Friday, February 4, 2011

He's not a doctor

Creation Science Evangelism (aka Kent Hovind Enterprises) is giving away a free DVD—except to atheists:
Sneaky Eric put up a redirect to intercept any visitors arriving from Pharyngula to his fake out-of-stock page. He could have been honest, and done exactly the same thing, but have the page say something like, "Please, we are making these DVDs available to our Christian customers..."

For those of you who may not be familiar with Kent Hovind, Here's Michael Shermer's account of "debating" him:
The moment Hovind spoke the debate was over. “I am here to win you over to Christ,” he began. “And I’m here to win Michael Shermer over to Christ.” With that, Hovind lost the debate. He was not there to debate evolution v. creation, or natural v. supernatural explanations. He was there to witness for the Lord (what we used to call “Amway with Bibles” when I was an Evangelical Christian at Pepperdine University).
It is impossible to actually debate Hovind as he is not there to debate. Like all good Creationists his task is to reassure the believers in the audience while painting his adversary as Old Scratch himself, or at least a pitiful clown. Hovind has a singular gift: the ability to spout so many things so fast that no one can keep up with him, let alone respond. The fact that all of it is ultimately complete and utter crap doesn't matter; if you can't argue with him—and he won't let you—he wins by default. His followers gape in rapturous awe at his sheer mastery of the subject; pity the hapless opponent who comes to the stage naïvely mistaken that this is an actual debate on the facts in question. The outcome is as predictable as a Passion Play. No one on either side is dissuaded, the entire event is a charade. The Hovindists leave in triumph, everyone else is left in a semi-dazed condition, not yet aware that the "debate" is over.

Not all such debates are quite so polarized. Some people are actually civilized about it, believe it or not. But Hovind is the Young-Earth Creationist who embarrasses other YECs and he wouldn't have it any other way.


Dinosaur Adventure Land used to be in his backyard in Florida. I think they've bulldozed it by now. All because he didn't bother to get a building permit.


Reading Hovind's bogus "doctoral thesis" is a rather tedious experience and it seems to have disappeared from WikiLeaks, anyway. Fortunately, there remains a far more hilarious critique on-line. Laugh yourself silly.

Update: here's Karen Bartelt, Ph.D.'s devastating analysis of said "doctoral" thesis with a link to the original. Read and weep laugh till your guts bleed.

I just looked at it for the first time since originally posting this. Christ is it awful.

1 comment:

ssslack said...

That entire 3rd paragraph about the impossibility of debating Hovind re his rapid-fire-crap-spew ... You could use that to perfectly describe Sean Hannity's daily radio show. When the only opposition he lets on the phone is confused and inarticulate, it's easy for him to say they're representative of the entirety of liberalism.