGION when the same standards of definition were applied to it as often are to Creationism.

What Dr. Hovind proceeded to do was to demonstrate by examination of empirical evidences (a variety running the complete spectrum) and by reasonable demonstrable models (ie. hydrologic sorting of soils and other sediments) that the Genesis account COULD have happened exactly as stated in the Bible, and as such there was simply no valid reason to doubt the Biblical account. He also advanced what he called "The Hovind THEORY" (emphasis added), his OWN thoughts as to what MIGHT have happened during the castrophe known as Noah's Flood or the Great Deluge. NOTHING Dr. Hovind advanced in his theory is unsound scientifically. It is all possible and quite reasonable as demonstrated by other calamities (ie. the Mount St. Helens eruption). Yet NOWHERE did Dr. Hovind claim that his theory "was" what happened. He simply left it for what it was HIS THEORY (and a good one at that).

Now I've seen this site thatdedicates itself to smearing the character credibility of Dr. Hovind (www.kent-hovind.com) and whereas I am well aware of the people at Answers In Genesis warning against some of the things Hovind was advancing (WHY I do not know, but be that as it may) and some of the other stuff I wonder about. I do know that this site has taken one of Dr. Hovind's parodies completely out of context.

I am referring to the Chromosome Parody. Dr. Hovind put out this parody to demonstrate the utter fallicy (scientifically speaking) of suggesting that because "humans and some great apes are different by only two or three chromosomes this is proof of their close kinship". Dr. Hovind points out that chromosomes are so complex that their numbering in no way tells us anything about the complexity of the plant or animal or its relations to any other (for example if chromosomes were themselves indicative of advanced life forms, then we humans can only look forward to the day when we evolve enough to be ferns!) Chromosomes are no proof of complexity and yet the smear mogul running this site STEALS Dr. Hovind's own argument to try and advance a case against him (it would probably work except on those of us who have actually seen the seminars!)

As to the school where he got his PhD being a "diploma mill"? Well I've encountered enough Harvard and Yale graduates to impress me that these ivy league institutions are nothing but diploma mills themselves. Possibly one man's meat versus another man's poison kind of thing.

The simple fact is that Darwinist Evolution REQUIRES some (great) degree of blind belief (ie. FAITH) in its 'accuracies', as most of it is not provable. It is not science but a religion ITSELF. You can believe in Darwin and his crowd. You can believe the earth is flat too.

Absolom_Absolom

Amen!!!
He has been a great influence on my faith!!!

I think most people try to discredit him, so that schools can go on as usual.
(I mean 'higher learning' schools)
Where God is somewhat 'not allowed'.

Most of the arguments against him are about his taxes.
But, if his ministry uses innovative learning methods coupled with amusement, the I.R.S. decides seperation of church and state is null???

I still respect him ALOT!!! I hope this "We're all just animals, and if you don't believe it you should go to jail", 'higher learning' tyranny will stop!!!!

Personally I'm not convinced of Dr. Hovind's theories, but I do have to admit that it seems his critics have done a poor job of trying to refute him. Attack the theories, not the person, people.

Originally posted by mentalempire
Personally I'm not convinced of Dr. Hovind's theories, but I do have to admit that it seems his critics have done a poor job of trying to refute him. Attack the theories, not the person, people.

Its good to keep a critical view of statements by even Dr. Hovind. Another person I would recommend is Ken Ham to further anyone elses interest and research to a broader scope then just videos from one man.

I'll also add that it does not make much difference to me whether Kent Hovind is correct or not because, as far as I'm concerned, the creation account was never intended to be interpreted literally.

I am fully convinced that as he started to talk out more against the government and more people started to follow his teachings, he became a threat...

I mean come on...this charge sounds so bogus..."tax evasion" who the hell goes after a church for tax evasion.

I do not know the entire details of the case, but i really think this is a lot more then just more then his "tax evasion" and about creation theories again evolution, he became a threat starting to show the government for what it really is and he had a big following....

They had to shut him down!


Oh yea and seriously if all you can find on him is this "diploma mill" crap then wow... every heard of private education?

this maybe off the subject a little bit but... don't you think that the government would want to shut these places down, and "expose" them as frauds causing these people that graduated from them to be discredited?

and i really love what he says, if you dont like that he has a doctor...then forget about it and more on...

[edit on 6-1-2009 by white_raven]

While it's a great talking point for me to point out Hovind is currently serving 10 years in prison, that's more an icing on the cake.

Some of my favorite arguments from him

1. "A giant ice meteor hit the poles causing the ice sheets." Nevermind that an "Ice meteor" wouldn't hit and spread ice no matter the size. An object the size of New York City slamming into the earth would have been large enough to destroy all life on Earth.

2. "Java man, lucy, Piltdown man, Nebraska man are all hoaxes propagated by a scientific minority." First, Piltdown man was a fraud sure. But who figured out it was a fraud? Scientists, and not the "Creation" type. Nebraska Man was never accepted as a human ancestor, and he completly misrepresents Javaman and Lucy.

3. "One drop of water can cover the world if you spread it real thin" No. Each drop of water have X amount of molecules in it. To get one microlayer, or one layer of water molecules to cover the Earth, your "Drop" needs to be about your average lake.

Lot's of others, but you can check my other posts in the forum if you so choose.

Originally posted by white_raven
I am fully convinced that as he started to talk out more against the government and more people started to follow his teachings, he became a threat...

I mean come on...this charge sounds so bogus..."tax evasion" who the hell goes after a church for tax evasion.

I do not know the entire details of the case, but i really think this is a lot more then just more then his "tax evasion" and about creation theories again evolution, he became a threat starting to show the government for what it really is and he had a big following....

They had to shut him down!


Oh yea and seriously if all you can find on him is this "diploma mill" crap then wow... every heard of private education?

this maybe off the subject a little bit but... don't you think that the government would want to shut these places down, and "expose" them as frauds causing these people that graduated from them to be discredited?

and i really love what he says, if you dont like that he has a doctor...then forget about it and more on...

[edit on 6-1-2009 by white_raven]

The tax evasion charges came because he was a paid public speaker. He tried to get around that by doing things such as having "Mandatory" donations to his church and other loopholes, but they all went to his personal income in the end. He didn't file any of it, and when considering Hovind at his height was making between 1-2 million dollars a year in speaking fees and not reporting any of it, the IRS is going to come after you.

As for "Diploma Mill" charges, they are completely legit. It's a school that isn't recognized by any major body, his "Thesis" isn't publicly available, and nevermind his doctorate and masters are in "Christian Education."

Originally posted by Absolom_Absolom

1). That Science did not 'disprove' the Biblical Genesis account of Creation or Noah's Flood; geological sciences did not disproiove it nor did biological or astronomical sciences either.

why should we disprove it? we would need negative proof, theres no evidence for the flood and all the evidence is against it, its up to you guys to prove how every single scrap of evdience is wrong, and faulty pulonium haloes that were never proven isnt enough

2). In viewing the whole seminar (several hours) I did not once ever hear Dr. Hovind claim that God and the Bible could be "proven" by science.

thats becasue it cant god anyway, but here comes the evil immoral logic bit, absence of evidence isnt evidence of absence correct, but lack of evidence does show a lack of justification for said belief via occams razor, so creators can be ignored until evidence for one is presented

again its not for anyone to disprove but for believers to prove, burden of evidence lies with the believers

i can prove the bible exists and i can prove the bible has been aded and altered from earlier versions

On the contrary he stated (quite accurately) that true science (an examination of the empirical evidences and demonstrable models) that neither Creationism nor Darwinist Evolution could be "proven" one way or another (perhaps those who unwisely took him on in debates should have given this fact more consideration).

well deffine proven?

if you mean the major known factors in evolution being witnessed and tested, then you can call it proven ... theres always more stuff to find out and more test but its a given tested and proven theory thats currently helping to improve our world

3). Dr. Hovind revealed the many holes in Darwinist "thought" and pointed out the many inaccuracies and outright lies (ie. the gill slits --admitted by other biologists as bogus) and demonstrated that in FACT Darwinist Evolution was as much a RELIGION when the same standards of definition were applied to it as often are to Creationism.

and thats why he doesnt know what he is talking about

it requires no faith when you look at all the evidence

What Dr. Hovind proceeded to do was to demonstrate by examination of empirical evidences (a variety running the complete spectrum) and by reasonable demonstrable models (ie. hydrologic sorting of soils and other sediments)

unfortunatley that will only display how different sized grains of the same strat will be sorted and not how different layers of rock will form unless you purposly use different sized material to start with

use similar sized grains of two different sediments and they will all end up mixed together not in pretty layers

He also advanced what he called "The Hovind THEORY" (emphasis added), his OWN thoughts as to what MIGHT have happened during the castrophe known as Noah's Flood or the Great Deluge. NOTHING Dr. Hovind advanced in his theory is unsound scientifically.

the Hovind theory is the ice shield right? or is it the meteor? both get called the same, nothing unsound?

lets do the meteor first ... ill pass this to thunderf00t he does the maths so well


so its not unsound if you think every person on the planet detonating 6 thermonuclear warheads(thats 6 each, not 6 to share) at the same time is a good thing .....


Ice shield

the depth it would require to stay in orbit for 2000 years would prevent all solar radiation reaching earth meaning it would be cold enough for oxygen to liquify, liquid oxygen enviroments are very bad it freezes everything so anything bigger then single cell is going to die ... it would make earth one big cryogenic ball,
the good news is when the shield finally collapsed it would super heat the earth and probabily burn all the oxygen out of the atmosphere so it would warm up and the lack of oxygen wouldnt matter the super heating would destroy the frozen bacteria anyway destroying all life on earth except for at the bottom of the ocean ... noahs submarine?

e simply left it for what it was HIS THEORY (and a good one at that).

its NOT a theory its a hypothesis becasue its entirely unproven

Now I've seen this site thatdedicates itself to smearing the character credibility of Dr. Hovind (www.kent-hovind.com) and whereas I am well aware of the people at Answers In Genesis warning against some of the things Hovind was advancing (WHY I do not know, but be that as it may)

the absurdity factor, AIG do bad pretend science and hovind didnt even managed that standard

and some of the other stuff I wonder about. I do know that this site has taken one of Dr. Hovind's parodies completely out of context.

he is the greatest parody of him self, so its hard to do a better parody think of it more as a homagee

I am referring to the Chromosome Parody. Dr. Hovind put out this parody to demonstrate the utter fallicy (scientifically speaking) of suggesting that because "humans and some great apes are different by only two or three chromosomes this is proof of their close kinship".

but on examination we have 2 fussed chromosones that when split and compared are almost identical to pan trogladytes chromosones

he did nothing scientific else he would know chromosone number 2 is fussed, so were nto really different by any chromosones

Dr. Hovind points out that chromosomes are so complex that their numbering in no way tells us anything about the complexity of the plant or animal or its relations to any other

well he got somthing right,

The simple fact is that Darwinist Evolution REQUIRES some (great) degree of blind belief (ie. FAITH) in its 'accuracies', as most of it is not provable.

it would much rather you learnt about it for your self and examined the evidence(yes theres lots of it) blind faith leads away from science, scinence is about understanding not believing

the same scientific method that has shown evolution to be happeneing also showed how medicine cures you, better fertaliser grows more food, made the computer your sat at

there isnt good science/ bad science there is just science it all uses the same level of evidence and same method

scrol to the bottom you will several scientific critiques of hovinds videos done by extantdodo
uk.youtube.com...

and let me leave with you with a question or two, if hovinds work is accurate and honest why has he and his organisation filed so many false DMCA's to try and shut up anyone critical of the work? shouldnt it be able to stand on its own merits?

[edit on 7/1/09 by noobfun]

[edit on 7/1/09 by noobfun]

reply to post by noobfun


Hovind is NOT saying that there is water in or above the atmosphere present day. He is theorizing that it may have been thousands of years ago.

reply to post by turk182


...that still isn't anymore ridiculous. In fact, that sort of water would either create one of many effects that would prevent life from surviving

It doesn't matter when Hovind said it was there, it matters that he simply says it was there.

reply to post by Absolom_Absolom


Seriously? Defending Hovind? Haven't met a creationist recently who'd be crazy enough to do that...

But don't take my word for it, hear him speak

Kent about the age of the earth:


Kent about dinosaurs:





Kent about eden:


Kent loses a discussion vs a student, lol:




Kent vs Ali G


"Speak to the hand, 'cause the face ain't listening!"

That's the only thing people should ever tell Hovind should they meet him!

That guy uses nothing but pseudo-science and it's baffling that people in the 21st century fall for his crap. The public education must really be failing...