How (not) to discuss evolution/sciene vs. religion/creationsim

[arildno]

Mr. Hovind is clearly not a rational person.
Hence, the proper debate attitude towards him is ridicule and contempt, not arguments he is not competent to think through.

He is, quite simply, OUTSIDE the community of rational individuals, and should be told that firmly.

 

[arunma]

Mr. Hovind is clearly not a rational person.
Hence, the proper debate attitude towards him is ridicule and contempt, not arguments he is not competent to think through.

He is, quite simply, OUTSIDE the community of rational individuals, and should be told that firmly.

Already taken care of. I neglected to mention this earlier, but Kent Hovind was recently convicted of tax fraud. Turns out that Mr. Hovind is a so-called "tax protestor," who believes that because he allegedly does the work of God, he should be exempt from paying taxes (btw this is happens to violate the Biblical commandment to pay taxes, found in Romans 13:6). As far as I know, Mr. Hovind is currently behind bars.

For instance:
- Let Mr Hovind explain why he doesn't belief in any of the other Gods (there are hundreds) and on what basis.
- If he claims that he interprets the Bible literally and that the Bible is his source of morality, he can be pointed out what moral standards actually are preached in the Bible. Let him take a point of view on that morality. If he declines to adhere to that moral standard, then it can be concluded he merely uses his own opinion, rather then the literal bible interpretation. If he acknowledges to such moral standards, he is obviously in contradiction with modern moral standards (which acc. to his interpretation must be absolute and not changing with time).
- And if also the Bible is to be taken serious on dragons, where is the unicorn?
- If his God of the Bible is not anywhere at anytime (as he himself claimed) and not material:
= On what (scientific basis) can it be (at all) assumed that such "being" is objectively there? And how does that prevent any other being (any being other then the God of the Bible) from not existing?
= How is it that God needs 6 days for his creation if God is "outside time" (from which we would rather expect the creation took no time at all)
= where did the matter come from? With what and how did God create it? (as God himself was not material, neither was there any matter, this still makes it totally incomprehensible where matter came from and how it got here, unless we assume that matter was in fact already here, but in a different form, and God "shaped" it, but that is not what he states)
= How did God do anything? Did it involve motion? If yes, this is impossible, if said that God is "outside of time". If not, then God is without change, which makes it impossible for God to do anything. Mystery remains: how did the creation took place.

The above methods (which of course is far from scientific, but just an offensive and aggressive method to strangle him with his own nonsense claims, and putting the same rigid standard for "his" theory as he uses against science) might be the only one that could be effective.

Not sure that this is the best approach, though I think you've got a good idea in general. Certainly creationism should be fought with theological arguments, but we need to use the right theological arguments. Many of the things you mentioned above have legitimate responses. The unicorn, for example, is given mention in such Biblical verses as Numbers 23:22. However, it is based on translations into early modern English ("early modern" meaning the 1600s). Indeed in several instances, the Hebrew language employs words of unknown meaning. Thus the problem is purely linguistic. Indeed modern translations of Numbers 23:22 render the animal as a wild ox rather than a unicorn.

It seems to me that it would be better to point out to creationists that their beliefs don't logically follow from the Bible (assuming the scientific approach doesn't work first). The history of creationism can actually be traced by to fairly recent times, and it is fairly easy to cite examples of ancient Christians who did not believe in said dogma. Whatever we do, I think it is important for us to pry the creationists' grip on the American public, lest our educational system be littered with unscientific nonsense.

 

[dontdisturbmycircles]

Kent Hovind, mentioned earlier, went so far as to obtain his degrees (which are also not in science) from diploma mills!

I wiki'd diploma mill to learn more about the colleges that hand out these degrees and found this : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colby_Nolan

 

[arunma]

I wiki'd diploma mill to learn more about the colleges that hand out these degrees and found this : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colby_Nolan

Why is it always a cat?