"Harlequin" <usenet@cox.net> wrote in message news:Xns9452C979FBF6Fusenet123mmcablecom@68.12.19.6...

> Continuing with our series of flagrantly false claims made
> by Hovind and posted to the web by his fanboy Roadrunner...
>
> http://www.algonet.se/~tourtel/hovind_seminar/seminar_part1b.html
>
> "They say it would take 20 super novas to create enough energy to create a
> star. Wait a minute, now 20 of them have to explode before you can make
> one? That looks like a winning proposition, doesn't it? You got to loose 20
> to gain one, well, how did we get them all then?"
>
> This is something that Hovind or some other creationist just made up.
> It is fiction. No one claims that it takes 20 supernovas to
> create one star.
>
> So Roadrunner, find some evidence that any astronomer supports such
> a claim or remove it from your site.
>

I am an astronomer, and I don't know of any such claim either current or in the past, that any astronomer would support.

The same paragraph has more strawman junk science that Hovind seems to make up as he goes along. A few examples:

"We have seen lots of them blow up, but nobody has ever proven one star forming.

[That is false. Stars and nebulae have been observed in every stage of formation expected by current models of star formation. It is one of the most important areas of current research.]

"They dream about it, they hope it is out there in the crab nebulae, but it has never been observed.

[What the hell? The Crab Nebula is a supernova remnant, not a zone of star formation. I do not know of any astronomer who "dreams" that stars are being formed in the Crab Nebula. Again, Hovind is making up lies about as fast as he can speak.]

"But it was observed nearly 2,000 years ago or so that Cirrus, the brightest star in the sky tonight, Cirrus is, it was a red star. All of the ancient astronomers described it as being red: Cynica said it was red, the Egyptian hieroglyphics said it was red. Yet today, Cirrus was is a white dwarf indicating it happens in less than 2,000 years. It does not take 100,000 years like they said."

[I liked the ancient writer "Cynica" part! He may have meant Seneca. He may even have meant "Sirius". It is not true that all the ancient astronomers described Sirius as red. Many described it the same way we see it today, as a brilliant white star. The details are in the FAQs in the talkorigins.org archive. And it is not a white dwarf, that is the companion to Sirius.]

By the way, the stuff about spiral arms of galaxies and cooling of planets is also wrong, indicating complete Hovind/Roadrunner's total lack of knowledge about modern astronomy and thermodynamics. Not to mention the stuff about moon dust. Even AIG asks creationists not to use that one.

Please ask Kent to send the cheque for $250,000 to the UK Parkinson's Disease Foundation.

-- Mike Dworetsky

(Remove "pants" spamblock to send e-mail)