The thesis was submitted as a requirement to obtain the degree of philosophiae doctor, again, allegedly. It was handed out (and yes, that phrase does seem the most appropriate here) by the institution of academic excellence, Patriot University. Particularly amusing are the images of Learning HQ.
The thesis is reminiscent of a ten-year-old's book report. Of course, one would perhaps expect a higher standard of writing from a child nearing secondary school age. At the risk of breaching copyright, I must inform the reader of the first sentence that appears in the main body of text:
"Hello, my name is Kent Hovind."Yes, that is right. It really does get you on the edge of your seat. There was no way I was going to put it down after that. The rest of the "thesis" is written in a similar manner. The sentences are short and sharp. Much of the thesis is concerned with giving information on historical figures whom Hovind feels have for some reason gone out of their way to reject the obvious existence of his God and in describing them he informs us of one thing per sentence in the form, "He was...". This gets rather tedious extremely quickly. The number of spelling errors is horrendous. The same applies to the grammatical errors that render this almost unreadable. He has also taken a liberty with the "information" that he has provided. One fairly amusing example was the lifespan of Voltaire (a man whose name got the joy of losing an 'e'). Voltaire lived to be eighty-three - a respectable age for a man in the eighteenth century. For some reason, Hovind let him live to be in the region of 104. Upon writing that down, I would personally double check my numbers since I know that in that time living past your centenary year was extremely rare.
Ignoring all the mistakes of this nature, the other stupidities present themselves rapidly. He repeatedly informs the reader that evolution is a religion, not a science, because there is no empirical evidence. What he really means is that he does not understand evolution and calling it a religion lowers it to the level of his belief system, allowing him to consider it an even playing ground. There are several attempts at demonstrating that the earth can be little over 6,000 years old. He has, of course, linked both fascism and communism to evolution. He has also gone out of his way to inform us that the term evolution (which in the context should mean biological evolution) is used by "evolutionists" to maintain that the universe started 13.72 billion years ago from nothing - an impossibility, surely! Of course, in reality the theory of evolution is only useful at looking at progress after abiogenesis. I'm rather quite surprised he did not take any time to complain about gravitationalists like me.
The mistakes are plentiful, and I certainly found myself chuckling away at the whole thing. The best part, though, is the one that appears both here and in all the talks he did:
"Evolution is a religious faith... What I am upset about is the fact that their faith is being taught as science in the public school system at my expense as a taxpayer. That upsets me greatly!"What is it you are in prison for again, Kent?
