Christianist debater Eric Hovind owned by sixth-grader

Portland State University recently hosted a debate between former-Evangelical-Christian-turned-atheist Bernie Dehler and Young-Earth Creationist Eric Hovind (son of incarcerated tax cheat Kent Hovind), and it apparently went as you’d expect, with the secular humanist doing his best to remain afloat amidst the self-assured goober’s deluge of Biblical nonsense. But one moment in particular stuck out, when Hovind was reduced to a babbling mess by his opponent’s sixth-grader son:

Transcript: (click the [+/-] to open/close →)

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CHAD DEHLER (11): What is your evidence with God? Do you have – whenever you have God talking to you, it’s just one part of your brain actually talking to yourself.

[…]

ERIC HOVIND: What’s my evidence of God? Dad’s [Bernie Dehler] okay with this. The proof of God is that without God, you can’t know anything. And that’s exactly what we’ve seen, here, is when you’ve seen somebody say, “I could be wrong about everything,” they’ve given up knowledge in order to deny the God that they know exists. And that’s why the Bible says it is so foolish to deny God.

DEHLER: So, you’re saying if I don’t know one thing, then I don’t know everything?

HOVIND: No, I’m saying if you don’t know everything, then you can’t know anything to be absolutely true.

DEHLER: So, if I don’t know everything in the world, then I don’t know that you exist?

HOVIND: [slight pause] Unless you have revelation from someone who does know everything. And that someone that does know everything is God, and young man –

DEHLER: So, does that mean if I don’t know everything, then that means that I don’t know God exists?

HOVIND: You can’t know anything. You can’t even – you can’t – the argument and – I’m sorry, Max, thanks for trying to get – how old are you, buddy?

[Crosstalk, during which Max says that he’s eleven years old.]

HOVIND: These are good questions. But the argument is actually kinda simple. It just says, look, you have to know everything in order to say you know one thing to be absolutely certain. Or, somebody who does know everything could reveal something to you so that you can be certain. We all deal in a realm of certainty. We deal with 2 + 2 = 4. You don’t go to the bank and ask for change for a $100 bill, and they give you $5, and go, “Oh, I got some change!” No, you go based on certainty. If I, for example […] I knew everything everything there was to know, if I had all the knowledge and you didn’t, and there was a rule that said I am never, ever, ever allowed to tell a lie [Except that God does lie in the Bible. —JM], and I said, “Chad, I know everything, I’m not allowed to lie – 2 + 2 = 4.” Could you now know that to be true, even though you, Chad, don’t know everything? […]

CHAD: Yes, because I know it, because there’s proof for it. There’s no proof for God.

[light applause]

How can the man expect to be taken seriously as a debater when he’s so helplessly outmatched at his own game by an eleven-year-old? And these people then wonder why few secular intellectuals are willing to waste their time and energy on a stage with them.

(via Friendly Atheist)