But I happen to be up to the challenge. Let's see how it goes. I need to say at the outset that I am not a scientist, but I do have some undergrad training in anthropology and a lifelong interest in the evolution of the human species.
First I'll begin by addressing the claims you derive from Hovind's video:
To begin, the rendering of "evolutionism" as a religion is unsubstantiated at best and a malicious lie at worst. Evolutionary science is as empirically based as any scientific discipline, and is supported by findings over the last 150+ years in such diverse, independent fields as geology, paleontology, anthropology, biochemistry and genetics -- all of which would have to be involved in some kind of global conspiracy in order for evolution to be in error.
Religion, specifically the kind that Hovind peddles, is based on unsupported texts written thousands of years ago by Bronze Age philosophers who had no understanding of the scientific method and very little grasp of the realities, forces and principles of the natural world. How could they have?
Even if their work is divinely inspired, which could not be proven on an evidential basis, though I'm willing to accept it for argument's sake, clearly God would have been talking to them in the parlance of their times, and couched in language and terms that they could understand with their limited worldview and perspective. In short, the authors of the Bible could have had no grasp of evolution, so God spoke to them, if "He" spoke to them at all, in symbolic language.
This makes it impossible to assemble a scientifically accurate picture of the world from the poetic proclomations of the Bible, though that is what Hovind and other fundamentalists wish to do.
I'm gratified to know that. We may be able to discover some common ground after all.
This is a purely semantic, meaning language-based, argument. The kind of evolution we're discussing here is biological evolution of organisms through random mutation and natural selection. That phrase is too long to write every time we want to discuss it, so in short hand we just say "evolution".
All those other forms of evolution are unique and specific to their discipline, and have nothing to do with biological evolution of organisms through random mutation and natural selection. Hovind is trying to introduce doubt and sow confusion by conflating what we can consider homonyms -- words that sound alike but have different meanings.
Since this has nothing to do with biological evolution of organisms through random mutation and natural selection, I hope that you will agree to table this and/or address it in a thread regarding the origin of the cosmos and the Big Bang theory.
What's next?
