Der Apfel fällt nicht weit vom Stamm

May 9th, 2006 Black Ops Posted in Commentary |

BARRY BONDS HAD the same problem, back at the very beginning of his career. He had to, first and foremost, break out of the shadow of his old man, Bobby Bonds, who was a heck of a ballplayer himself back in the day. So it is with Eric Hovind, the lesser-known crevangelist of the Hovind clan, and his father, the infamous Kent Hovind. Unlike Barry, however, Eric appears to have learned how to inject himself in the butt at his father’s knee.

Well, not literally, of course — the only way “beefcake” comes to mind upon seeing either of the Hovinds is in the ironic, Eric Cartman sense. No, what we mean is that Hovind the Younger walks, talks, thinks — okay, maybe that’s too generous — and spews nonsense in exactly the same manner as his old man. They are, for all intents and purposes, effectively interchangeable.

And so it was with the usual mixture of dread and amusement that we stumbled across an account of Eric Hovind’s traveling roadshow, brought in from the rain by the entirely too credulous Dakota Voice. After all, in it we find all the usual creationist canards and errors and strawmen regularly deployed by Hovind the Elder — the Second Law of thermodynamics forbids evolution, evolution in schools is a result of a panicky attempt to imitate the dirty commies, the rise of evolution in the educational system is correlated with a rise in automobile fuel efficiency, the 1994 Republican Revolution in Congress, and the lowering of the capital-gains tax.

Well, okay, we made that last part up. Of course, it makes about as much sense to credit the theory of evolution for those events as it does to blame it for the increased prevalence of…um, body piercing. And tattoos. Hey, he said it, not us — don’t shoot the messenger.

Anyway, amongst the usual flow from the Hovind manure spreader, we find a slight variation on a usual theme of Dad’s, taking the following form

One of the inconsistencies in evolution theory which Hovind pointed out was that of population. Hovind drew attention to a study which said that even though the current rate of population growth is 1.7%, if you assumed an extremely modest growth rate of .01% for the past 1 million years, you would end up with a current world population represented by the number 1 followed by 43 zeros.

Naw, he didn’t really say that, did he? I mean, we can readily admit that we’re not all that surprised by the body-piercing thing, stupid though it may be, but this is even sillier. If you can imagine.

Why? Well, this is well-trodden ground, but in short, all you have to do is spend thirty seconds thinking about such an argument to realize that it’s hopelessly flawed. That is, the first and most obvious counterargument is that nobody argues that Homo sapiens sapiens (modern humans) has been around for anything like a million years - more like 100,000+, not a million. And do people in Hovind’s acquaintance really live for a million years, such that they’ll still be counted by the Census Bureau in the year 1,002,006? That is what his model claims in calculating the “current world population”, right? Right. So what’s the point then? Why bother with the younger, sillier Hovind, when you can get the same dose of straw and manure from the clan leader?

Ah, but we know ’tis better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. We can help, young master Hovind. You too can be like Barry, and break out of your father’s shadow. Except, unlike Barry, you can do it by putting down the needle. You see, creationism, like all forms of hucksterism - ESP, Bigfoot, crop circles, chemtrails, pyramid power, et cetera - really works best if you want to believe in it so badly that you actively prevent your brain from doing what it does naturally - asking questions. All you have to do is put away Dad’s hypodermic cocktail, and resolve to honestly find your own way. You can do it, young Hovind. We believe in you.

Hey, we can dream, can’t we?