[texan]

Heep, that is one scary mofo you are listenting to.

First of all, his whole premise is entirely WRONG. Wrong to the point that it's hard to read this doctor's paper when the initial contentions are false.

"Four Basic Questions in Life
Now, how would you answer the four great questions of life? Well, that depends upon your world-view. If the evolution story is true, who am I? Well, if evolution is true, we are nothing important that is for sure. Actually, you are just a bit of protoplasm that washed up on the beach. As a matter of fact, you are part of the problem because you are one of the polluters of the environment and the more of you we can get rid of, the better. Right? Where did I come from? Well, if evolution is true, you came from a cosmic burp about 20 billion years ago. Why am I here? What is the purpose of life? Well, if evolution is true, there is no purpose to life so you might as well have fun; if it feels good, do it. Get all the gusto you can get, you only go around once in life, you know? Where am I going when I die? Well, if evolution is true, you are just going to the grave and you are going to get recycled into a worm or a plant. But the Bible says, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” "

First off, evolution makes no claims as to your importance in the scheme of things, your basic position in the universe, or your morality. It also lays no claims to the afterlife. It's clear from reading the first two pages that not only has this Dr. Hovind blown evolutionary theory well out of it's true proportions, but is claiming that the Devil is responsible for it's formulation. These are the ridiculous meanderings of a Christian who's personal beliefs in something make the evolutionary theory into a great devil (simply becuase it poses alternate methods for the formulation of our species). Evolutionary theory is no more than an honest attempt at explaining our biological origins through observation and application of the scientific method; a thought process which I might mention has enabled this Dr. to create his electronic articles in the first place. Darwin's theory lays no claims to the metaphysical, the spiritual, or the theological aspects of life. It is, in any rational person's view, simply a theory to explain the origins of ourselves, and does not prove or disprove the existence of God. In fact it doesn't even take a stab at where the first life came from, that is something other theories are tryin to deal with.



"Macro evolution would say the dog and the rose had a common ancestor and the common ancestor was a rock. You wait long enough, the rock will turn into a dog and a rose"

No, actually that is entirely false. A rock is a rock, although it is true that a sedimentary rock can eventually be reconstituted into a metamorpich rock. But a rock is a rock, and whether it's a diamond formed under extreme pressure and time, or sandstone squished by only a bit of pressure over a bit of time, it's still a rock. DNA however, in it's infinite varation, CAN describe something as simple as a one celled organism or even oursleves. This is FACT, not evolution. The only contention is how this is brought about. Grace of God, or evolutionary theory?


Every point this guy argues is easily dismissable except for Big Bang theory (which is a double tough thing to gather evidence for, and which many scientists, even evolutionary theorists, deny). Which of course, has absolutely NOTHING to do with evolutionary theory, or any theory pertaining to the origins of life on this planet. You notice he has only one little paragraph in the first article concerning fossils, and makes absolutely no logical rebuttal or explanation for dinosaur existence. If they Earth is indeed only 4400 years old, why doesn't anyone remember them? There are existing cultures in the world pre-dating that figure by thousands of years, how does he explain that?

As for the second article, I only got through the first page before realizing this Doctor's arguments were based on very weak and incomplete science catering only to those who don't know anything about what he talks on, and don't want to learn more about it from a credible scientist. As for the conservation of angular momentum theory, that only applies to larger than atomic objects functioning on the space-time continuim that throw off debree, and who's debree isn't magnetically charged. However space-time didn't exist before Big Bang theory (it can't exist without mass), virtually all subatomic particles have magnetism and attraction variation (which allows for their interaction to change rotational direction), and conservation of angular momentum theory only holds true in relativistic physics. Quantum physics was responsible for the formulation of all mass in the universe; physics pertaining to atomic particles larger than the atom do not apply here.
On his mention that the timeline for homo sapiens' spread must have started about 4400 years ago, well in fact he's almost right. Humans exist in such numbers because at some point about 6000-7000 years ago, we lost our nomadic ways and began to farm and raise animals. Once we took the food and shelter equation of existence into our own control, the population started to grow exponentially and hasn't stopped since. Before that, it's well known that only about 15-30 humans could live in an area of 25 square miles (this number is the limit based upon natural food sources existing within that area, and the miles part is the limit because our ancestors only traveled on foot). And this says nothing of the fact that humans haven't lived here for billions of years, so the timeline for modern culture and populace is indeed much shorter than 4 billion years. Again, he's not really saying anything about why the Earth MUST be younger than that, he's just mixing up fact with fiction (like the Devil does, according to him) to make things sound bad for the scientists. Oh and here's another qoute from our beloved doctor...

"So, let’s look at a few more facts from science here. The galaxies are spinning. They are turning around. But the stars in the middle of the galaxies are going faster than the stars at the outside, which means if the galaxies were billions of years old, they would have lost their spiral shape and yet all of them are spiral shaped galaxies. So if their trying to tell you that stars are billions of years old, they are simply mistaken they cannot possibly be, they had to be created."

Not true at all, there are three different and common types of galaxies. In fact, the sprial galaxy is not the most common form. There are sprial, elliptical, and irregular shaped galaxies. Most actually fall into the irregular section, and guess what, they don't spin. In fact, it's becoming more and more clear that galaxy formation type has a lot to do with black holes, and spiral galaxies are formed by having a black hole in the center of the galaxy. Our milky way galaxy has one.

All this crap, about thre planets cooling (which is fact, and the reason Earth's surface is no longer plagued by constant volcanic eruptions), about Saturn's rings (which are formed from smashed up satellites, and is indeed becoming finer and finer over the milenia; but nothing stated disproves the thoeries as to how and when they were formed), about the drifting Moon (where he claims the Moon's proximity to the Earth makes life on land imposible a billion years ago; hey no kidding bud, but all very acient life was sea dwelling and wouldn't have been too troubled by the tides), and even about the Earth's slowing rotation. Hello, this guys doesn't know much about astronomy does he? The Earth's rotation is slowing because the Moon is getting farther away. The Moon's influence on Earth is profound even at it's current distance, and is in fact responsible for our lives on this planet. Without the influence of the Moon, Earth's rotational axis would not be stable, weather patterns would literally become cataclismic, and yes, we would not have any place to reliably live or find food. But for Earth's rotation to have ever stabilized, the Moon had to have been MUCH closer than it is now. And as it slowly creeps away, it does cause the Earth's rotation to slow. But not by anywhere near his estimate (a leap second every year and a half in his article is asking you to assume that means the day really does get longer by 1000th of a second every time around). This may have been printed in Astronomy magazine back in '92, but current observation reveals that about 2000 years ago the day was about 2 seconds longer than it is now. Again, we are talking about geological events and planetary motion here, which occurs only over a REALLY long time period.

Alright, I should shutup now. The point here is that I can easily debate and explain the things he doesn't accurately do (as in boy does that article need a re-write!), and I am no scientist. It would in fact only take about two years of univeristy study to realize these arguments are formed from the table scraps of modern scientific knowledge, and cite either innacurate or completely false information (I believe some has been "doctored" up for this article) to further his creationist belief. I also find it amusing that a Christian would spend so much time proselytizing that his Faith is True while using science to disprove science, and therefore uphold his world view. I ask this doctor, why is it so important to believe the Bible is a factual account of history? Does it make the Word any more believable, or lend credit to it's lessons? The nature of God and Man has nothing to do with Genesis's first verse, and you certainly don't need to take the stories of the Bible literally to become a devout Christian, or even to accept God's grace and enter the kingdom of Heaven. So why write all that when none of it truly pertains to your faith? Just know this, your faith is not supported by this argument, it is supported by your acceptance of God's Grace. This man's arguments appear to be poorly formed, poorly executed, and wholely ineffective if it's conversion he's trying to bring about. Historical fact has NOTHING to do with God.