Deimos

Listened for over 100 mins...

SLAUGHTER!

Hovind is nutz <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Time is your GOD, evilutionists!

Orestes

Listening to Hovind makes my head hurt . I think my brain is trying to run away.

lpetrich

I finally downloaded and listened to a recording of that debate (~ 2 hr 10 min), and Massimo Pigliucci had held up well.

The only error I could find on MP's side was what the common ancestor of dogs and banana plants was like -- he sort-of claimed that it was a 500-million-year-old multicellular organism, but the real story is somewhat different:

The short version is that their common ancestor was a one-celled organism that lived something like 1.5 billion years ago. The long version ... I'd have to trace the ancestry of the mitochondria and chloroplasts.

But posed in the fashion that KH had done, it does look a bit silly, because it's difficult to imagine going from a dog to a banana plant or a pine tree in some simple steps. And in fact, that is not how it happened; instead, both are the result of lots of multistep evolution from a long-ago protist ancestor that liked to eat blue-green bacteria -- with one of its descendants becoming infested with one of its "meals".

The same could be said of rock-to-dog evolution, another KH example, though KH waffled a bit as to what counts as rock.

But MP correctly pointed out that the evolution of life, the origin of life, and the origin of the Universe are separate question, in contrast with how creationists often mix up these questions. KH had claimed that the question of origins is outside of science, because we aren't around to see origins happen.

KH could not help projecting some of his beliefs onto MP, claiming that he believed that MP treated time as a miracle-working deity. KH also repeatedly called evolution a "religion" (!), listing that as a reason for doing so.

KH also claimed that it was self-evident that the Universe had had a designer, using a version of Archdeacon Paley's old argument about finding a watch somewhere. However, he ducked the question of what a designer could not be responsible for.

KH stated that he believed that Noah's Flood had been real, that it was responsible for much sedimentary rock, and that polystrate trees were clear evidence of that flood. MP sort-of ducked that question by disclaiming geological expertise, though he pointed out that mainstream geologists have no trouble with polystrate trees.

KH was asked how he would date a really old Bible that he found somewhere, and the debate drifted to KH claiming that the King James translation was the only divinely-inspired English translation, with the others having errors. MP asked him how he was so sure that other translations had errors, and KH wiggled without giving an answer.

The Q&A period turned to the question of human-embryo gill slits, with MP denying that he ever claimed that that's what they were. However, human embryos, like other amniote embryos, grow gill bars, gill pouches, and blood vessels appropriate for gills, though these structures never go all the way to becoming functional gills, slits and all. Instead, the structures either get resorbed or get reused in various ways.

One broad example of such reuse is that in all jawed vertebrates, the jaws develop from the upper and lower halves of the first gill bar.

About created kinds, KH was rather vague, claiming that horses and donkeys were in the same kind, most likely because they can interbreed -- which seems to be his criterion for identifying a created kind, as far as I could guess from his statements.

MP asked him about Noah's Ark, and about how a few members of each of 10,000 created kinds could produce all of over a million species -- that requires an enormous amount of speciation.

Though when pressed for examples of speciation, MP used the analogy of a mountain growing -- speciation examples are known, but they are rare.

Dinosaurs, KH claimed, could have been tame herbivores taken aboard the Ark as juveniles -- which is rather far-fetched for tyrannosaurs.

He claimed that they had been exterminated, being remembered as dragons. However, the debate did not go into the question of dragon appearance -- usually not very dinosaurlike.

KH's example of wisdom teeth indicating that we had larger examples MP pointed to as an excellent example of evolution in action -- wisdom teeth are a vestige of larger jaws.

The debate ended with some final statements by KH and MP, with KH asserting some traditional Christian theology and MP saying that a deity could be a "she" as well as a "he".

butswana

With all of the bleating Kent did about tax dollars, I was disappointed that no one called him on it.

Mossimo rocks!

tgamble

Demands for speciation are just a smoke screen. Whenever they are given it's just dismised as variation. It's still a finch. It's still a fish. It's still a whatever. It's never enough.

They want a cow to give birth to a pig or some shit like that.

Let's face it, demands for evidence are meaningless when they've signed a statement of faith that says evidence is irrelevent.

hezekiah jones

No wonder! That was one of the highlights of the program. The caller had Hovind hogtied by the fact that Hovind would use precisely the same methods of inference that he'd been denigrating Pigliucci for using. Even Hovind's not stupid enough to get suckered into utterly contradicting what is essentially his entire "argument"!

Hi Infidel Guy. Rest assured I was giggling right along with you and Dr. Massimo.

[ May 25, 2002: Message edited by: hezekiahjones ]</p>

NialScorva

Funny that Hovind is so busy telling his opponent what evolution is that he never actually talks about what evolution is.