Defeating "Dr" Kent Hovinds' claims.

What you say may well be true of Muhd. But complaining that naturalistic explanations "remove God out of the picture" do display basic God-of-the-Gaps (GOTG) mentality, whether or not he has carried that GOTG theology to its logical conclusions. And, I believe, it is that GOTG mentality that has largely created and perpetuates the fiction that science attacks religion.

Fork, let your friend explain how well the math works out on this Hovind claim:

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For instance, the sun is burning, of course, and it's burning an enormous amount of fuel. It's losing about 5 million tons every second. Well, if the earth is billions of years old that creates a problem, because you couldn't go back 5 billion or 20 billion years like they say with the sun constantly getting larger and larger and heavier and heavier. The sun's gravity would of course become real great and would suck the earth in. Plus the sun would be bigger and burn the earth up. It can't possibly be true that it's billions of years old.
[Hovind in radio interview on Southwest Radio Church, 13 Sep 2002 (my transcription taken from the audio at Page not found - SWRC at 8 minutes]

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So how much more massive would the sun have been 5 billion years ago?
At 5 million tons lost a second, that would amount to about 1.5779216 x 10¹⁷ tons.
The sun's current mass is about 1.9891 x 10²⁷ metric tonnes, or 2.1926 x 10²⁷ short tons (somehow, I just can't see Hovind using the metric system).
So the total mass lost in 5 billion years is only about 0.03598%, less than 4 hundredths of one percent, of the sun's current mass.
So the ancient sun would have been only marginally more massive than it is now, "sucking" the earth in by less than 100,000 miles.BTW, that figure of 5 million tons per second is about right and Hovind says that he got it from a textbook. In his seminar tape (no long on-line), he said:

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The problem is nobody is positive of what's causing the sun to burn. There are two theories about what causes the sun to burn. One theory says the sun is burning by nuclear fusion, in which case it could burn for billions of years and you wouldn't see much change in the diameter, because a small amount of matter produces an enormous amount of heat. The other theory says the sun is burning by gravitational collapse and is just, you know, burning up -- OK, the pressure produces the heat to keep it burning.

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Hovind has indicated elsewhere that he doesn't accept the nuclear fusion explanation and seems to prefer gravitational contraction (he does offer this claim to support the "shrinking sun") and combustion. Though combustion would result in near-zero mass loss, not the 5 million tons per second that he cites.Part of the irony here is that that rate of 5 million tons per second is based entirely on nuclear fusion producing the sun's entire energy output. From the sun's perspective, 5 million tons per second is "a small amount of matter [that] produces an enormous amount of heat". So he's basing his claim on something that he doesn't want to accept.

Oh my goodness, how ignorant can this Kent guy be? 2 theories on what causes the sun to burn? I see the same thing repeated twice using different words.The sun's massive gravity results in an enormous pressure on the matter the sun is made of, which is mostly hydrogen and helium. This pressure causes the gas to heat up and you have hydrogen burning, the same process we see happen in a hydrogen bomb, which is the same thing as nuclear fusion.This guy seems to draw strength from people' ignorance.

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[Hovind] seems to draw strength from people' ignorance.

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Hey, he's a real expert on science and math. That's what he keeps saying on his seminar tapes and brags about how well he understands that stuff. After all, he taught high school math and science for 15 years -- what he doesn't add is that, as I understand it, it was at his own private Christian high school that he did that teaching.As for his understanding of how the sun burns, I've found two sources:kent-hovind.com - , "Quacky Quotes", Basic Science I:

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Listener's letter: [.....] It is said the Sun is a burning ball of gas, in other words fire. What is the one thing that fire needs to burn? Oxygen. How come that stars continue to burn if they have no oxygen to keep them burning? [.....]

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Hovind: Excellent question, Andres. I'm sorry but I don't know that I have a positive answer. [....] As far as the oxygen required, I'll have to pass on that one too and do some more study on that one. I don't know that I could prove one way or the other. I think there are different types of burning though - some do not require oxygen. Sorry about that, Andres. I'll have to do some research and check back with you on that one.

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Source: Truth Radio 5 August 2003 @ 37:50

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Then there was a ... er, religious-fringe site going on about ... oh, go look at it yourself, because you wouldn't believe me if I told you:

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TITLE: EXACT ILLUMINIST TIMETABLE FOR PRODUCING ANTICHRIST HAS BEEN REVEALED TO CUTTING EDGE MINISTRIES!

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Subtitle: We have been given the exact timetable for producing Antichrist, including the exact date he is planned to arise. We have also been given the precise occult thinking by which this timetable was produced. If God does not act to prevent the Illuminati from carrying out this Plan, Antichrist will likely arise as the Illuminati has scheduled.

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at No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.cuttingedge.org/NEWS/n1260.cfmThe pertinent part was that the occultists were planning on igniting Jupiter into a star by having the Galileo probe crash into the planet whereupon its nuclear reactor would cause a nuclear explosion. [BTW, no, it never could have exploded and, no, it never did] They checked out some sites and asked astronomers about the likelihood. The astronomers explained to them that Jupiter has far too little mass for the core to get a fusion reaction started. These guys simply could not understand what the astronomers were talking about -- and they admit that they couldn't understand -- , but then Kent Hovind gave them an answer they could understand:

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These comments from NASA, and this astronomy research group, seem to be clear that Jupiter could never ignite on its own. We then posed the following question to the Arizona Space Exploration and Astronomy research group "Could Jupiter be ignited by a huge nuclear device ?" The answer we got back was:

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"Jupiter could not be ignited. The central temperature is the determining factor. A self-gravitating mass of hydrogen 20% the size of the Sun, or smaller, does not have a high enough central temperature to induce nuclear fusion. Temperature equates to average kinetic energy of particles; it takes a very high temperature to get even a small fraction of hydrogen ions to overcome their electrical repulsion and fuse." [Guy Smiley dated 2/2/99]

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We were still not sure exactly why Jupiter could not ignite, especially if it were hit with the huge atomic explosion of 1,750 Megatons, as occult sources are saying will occur when the 49.7 pounds of plutonium in the spacecraft Galileo is turned into the planet on December 6. After all, the largest thermonuclear explosion on earth was the Russian test of only 100 megatons in 1961. The answer we received from a Christian scientist, Dr. Kent Hovind, [ Dinosaur Adventure Land ] explained the science to us so we could understand. In the NASA excerpt, quoted above, we learned that "most" of the mass of Jupiter is Hydrogen and Helium, a most explosive mix, if it is mixed with sufficient oxygen in order to burn this mixture. Dr. Hovind says Jupiter does not contain enough oxygen in order to sustain the type of continuous burning that would be needed to produce a star. Now, we understand and now it all makes sense. No matter how large the initial explosion might be, the lack of sufficient quantities of oxygen would snuff out any resulting fire rather quickly.

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I swear, I am not making any of this up. I've emailed that site asking whether they were quoting Hovind accurately, but have never received any answer. I haven't gotten around to asking Hovind. The last time I wrote him it was to ask him what mass he had come up with for the ancient sun. He "responded" by avoiding that question any way he could, including twice trying to pick a fight with me over my AOL screenname. Besides, I'd think that he's probably a bit preoccupied right now with his legal problems.

not even with a trillion 1x4x9 black objects?

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Well of course, you could use self-replicating monoliths to either increase Jupiter's mass (though if they're not compressible, you still might not enough pressure at the core, plus I'm not sure what effect that increased mass would have on the orbits of the other planets) or to artificially compress Jupiter's existing mass to compress the core enough to fuse.But these "Illuminati" don't have such monoliths at their disposal, the plutonium dioxide fuel pellets on Galileo wouldn't have exploded (for that, you would need weapons-grade plutonium and you would need some mechanism to compress it to achieve critical mass -- as I recall, Little Man was a high velocity gun that shot one piece of nuclear material into another and Fat Boy was a piece of nuclear material completely surrounded by shaped charges, the kind of design depicted in The Peacemaker), and it still looks very much like Hovind thinks the sun burns by combustion. Even though he uses a mass-loss rate that depends on the sun's entire energy output coming from hydrogen fusion; from a draft web page:

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To determine how much mass is being converted to energy, we measure how much energy the sun is outputting and apply Einstein's equation,
E = mc²:

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Sun's energy output (E) = 3.86x10³³ ergs / second
Speed of light (c) = 2.99x10¹⁰ cm / second
Mass (m) = E / c²
m = 3.86x10³³ / (2.99x10¹⁰)² grams / second
m = 4.318x10¹² grams / second
m = 4.318 million metric tons / second
m = 4.76 million short tons / second
(1 short ton = 2000 pounds = 0.9072 metric tonnes)

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It appears that either Hovind or Hovind's source had rounded that rate up to 5 million tons. Most other sources round down to 4 million tons, although it is never clear what kind of "ton" they are using. Therefore, Hovind's cited rate appears to be legitimate and quite close enough to the scientifically accepted value. I will use Hovind's cited value for the rate of mass loss in all my calculations on this page.

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From Hovind's seminar tape:

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All you got to do is step outside and look up. Obviously the sun is burning.

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Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.

So, apparently this guy doesn't comprehend or refuses to comprehend what hydrogen burning is. It's kinda sad that this guy has an audience at all.

You couldn't make this up!I don't know which is funnier - that site or Hovind explaining about the lack of oxygen (and them believing it - didn't they go to high school themselves!?)

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Oops! Wrong Planet

hey, fire's nukular, right?

Fire (ie, combustion) is chemical, not nuclear.But we knew that even before high school (reference to Hovind's boast that he taught high school science for 15 years).BTW, while many of his followers I've had the [dubious] pleasure of corresponding with cite his doctorate degree to show that he is indeed a scientist, it should be noted that that degree is in religious education. And as I recall, his masters is in education and his bachelor in religion (or the other way around). And that is ignoring the question of whether his masters and doctorate are even legitimate or simply purchased from a degree mill -- different subject.

Long ago, I fished around for the credentials of some of these crackpots. While I do not have the sources now, I remember finding out that these "doctors" got their doctorates from unaccredited christian schools.But honestly, any high schooler should know that combustion is different from nuclear fusion. I mean, just how much crack are these people on?

my jokes are failing.

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why? what does evidence have to do with faith? people believe all sorts of crazy things, including fundies yes because anything that doesn't center on YOUR god as the source of everything is godless or worthless

It wasn't lost on me, Arach. 'Nukular' is what gave it away. I think Dwise1 just hasn't been around on EvC long enough to know you. Or Dwise1 was in too serious a mood to notice your little quip, what with debunking Hovind's nonsense an' all.

Is "to remove God out of the picture", to put God in the picture. I agree.Bring back Thor so we can understand lightning.Earthquakes are the result of Tulis dogs stopping to scratch for fleas therefore we need to be studying how to get fleapowder to the God Tuli.Chac is needed if we wish to study rain and storms.Poseidon needs to be returned to a central position should we wish to comprehend tsunamis.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion