Lie #252. Oh but there will - if you keep your watch and it keeps ticking, there will most definitely be time passing. Even if God stops your watch, time will pass and everyone will be aware of it. The only way to stop time is to 'freeze' the universe or have everything happen all at once. Is this Hovind's idea of heaven?

Hovind: 'What did God do for billions of years before he made Adam and Eve? There wasnt billions of years before he made Adam and Eve. He also made time when he made the world."

Lie #253. If there was no time, then god arrived instantaneously from nowhere in particular - just like science understands the universe to have arrived. What's the difference? On the other hand, if god were there for an eternity, well, it's time Hovind called it what it is....

Hovind: "How does one measure the distance to a star?...The farthest that we can get away on earth is eight-thousand miles."

Lie #254. We can actually get a 186 million mile baseline by taking measurements in January and July.

Hovind: 'The farthest that they can measure distance to stars is about sixty light years away. If somebody says that a star is ten billion light years away, you ask them how they know that. Who measured it, and how did they measure it? Show me the mathematics please."

Be happy to. Astronomers take parallax measurements for those objects that they can do so. The first of these was in about 1672, believe it or not, when the distance to Mars was measured. This effort alone disproved the Bible, which claims these lights in the sky were placed in a firmament.

By 1900, we had the distances to about 100 stars. Since the Hipparcos satellite went into orbit, we have accurate distances to about 100,000 stars. That is a stunningly large number that extend far beyond 60 light years. Obviously, parallax has its limits, but for Hovind to pretend that scientists are unaware of this, and have no other methods is nothing but a cheap lie.

Next in line is proper motion of stars. Two photographs of the same portion of the sky, taken a few years apart, will show inevitable differences of position since not all stars are the same distance from us. From this information, a lot of statistical and relative distance information can be gleaned.

It is a fine art, but you can say for a fact if we have measured one star by parallax, and know it to be 60 light years away, and we see another star, judged from proper motion to be further away yet, then it must be more than 60 light years away. If other stars, beyond that, move also, then they must be further still. Comparatively, you can bootstrap yourself out to the edge of the universe this way.

Next in line is absolute magnitude. Scientists (and Hovind would know this if he ever were a real teacher of physics) can calculate how bright a star of known distance would be at any other distance. By comparing stars of known distance with our sun, and examining the spectra of these stars, we can gauge luminosity, which is a key to gauging distance. The information for a know spectral type can be extrapolated to other stars of that type, and their distance determined from their luminosity. This is how we know, that's the math.

Hovind: "The first point on the starlight question is: We dont know how far away the stars are. They might be billions of light years away. Im not saying that they are not. I am saying that we cannot measure it."

Lie #255. In 1784, a deaf and mute English kid by the name of John Goodricke discovered that a star known as delta Cephei was not the perfect work of god that people had thought stars were - it was a variable star. From this discovery we get the name 'Cepheid Variables' - a group of stars which grow bright and dim with a regularity of between 2 days and 60 days. Polaris is a Cepheid - with a period of almost 4 days.

In 1912, Henrietta Leavitt, at Harvard College Observatory, discovered that longer period Cepheids have brighter average magnitudes. From this, astronomers (in my opinion some of the most brilliant scientists there are) were able to figure a way to gauge distances of stars much further away than could be measured by parallax. There are other methods. These methods are detailed in college textbooks. For Hovind to claim there are no methods is for him to admit that he is either ignorant or stupid.

Hovind: "Some say, What about the red shift? The red shift is the Doppler effect of light. Nobody knows what is causing the red shift. Maybe light becomes tired of traveling great distances. That cannot be used to prove that light is great distances away. The star could be very close, traveling away from us, and still give us the red shift."

Lie #256. Light becomes tired? I would love to see Hovind's physics on this one. (He stole this idea, also, by the way). I also would dearly love for him to explain how it is that increasing red shift, which has been verified over known distances, has nothing to do with speed of departure.

Hovind: "God made the stars in order to be a light upon the earth. The light was showing the instance they were created."

Lie #257. These same stars that can be cast down? There is no down in space. If god made the stars as a light, why couldn't he do a better job? It is dark on starlit nights, and very dark when there is cloud cover. Why didn't god just make the sky luminous? The moon was supposed to be a night light but is not there a good portion of the time and is often out in the daylight. Why didn't god make many moons? Why isn't the moon made of mirror-glass, so it reflects almost as much light as the sun shines on us? The pulverized rock of the Lunar surface is really a lousy reflector, and the lunar 'seas' hardly reflect at all. It would seem, according to the best available evidence, that either the moon was not made as a night light, or the creator of it was appallingly inept.

Hovind: "We do not know that the speed of light has always been the same. Maybe light traveled faster when God first made it. Some would say, No, the speed of light is a constant. That sounds impressive, but you really cant see it."

You can't see light?!!

Hovind: "If you are traveling down the highway at sixty miles an hour, and turn your headlights on, how fast is the light going from your headlights? Compared to you, it is going at the speed of light. Compared to someone on the sidewalk it is going at the speed of light plus sixty miles an hour."

Lie #258. No it isn't. Hovind is showing precisely how poor a scholar he is and how clueless he is about the physics he pretends to be able to debate. The speed of light is a constant by any measure we are able to make. If you were traveling at 75% of the speed of light, and someone were traveling towards you at the same speed, and you measured the speed of light emanating from them, it would 186,000 miles per second - not 279,000 miles per second.

That does not mean that light cannot go slower. It travels more slowly through a medium than it does through a vacuum (and the oft quoted speed for light is that through a vacuum), but the speed of light is an upper limit tied to the very fabric of the universe. It is a foundation of Einstein's theory of relativity - it was so important that rather than change Einstein's theory, it became necessary to change our way of thinking about physics to match his theory!.

Any physics teacher knows these facts (or should) and it is a sad indictment of Hovind's education and a total condemnation of his approach to science. The man is an ignorant and gullible moron who, if he had any intelligence at all would be ashamed to call himself a school teacher, let alone a PhD.

Hovind stole this idea about the speed of light from Australian creationists. I adore the Australians, but the two guys who invented this nonsense are idiots. The speed of light was first determined in 1675 by a Danish astronomer - Olaus Roemer. Prior to that it had been thought infinite. To date, more than fifty distinct measurements of the speed of light have been made using a variety of methods, and when the uncertainties for each of the measurements are taken into account, the speed of light has revealed itself to be constant ever since that first measurement. It is not slowing, it is not speeding up, it is constant. Even if it were changing, it is not the only means of measuring the age of the universe. To prove the universe younger than science currently accepts, you would have to destroy many more gauges than the speed of light.

Hovind: "We do not know that light has always traveled at the same speed. We dont even know what light is."

Lie #259. Err...can you say photons?

Hovind: "Did you know that bugs can see ultraviolet light, but you cannot see it? Did you know that bugs cannot see red? That is why you can put a red or yellow light out on your porch, and bugs will not see it. They think it is black. Their eyes pick up different wave lengths."

Interesting that god shorted us in this way, and benefited the bugs, isn't it? Maybe bugs are the chosen ones. There are definitely more of them.

Hovind: 'Suppose when we get to heaven God...expands your sense of sight. He now gives you an eyeball that is capable of seeing all the frequencies on the spectrum. That means that you would be able to see the radio waves going through the air as a color. Also, you would be able to see the sounds that come from a piano."

Lie #260. Sound waves are merely a vibration in the air - they are not part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Any teacher knows this - unless that so-called 'teacher' happens to be an imbecile called Kent Hovind.

Hovind: "That means in heaven there may be brand new colors. I dont mean new shades of the colors that we now see. Im talking about new colors that are unimaginable."

Lie #261. The rainbow of colors we are familiar with is simply the way our eyes detect those electromagnetic frequencies. They tail off toward the infrared at one end and the ultraviolet at the other - just how many shades of red and blue does Hovind imagine there are? Perhaps there is a god who can cause us to perceive frequencies off either end of the visible spectrum, but I am willing to bet they would be much more wonderfully perceived than Hovind's idea of new colors. What a limited imagination this idiot has.

Hovind: "Maybe when we get to heaven God will give us ears that can not only pick up 20,000 cycles per second, 20 kHz, but pick up the whole spectrum. Maybe when you get to heaven you might be able to hear the colors."

Lie #262. Maybe on LSD you think you can hear colors and see sounds, but this is simply an illusion caused by the fact that your brain's functioning is scrambled up by the drug. The same kind of things happen when people get very sick and run a high fever. It's not real and it's not normal. Once again, Hovind reveals his appalling ignorance. Here he is confusing the sound frequency spectrum - which is simply vibrations in a medium (such as air) and which are perceived when they cause our eardrums to vibrate likewise, with the electromagnetic spectrum, which is radiation.

Hovind: "Also, when Paul was rocked to sleep (I mean stoned) outside the city of Lystra, he was caught up to the third heaven. When he got up to heaven the Lord said, Paul, its good to see you hear, son!"

What a sick mind this man has - rocked to sleep? See you hear? I wonder if Hovind doesn't have something seriously wrong with his brain.

Hovind: "Paul went back down, and as they were dragging that old body out to the garbage heap, he climbed back into that wreck of a carcass, and arose from the dead. The disciples said, Paul, we thought that you were dead! Paul said, I was! They said, Paul, where have you been. Paul said, I have been to heaven"

A lot of people who have suffered brain damage have illusional experiences. Paul had already demonstrated some prior to this - he might well have started life with some kind of brain damage. To mistake brain damage for heaven is not only stupid, it is rather blasphemous.

Hovind: "Could you explain colors to a blind man? Where would you start when trying to explain colors to a blind man? You could not do it, could you?"

Lie # 263. How about the feeling of cold for blue and hot for red? Go on, Hovind, try it - try to develop an imagination in order to see the plank in your eye that you have mistaken as a soapbox to stand on so you can spout lies for god.

Hovind: "Could you explain sound to a deaf man? No."

Lie #264. Hovind's sexism compels him always to use men for examples. Deaf people, even those with no ear drum function, can still feel vibrations in their body. That's all that sound is. If the deaf person can see, you can hook up a sound receiver to an oscilloscope and show that person the wave forms. Yes - you can explain sound to a deaf person.

Hovind: "Could evolution have happened in giant leaps, known as punctuated equilibrium?"

Lie #265. Punctuated Equilibrium is not giant leaps, never has been, and Hovind knows this for a fact. The only way, however, that he can make it look bad, is to lie about what it is. This is the entire creationist strategy for dealing with evolution.

Hovind: "Goldsschmidt proposed that idea back in the 1940s."

Not quite a lie, but close. That was Richard Goldschmidt - with only one 's'. Doesn't this dimwit Hovind ever check anything? He wrote a book about it in 1940, called "The Material Basis of Evolution." Just like the modern promoters of punctuated equilibrium (PE), Goldschmidt accepted that evolution came in small and gradual changes. Modern evolutionary supporters of PE also assert (this is in addition to, not instead of) that there are times, in isolated populations, where this gradual change is, in effect, concentrated and speeded up, especially in changing environmental conditions.

By 'speeded up', they are talking about tens of thousands of years rather than millions - not a single one of them has ever suggested anything remotely like Hovind wants you to believe - that in one generation a new species can spontaneously arise. None, that is, except Goldschmidt, who couldn't imagine anything gradual producing a new species. In this regard he was no different from the brain dead creationists.

Goldschmidt speculated that there might be what could be called macro-mutations - "hopeful monsters" which were deformed as compared with their parents, but perfect for a new environment. Evolutionary science does not accept hopeful monsters - it leaves too much to chance and is not very scientific. Besides, it is not necessary. The gradual mechanism, with somewhat speedier transitions in isolated environments is quite sufficient to explain evolution between species.

Hovind: "It has just been revised by Nyles Eldridge"

Lie #266. I let him have the last one, so I am going to call this one. That's Niles Eldredge, and I have corrected Hovind on it so many times I didn't even have to look it up.

Hovind: "After he gave a boring lecture on evolution for about an hour, I went up to him and gave him my card. I said, Dr. Eldridge, I know that you strongly believe in evolution. It is obvious from your presentation, and I have read some of your work. On the back of my business card, it states, Ill pay $10,000 for anybody with empirical evidence (scientific proof) for evolution. I went on to say, I know that you believe very strongly in evolution."

Obviously Eldredge was not as boring as Hovind is tedious with his stories. Hovind ought to have paid attention - he desperately needs tutoring from an expert.

Hovind: "If you ever get any real proof for it, give me a call. Ill pay you $10,000."

Lie #267. Hovind has no intention whatsoever of paying - and I have proven it by challenging him. Rest assured I am not done with him yet on this score.

Hovind: 'They never present any evidence because there isnt any."

Lie #268. I have presented Hovind with evidence after evidence, after evidence. He lied about being serious in his offer, he lied about presenting my evidence to a panel of impartial judges and he lied about paying the money. He is nothing but a cheap, jumped-up snake-oil salesman, playing on people's poor science education. He is a fraud, and a charlatan. Well I intend to change him from being a fraud. I will make him afraid - afraid to speak of creationism for fear of utter ridicule.

Hovind: "I corresponded with Stephen Gould to try to schedule a debate for October 1993, and he refused."

Hovind even lied about this - claiming he had a debate scheduled before Gould even responded. Gould does not debate anyone because debate does not solve anything but who is the better at rhetoric.

Hovind "I was going to speak near Harvard and contacted him to schedule a debate punctuated equilibrium. The idea they present is called punctuated equilibrium, that is, there is no evidence for gradual change. There are no missing links. Therefore, evolution must have happened rapidly. In other words, a lizard laid an egg, and a chicken hatched out. That is the general idea behind punctuated equilibrium."

Lie #269. Punctuated equilibrium is nothing, in any way shape or form, akin to Hovind's description. Neither is evolution.

Hovind: "Nobody has time to read all the textbooks unless that is their full-time job...You probably will not find any of the books that are real strong on the creationist stand and against evolution."

I wonder why?

Hovind: "You can at least get some that are not so blatantly anti-Christian."

Lie #270. Science is neither pro- nor anti-religion. Science merely observes, tests, and records and theorizes. A better testimony to god's creation there cannot be - if indeed there is a god. It is not science that is anti-Christian, but Hovind. Hovind wants to get everything he dislikes banned, so he can control you, your children, your minds, and your money.

Hovind: "If they get responses from Christians by the thousands from across the country saying, We did not choose your book because... They will change what is published in the books."

This is Hovind's plan - the hell with what science says and can prove - ban the books. Isn't that what the Nazis did? He wants to declare facts not by how well they stand up to scrutiny and criticism, but by his own approval or veto. What he thinks is not a fact is banned, what he thinks is a fact is sacred. Hovind as god the creator, creating his own reality by force of will. How blasphemous can you get?

Hovind: "The second law of thermodynamics states that everything tends to fall apart, and break down or get worse with time."

It says nothing of the sort. Look it up. I covered this in lie #9.

Hovind: "You will find many scientists who argue that the earth is cooling off, and we are going into another ice age."

Maybe idiotic so-called creation scientists. Real scientists understand that we are in an ice age right now - it just happens to be a warmer phase, and apparently getting warmer by the year.