Creationist Kent Hovind Challenges Me, I Respond

on my channel I've spoken quite a bit about how I grew up Christian fundamentalist something I've only made mention of but never discussed though is my former admiration of Kent Hovind I'm going to get to the response which this video's title and thumbnail promises but I would like to first give you guys some context to illustrate the gravity of this situation to me I've been very interested in science as long as I can remember my parents knew this very well and always made sure I have access to plenty of science books and other educational content as a kid when I entered adolescence the educational content at my level of comprehension began to cover evolutionary theory naturally my parents being young earth creationists wanted to ensure that I was being taught what they thought was right so they found and presented me a massive collection of educational videos about creationism those were Kent Alvin's immediately I took a liking to his ideas and presentations when I quickly burned through all of his material and I do mean all of it I watched it over again and then again and again and again I loved Kent Hovind I sought to emulate his wit his resolve and his dedication to the defense of what was in my teenage mind simply right and reasonable years past and my admiration of Kent and dedication to creationism really never wavered it wasn't until the middle of college that I began to rethink a single point that Kent ever preached I've gone over that transformation of my thinking in other videos so I won't get into it here not long after graduating from my Christian University I was an atheist I remain in the closet to everyone but my wife for an entire year all the while seeing from a different perspective and from inside a Christian community how fundamentalists think about and treat atheists this experience motivated me to start a YouTube channel where i spoke about issues surrounding atheism and skepticism these days you guys know what i'm all about on this channel and in my full-time work as an activist i push for religious tolerance religious literacy nuanced discourse strong standards of evidence scientific literacy and i constantly call for empathy toward others it's likely a lot of you have heard me say that I care more about increasing our compassion and empathy in these discussions and helping atheists cope with deconversion then I care about just creating more atheists enter Kent Hovind Kent the man I used to follow and revere has discovered my content and on his own YouTube channel posted a video responding to and trying to convert me back the video he chose to respond to was my D conversion story as you probably realized this is really strange for me he's acknowledged me personally for the first time but as an adversary when for the majority of my life I was his follower the response is it's something that would have shocked teenage Christian me but it's what adult atheist me has just come to expect from him and now I've chosen to go about my response to him differently than you might expect I'm not going to try to counter Kent's points this is for two reasons one Kent doesn't really argue against my points in his response he mostly just disagrees with me says something condescending states his opinion and then moves on there's really no point in arguing for me since Kent isn't really arguing with me in the first place but simply contradicting me to virtually no one who agrees with Kent's videos is going to be swayed by me defending my points here because even Kent himself felt no need to actually counter them in his video people likely aren't going to change sides on the issue of evolution because of this exchange so I'm not going to act like they are instead I'm going to use this as an opportunity to discuss how one's approach can make or completely destroy one's effectiveness and communicating with others basically Kent's video is an example of what people do wrong when it comes to building bridges and persuading people I think Kent really only responds to popular atheist channels for the sake of getting views and remaining relevant he's just using me so I'm going to use Kent's video but for a more important purpose to encourage better discourse by showing and discussing examples of what not to do when trying to persuade people and build constructive dialogue his video is over an hour long so I'll just be hitting the highlights the link to his full video is in the description watch it if you'd like to see if I'm fairly representing him in this video however if you do want to minimize the algorithm boost he'll get from you then just don't engage beyond watching the video don't dislike or comment or whatever you can also watch it on higher speed to decrease the amount of total watch time he'll get from you please be respectful however you decide to engage now onto the highlights cut hoping here in the crew at dinosaur Adventureland welcome to whack an atheist Wednesday with dr. Kent the science gem even with the stethoscope now is it official yeah okay tonight we're going to whack an atheist we've been looking high and low for one functioning brain cell and somebody who claims there's no God a few seconds in and the tone toward atheists is adversarial and condescending to the point of bigotry if you want to convince people of something saying that your show whacks them and that they lack brain cells isn't going to help he continues with this rhetoric in several other places but there's not one functioning brain cell on those who think there's no God and we're gonna whack another one tonight sweetly and Christian love this is dr. Kenta the science gent okay the Bible says in the lips of him that hath understanding wisdom is found but a rod is for the back of him that is void of understanding some people that's the only way they learn my dad would say some people listen with their ears and some people listen with their nose that some bully's picking on me in fourth grade or something he said son they listen with their nose you know like that oh then they listen I got you understand okay got it all right smite Haise corner and the simple will be where so we're gonna smite an atheist again tonight we're gonna whack another one when your goals and tone are best explained through analogies which describe violence there's a problem why would anyone think that saying hey I disagree with you so come listen to me insult belittle and make allusions to punching you in the face and see if you change your mind would convince anyone of anything it's like whack-a-mole we'd like to get one of these games for our dinosaur Mitchell and by the way if you know of one for sale whack Amole we'll label each of the moles with a different atheist picture and name on there yeah here comes again BAM okay imagine if I said the Atheist community of Austin where I'm a board member wants to get a whack-a-mole game where each mole is labeled as a different Christian because apparently hitting Christians with hammers is fun would that be hateful and dehumanizing yes and that's why we wouldn't do it I'm going to skip to where he starts addressing my video to keep this s concise as possible I will be skipping over a lot of parts where my video is played with in his video remember this response of mine isn't about arguments because neither is Kent's response it's about his approach okay drew here's I just picked randomly one of the ones you did here this is exactly why I'm an atheist you have 377 thousand views on this one let's listen to this and insert Kent Hovind comments I started college in 2012 and my beliefs were not challenged in any way until I took an astronomy class in summer of 2014 the professor there was a devoted Christian and while he constantly encouraged his students to embrace Christian ideas he didn't teach the universe was created in six days about 6,000 years ago like the most fundamentalist believe I won't bore you with too many details but in that class okay drew before we go too far I'd like you to find that teacher and I will debate you and that teacher simultaneously half my brain tied behind my back okay if he is believing that the earth is billions of years old because of the starlight question I think we can very adequately answer that I do on my DVD number seven of the seminar series about my question answer how do we tell the distance to the stars if somebody destroyed your faith in Christianity over that topics on you have got you have swallowed hook line and sinker a load of garbage okay I actually remember bringing up Kent's points from that lecture to my astronomy professor after class one day he took me seriously and kindly spoke with me about why he didn't teach those ideas one thing he never said which was definitely for the best was that he could debate both me and Kent Hovind with half his brain tied behind his back I'm also glad he didn't say or do any of the following things to me either you got brainwashed and we can done brain wash you you got brainwashed you weren't paying attention son you got brainwashed son bring him on bring him on down here you got brainwashed and I need somebody used to whack you with some real science and explain it to you drew drew pay attention boy you need wacked yeah that would have definitely put me off luckily my professor knew that kindness patience and well sourced arguments would be sufficient in for my perspective he was a Christian who showed me actual compassion and love rather than Kent's so-called Christian love later in the fall of 2014 I began taking my first semester of a two semester class in statistics and scientific research methods that class taught me how to avoid cognitive biases avoid fallacious reasoning isolate variables established causally no it did not drew you didn't teach you how to think logically and to avoid fallacious reasoning you you fell for it hook line and sinker the fallacious reasoning is believing in evolution that class didn't teach you a thing son if that's what you came out of that believing that you came from a rock 4.6 billion years ago which came from a dot of nothing exploding grew talk about fallacious reasoning evolution is the dumbest theory in the world and you gave up Christianity for that and you're trying to encourage other people to give it up you need really wax on come on down to dinosaur Adventureland hitting an effigy of your interlocutor is obviously not helping you reach anyone but beyond that Kent makes an even more damning mistake here it's the most common mistake I see theists make when trying to convert atheists never did I say in my video that I believed in evolution at this point in my story but Ken assumes it because here's the mistake he's not actually listening he's just trying to have a comeback the clip from my video he just played disproves the assertion he made as it says once I finished that class I stopped believing in a young universe in 60 situation although I still believe in the inerrancy of the Bible and that God created all life in its current form I was still a fundamentalist in every way except for my belief in the ancient universe no progress can be made without listening to your interlocutor the straw Manning and insulting he does right after this doesn't help either as a result of my newfound critical thinking skills I stopped believe you don't have any newfound you don't have any thinking skills at all if you believe you came from a rock which came from a dad of nothing I know you they they taught you you're a real good thinker now someone in Kent's audience then makes this comment just amazed me that not only they can't just speak by atheism it's like he's attacking religion too he's attacking Christianity if you want to have a productive conversation you can't have this double standard this video is on my own D conversion story all my other videos explore ideas and explain my opinions and arguments never do I personally attack individuals or treat people as enemies Kent on the other hand I think we could say is on the attack he does target individuals he does treat people as enemies is saying that I'm inexcusably on the attack but still condoning Kent's approach is a ludicrous double standard unfortunately I see this double standard a great deal both in evangelical circles and in the response video culture on both sides of this whole issue it doesn't allow for productive discourse I feel the need to summarize the next section of the video because Kent pauses me several times to do this so next my video discusses how I began to doubt the efficacy of the essential oils my family sold I make no mentions of doubting Christianity at this point in the video but Kent not even making an attempt to listen inserts this if they got involved in something like that and it doesn't work let's suppose that is quackery you may be right okay therefore the Christianity's quackery critical thinking skills come on drew at this point in my deconversion video I hadn't made a single argument against belief in Christianity I was still just giving context to the narrative yet it's almost as if Kent thinks he knows what's going on in my brain better than I do he asserts that I'm making points that I'm not this is the second biggest mistake I see theists make when trying to convert atheists instead of listening they assert your point for you or claim to know your mind better than you they say you don't believe in God because of this reason well that's not true here's the real reason that extremely common tactic exemplifies incredible overwhelming arrogance not only are you asserting that you're right but you're also asserting that you know what others are thinking better than they do then you're discrediting that assumed thinking and awarding yourself a victory the problem with that is no one but you thinks an actual discussion of the issues happened if you refuse to listen to others or meet their reasoning where they say it is you're not just a useless evangelist you're an obstacle to progress on the issues that you yourself care about unfortunately Kent's listening gets even worse as the video progresses keep in mind that through all of this my beliefs surrounding God and Christianity remained basically unchanged then things finally got shaken up for me again when I took a master's level course in human sexuality in mid-2015 there I learned that there was a strong genetic component to homosexuality that attend 2nd Peter chapter 3 says the scoffers in which you are in that category drew the scoffers are willingly ignorant of the creation and the flood and the coming judgement of God and it's because of their lust that's why they're ignorant read 2nd Peter chapter 3 and sign your name in that one drew yeah Kent hears me say I think there's a genetic component to homosexuality so he assumes I doubt Christianity because I'm gay the problem is I'm straight I never say otherwise in that video and I have a video with my wife on my channel which I know Kent has come across because he does so in his very video I think that clearly demonstrates a refusal to listen on Kent's part in the next part of my D conversion story I begin talking about how I began to believe evolution was real Kent argues some of my points but ultimately his responses served to motivate me to come debate him more than anything he asked for proof of my claims but when I mentioned my sources its totally ignored and he moves on this is just about publicity rather than persuading me okay come show my audience and come show the whole world how ignorant I am about it drew come show everybody please come bring it up okay I'll pay your way down I don't know where you live I'll pay your way here proof of all of this isn't my sources finally I understood that scientists were right about using Jim you got brainwashed son they are not right about evolution and the North Korean scientists are not right about communism and the Iranian scientists are not right about Islam and they are not right that we all came from Iraq 4.6 billion years ago I'm sorry they're not right you got you swallowed and you've strained it a gnat and swallow a camel and next up we have this classic bit of Kent's presentations which I admittedly used to mimic to the annoyance of any non-christians I came across like I did this to people I didn't even know and some people on the internet Oh a box of nothing okay good here let's take a box of nothing and make it explode into something anything let's see you make a BB out just a BB okay that bit relies on massive mischaracterization and in an attempt to make a mockery of the opposition prevents progress in the conversation altogether people laugh as they're being encouraged to do little more than mock their supposed enemies there's no regard for addressing accurate representations of anyone else's ideas when I hear atheists mock blatant misrepresentations of theistic ideas I'm ashamed you guys know by now that I actively discouraged that behavior all the time as a leader in his community I think Kent should take up the same responsibility moving on a bit in the video I discuss a conversation I had with my family where I explained my view that personal spiritual experience is an unreliable means to determining truth okay but squander questions sufficiently and ended up we're treating to a point where they defended all of their beliefs about essential oils with personal experience alone I pointed that out when personal experience was unreliable there's drew you are saying you switched over to evolution because of your personal experience go look in the mirror sign this demonstrates once again that Kent has not been listening I make it clear in the video that I came to accept evolution after a period of studying literature on the topic no personal experience with natural selection or something influenced my position and Kent should know that being close to the end of this video I hope that viewers realize at this point that there never an attempt made to understand my story or my positions unfortunately Kent isn't the only person guilty of this kind of thing it happens in evangelical circles and in response videos on all sides all the time I prayed and told God that I needed to think about these questions freely but that I thought if he was really there and Christianity was true my honest inquiry would help me find him in every line of evidence I would explore he said if you'll seek me with all your heart you'll find him here's another implication that Kent knows my mind and my life better than I do I make it clear in this video that I have tried with all my might and all my heart to find God especially the Christian God assuming superior knowledge of other people's thoughts may only be the second most common mistake I see evangelicals make and trying to convert atheists but it's definitely the most annoying and near blasphemously arrogant if you think about it next up Kent tries to get personal with me it's a sad to see that you have turned this way drew I'm here to help I bet your parents are gonna watch this and call say drew would you please listen to that guy I'm who they are tell them to give me a call okay they're probably brokenhearted over what you did you gave up Christianity to believe you came from a rock you think this is your grandpa use your head son I shouldn't have to tell anyone that dragging someone's family into an argument is not a good way to try to persuade them of anything I won't say any more than this out of respect for my parents but I highly doubt they've seen this video if they did I can assure you that they'd be disgusted that a man that they trusted to teach their child about God's creation and to set an example of godliness would stoop so low as to treat a wayward young man someone who strayed from Christ with the hatred that Kent has displayed here my parents are amazing people and they know that to help or even just persuade someone one often has to show long-suffering love and compassion not bigotry I'll wrap up my review of this videos highlights and Kent's behavior with a final clip which I think contrasts the attitude of someone who listens with the attitude of someone who obviously doesn't it influenced my thinking when I felt a bit more clear-headed I would end that media blackout the media blackout served two purposes one I knew that if I stopped believing my whole family would tell me that it was because I blindly followed some worldly person so I needed to make sure that well didn't you blindly follow some astronomer astronomy teacher and you're in your Christian College whatever the guy was ought to be fired by the way for teaching that go garbage in a Christian school in my explanation of why I refrained from consuming any relevant media surrounding atheism and Christianity for a while I demonstrate that I thoroughly understood the thinking of my evangelical peers the assertion that I just blindly followed some worldly person was the first thing said to me when I came out as an atheist I totally called it in this very video Kent's assertion that I did just that even after going through my entire deconversion story shows that my understanding of evangelical thinking was so solid that it had effective predictive power meanwhile Kent has refused to listen so hard that he doesn't even see that his comments are lending me credibility after this point in the video I talked about seeking out answers to philosophical questions surrounding God ken doesn't really address any of those questions and keeps trying to bring the conversation back to evolution even though that's irrelevant to the portion of the video he's viewing if you want to see that for yourself watch his full video and see if I've represented that accurately please do set a good example for others if you choose to engage with his video in any way now that we're through all that I have some reflections on the discourse surrounding atheism and evangelicalism that this video makes me want to speak on in my own experience which you should of course take with a grain of salt I found that Kent's mistakes are pretty common amongst evangelicals however don't think that they're limited to any one group I almost didn't make this video because I don't like much of the culture surrounding response videos but then I realized that this was a perfect opportunity to critique that culture some backstory here among atheists response video culture started over 12 years ago almost at the beginning of YouTube some of those videos were useful and informative but a good deal of them were vitriolic and often personal not long after that Christians and Muslims started to hit back with similar trio around five years ago for unrelated reasons atheists YouTube started to die off since about 2017 though atheists YouTube has been growing in number of new creators and in at least my circles has become far less vitriolic than the Atheist YouTube of the past I think a good bit of popular Christian YouTube has gotten nicer too but even among very polite creators there seems to persist this idea of striking back against their atheist enemies or giving atheists a taste of their own medicine by mimicking tactics of atheist response videos of the past but in responses to non vitriolic atheist channels at least for the most part it sometimes feels to me like people are trying to get revenge on us for abuse they suffered at the hands of people who we don't care for either in short response video culture has long reveled in the creation and clash of bitter enemies that's a huge problem for healthy constructive discourse and relationships though theist and atheist youtubers have disagreements and often different goals so we are going to treat each other as adversary sometimes that's just the reality of human nature what I'm encouraging and honestly begging for though is for those on all sides to when possible avoid destructive tribalistic displays don't make an enemy out of a detractor don't make a venomous fight out of a disagreement don't look at an opportunity to build a bridge square in the face then decidedly destroy that opportunity for the sake of scoring points with your own team that's what Kent did in his video and it ensured that no one on my side of the aisle would ever take him seriously sometimes useful bridges can't be built and it's okay to still utilize situations like that to make points I mean I'm doing that myself in this video in those situations I just ask that and more of us refuse to escalate conflict for its own sake I'm only responding to Kent to further this message not to strike back at him personally and mueslix I'd like to conclude by addressing why I rarely respond to response videos I get for reasons I've already laid out I'm interested in constructive dialogue not personal beefs or mudslinging I usually don't respond when I think the person addressing me is more or just as interested in scoring points than in having an actual conversation among several recent response videos I've gotten from both Christians and Muslims I've seen deceptive editing ceaseless condescension cheap attempts at making me look stupid in thumbnails and maybe most of all repeated and baseless assumptions and assertions of my flagrant ignorant direct assertions that I've literally never googled anything that I talked about or that I've never read the Bible come to mind both are are obviously false to anyone who isn't simply interested in scoring points I'm not disappointed about Kent saying things like this because I know him well enough to just expect that from him others though many of whom don't take Kent seriously either I am disappointed in I tend to begin with the assumption that many who respond to me are more worthwhile interlocutors than Kent when I see indications that might not be the case it just saddens me more than anything now I'm not saying that most of my detractors are as impossible as Kent I'm just disappointed when any one of them shares any feature of his communication style I'm sorry to pull the whole I'm not mad just disappointed card but I'm just trying to be honest about how I feel in the hopes of encouraging someone I mean anyone to improve the discourse in which we're all engaged thanks for sticking around through this long video now I have something important to announce if you guys will stick around for like 30 seconds longer I'm the president of an atheist conference called faithless forum it's the first and only conference run by atheist YouTube for atheists YouTube and its fans all of our speakers are atheist youtubers and we have a lot of them we don't just have boring lectures there are game shows I conduct comedic audience interviews I wore a coconut bra last year and while doing that we have multimedia presentations panels workshops Q&A s meet and greets parties and a lot more all with dozens of atheist youtubers it's also a lot cheaper than others conferences of the same size this year faithless forum will be in Austin Texas June 19th to 21st we do expect it to sell out like it did last year so go ahead and check out our website faithless forum comm for tickets and to reserve a discounted room at our hotel I'm really looking forward to seeing you guys there and until next time stay skeptical hey my

Channel: Genetically Modified Skeptic

Views: 1,446,384

Keywords: atheism, atheist, agnostic, skeptic, skepticism, genetically modified skeptic, gm skeptic, Young earth creationist, creationism, Kent Hovind, evolution vs creation, response video, Aron Ra, Matt Dillahunty, Paulogia, Viced Rhino, This Is Exactly Why I'm an Atheist, evangelical to atheist, Christianity, creationism debunked, eric hovind, ken ham, yec, fundamental falsehoods of creationism, christian vs atheist

Id: GdyjN_zCO_M

Length: 26min 42sec (1602 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 28 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/nthinson]

Thank you for this. Simply because this guy understands discourse and its good to see someone rational and logical. I think that's why I like NDQ - because they both think with logic and dont get angry about things.

[u/rynelf360]

What if Matt was (still) an atheist, and took the same patient and respectful tone to public dialogue? Seems to me there are lots of parallels between Drew's story and /u/feefuh 's, they just took a different fork.

I think it would be really interesting to have him as a guest on NDQ.