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Kent Hovind's doctoral dissertation leaked online.

I'm posting this in the science forum since Hovind's dissertation is a poorly-written screed against evolution. It is 105 pages of fail that I think anyone who seriously wishes to combat these jokers should read it.

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hovind-text.pdf, 355 KB

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Permalink Reply by Fabio on December 12, 2009 at 4:55pm

Boy, this has to be the most painful reading of my life...

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Permalink Reply by Buffy on December 12, 2009 at 8:35pm

Have you ever seen Patriot Bible University? It's nothing more than a diploma mill (and I use the word "diploma" lightly) for RRRW whackjobs. I could get degrees for my cats if I sent them money and forwarded the appropriate twaddle.

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Permalink Reply by AletheaT on December 12, 2009 at 5:20pm

It only takes reading the introduction for me to know this guy is full of poo...

First paragraph of the "History of Evolution" chapter

"Where in the world did the idea come from that
things left to themselves can improve with time? Who
would start a crazy idea like that? This idea is the
opposite of everything that we observe in the world today.
For instance, all the highways in our nation today left to
themselves decay, deteriorate, and fall apart. A house
left to itself will become a wreck. It takes work and
constant planning to make anything improve. Everything
tends toward disorder. The first and second laws of
thermodynamics are well established scientific laws that
have never been observed in the universe to be broken. The
first law says that matter cannot be created nor destroyed
by ordinary means. We do not see anything being created
today, and yet we do see an entire universe of created
material. This clearly indicates a Creator. There are
people in the world today who wish to avoid the concept of
God. They do not like the idea of a God telling them what
to do. Therefore, they have come up with the most
dangerous, damnable doctrine every imagined, evolution. I
would like in this chapter to trace the history of
evolutionary doctrine. Where did this dangerous doctrine
come from?"

Umm... first of all why the hell would he talk about inanimate objects that are man made? These are not organic or have the ability to evolve. What a retarded analogy.

second, the laws of thermodynamics have to do with ENERGY, like heat energy from the sun. The laws of thermodynamics have very little to do with organic matter. The closest it gets is the energy from the sun helped to create life, someone else may have more to say on this than I.

And lastly, I'm not afraid of god telling me what to do, I'm afraid of lunatics like you telling other people, who may actually believe, you what to do.

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Permalink Reply by Johnsky on December 12, 2009 at 8:15pm

lol... if the nations highways were indeed left to decay, they would be replaced by nature... commonly referred to as one of the most ordered systems in existence.

...he fails right in his introduction.

Order does form from chaos. Anyone who understands the very basics of even gravity can comprehend this. If you scatter large amounts of random matter in zero gravity, they will form together... eventually forming spheres. Of course this could take billions of years depending on the matter, quantity, and environment, however...

Water in zero gravity is a quick example of this... it forms a perfect sphere almost instantly.

Nothing interfered with it... it formed chaos from order.

Morons like these devalue the meaning of the word "doctorate".

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Permalink Reply by Loren Miller on December 12, 2009 at 5:46pm

Gives one to wonder if this cupcake ever was confronted in serious debate with a serious rationalist / atheist. Why do I get the suspicion that the answer to THAT one is resoundingly in the negative?

These guys are so used to preaching to the choir that they have no serious preparation to face real facts or deal with real issues outside of their own Looney-Tunes reality ... which is why we see Christopher Hitchens run roughshod over the stablemates of poor Kent in debate after debate. It may be that one day we may actually see one of these milque-toasts wake up to logic and reason and say, "Good grief, we've been full of shit all along." On that day, I will celebrate ... but I am NOT holding my breath.

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Permalink Reply by AletheaT on December 12, 2009 at 5:48pm

On that day I will make a total fool of myself. :)

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Permalink Reply by Jared Lardo on December 12, 2009 at 6:18pm

Why does he keep saying "Sod" where clearly "God" is supposed to go?

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Permalink Reply by Jared Lardo on December 12, 2009 at 7:39pm

Also, I find supreme irony in this quote from the dissertation:

"The story of evolution continues in
Gen. 9:22, "And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the
nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren
without." Ham, instead of doing the wise thing of covering
up his father's nakedness, went out and laughed about it to
his two brothers, evidently. This resulted in a curse
being placed upon Ham's son, Caanan. Ham's pride caused
him to try to make his father look bad. People who are
always cutting down others are usually motivated by pride.
They think making someone else look worse will some how
make themselves look better."

(emphasis mine)
That last sentence is creationist activities in a nutshell.

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Permalink Reply by the antithesis on December 12, 2009 at 9:33pm

That's my fault. For some reason, my OCR kept reading the uppercase "G" as an uppercase "S." I only went through the document once with a spellchecker and still need to go through it again to check for other errors that the spellchecker missed. But apt, don't you think?

The PDF available at the link above is made of scanned pictures of a dot matrix printout of the dissertation. (I found this amusing for some reason) It might be worth downloading that version as well. There are a few spots were the text is illegible. If you can figure out what the words should be, let me know.

Incidentally, Hovind did misspell 'Voltair' in his dissertation. No wonder why he's in prison.

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Permalink Reply by OutlawGirl on December 12, 2009 at 9:18pm

Did Kent just write that "Sod" has given him the oppertunity to preach? Does he mean God, or is he being ironic?

Dang, Jared beat me to it.

But seriously, how could it possibly be a typo? The S and the G keys aren't even on the same side of the keyboard. It would make more sense if he wrote Tod!