As I begin typing this I’m watching the closing discussions of a debate between convicted felon Kent Hovind and YouTube content creator Planarwalk. To say it was an interesting one would be, honestly, rather appropriate, not because anything new or special happened — far from it, the “debate” was, as always, Kent saying the same things he always does with Planarwalk honestly replying to Hovind’s assertions. No, the interesting aspect is that this debate very well demonstrated many of Kent’s failings in attempting any honest discussion on the subject.
Yes, Kent said the same crap he always does, but when you look past that you’ll notice how quickly he goes into his insults and attacks on “Evolutionism” and the ideas of those he is debating. That’s to be expected, but it takes only minutes for him to get to that phase in this debate. Interestingly he actually backed off of this as the debate went on, up until the end at least, but what he lacked in his usual rudeness to his opponents he made up for in the rest of his abject idiocy, repeating the same nonsense he always does.
He’s clearly starting to lose it – not only does he claim at a few points that he can’t understand Planawalk’s New Zealand accent, but he also repeatedly gets lost trying to follow Planarwalks very coherent train of thought.
That isn’t to say Planarwalk was perfect in this. I personally think it was a flaw to at all fall down the rabbit holes that Kent sets up, but he handled himself well and by the end was beginning to hold Kent to task on answering the questions asked, which of course Kent never did. He never answered “What is a Kind,” instead turning the question around on Planarwalk.
Kent continued to misrepresent the concept of the geologic column, the principles of genetics, the nature of time and even reality to try to say there is no way that the universe is more than about 6000 years old.
One moment that did stand out, however, is when Kent did his usual denial of fossils being of any value, Planarwalk called him out on the fact that Kent uses these same fossils as proof of “the flood” and that they all come from things “drownding” (Kent always says that, for some stupid reason.) It was certainly a highlight in what was otherwise a sea of Kent being moronic, as always. The man refuses to grasp what any terms actually mean, like what it means for something to be vestigial, or any aspect on how mutations actually happen; those are just a few of the ideas that come to mind as this debate wraps up.
Truly it’s nothing different, as Kent always says the same things all the time. Of note, however, is that the live chat of Planarwalks stream of this event (of which I’m a part of) is presented in-video, and provides a great look at what other things people noticed, or how they would address what Kent said or a question asked.
I think Planarwalk did an adequate job — as the debate moved on he seemed to get more comfortable with the nature of a live debate against someone as dishonest as Kent, avoiding low blows and taking the discussion at face value. That being said, I believe the only way to “debate” Kent is to rail into him; to be a jerk and hold him to task to defend his thoughts. He didn’t do that here, and never will try to defend what he believes. That needs to stop — someone needs to push him, relentlessly, to defend his book of fables. I had hoped Planarwalk would do this, but he didn’t, and that’s fine — this discussion still showed what Planarwalk knows, what Kent doesn’t, and how much of a dishonest prick Hovind actually is.
P.S. Something that hit me while I was watching this was that Kent’s ideas of “genetic” limits with animals are actually simply physical limits — genetics has no say in such, but the laws of physics do, hence why you can’t have a cow “as big as Texas” and other bullshit Kent thinks Evolution would allow.