Give me the money!

I just ran across this correspondence from a few years ago where I had a rather heated discussion with a certain Dr. Kent Hovind who you may or may not remember is a fundamentalist preacher with a lot of strange ideas about biblical history and the evolution/creation debate.

Hovind acknowledges many contributors to his model of how the earth was formed and puts his own peculiar slant on most of the stories in the bible.

The model includes the following explanation of the Biblical account of Noah: Noah's family and two of every "kind" of animal (including dinosaurs) safely boarded the Ark before a minus 300° F ice meteor came flying toward the earth and broke up in space.

Some of the meteor fragments became rings and others caused the impact craters on the moon and some of the planets. The remaining ice fragments fell to the north and south poles of the earth.

The resulting "super-cold snow" fell near the poles, burying the mammoths standing up.

Ice on the North and South pole cracked the crust of the earth releasing the fountains of the deep, which in turn caused certain ice age effects, namely the glacier effects. This made the earth "wobble around" and collapsed the canopy that protected it.

During the first few months of the flood, the dead animals and plants were buried, and became oil and coal, respectively. The last few months of the flood included geological instability, when the plates shifted.

This period saw the formation of both ocean basins and mountain ranges and the resulting water run-off caused incredible erosion — Hovind says that the Grand Canyon was formed in a couple of weeks during this time.

(Well bunky, what do you think so far? Is it starting to sink in that a lot of these guys are much more than just a brick or two short of a load.)

After a few hundred years, the ice caps slowly melted back retreating to their current size and the ocean levels increased, creating the continental shelves.

The deeper oceans absorbed much of the carbon dioxide in earth’s atmosphere and thus allowed greater amounts of radiation to reach the earth's surface. As a result, human lifespans were shortened considerably in the days of Peleg.

On top of all this Hovind's website has offered $10,000 since 1990 to those who can "prove the theory of evolution."

Since at least 1999 the offer has been for $250,000:

"I have a standing offer of $250,000 to anyone who can give any empirical evidence (scientific proof) for evolution.* My $250,000 offer demonstrates that the hypothesis of evolution is nothing more than a religious belief."

Critics view this offer to be spurious because of the conditions which Hovind imposes.

Hovind also insists that evolution equates to atheism even though belief in a deity or deities is arguably unrelated to evolution and the two are not mutually exclusive.

The asterisk denotes the terms which he claims show significant gaps in the gradual progression predicted by the theory of evolution:

Hovind has said a panel of judges would decide if a claim had met his criteria, but he has refused to say who would be (or is) on that panel. He has even refused to say what their qualifications might be.

Challengers who have submitted claims to Hovind have become convinced that he does not actually use a panel of judges, in spite of his promise to do so.

In one case, after twice stating that he would send a particular response to
his judges (according to his website any responses he sent were considered
"legitimate" Hovind then reneged stating, "Thanks for reminding me about not sending minor changes to the committee. This would be a waste of time for everyone involved. If you ever get any evidence that does support evolution please send it to me".

The respondent was not amused and felt that this indicated dishonesty on Hovind's part and proved that he'd never intended to pay.

The winter 2005 issue of Skeptic included an article titled "Doubting Dr. Dino" by Adam Kisby.

Kisby lays out Hovind's arguments in formal logic, and says that the assumptions "God is a necessary cause of the universe" and "The universe is eternal, i.e., un-caused" lead to contradictions.

Kisby sent his proof to Hovind and reports that "many weeks later I received a terse reply from Hovind in which he dogmatically rejected my proof."

Hovind's reason was "the universe is evidence of a Designer - not proof there is no Designer."

Thus Kisby concluded "I contend that either my proof is technically correct or Hovind's $250,000 offer is fundamentally flawed. If my proof is correct, then Hovind is constrained by the terms of his offer to release the money.

On the other hand if Hovind's offer is flawed then he is morally obligated to withdraw it or modify it."

Others have approached Hovind in regard to the challenge, addressing it from perspectives ranging from "large-scale evolution" and "the big bang" to "polar bears."

I myself sent Hovind a proof of Evolution based roughly on the Scientific principals that were covered in great detail by Scientific American and featured in this blog a few days ago.


Just as in the other cases, Hovind wrote me back and did a little sideways shuffle, rejected my arguments and refused to send me the 1/4 of a million bucks!


For my effort, (And I still maintain that I adequately explained and proved evolution!) Dr. Hovind sent me this message! (You might want to click on it to get it larger!!!)



Since I knew from the beginning that he was going to be a slime ball about the whole thing I sent him this little love note! (Click again)


The way things have turned out I would never have gotten the money anyways since Hovind AND his wife are now cooling their heels in a federal prison for 10 years after being convicted of tax fraud.

Hovind is a dip shit from the word go and he has now learned that you might be able to fool some of the population, some of the time, but don't ever fuck with the government.

They'll getcha every time!

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God at http://www.god-101.com/ and the blog "Perspective" at http://god-101.blogspot.com/