A visit to drdino.com

I commented recently on a blog post by a fellow believer. She claimed that the Bible teaches unequivocally that the earth is only a few thousand years old. I suggested that the Bible isn't that definitive on the matter. In response, she suggested three web sites that advocate young-earth creationism.
I don't question God's creation. I'm not sure that it was only a few thousand years ago.

I visited the sites.

One of the sites she recommended was the Creation Evidence Museum. (The site uses frames, so I can't link to individual exhibits.) Some of the exhibits do, indeed, appear to cast doubt on geology as it is usually taught, such as the apparent discovery of a metal cup in a lump of coal. I am not a geologist, nor a paleontologist, so can't say more than that. One exhibit, supposedly of a sandal footprint on top of a trilobite fossil, was less convincing. I'm not sure that this was a sandal footprint. It could have been just shaped like a sandal.

Another site was "Proof Evolution is Wrong." The first item on the page is this:

Ok.. let me get this straight. The Word of God says we were created with Human bodies that are designed to live forever. Science has recently proven that if we were to learn something new every second, we would take well over 3 millions [sic] years to exhaust the memory capacity of our "post flood" brains. (Pre-flood brains were 3 times larger) On the other hand... Evolutionists say things evolve after there is a need for change.

In the first place, where in the Bible does it say that our human bodies are designed to live forever? Maybe Adam's and Eve's bodies were, maybe not. If they had lived as they should, perhaps God would have translated them, as He did Enoch, rather than having them live forever on earth. But my body is presumably altered as the result of the fall. Glorified bodies, as described in 1 Corinthians 15, are designed to live forever, I believe, but I'm not at all sure that, say, President Bush's is.

Secondly, when and where has science proven that it would take well over 3 million years to exhaust our memory capacity? I'd never heard of such a thing, and it would be difficult or impossible to prove, even if true. Most of us have trouble with forgetfulness without living nearly that long. There was a reference for this, but it was to a Moody Science film, not to any scientific source.

Thirdly, how do we know that pre-flood brains were three times larger?
I wasn't impressed with the quality of the site, nor the evidence for a young earth which was presented.


I also went to Creation Science Evangelism (drdino.com), as suggested. I clicked on the Articles tab. [Note, added April 16, 2015: I re-checked the links in this section of this post, and found that none of them worked, which is hardly surprising, after nearly a decade. Please take this portion of the post as my assessment of some materials from that site, in July, 2006. I have not attempted to find out whether the articles referred to are still available.] Then I clicked on the Biology link, as I am a biologist by training (There are several categories of articles). Since this is Dr. Kent Hovind's site, I chose an article by Dr. Hovind, "Opossums, Redwood Trees, and Kidney Beans." His first sentence was not a good start: "The theory of evolution teaches that living things are becoming more complex as time progresses." Oh? It is true that many people think that that is what the theory of evolution teaches, including some so-called experts who are atheists. But they are wrong. For example, I went to the Amazon page offering the late Stephen Jay Gould's Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin for sale. Here's part of what this page says that the Library Journal had to say about the book: . . . Harvard paleontologist Gould examines trends in natural variation throughout organic evolution, thereby discrediting the abstract ideas of eternal forms, fixed essences, and intrinsic progress. . . . In light of fossil evidence and overwhelming biodiversity, he concludes that there is no linear pattern or ultimate design to evolution. Instead, life is a spreading web or a branching bush; variation, rather than progression, is nature's expression of excellence.
This summary is accurate, as I recall from reading the book myself, a number of years ago. Gould was one of the most prominent spokesmen for evolutionary biology in the previous century, perhaps the most prominent one. (He did not believe that evolutionary theory disproves the existence of God, by the way.) For an example of non-progression, a parasite, which is so simple that it lacks a digestive system, and has little or no nervous system, may have evolved from an organism that had such systems.

So, Hovind is arguing with a straw man. What else does his article say? Not very much. It shows, and briefly discusses, a table listing the number of chromosomes found in about 30 widely diverse organisms, in order from the greatest (fern, with 480) to least (kidney beans, with 22). His point is that there is no correlation between chromosome number and complexity of the organism. True, certainly, but so what? In the first place, as I said above, his premise is false. Secondly, even if his premise were true, chromosomes are of different sizes, with differing amounts of genetic material. It would be possible for an organism with 22 chromosomes to have more genes than one with 480. He really goes off the deep end with this sentence: "One of our ancestors must have been one of the identical triplets—opossums, redwood trees, and kidney beans—with 22 chromosomes each." Please! Identical triplets? I'm sure Hovind doesn't believe that we descended from any of these three, or that they are identical, and no one else does, either. The most rabid atheistic evolutionist would never say that we did. Hovind's table doesn't include fruit flies or penicillium, yet he refers to them in his brief discussion.
I'm sorry, but if this sample is in any way representative, I would have to dismiss Hovind.

The second article (which I chose because the author had more articles listed than anyone else) I looked at was "Widsom [sic] Teeth, Things That Make Evolutionists Look Stupid.*" (Wisdom is spelled correctly in the article, but not the title.) This one made more sense. It claimed that the presence of wisdom teeth, and the problems they give, is proof that humans have degenerated since creation. That seems possible, although I can't see that, even if it were true, it would show much of anything about the age of the earth.
Further, the article suggests that Adam and Eve were Neanderthals, which would probably be denied by many young-earth creationists. It also says that an orthodontist who studied the skulls of ancient humans, or human-like beings, concluded "that the Neanderthals were from a time when human beings had much longer life spans, developed and grew much slower, and were of superior strength, and possibly intelligence, if their larger brain capacities are an indication of this." I doubt that a dentist is very well qualified to draw such conclusions. I would be much more confident in his conclusions about their teeth. I can't see how an examination of skulls could tell much about life expectancy.

I also decided on an article by the author who appeared next most often. His thesis sentence (not his first) says "The idea of vestigial features has been used as evidence for evolution since 1859 when Darwin first proposed that such features were evidence of descent of one organism from a completely different one." This is true, except that, to my knowledge, such features are seldom, if ever, now invoked as evidence for descent of one species from another. In other words, it was true. Many of Darwin's ideas have been refined, further expanded, or dropped all together. This one is in the latter category, I believe. (The second article has the premise that wisdom teeth are proposed as evidence for change with time, and are stated to be vestigial, by evolutionists.)
Here's the last paragraph:

In summary, evolution predicts that there should be leftover features as one organism turns into another. Creation predicts that although some life forms have degenerated and lost use of an original function, every part of an organism was designed to serve some useful primary or backup purpose. As we learn more about the biology of living organisms, including ourselves, it is readily apparent which theory fits the data.

Actually, natural selection would be expected to give organisms in a particular species which had parts that were not useful a disadvantage in the struggle for existence with other members of that species that did not have such parts*, so that evolutionary theory would predict that there aren't many vestigial organs, and that some we might guess would be vestigial aren't, so there is little or no difference between the evolutionary and young-earth models, as I see it, on the question of the existence of vestigial organs. The two models have a different explanation for the data, but these explanations aren't subject to scientific experimentation, as I see it. Hebrews 11:3 suggests, to me, that acceptance of God's creative acts (or rejection of them) is by faith, not scientific evidence. [Discussion of the drdino site, with links that used to work, ends here.]

I'm sorry, but I was not impressed by my visit to the drdino site, and would suggest that, based on my meager sample, it argues with straw men, and misleads.
I don't know everything, and there may, indeed, be a giant conspiracy among mainstream scientists to deny the short history of the earth, but I'm afraid that these three sites are not strong evidence for that.
*I altered this sentence a few hours after the original post by adding the words after "existence."

Added August 10, 2006. Since my original post, in July of 2006, I have learned that Hovind has been charged with various evasions of taxes. A blogger who thinks Hovind's work is the greatest science ever admitted, in her blog, that he was somewhat loony politically, which is related to these charges. Other things I have read suggest that he is more than somewhat loony. Here's a blogger's remembrance of some interactions with "Dr. Dino." (Apparently there are serious questions about the validity of his doctorate.) See the Wikipedia article, which has not been, as of this date, disputed, on Hovind. It certainly does not recommend him as an expert on anything. (Wikipedia articles can be edited and disputed by anyone. If there is a dispute, the article will say that there is one.)

*Note, September 15, 2007. The spelling of "Wisdom" has been corrected.

Thanks for reading.

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Addendum, September 10, 2010.

I have gone back to the Dr. Dino web site, and found it much changed, in appearance, and, I would guess, in coherence. In the post above, I checked three articles, and found all of them wanting, for various reasons. Only one of these, the one about the chromosomes, seems to be still available. I believe that the content is unchanged, but the date is now given as August 3, 2010, and the article is subtitled "A Spoof on Evolution Theory." It didn't seem to be a spoof when I first saw it, but it makes more sense as a spoof than as serious criticism. Kent Hovind is given as the author, which, although I suppose that is true, is misleading. He is in prison for tax fraud as of this date, and would have been on August 3rd. (See Wikipedia article.)