Henke 2022bc

The Hovind Reference in Lundahl (2022a) and (2022k): Why Would Mr. Lundahl Ever Cite Such an Unreliable Source?

Kevin R. Henke

September 15, 2022

In Henke (2022b), I respond to Lundahl (2022a), who uses an unknown source from young-Earth creationist Kent Hovind:

“In a vain attempt to justify that dragons could have actually breathed fire, Lundahl (2022a) scrapes the bottom of the barrel and cites Kent Hovind to support his argument:

“I think Kent Hovind gave a good reply when referring to the bombardier beetle. Yes, Leviathan is described as fire-breathing, so he dealt with it on a seminar on Job (morally not as great as Moralia in Job by St. Gregory), and the explosions coming out from the bombardier beetle would kill it - if they happened inside the head of it. Two liquids are emitted separately and join when coming outside the organism, and then explode. Same would be the case with things catching fire when coming out of a dragon's (or leviathan's) nostrils. Hovind mentioned more than one dino that had cavities above the nose, and these could have held liquids meant for such combustion.”

Once more, Mr. Lundahl provides no reference for Hovind’s statements. Nevertheless, I know a lot about Hovind and I’ve even spoken with him over the phone. Hovind is totally incompetent on science and doesn’t know anything about paleontology. I’ve even read Hovind’s diploma mill “doctoral dissertation.” It’s absolutely dreadful and incompetent. See Senter (2019) for a detailed rebuttal of Hovind’s and other young Earth creationist nonsense on fire-breathing dinosaurs.”

Lundahl (2022k) then responds:

“In his videos, getting the exact right one (which Henke wouldn't want to watch anyway) would be a chore. Hence a fairly good excuse for not going through it as Henke would not use the reference anyway.”

Lundahl (2022k) is correct when he states that I don’t watch these videos. People in videos tend to talk off the top of their heads or misremember important details. They do not always properly summarize the literature or even state their sources. This is why I always list my references in the rare cases that I’m invited to do videos. I expect people to cite my peer-reviewed written references and not my videos. That is, people should use and quote the primary written sources and not videos that cite them from memory.

I prefer articles and books, especially peer-reviewed ones. I will, however, tentatively accept web articles and blogs. So, if Mr. Lundahl really wanted me to see Hovind’s claims, he should have used Google to track down whether or not Hovind made his claims in writing in an article, booklet or blog. Then, he should have properly cited the source so that I could confirm that Lundahl (2022k) was correctly remembering what Hovind said and referencing him in context. The quality of references and the proper formatting of them in bibliographies are very important and Mr. Lundahl still does not understand that (Henke 2022e).

Nevertheless, instead of citing Hovind, who knows absolutely nothing about paleontology or any other science, Mr. Lundahl should have taken the time and effort to track down a real expert on the skull structure of dinosaurs, such as Sereno et al. (2007), for example.

References

Senter, P.J. 2019. Fire-Breathing Dinosaurs? The Hilarious History of Creationist Pseudoscience at Its Silliest: Cambridge Scholars Publishing: Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, 211pp.

Sereno, P.C., J.A. Wilson, L.M. Witmer, J.A. Whitlock, A. Maga, O. Ide, and T.A. Rowe. 2007. “Structural Extremes in a Cretaceous Dinosaur”, PLoS ONE, v. 2, n. 11, 9 pp, e1230, doi:10,1371/journal.pone.00001230.