Transcript of Debate between Kent Hovind and Frank Zindler
On Wednesday, 29 April, 1998, the Ohio State group called Students for Freethough (SFF) sponsored a debate on the relative merits of creationism vs. evolution. This debate was between Kent Hovind, a prominent spokesman for biblical literalism and creationism (visit his web page for more information on his views) and Frank Zindler, editor of American Atheist Press. The debate was held on campus in a large auditorium, that was pretty much full, indicating that there must have been several hundred people there. I took notes during the debate and I tape-recorded it as well, so I hope to, in time, have a complete transcript of the event. However, due to the fact that I also have a life and the length of the debate (nearly 2 hours) it's going to be some time before I get everything down here. I'll try to add things in a timely manner, but there are so many other things I'm trying to update here that it's a little difficult. In some cases, the tapes aren't particularly audible, so hopefully, I'll be able to use my notes to give an overall correct impression...
Links to specific parts of the transcript
Pre-debate thoughts and observations...
Well, to start with, as I've stated elsewhere, I'm a zoology graduate student, so I am definitely slanted toward the Darwinian evolution side of this debate. Even ignoring that fact, I came into this particular debate with some pre-conceived notions. I had heard the name of Kent Hovind mentioned on the newsgroup talk.origins, but I hadn't really specifically heard of anything he claimed. A couple of days before the debate, I found out about his web page and decided to visit it to see what it said. First, the initial page shows a picture of a dinosaur (diplodocus maybe? I'm not much for dinosaurs) and a mammoth standing near a pair of humans (the female seems to be offering a branch to the dinosaur to eat). This didn't sit well with me, since I know that humans did not co-exist with the dinosaurs! To flaunt this fact seems to be ridiculously naive, if not purposefully deceptive. However, on reading further into his web page, I got the feeling that Hovind actually believes that the picture is accurate. Even worse, he believes that dinosaurs are alive today! He has a page dedicated to pictures of modern day dinosaurs (click here to see it). Looking at the pictures, most of them are too fuzzy to make anything out, not to mention the fact that they're of animals that were purported to be dead for several weeks. They could be almost anything. The top pictures, showing a supposed plesiosaur, looks more to me like someone took a dolphin head and attached it to something else. His pictures of the Loch Ness Monster are about as good as the other fakes that have turned up over the years, so all in all, this information isn't that compelling. Of course, he also believes that evolution is the root of communism, nazism and socialism! Click here to read his ridiculous claims. Top that off with a scattering of misogynistic comments (he calls Eve "the first loudspeaker"), and you have a web site that I couldn't stomach reading for more than 20 minutes. Needless to say, I was more than a little set against Mr. Hovind's ideas...
I arrived about 30 minutes early to get a good seat and to give myself some time to people watch. The SFF was distributing several pamphlets to everyone entering. The first listed the title of the debate, the participants and their basic biographical information. The main thing I noticed as I sat in the auditorium was the large number of people coming in, nearly all of whom were rather dressed up (especially the children they had with them) and that most of them were carrying bibles. I personally didn't consider this to be a good start, just because any serious debate isn't going to go well when there are a lot of children just making noise in general. In fact, the family that sat next to me sat their son who couldn't have been much more than 4 or 5 next to me. He sat for the entire half hour before the debate bouncing up and down, making noise and generally being a huge nuisance. Fortunately, his parents pulled him away from me soon after the debate started, probably because they realized that I was not a creationist (I didn't laugh at Hovind's snide remarks). Overall, the crowd was relatively OK, there were some shouts of "amen" and the like periodically, but they were generally from a few isolated individuals, and weren't so loud that they drowned out the speakers. There were a couple of times that one side or the other thought that one of the debaters had scored a particularly telling point, and clapping and cheering got a little loud. The speakers were relatively pleasant to one another, although there were some low blows on both sides, although I have to say that Hovind made what I consider to be the worst gaffe when he stated something to the effect that "no good science had ever come from a Hindu nation". (I'll update this quote with the exact words when I come to it in the transcript). However, Zindler was making remarks about creationists that were also somewhat harsh, but since I agreed with them, I didn't mind! (: The debate was interesting, and if nothing else, I learned just how far science education has to go in the US, since the understanding of evolution in the room was abysmally low. A lot of the debate seemed to center on points that weren't even relevant to evolution at all! However, since it is evolution that upsets religious individuals, that is the science that is going to be attacked...Well, this includes my sort of general impression of the whole debate. I'll add transcript material as soon as I can in the future. Come back soon and see what I've added. And as always, feel free to e-mail me with comments/suggestions. Thanks...
Updated Thursday, 30 April 1998