Creationists

A couple of weeks ago, New Scientist published an insightful but hardly controversial little essay on the challenges a science book editor faces when she has to deal with creationist literature. Amanda Geftner's piece, "How to spot a hidden religious agenda" disappeared from the magazine's website last week (Of course, it's still available elsewhere, like here.) As of this morning, if you try to find it at the New Scientist site, you get a message from the editors: New Scientist has received a legal complaint about the contents of this story. At the advice of our lawyer it has temporarily…

Carl Zimmer faces the wrath with cheerful good humor. The source of his troubles:

tags: dinosaurs, Tardosaurus, paleontology, fossils, Noah's Ark, religion, godlessness Image: Orphaned (please send the original artist's information to me so I can properly attribute and link back to this person) Inspired by the recent unveiling of the Tarbosaurus in Japan, I had to include this dinosaur for the creationists, the newly unveiled Tardosaurus, which single handedly (?) destroyed Noah and his ark full of animals.

tags: Expelled!, Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, religious wingnuts, christian fundamentalists, cultism, streaming video This streaming video reveals the unadulterated stupidity of the religious wingnuts; their poor public relations skills, their artlessness, their shocking lack of creative abilities, along with their unabashed duplicity. Oh, by the way, Happy Easter! [9:30].

tags: atheism, atheist, godlessness, Expelled!, religion, fundamentalist christians Last night, I was amused to learn that my friend and fellow SciBling, PZ Myers, was prevented from attending a free screening of the creationist film, presciently named Expelled! A film that thanked PZ in the credits for giving freely of his time by appearing in the film itself, no less (of course, the producers lied to him about the sort of film they were making; they claimed they were making a documentary about evolution). So much for free speech, as the fim's producer shrilly proclaims, eh? So not only is…

In the most predictable result ever, the jury deliberated only 3 hours before finding Kent Hovind and his wife guilty on all charges. A federal jury has convicted Kent Hovind and his wife, Jo, of tax fraud. Hovind faces a maximum of 288 years in prison. His wife faces up to 225 years. Her charges include aiding and abetting her husband with 44 counts of evading bank-reporting requirements. He won't get that much, of course, nor should he. A couple years in jail, a nice fine. That oughta send a pretty strong message. It's all lost on Hovind, of course. He is impenetrable to reason and he will…

I just saw this posted at the Panda's Thumb. Look at this article. A man waving a brick barged into Monroe Middle School and ranted about the teachings of evolution before being arrested by police Tuesday morning... Monroe police reported the man walked into the school office and immediately headed down a hallway toward the principals' offices. When stopped by employees, he began yelling at them asking if he looked like a monkey. They then noticed Mr. Wood was holding a brick. A teacher, an assistant principal and a secretary tried calming the man down, but he continued his rant about…

And yet another of his fellow Christians blows the whistle on him. Gibbs, an attorney with the Gibbs Law Firm in a suburb of St. Petersburg, also is affiliated with the Christian Law Association, a nonprofit organization founded by his father that offers free legal help to churches nationwide.... Gibbs said Hovind tried to persuade him he had no obligation to pay employee income taxes and explained with "a great deal of bravado" how he had "beat the tax system." Gibbs said Hovind also told him he preferred to deal in cash and that when you are "dealing with cash there is not way to trace it…

The local paper reports that the prosecution put on an administrator from Pensacola Christian College to talk about her past dealings with Hovind regarding his refusal to pay taxes. Horton first heard of Hovind's beliefs about taxes in the mid 1990s. A woman gave Horton a videotape. The woman received it when she worked for Hovind. The video featured another evangelist advocating tax evasion, Horton said. The woman told Horton of Hovind's philosophy on paying his employees. "She said, 'You were giving a gift with your work, and they were giving a gift back to you,' " Horton said. Horton said…

This trial is going to be a lot of fun to watch. The local paper reports that two of Hovind's employees, the ones he says he didn't withhold taxes from or pay taxes on because they were "ministers" and he runs a ministry, testified that they thought they were employees. And they quoted from memos from Hovind himself calling them such: Heldmyer asked Popp to read from ministry memos that referred to the workers as "employees" and included rules about timeliness, payroll, vacation days and salaries. Yet Hovind claims they weren't employees. And his attorneys attempt to spin this: Richey pointed…

The Pensacola News Journal reports that the jury has been selected and the trial started today. I find Hovind's defense really funny in light of his history. He claims that he was completely ignorant of the law and didn't know what the IRS requirements were, but in the past he has railed about the illegality of the income tax and filed frivolous lawsuits against the IRS (all of which were thrown out) and actually filed bankruptcy to avoid an earlier IRS case against him. He knows exactly what the law says and has ranted about how unfair it is, he certainly can't claim ignorance of it now.

Kent Hovind's attorney has filed motions to dismiss all of the counts against him. Counts 1-12 and 58 (12 counts of failing to pay FICA and withhold income taxes on employees and one count of threatening a Federal agent) are discussed in this motion, while counts 13-57 (46 counts of "structuring") are discussed in this motion. But here's my favorite part of his article discussing the charges: I can only guess what God allowed this for but here are some of the options we have thought of so far: God is testing us like Job. God is punishing us for sin. God was testing other Christian leaders to…

The Anti-Defamation League has joined the chorus blasting D. James Kennedy's flagrantly dishonest TV special about Darwin and Hitler. They issued a press release that addressed the Francis Collins issue as well: The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today blasted a television documentary produced by Christian broadcaster Dr. D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries that attempts to link Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to Adolf Hitler and the atrocities of the Holocaust. ADL also denounced Coral Ridge Ministries for misleading Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Human Genome…

A Washington state court has handed down a ruling that could presage a bad result for Kent Hovind in Florida (yes, I know it doesn't apply in another state, but the logic is perfectly applicable to both states and the Federal level). In the case of In re Didier, the husband in a divorce proceeding tried to claim a free exercise defense for not paying child support. He made the same claim that Hovind makes, that he is employed by God, has taken a vow of poverty, and has no income. He also claimed, like Hovind does, that the court has no jurisdiction over him. Michael Didier is a member of the…

This is a guest post written by Skip Evans. Skip is a dear friend I have known for many years. He worked for some time for the National Center for Science Education and now owns a web development company called Big Sky Penguin. This is the sordid tale of his repeated dealings with the infamous creationist Kent Hovind. Perhaps I'll add my own story to it at the end. I Remember Hovey With the news of Kent Hovind's arrest, I began reflecting on my past interactions with the man I regard as the nuttiest cookie in the jar of creationism. I mean, this is a guy that even fruit loops like Ken Ham…

Here's an update on the Hovind trial. When arrested, he was forced to turn over his passport and stay in that judicial district. He asked the court to allow him to travel to South Africa for a preaching tour but the court agreed with prosecutors that he is a flight risk. That seems obvious to me, as he has already declared that he refuses to recognize the authority of the court. And in a very strange email, the organizer of the South Africa speaking engagements has issued an odd threat: In an e-mail to a reporter, Andre L. Immelman, CEO of PowerMinistries, the South African group sponsoring…

Because of breathtaking logic like this: The grand jury alleges Hovind failed to pay nearly half-a-million dollars in federal income, Social Security, and Medicare taxes on his employees at his Creation Science Evangelism ministry in Pensacola. Hovind, who is known as "Dr. Dino," says even though the 30 people who work for him are paid in cash, he is not a tax protestor and is not violating any laws. "Nobody's an employee, and they all know that when they come. They come, they work," Hovind offers as an explanation. "The laborer is worthy of his hire -- we try to take the purely scriptural…

The Pensacola News Journal has been following the arrest of Kent Hovind closely. A trial date has been set for September 5th and Hovind has pled innocent to the charges (well, kind of). And I can't wait to see how the court treats some of the profoundly silly claims of immunity that Hovind is making. And get this: he has a public defender, who must be rolling their eyes at some of the things Hovind wants him to argue: Hovind's attorney, Assistant Public Defender Kafahni Nkrumah, told U.S. Magistrate Judge Miles Davis at a hearing Monday that his client did not want to enter a plea because he…

More details on Hovind's arrest are found in today's Pensacola News Journal. I especially love this part: 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. Some 20 supporters were in the courtroom. "I still don't understand what I'm being charged for and who is charging me," he said. Kent…

Over at Volokh, Jonathan Adler posted a link to Derbyshire's response to Gilder and that has brought some real prizes out of the woodwork. Especially amusing is one Joel B, who gives a breathtakingly idiotic response to another commenter. The original commenter, riskable, said: In our universe full of energy and particles, each particle is being pulled via various forces (gravity, magnetism, etc) and so they come together. Seems a fairly unassailable statement, doesn't it? It's not universally true, of course. Under some circumstances, molecules come together, while under other circumstances…