Kent Hovind's Bogus Challenge
The following letter was received from Dr Barend Vlaardingerbroek, Senior Lecturer in Science Education at the University of Botswana. In it he describes the dealings he and his colleague Christopher J. Roederer, Lecturer in Law at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, had with Kent Hovind in connection with his publicized "offer".
To begin with the obvious, Mr Hovind has on his web site a public offer which reads:
I have a standing offer of $250,000 to anyone who can give any empirical evidence (scientific proof) for evolution.
That would present few, if any, difficulties to most undergraduate students of the
life sciences. The offer looks to be a legitimate offer that calls for empirical proof and
which, it is claimed, will receive scientific consideration through a neutral "peer
review" process (a committee of trained scientists).
However, on closer examination, and when the initiator of the offer is pressed for
specificity, it transpires that he is demanding (in a most circuitous manner, as will be
shown below) evidence for nebulous claims that lie beyond the orb of pure empiricism. More
sinister is the revelation that he who has chosen the aforesaid committee will look at the
evidence first and decide what submissions go to the committee at all, and to what members
of the committee at that. The result is that he intends to act as a judge in his own case,
a case that he has made impossible to prove, and the "jury" for which may not
exist, at least not one that conforms to the image presented.
The elaboration of the offer (under "How to Collect" on the web site ) is, at
best, garbled, requiring two referrals to preceding material, invoking at least three
kinds of evolution (cosmological, chemical, biological), and containing serious
epistemological flaws in connection with the scope of empiricism. I wrote Mr Hovind on 30
August outlining our concerns about the nebulousness of his offer and was sent a FAQ
attachment by his secretary. The same document was subsequently sent by Mr Hovind himself
on 17 September. The document did not address the issues raised by us. It implied that he
would act as a "first filter" ("Any legitimate evidence will be forwarded
to [the committee]... Evidence of minor changes within the same kind does not qualify and
will not be sent to the committee.") I responded to the effect that he had not
addressed our concerns, to which the issue of the "first filter" had now been
added, and also questioned him about the impartiality of the "committee" -
should the members thereof be his ideological confreres, then any pretence at impartiality
would be a sham. He replied on 18 September:
I do not have the first letter. The offer is clear to most people of average intelligence and the committee is neutral and ready to review any evidence you may have.
I informed him that he most certainly had the first letter as its text was included in his reply of the 17th, and pressed him again about the neutrality of the committee by asking him whether these people were professing creationists. His response on 23 September was:
I think the offer is fine as it is ... What evidence do you have for any type of evolution besides minor variations that some call micro-evolution?
At this point, we thought we were making progress in regard to the conditions that
need to be met to satisfy the requirements of the offer. Kindly bear this critical point
in mind while reading the rest of this account.
On 27 September, my colleague wrote Mr Hovind outlining some of the issues that in his
opinion were dubious with reference to the nature of the offer as being one made "in
good faith". These were:
* the need to delineate the nature and scope of a successful submission, and
the impossibility of addressing supernatural inclusions, and the requirement about
evolution being the "only" way in which his "observed phenomena" could
have come about, empirically;
* the issue of the "first filter" and our desire to submit the evidence in
sealed envelopes for direct dissemination to the committee;
* the applicability of the term "peer review" to the committee (viz, that they
be people with advanced qualifications in science from recognized universities), and their
impartiality (viz that they not be professing creationists);
* the decision-making mechanism of the committee (viz majority decision, or not);
* the need for refutation of submitted evidence on purely empirical grounds;
* our desired right of reply to any rebuttal.
On 28 September, Mr Hovind responded to these points in the following
manner:
* he did not address the first point at all but merely wrote, "Then why do textbooks
teach it as the only option? That is my point exactly!";
* To the second, he wrote, "That is fine - send it on. I am not a first
filter.";
* Re: the crucial third point, his reply was, "I don't know if they are or are not
young earth creationists like me but asking that question or making that stipulation would
prejudice the committee. Everyone has an opinion on the topic. Quit stalling and send the
'proof' please." (Yes, distorted reasoning indeed!);
* He also avoided the equally crucial point about the decision-making mechanism, stating
only that, "Since all taxpayers are being forced to fund the religion of evolution in
schools and it is evolution that must be proven to be the only way our universe came into
being like the textbooks say, what happens if one jury member will not vote with the
rest?" (The connection continues to elude me.);
* He conceded to the final two points by the words, "That is fine."
I e-mailed him again the next day pointing out that we were not at all satisfied with his
evasive answers to questions regarding the committee. His four word reply on 5 October
was, "Where is the evidence?" I immediately, after consulting with my colleague,
offered him the following agreement:
That if Barend Vlaardingerbroek, acting on behalf of himself and Christopher J.
Roederer, submits evidence of an evolutionary transition between biological taxa above the
Linnaean Family, subsequently judged as making the intended case beyond reasonable doubt
by a majority of a panel of impartial peers, here defined as people with postgraduate
qualifications in science who are not professing creationists, then Kent Hovind will
immediately release to Barend Vlaardingerbroek and Christopher J. Roederer the sum of
$250,000 as per their instructions. This agreement does not supersede earlier agreements
regarding the processing of the submission. [Please note that the phrase "beyond
reasonable doubt" is in Hovind's published material.]
His response came on 7 October and read:
What you have proposed... is not my offer and is only a small part of what evolution
claims. I don't think you could demonstrate what you propose anyway so out of curiosity I
would like to see what evidence you have. There are ten [committee] members in various
fields of science so which ones it is sent to depends on the nature of the 'evidence'. It
seems childish to use sealed envelopes though. If it is real evidence then it should be
well known in the literature by now. Do you know something that no other scientists know?
The rest of the response was a list of quotations (at least two of them, including
Stephen Jay Gould, entirely out of context) about evolution being nonsense. I replied
briefly to the effect that he was continuing to avoid a clarification of the requirements
of the offer in spite of having rejected our version, and that he was reneging on his
statement that he was not a first filter.
My colleague, on 9 October, offered him essentially the same agreement that I had made,
pointing out that Mr Hovind had changed the offer when he asked for evidence of evolution
beyond the "micro" level, and asked for his assurance that he would not
interfere with the envelopes, and would release the money upon receiving a majority ruling
from the committee. Hovind's reply to me of 11 October reads as follows:
In order to collect the money you must 'Prove beyond reasonable doubt that the process of evolution (The universe came into being by itself by purely natural processes (known as evolution) so that no appeal to the supernatural is needed.) is the only possible way the observed phenomena (the universe, planets, life and mankind) could have come into existence.' If you want everyone to pay for this silly theory of evolution to be taught then the burden of proof is on you [grammatical and punctuation errors faithfully reproduced].
His response to my colleague, dated 14 October, reads in part:
Your interpretation of the offer is not correct. I would like to see what evidence
you have to offer because I do not believe it exists but that is not what the $250,000
offer is for.
In other words, in 6 weeks of communications we had come full circle. My colleague
wrote him to say that it would be advisable to not use words such as "science"
and "empirical". All he got back was a statement to the effect that no evidence
had been submitted.
Of course no "evidence" has been submitted. Neither my colleague nor I were born
yesterday. We do not submit to rigged "juries", especially not when the
"judge" decides what they are given to begin with..... and especially not when
the existence of the "jury" is in some doubt. For three weeks, I ran an
advertisement under "Announcements" in the on-line Pensacola City News labelled "Attn:
Hovind's Expert Committee". There has not been a single response.
We are of the opinion that this offer is bogus; that it is a publicity stunt that scrapes
the bottom of the intellectual and ethical barrels; and that the members of his
"committee" are either Hovind's ideological confreres and are thereby a party to
this deception, or they simply do not exist. However, it is up to readers to make
their own judgement.