Pensacola News Journal => Evangelist arrested on federal charges
While it might be amusing, it isn’t my policy to bring notice about every evangelical to be arrested, but this one is particularly satisfying. (It’s too much to hope that they’d all be put in jail.)
Kent Hovind has been running Dinosaur Adventure Land in Florida, an “amusement park” designed to undermine science and reason and tries to present “young Earth” creationism as anything other than a delusion of seriously impaired minds. I was going to compare them to Flat-Earthers but why insult the Flat-Earthers? They get enough of that already.
A Pensacola evangelist who owns the defunct Dinosaur Adventure Land in Pensacola was arrested Thursday on 58 federal charges, including failing to pay $473,818 in employee-related taxes and making threats against investigators.
Of the 58 charges, 44 were filed against Kent Hovind and his wife, Jo, for evading bank reporting requirements as they withdrew $430,500 from AmSouth Bank between July 20, 2001, and Aug. 9, 2002.
At the couple’s first court appearance Thursday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Miles Davis, Kent Hovind professed not to understand why he is being prosecuted.
Check out his Wikipedia Entry, the “Hovind Theory” is particularly a hoot – if it weren’t such a terrifying indictment against our education system that people can still believe this stuff.
(And no, I’m not actually talking about the debate of teaching Evolution vs Creationism (or it’s poorly disguised avatar, Intelligent Design.) It’s about teaching Critical Thinking skills.
No one believes that they don’t think critically because the implication is that you’re stupid. This isn’t true, critical thinking isn’t specifically a function of being “smart” or “stupid”, it’s a skill that everyone needs to be taught.
Some of my favorite Hovind ideas:
- Dinosaurs lived contemporaneous to humans 6,400 years ago
- The grand canyon was formed from the receding flood waters from God’s flooding genocide (sometimes called Noah’s flood)
- The Loch Ness monster (and Bigfoot) are both examples of “dinosaurs” that survived the flood
- The “flood” was caused by a gigantic ice meteor (presumably aimed by god) which froze mammoths in Siberia standing up and broke upon subterranean water deposits which flooded the planet.
- The ice comment also formed the rings around the other planets
I also understand that not only did he object to his guns being taken away by the court, (“They aren’t my guns, they’re god’s property.”) but he’s also claiming that he’s not subject to federal law because, “… I’m a citizen of heaven and I answer to a higher authority.” I guess that’s ok if you’re just slaughtering cows to make hot dogs, but not when you’re up on a Federal indictment.
Technorati Tags: Archaeology, Bigfoot, Blog, Commentary, Cryptid, Dinosaur, Dinosaurs