Is calling a Bible translation a "Perversion" blasphemy?

I have previously posted on Kent Hovind, here and here. I have been mostly critical of him, and I'm not alone in this. Some of the criticism comes from a leading Young-Earth Creationism organization, Answers in Genesis.* Hovind spoke in many churches, on young-earth creationism, and his group has produced several videos on this subject.

*Correction, September 19, 2007. See the comment below. A more correct statement would be "came from." Here's a direct link to a detailed criticism of Hovind by three prominent young-earth creationists.

I encountered Mr. Hovind again recently. I was using the Blueletter Bible, an excellent reference, which has, among other things, several Bible versions which can be compared, Hebrew and Greek text, and links to various commentaries. I was preparing to teach a Sunday School class on the Fall, and noted that a video by Hovind was included in the list of commentaries. (The particular tape was the 2nd one in the list on the page, and shows Hovind presenting a seminar at a church in California.) I didn't watch all of this video. There were reasons why I didn't.

A few minutes into the presentation, Hovind, who is a young-earth creationist, made light of the Revised Standard Version (RSV) of the Bible. (Hovind says that he uses the King James Version, but looks at what other versions say.) He called the RSV the Reversed Standard Perversion. I was offended by that. He was taking issue with the translation of Genesis 1, which, he said, was favorable to the gap theory, which he opposes. He gave some Biblical reasons for this opposition, and it is possible that the opposition is valid. I didn't appreciate his attitude.

No doubt, the RSV has its problems. There is no perfect translation of the Bible, and there may be legitimate reasons to question the treatment of various passages in the RSV. But to call a version a "Perversion?" That strikes me as dangerous, and bordering on blasphemy. It probably isn't, but it seems close.

In Matthew 12:31-32, Mark 3:28-29, and Luke 12:8-10, Jesus said that His Jewish opponents were committing a sin of blasphemy that could not be pardoned, when they accused Jesus of serving Satan, instead of God. I don't guess Hovind did that, but I suppose that many people have been inspired, and even brought to conversion, through the RSV, and it strikes me as a dangerous and irreverent thing to ridicule that translation.

The Blueletter Bible offers the RSV as one of its versions. I don't know if they are aware of what Hovind had to say about it.

A few minutes later, Hovind said, correctly, that language has changed. He gave the example of "cool," which, as he said, used to mean "not hot," and now, as he said, we aren't sure what it means. Yes, language does change. So why make a Bible translation that was made nearly 400 years ago your main translation?

My second objection was to his sources. Hovind seldom, or never, used scientific literature in dealing with supposed scientific discoveries, such as the claim that humans used to be larger than they are now. He used newspaper articles, instead. Newspaper articles may impart correct information, but they are not refereed like scientific papers. I suspect strongly that there were no credible scientific sources for many of his ideas. (And most of them, as far as I can tell, are not central to his main thesis, namely that the earth is but a few thousand years old. They are peripheral.)

I'm sorry, but this video gave me two more reasons to criticize Mr. Hovind.

Thanks for reading.

St. Augustine and Kent Hovind

Entries in two recent Christian Carnivals have praised the science materials produced by Kent Hovind's organization. Another post, also part of a Christian Carnival, has argued that this isn't wise. So has a second, also part of a Christian Carnival. I don't think so, either.

I'm going to make some general observations about these three posts, and Dr. Hovind. I have four issues with posts of this type (that is, using Hovind to argue that young-earth creationism is true).
Claiming that young-earth creationism is the only valid Christian belief is a mistake. This is true whether it's Hovind, me, or anyone else. Christians disagree on origins! This post says that requiring belief in young-earth creationism for church membership would have excluded "Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Charles Hodge, Benjamin Warfield, Gleason Archer, Francis Schaeffer."
To name only one other Christian view of origins, Intelligent Design has gotten a lot of attention over the last decade, and many Christians have embraced it enthusiastically. However, it isn't the same thing as young-earth creationism, which shows that there is more than one Christian view. (Here's a web page, identifying six different views of origins, five held by at least some Christians, and attempting to point out their strengths and weaknesses in a fair manner.)

Hovind does not present convincing evidence. I can't say that none of his evidence is convincing, since I haven't seen it all, but I examined "articles" on his web site. You can see what I found, and why I say that his evidence is not convincing, in the last part of this post. Here's a web page, pointing out a number of problems with Hovind's work.

Hovind does not have scientific credentials. There is a Wikipedia article about him, which describes his educational history in some detail. The facts presented there indicate that Hovind's doctorate is from an institution of questionable academic reputation, and is not in science. This has not been disputed. (Anyone can contribute to the Wikipedia. Articles may be disputed. When they are, Wikipedia shows this. Here's an example of an article which is partly in dispute. Presumably, if the article was seriously incorrect, Hovind or a staffer would have disputed it.)

The truth is the truth, whether presented by scientists or non-scientists, but Hovind seems to be presenting himself as if he did have scientific credentials when he doesn't, and that looks like deception.

Hovind is in some legal trouble, and is rather far out politically. (See the same Wikipedia article for details, which are not in dispute.) Even one of the posters who seemed to believe that his stuff was the greatest ever commented that he was a little far out in some areas. Again, this doesn't make what he says false, and could be the result of persecution, but it could also mean that he has been doing some things with his taxes that he shouldn't have.
All this, of course, does not prove that young-earth creationism is false. It may be false, and it may be true. I wish to concern myself here only with Dr. Hovind. It seems to me (and I am certainly not alone) that Dr. Hovind's work offers no reliable support for young-earth creationism. Using it, therefore, not only does not help the cause of young-earth creationism, but gives it an unnecessary black eye. It is as if, say, Bill Clinton were invoked as a spokesman for the sanctity of marriage, George Bush for pacifism, or Barry Bonds for drug-free athletics. Answers in Genesis, one of the most important young-earth creationist organizations, has criticized Hovind*.
As to St. Augustine, he had something to say about being careful about origins apologetics:
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although “they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.” St. Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis. vol. 1, Ancient Christian Writers., vol. 41. Translated and annotated by John Hammond Taylor, S.J. New York: Paulist Press, 1982. My source was here.

Thanks for reading.

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Addendum, September 10, 2010:

*Answers in Genesis has modified their criticism of the www.drdino.com website, based on changes in it. See here for their republication of their criticism, with modification included. I don't believe that the original article criticizing Hovind remains on the web, but my impression is that they have republished it, with a disclaimer. My impression, based on some examination of the Hovind web site on this date, is that at least some of the uses of invalid arguments for young-earth creationism have been corrected. This, of course, neither proves or disproves young-earth creationism.

Kent Hovind has been imprisoned for tax evasion. See the Wikipedia article on him.

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.)