To Kent Hovind on Mass Killings Ordered by God

1) Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : To Kent Hovind on Mass Killings Ordered by God, 2) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on Several Matters, Including Carbon Dating, Canaaneans, and Ape DNA, 3) ... on Kent Hovind's Answer, Which I Link To

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Me to Kent Hovind

10/11/15 à 09h08
(in France this means 10th of November, not October 11th!)

This is DISTURBING, Sir!

I am right now in a library where I cannot watch your video and check what you said, but this is what someone else referred to it as saying:

(linking to my source)

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/11/09/kent-hovind-and-other-theologians-justify-biblical-genocide/

[Intro by Jerry Coyne]

Reader John sent me this video made by the disgraced (just out of prison for tax evasion and other crimes) but still active young-earth creationist Kent Hovind. While the 35-minute video includes Hovind’s usual blather about evolution and creationism, the reader wanted us to see Hovind’s justification for the Canaanite genocide. His/her email:

[Letter by John, cited by Jerry Coyne]

“Dr.” Kent Hovind has recently been released from prison and is back online, answering emails from the public in a daily Youtube broadcast.

In his November 5th 2015 video, he put his own spin–the most monstrous I’ve yet encountered–on the fictional Yahweh’s proclivity for genocide: apparently, mass murder of the Canaanites by Yahweh’s servant Joshua was a necessary public health response to the population’s bestiality-induced infectious disease burden! According to Hovind, the extermination of the Canaanites, innocent children included, can be considered entirely analogous to a physician prescribing an antibiotic to eradicate bacterial infection!

Imagine if you or Richard Dawkins or Peter Singer said such a thing!

The relevant excerpt of the video–amongst a half-hour of inane blather–begins at 6:30 minutes in: ...

[Jerry Coyne again]

The following is my [John’s] transcript (verbatim by intention, or, at least, as close to verbatim as I can manage):

[What Kent Hovind is supposed to have said:]

“As far as God telling ’em to wipe out the Midianites, well, there were nations that were so full of diseases and things like that … that God said, “Yes, they need to all be wiped out, especially, like, the Canaanites in that land”. God told Joshua, “When you go into the land, utterly annihilate them! Kill ’em all!” Well, one of the things the Canaanites did was sex with animals, and had all kinds of diseases … and … and … just endemic in the civilization, and God said, “Wipe ’em all out!” No different than a doctor saying, “Take this pill that’s gonna kill every bacteria [sic], even the little baby ones that haven’t done anything wrong. Yeah, we’re gonna kill ’em all, ’cause if you leave onebehind or one resistant one behind, the disease can come back with a vengeance!”

[Back to my words:]

• 1) Were these your actual words?
  
  
• 2) Are they taken out of context, so that you really give another explanation for the mass execution ordered by God, but take the health effect as a bonus for obeying God in this command?
  
  I would like an answer in mail, please don't think it will be wasted, I have a blog for correspondences like this one (any answer will be considered as your consenting to my blogging it).

Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl
http://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com

Hans Georg Lundahl

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Answers from KH?

None per mail, and if one per video, it was not sent in any link. I was not very able to hear his videos or anyone else's, and might get a possibility later. But not in this library./HGL

I might as well take issue with Jerry Coyne's friend John for writing these words:

Imagine if you or Richard Dawkins or Peter Singer said such a thing!

Since Kent Hovind is a Christian, at least sort of (not Catholic = not fully Christian), he does believe (as much as I do, I suppose) there is a difference between the Testaments. This involves in NT times there is a standing order of "making disciples" and this "of all nations". Not "of people from all nations", but of "all nations" in their entirety. But a nation which is wiped out is incapable of becoming a disciple. Therefore God cannot in NT times be ordering Christians to wipe out any nations. Now, if it had been a Jewish rabbi, especially one who sees Palestinians as "Canaanites", that would have been cause of alarm or of comparison with Peter Singer./HGL