Saturday Morning Confusion! (Pt 1)

Here it is, another Saturday morning with a newspaper and a few coffee's! As usual I was struck with a few thoughts, but fortunately none of them caused any serious injuries!

The first thing that caught my eye was good ol' Dr. "Dino" Kent Hovind. Remember him?

He is the guy that has a "Creationist" theme park that shows dinosaurs and humans living side by side about 4-5000 years ago and is a great hit with the "Right Wing Christian Fundamentalists!"

Well the poor Doctor and his wife just got themselves 10 years in the slammer yesterday for playing around with their income taxes.

(Actually, they didn't play around with them, they just sort of "forgot" about them! ------Watch this, good seguay coming up here!)

Speaking of "Doctor:" Hovind was awarded a Master's degree and doctorate in "Christian Education" through correspondence from the unaccredited Patriot University (now Patriot Bible University) in Colorado.

Dr. Barbara Forrest, a critic of Creationism, wrote that Hovind's lack of academic training makes it impossible to engage him on a professional level.

Specifically, critics of Hovind have charged that Patriot Bible University is a diploma mill. The school's current policies allow students to attain Bachelor's degrees, Master's degrees and even "Doctor of Ministry" (Hovind!) degrees in months, rather than years, for as little as $25 per month.

Various criticisms have been made of his dissertation, including charges of incompleteness, low academic quality, poor writing, poor spelling, and ungrammatical style. (This on top of the fact that the guy wants to play with words and call it the "THEORY of Evolution" while he calls Creationism -- "Creation Science!"

Now the reason I am going into the stuff below is because Hovind is a good example of how the Extreme-Right thinks!

His thoughts are sytemic of how the United States is going wrong in not only it's attitudes, but also it's foreign and domestic policy. After all, the Right does have undue influence on things at the moment! (If you don't believe me read the article below on how the Right thinks it's the "Liberal Left" that is responsible for 9/11!)

In other words, some of his beliefs are shared by a good percentage of the American population and they are not doing themselves any favours by holding these views.

At least that's the opinion of someone quite close to, but still able to maintain an objective viewpoint of the States! (A Canadian!)

Creation Science Evangelism Ministry:

After receiving his first correspondence education degree, Hovind started Creation Science Evangelism Ministry in 1989.

The ministry aims to evangelize people by teaching them a creationist perspective.

The ministry is not a non-profit organization nor is it considered a church by people who work there or the IRS.

The Hovind Theory:

Hovind summarizes his highly controversial version of the argument for Creationism into the “Hovind Theory."

The theory includes a literal reading of the Biblical account of Noah: Noah's family and two of every animal (including dinosaurs) safely boarded the Ark before a minus 300° Fahrenheit ice meteor came flying toward the Earth and broke up in space.













Some of the meteor fragments became rings and others caused the impact craters on the moon and some of the planets. The remaining ice fragments fell to the North and South Poles of the earth. The resulting "super-cold snow" fell near the poles, burying the Mammoths standing up.

Ice on the North and South Pole cracked the crust of the earth releasing the fountains of the deep, which in turn caused certain glacier effects.

This also made "the earth wobble around for a few thousand years" and it made the crust collapse.

During the first few months of the flood, the dead animals and plants got buried and became coal if they were plants and oil if they were animals.

The last few months of the flood included geological instability when the plates shifted. This period saw the formation of both ocean basins and mountain ranges and the resulting water run-off caused incredible erosion!!!!

Hovind claims that the Grand Canyon was formed in a couple of weeks during this time.

After a few hundred years, the ice caps slowly melted back, retreating to their current size and the ocean levels increased, creating the continental shelves.

The deeper oceans absorbed much of the carbon dioxide in earth’s atmosphere and thus allowed greater amounts of radiation to reach the earth's surface.

As a result, human lifespans were shortened considerably from the pre-flood days.

Now I should mention here that the vast majority of scientists do not take Hovind's work seriously and do not agree with his interpretation of the facts. But, if you're one of the people I should be mentioning this to, then you really shouldn't be reading this article anyways!

Dinosaur Adventure Land:

In 2001 Hovind started Dinosaur Adventure Land, a young earth creationist theme park located behind Hovind's home in Pensacola, Florida.

The park depicts humans and dinosaurs co-existing in the last 4-6,000 years, and also contains a depiction of the Loch Ness monster.

The park does not explore "The Jurassic and Cretaceous eras," but rather, "depicts dinosaurs as coexisting with human beings."

Legal problems:

Kent Hovind has been in trouble with law enforcement several times. These have included assault and battery, falsely declaring bankruptcy, making threats against federal officials, filing false complaints, failing to get necessary building permits, and various tax-related charges.

In 1996 Hovind unsuccessfully filed for bankruptcy to avoid paying federal income taxes. Hovind was found to have lied about his possessions and income. He claimed that as a minister of God everything he owns belonged to God and he is not subject to paying taxes to the United States on the money he received for doing God's work.

"Since 1997, Hovind has engaged in financial transactions indicating sources of income and has made deposits to bank accounts well in excess of $1 million per year during some of these years, which would require the filing of federal income taxes."

In 2002, he was charged with one count of felony assault, one count of misdemeanor battery, and one count of burglary with assault/battery. In December 2002, the charges were dropped by the alleged victim - Hovind's secretary.

On June 3, 2004, the IRS issued tax liens of $504,957.24 against Hovind and his son and their businesses due to previous legal maneuverings to evade taxation by moving property between himself, his son, and other legal entities.

Hovind stated that he did not recognize the government's right to try him on tax-fraud charges.

Hovind is known for his debates against atheists, skeptics and scientists. However, some scientists like Richard Dawkins refused to debate Creationists as they believe debate is not how science works.

Others like evolutionary biologist Massimo Pigliucci have debated Hovind, and were surprised how ignorant Hovind was of evolutionary theory. Pigliucci was surprised to hear to Hovind try "to convince the audience that evolutionists believe humans came from rocks" and claimed biologists believe humans "evolved from bananas."

In Hovind's debates, he traditionally focuses on points that he claims serve to discredit evolutionary theory, physical cosmology, and geology. He also presents what he claims is evidence for a Biblical flood, a young earth, and the canopy (crust) theory.

Hovind's $250,000 offer:
Since at least 1999 the good "Doctor" has said; "I have a standing offer of $250,000 to anyone who can give any empirical evidence (scientific proof) for evolution. My $250,000 offer demonstrates that the hypothesis of evolution is nothing more than a belief.

I have to inject a personal note here! I myself, sent Hovind a letter a few years ago in which I think I pretty well established the "fact" of evolution. Not only did I not get my $250,000 bucks - he didn't even bother to reply!

Controversial remarks:
Kent Hovind has made controversial remarks regarding conspiracies, science, creation, equal rights, religion and government over the years.

Hovind considers the King James Version of the Bible to be the Inerrant word of God that must be taken literally. Because of this, he believes all findings of science will eventually be found to agree with Scripture.

Hovind maintains that biology textbooks are lying and advocates simply taking evolution out of the textbooks because he considers evolution to be a false-religion.

Hovind has several conspiracy theories about the U.S. government. For example, he believes that Laetrile works and teaches that the US government is conspiring to suppress a cure for cancer.

On his radio program that he claims the U.S. government was behind the 9/11 attacks and that a "lot of folks were told not to come to work."

He also believes the Oklahoma City bombing was done on purpose. To quote the good Doctor; "Did you know the Federal Government blew up their own building to blame it on the militias, and to get rid of some people that weren't cooperating with the system?"

He also alleges that "UFOs are apparitions of Satan" and that the US government possesses UFOs.

Additionally, Hovind believes that the Federal Reserve, the Council on Foreign Relations, the United Nations, and various other groups are actively planning to create a one world government.

He also claims that the 1993 World Trade Center attack was staged by the U.S. Government in order to pass "anti-terrorism" legislation that restricts civil liberties.

He says, "I love my country, but fear my government. And you should too."

Jesus Christ, that's exactly what I keep saying about mainstream religion!

In terms of science, Hovind disregards all fossil evidence, claiming; "No fossils can count as evidence for evolution because all we know about that animal is that it died. We do not know that it had any kids, much less different kids!"

During a debate with Farrell Till, Hovind made the following claim about Donald Johanson: "He found the leg bones of "Lucy" a mile and a half away from the head bones. The leg bones were 200 feet deeper in a deeper layer of strata. I would like to know how fast the train was going that hit that chimpanzee."

However, the claim itself is false, and while Hovind has been informed of this, he continues to make it.

He also claims the Grand Canyon was not created through gradual geologic processes but rather by the Great Flood as narrated in the Old Testament.

I could go on about this asshole but I think you get the general idea.

As for the systemic problems in the United States, Hovind gives us a few good examples of what not to do!

Basically it boils down to throw away your "bibles" and your conspiracy theories and start looking at what makes sense. Period!

And that's all I have to say about that!!!!!!!

Your scribe;
Allan W Janssen

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 (what the church doesn't want you to know!) www.God-101.com