Hovind Attacks Evolution Theory
Part Three
This is the third section of three which analyses Kent Hovind's misrepresentation and attacks on Evolution Theory, both biological and any other science which contradicts a young Earth view. Hovind's own words are in bold and are quoted from Transcript 2 from Hovind's own web site [no longer available].
Well, Genesis 1:26, God said, “Let us make man in our image.” So, He made man in his own image. Well, now if we are made in the image of God, what about all the cave men they are finding? Why do we teach the kids that this is grandpa right there? What about the so-called cave men? Well, we will not take time to go into all of them here, let's just talk about a few of them for a moment.
Straw man Hovind is correct that
he isn't going to go into all of them. He selects a few
misidentifications, one fraud/prank and abuses a genuine "cave
man". He fails to mention the genuine scientific
position.
Nebraska Man
Nebraska man is a good place to start. Did you know all they found for a Nebraska man was one tooth? Somebody found a tooth! They built the entire man out of plaster of Paris and imagination, then they built him a wife. You have to be good to know what his wife looks like from his tooth. But, these guys are good! Later, they found out that the tooth actually came from a pig. There is the real Nebraska man right there!
Correct However, see Creationist
Arguments: Nebraska Man for more detail.
Piltdown man
What about Piltdown man? Well, Piltdown man was a fraud. Somebody took a human skull and an ape's jaw bone, filed them down and made them fit together, treated them with acid, buried them in a gravel pit and then discovered Piltdown man. Piltdown man was a hoax!
Correct However Hovind failed to mention that Piltdown was exposed more than fifty years ago. Piltdown was a hindrance to the evidence that other hominid specimens were indicating. Piltdown appeared to indicate a European branch of hominid history while all other specimens pointed towards Africa. Exposure of this hoax cleared away the contradiction. See Creationist Arguments: Piltdown Man for more information.
500 people studied the fossils and wrote a Ph.D. dissertation and earned a doctors degree on the Piltdown fossils, [and] nobody caught the fraud!
False I am putting a tentative false label on the claim of 500 PhD's
They were so anxious to believe in evolution, anything becomes evidence for the theory. See, some people do not want God telling them what to do. That Piltdown man was in the textbooks for 40 years. For 40 years, boys and girls went to school and were taught they have got proof revolution and it was a hoax-a fraud.
I wonder how many kids during those 40 years lost confidence in the Bible. I wonder how many kids did not get saved. I wonder how many kids would have or could have or should have become an evangelist or a pastor or a missionary. No, some teacher ruined their faith in the Bible with a deliberate fraud. Boy, I would hate to be in their shoes judgment day standing before God, wouldn’t you? Say, “God, I am the one that taught that to this kid and that is why he is going to hell.” I would hate to be on the textbook selection committee and say, “God I am one of those that voted for that book to go in our school;” it is a hoax, it is worse than a hoax, it is tragic! It leads kids to hell.
I left that little speech in as a reminder of Hovind's motivation and
mindset.
Neanderthal Man
What about the Neanderthal man, oh, he is still in textbooks right now used in our county. See, man walks on two legs, apes walk on four, the Neanderthal skeleton they found was bent over and he said wow look at this he is bent over, he is slowly evolving, he is coming up! No, they proved 50 years ago it was an old man with arthritis. He is slowly going down, he is not coming up at all! But, guess what? The Neanderthal man is still in textbooks right now. Proven wrong 50 years ago. .....
False Neanderthals were not "bent over"
False See Creationist
Arguments: Neanderthals for details of the flaws in many creationist claims
regarding Neandertals
Lucy
Parts from All Over
The one that is in the textbooks now that is the most famous is called Lucy. How many have ever heard of Lucy before? Better known as australopithicus atherensis [sic], scientific name. Donald Johanson found Lucy at Dar [sic] Valley, Ethiopia in 1974; it was 40% of the skeleton. This is considered the most complete skeleton ever found. There is a real controversy about the knee joint. The knee joint that he found a mile and a half away from the rest of the skeleton was labeled in National Geographic as “Lucy’s Knee”, Donald never corrected them; it was not Lucy’s knee found a mile and a half away. He let the error slip through because he wanted them to think, “well maybe that is the same.” There is a long story on that; 200 feet deeper in the strata, by the way.
Red herring If National Geographic did mislabel Lucy’s Knee, which is debatable, how does this mean that Lucy is not an early hominid?
Ad hominem Hovind is attacking Johanson for the claimed actions taken by a third party.
Straw man The "Lucy Knee" is one of those arguments that if the Creation Science movement had an integrity they would quickly forget that they raised the issue.
See Lucy’s Knee Joint - A Case Study in Creationists' Willingness to Admit Their Errors This article includes evidence that Hovind has been told numerous times the "Lucy Knee" argument is flawed. Yet Hovind is obviously still using this flawed argument (though now in a very strange form)
Also see The ICR and Lucy: Bearing False Witness Against Thy Neighbor. This contains a letter from Henry Morris of the Institute for Creation Research stating that no one in the ICR uses the "Lucy Knee" argument.
Monkeys and Femurs
Donald said, I think Lucy is becoming a human because the ape has a straight femur, the thigh bone on an ape is straight coming off the knee joint on the far right over there. Lucy’s knee angled to the side like a human knee angles to the side. See, your hips are wider than your knees and so your femur angles out to the side. I have got two of them myself, I know about that. Lucy’s femur angled and Donald said, “See, that proves Lucy is becoming a human.” No, no, no, Donald, any monkey that climbs trees has an angled femur; monkeys that walk on the ground have a straight femur. So it does not prove it is becoming a human.
He said, well the bones are slightly bigger; notice Lucy’s bones are a little bit bigger than a regular ape. That is true but it does not prove it is becoming a human. Did you know the bones of a Clydesdale are slightly bigger than a regular horse? That proves it is becoming an elephant or a truck. Just a heavy, duty chimpanzee, that is all; all they found was a heavy, duty chimp and that is all it was.
By the way, the St. Louis Zoo put Lucy with human feet on it. Guess how many foot bones were found. Zero! Pure propaganda! When they found the footprints over there in the ash, Time magazine put an ape-like creature on top of these perfectly normal human footprints - footprints were 100% perfectly normal human. They did not find any bones, but they made the “missing link” to be ape-like. It is propaganda folks, it is not science. Actually the Australopithecine are just an unusual monkey and the experts are admitting it. There might even be some still alive in Sumatra down near Vietnam.
False I am going to have to put a red flag on the ludicrous claim of Australopthecines living anywhere in the world.
False The expert I suspect Hovind is referring to is Oxnard who studied other Australopithecines in the 1970's but did not conclude they were an "unusual monkey". See here for more detail.
I suspect Hovind's source is CREATION ex nihilo Volume 19 Number 1 Dec.96-Feb.97 from Answers in Genesis. These "experts" are David Menton who is a member of Answers in Genesis. The other "expert" is David Bukna, a Canadian school teacher.
Sumatra is a province of Indonesia. Sumatra is 600 miles away from the nearest part of Vietnam. Between Sumatra and Vietnam is the Gulf of Thailand and the country of Malaysia See map
The Missing Link?
This book Bones of Contention is the best book I know of on the so-called missing links, the cave men. If you want to read about that we have got that on our order form. Every one of the so-called cave men is listed in here and tells what they really found about them, that will set the record straight. .....
I think before the Flood came though, the world was very different. People lived longer, got bigger, and animals lived longer and got bigger. Here is a man standing next to a Hornless rhinoceros, 18 feet tall 30 feet long. That is a big rhino! People say well that is a prehistoric animal. There is no such thing as prehistoric. Did you know that word prehistoric was just added to the dictionary 100 years ago? Here is a dictionary from 1766, guess what, prehistoric is not in there. Dictionary from 1860, guess what, no prehistoric. It was added about 1870; there is no such thing as prehistoric.
A word used to describe a period of time didn't exist prior to a certain date therefor that period of time doesn't exist? Absolutely ludicrous.
The word "prehistoric" is derived from the word "history". History is the study of recorded events. Therefor any period of time prior to written records is prehistoric.
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Dinosaurs were just big reptiles that lived with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. You can buy these at the pet store right now; it has got three horns on his face, what would he look like at about 10 tons? Some kind of triceratops. No, dinosaurs have always lived with humans.
False The man calls himself "Dr Dino" yet doesn't seem to have a clue about dinosaur anatomy.
Ica Stones.
Down in Peru, they found a human vertebrae with dinosaur bones, together. They found what came to be known as the Ica stones, with people riding dinosaurs, and people hunting dinosaurs. Over 50,000 of these stones have been found. Now in Peru, it is against the law to sell the National Treasure, so you go to jail, so the people that are finding them are claiming they are making them so they will not go to jail-so they can sell them. I read a book about a guy that has 11,000 of them in his museum down there. Every known dinosaur found carved on the Ica stones. He had them analyzed and they have a coating over them, which would require hundreds of years to produce this oxidized coating. He said these are not being carved now, they were carved hundreds of years ago, at least. But, the local people were just trying to stay out of jail.
See the Skeptics Dictionary's comments on the Ica stones
Paluxy River footprints.
If you go to Dallas, Texas .... you will find the town over there called Glen Rose, Texas. I have been there three times. There is a river that runs through town called the Paluxy River. In the Paluxy River, there are thousands of layers of limestone. The bottom of the river is flat. In 1908 the river flooded, a bad flood, tore the bottom of the river off. Ripped off two feet of solid limestone and moved it downstream 20 miles. In the new riverbed, freshly exposed in 1908, there were thousands of dinosaur footprints. There were so many dinosaur footprints there, they made a state park out of it. I have got the book right here, Dinosaur Valley State Park.
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They found human footprints with these dinosaur footprints. I talked to Cecil Dougherty, I talked to Carl Baugh, he lives there; I have talked to many folks who studied this and they have said yes, there are human footprints there so I went there and saw them myself and walked in them. Human tracks and Dinosaur tracks together. Sometimes the human track is inside the Dinosaur track; sometimes the Dinosaur track is on top of the human track, indicating that that Dinosaur was there last. Interesting! The tracks are pretty good size, I brought one, here it is. This is a casting of one of those from Glen Rose, Texas. Size 24! Either the guy was 10 feet tall or he looked hilarious going to kindergarten. .....
Skeptics Refuted
But, some of the skeptics said, “We think these are fake,” so they lifted the rock ledges out along the side of the creek and there was more footprints underneath, undisturbed limestone. Perfect stride, right foot, left foot, right foot. They cut one of the tracks in half, sawed it across the toes, saw the lamination lines distorted by the mud squeezing up between the toes; the man stride was 6 feet between steps. I would rip my britches every time trying to do that! Oops! Human and Dinosaur tracks together, that is interesting!
False The Paluxy River area is recognised for it's dinosaur tracks. However there is no serious acceptance of the human/dinosaur track claims even by other creationists.
See The Paluxy Dinosaur/"Man Track" Controversy
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March, 1999