Chapter I

The folks behind the curtain were certainly keeping busy, trying their best to phrase their efforts in a way to avoid sounding like what they actually believed, but because they seemed slow to follow Johnson’s (sorry, Santorum’s) cue sheet, some mighty curious products slipped through the folds as they translated the intent of the Santorum language into what they thought it meant.

Georgia’s House Bill 391 saddled teachers with a sprawling requirement to “make distinctions between philosophical materialism and authentic science and to include unanswered questions and unsolved problems,” Applegate & Alcott (2001). Montana’s House Bill 588 introduced by Rep. Joe Balyeat (2001) echoed the old Arkansas Balanced Treatment model by trying to ensure the “objectivity of science education” by a randomly selected six-member committee approving “a full range of factual information supporting the competing theories of origin” without identifying what those might be or (a much bigger omission) without ever suggesting by example what evidence would qualify or fail for inclusion. Balyeat’s bill sank even in a legislature dominated by Republicans, and Montana term limits meant Balyeat had to move on to fresh pastures. Cowgirl (2012) followed some of Balyeat’s subsequent Kulturkampf activities, from heading the Montana Tea Party to warning Christians that if they failed to become more politically active, “not only will hell prevail against us, but abortionists and homosexuals and humanists and pornographers and tin-horn TV networks as well.” Somehow Bozeman has still managed to survive as the dark clouds of doom gather.

Other antievolution proponents during this period knew more of what they wanted—sort of. Denise Matsumoto, member of the Hawaii board of education, introduced a resolution calling for the teaching of alternatives to evolution, but creationism was the sole example she appeared to be aware of and a wave of opposition from the science community and even some in the religious community brought her effort to an abrupt halt, Pyle (2000) and Kua (2001b). Catherina Hurlburt (2001) at Concerned Women for America (the organization founded by End Times believers Tim and Beverly LaHaye) put a deliriously congenial spin on this affair by selectively quoting one snippet from Kua (2001a): how a local biology teacher believed “students would benefit from hearing the debate.” Hurlburt might have showed more caution given the title of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin article: “Educators: Creation theory not scientific; Creationism can be taught, but not in science class, teachers and scientists say.” At no point had the article suggested any of the teachers or scientists thought Intelligent Design had scientific merit, and the teacher in question was only affirming an obvious scholarly skill: that it was good pedagogy to encourage students to investigate issues (which I confirmed in a June 2014 email exchange).

This would not be Hurlburt’s sole wrestle with logic or grasp of facts. Hurlburt (2001) had unapologetically defended the 1999 Kansas antievolution standards (“It did not ban evolution from the classroom, which media still erroneously report today.”) without examining any of its explicit content or noting the Big Bang or Willis matters. More recently, one of Hurlburt’s newsletters surfaced as an illustrative example of logical fallacy in an online writing course at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. Based on a single instance of a Swedish boy having declared (back in 1955!) his purely hypothetical disinclination to marry a girl if he ever got her pregnant, Hurlburt had conclusion jumped all the way to the belief that this “proves Sweden’s governmental system causes all children to reject traditional morality,” Kennesaw (2011). One swallow can truly a summer make, at least in Kulturkampf land.

Meanwhile in Michigan, Rep. Robert Gosselin et al. (2001) offered House Bill 4382 that would require every instance of evolution, how species change through time and natural selection in science courses to be offset with an explanation of “THE THEORY THAT LIFE IS THE RESULT OF THE PURPOSEFUL, INTELLIGENT DESIGN OF A CREATOR.” That Gosselin had a fairly specific CREATOR in mind is suggested by his political career, where his campaign website continues to remind potential voters of his efforts to have “IN GOD WE TRUST” and “TEN COMMANDMENTS” posted on the Lansing capitol, Gosselin (2013). The man liked CAPS, what can I say.

More idiosyncratically, in Louisiana, African-American Democrat Rep. Sharon Broome offered a resolution to condemn Darwin and evolution for supposedly proposing “a hierarchy of superior and inferior races” that with Hitler resulted in “the annihilation of millions of purportedly racially inferior individuals” and wanted textbooks discussing evolution to carry a warning disclaimer. This mirrored beliefs increasingly common in the African-American community (especially in church circles), but also likely reflected the campfire horror stories about Darwin and racist eugenics circulating in the creationist subculture (Broome’s alma mater was Regent University, founded by Pat Robertson, a character seldom far from frenetic hyperbole). This spawned the usual range of snap reactions: agreement from some (though by no means all) religious and conservative postings, arriving eventually on the scope of Glenn Beck (2001), while more uniform condemnation emanated from evolutionists and secularists. Fewer took this as an opportunity to explore what was a more complex history than the creationist cartoon version, such as Morgan (2001), Wertheim (2001) or Conley (2001). Meanwhile, when Broome’s proposal was trimmed to a general statement opposing racism, Answers in Genesis (2001) complained this was just “watered down to protect Darwin.”

Thus Broome’s venture was not occurring in a cultural or political vacuum. At the same time, Republican Rep. Tony Perkins was trying to get the Louisiana legislature to prohibit the state and parishes from “knowingly printing or distributing material that contains information that is false of fraudulent,” Applegate et al. (2003), by which he meant evolution. Perkins (a graduate of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University) has steadfastly supported Young Earth Creationism, first in the Louisiana Family Forum he set up in 1999, and later at his Family Research Council, hailing Ken Ham as “the world’s leading authority on Biblical accuracy,” Perkins (2013m), and was much impressed with Ham’s Creation Museum in Kentucky, Ham (2008b).

The language of Perkins’ Louisiana bill was similar to one offered in Arkansas that year by Rep. Jim Holt, except the Arkansas version spilled over into some honesty by actually specifying what he thought constituted instances of scientific “fraud”—which included Archaeopteryx, fossil hominids and the horse sequence. The Archaeopteryx fraud charge stemmed from the early 1980s and was entirely spurious but was still percolating in antievolution circles (Steve Meyer even tried to trot it out at the 1998 Whitworth “Creation Week” conference).

Holt channeled Wells’ by then unavoidable Icons of Evolution for his biological claims, but mined his examples of supposedly faulty fossil evidence for human evolution from another source altogether: the cartoon panels of Jack Chick (1972b), the notorious creationist “Big Daddy?” pamphlet, whose over-the-top vagaries are examined by Alston (2001) along with two other Chick comics (one from 1976 recounted how Soviet agents tried to prevent Christians from finding the remains of Noah’s Ark). But Holt’s House Bill 2548 also carried buckets of YEC water by specifying evidence challenging the age of the Earth, and the man Holt drew on for that was Florida evangelist Kent Hovind, Elsberry (2001a); there also used to be a juicy point by point breakdown of Hovind’s influence on Holt’s Arkansas Bill available at Analysis of Kent Hovind (2002c) but that website had disappeared as of 2014.

As it happened, Hovind was the authority Chick had relied on for his human evolution claims, which Rep. Holt then presented secondarily. Holt then drew this incestuous short circuit even tighter by calling Hovind to Arkansas to testify for his bill as an expert witness.

But expert in what? Self-styled as “Dr. Dino,” Hovind is hands down one of the great charlatans of modern creationism. Although regularly spoken of as Dr. Hovind by his admirers, his degrees in Christian Education came from an unaccredited Baptist correspondence school, Patriot University (now Patriot Bible University), currently operating from a suburban tract home-scale facility in Colorado. As their undergraduate “Bible and Science” instruction and graduate course on the “Biblical Basis of Modern Science” are based “on the extensive research of Henry Morris,” Patriot University (2004a-b), it was the full YEC of Henry Morris he had in mind, and not any watered down Intelligent Design talking points supplied by the Discovery Institute. And, like Robert Simonds’ Citizens for Excellence in Education from the Pennsylvania case, Hovind (1999e; 2003a) also beat the drum on the legality of teaching creationism in public schools,

Hovind’s doctoral dissertation is a particularly curious creature, as Karen Bartelt (2000b) discovered. Unlike real dissertations, which are matters of public record and not to be changed once filed, Hovind had been tinkering and padding it up much like a summer school term paper. Mindful of her experience in obtaining her own chemistry Ph.D., proofreading her husband’s in entomology, and evaluating student’s chemistry dissertations, Bartelt saw little in common with Hovind’s work. Lacking a title, references or footnotes, Hovind also frequently seemed reluctant to consult a dictionary:

Misspellings are rampant. A careful, knowledgeable editor/advisor would never allow a student to get away with misspelling “Cananan”, “Voltair”, “Nyles Eldredge”, Madelyn Murray “O’Hare” (just like the airport), “Shintu” (the Japanese religion), “peersuaded”, “centrifical” (force!!!), “aught” (to!), “disippated”, “immerged” (from the slime), or “epic” (as in geological!). “It’s” is used as a possessive pronoun. There are several non sentences. This is especially interesting since the course catalog of PU offers courses like “Refresher English” and “Mechanics of Composition”.

This phenomenon may account for Hovind’s reluctance to engage in written exchanges with critics, preferring stage debates or telephone chats instead. To what extent Rep. Holt was aware of any such discouraging words before channeling Hovind’s arguments is unclear. His legislative biography at Jim Holt (2002) listed his occupation as “Counselor/Chaplain,” suggesting he encountered Hovind somewhere in the conservative church subculture, where his views were just gaining traction.

I first bumped into Hovind’s world in 1997 (when he was still all but unknown on the antievolutionary landscape compared to Henry Morris or Duane Gish) after my brother asked me to evaluate one of Hovind’s videotape lectures that a creationist friend of his was burbling over. Grassroots followers were gobbling up Hovind, such as conservative Wisconsin creationist Teno Groppi (2002a-c) distilling Hovind’s claims as gospel (“Dr. Hovind is the BEST Creation Scientist I’ve ever heard”) alongside praise for the Constitution Party. By the time Rep. Holt entered the picture Hovind’s pieces were attracting attention higher up on the Kulturkampf grapevine, with Chuck Missler (1999) highlighting five of Hovind’s audio talks on The Missler Report (varied clips of Missler and Hovind expounding on topics from atheism to the threat of the “Illuminati” still to be found on YouTube), and archconservative Phyllis Schlafly (2001a-b) recommending “Dr.” Hovind’s creationism lectures at the Eagle Forum.

The fawning of Holt, Groppi, Missler and Schlafly notwithstanding, Hovind was quickly proving so factually embarrassing that some of his fellow Young Earth colleagues were getting antsy. Hovind (1999a-e) swallowed practically everything generated by the YEC misinformation factory, including items like the Lunar Dust myth and the Paluxy River man tracks (more on those in due course) that turned out to be too radioactive to keep defending and so were being abandoned at ICR and AiG just as Hovind was picking them up. Wieland et al. (2002) and Sarfati & Wieland (2002) slammed Hovind in the name of “Maintaining Creationist Integrity” at Answers in Genesis, while the Bible Answer Man Hank Hanegraaff (2002) felt obliged to defend conservative Christian orthodoxy by accusing Hovind of weak scriptural exegesis and persistent duplicity (such as advocating strained Bible Code predictions only to deny it later).

Undeterred by his creationist compatriots dumping on him, Hovind (2003a) plowed on to add more to his list of textbook “lies,” such as “The pangaea theory that’s taught in your books never existed,” and “The sun did not form before the earth like the textbook says.” About the only limit to his vaulting pseudoscience credulity was his summary rejection of biblical geocentrism, Hovind (2003d). Which can only make one wonder what an extraordinary challenge Arkansas’ science teachers would have faced had Jim Holt’s legislation not died in committee and they be compelled to call attention to the textbook “lies” doled out in Hovind’s seminars.

It should not be forgotten that more than just scientific buffoonery was being trotted out with Kent Hovind and the Chick pamphlets. Theologically and politically, they fall on the extreme political fringe of the antievolution spectrum, taking the doctrines of Henry Morris’s conservative creationism totally seriously, just being blunter about it. In this frame evolution is no mere scientific theory, but a sinister player on a distinctly eschatological stage. Lecturing on “The Dangers of Evolution,” Hovind (2003a) warned, “Satan protects his evolutionary theory with a vengeance,” and while expositing on “The Age of the Earth,” Hovind (2006) illustrated the special YEC historical filter for ostensibly scientific topics when explaining evolution “didn’t start with Charlie Darwin; it started with Satan in the Garden of Eden. He wants you to think you can become a god.” Which view he linked then to Mormonism, another offending heresy in his far-ranging and ever-vigilant Kulturkampf crosshairs.

The universe of Kent Hovind is a swirling mélange of eccentricity teetering on the brink of conspiratorial disaster. Meyers (2000) commented on his dietary fanaticism: take B-17 laetrile to cure your cancer but eschew white bread lest it kill you. But it’s hard to top Hovind’s belly-flopping expectation that the New World Order was about to initiate a scheme to bring the world’s population down to only half a billion by May 5, 2000, a date conjoining Marx’s birthday and the anniversary of Israel’s statehood, Huxley (1999).

This would all be merely laughable if Hovind didn’t also patrol more troubling territory. Southern Poverty Law Center (2001b) noted Hovind’s association with the anti-Semitism of Des Griffin, whose Fourth Reich of the Rich argued “international communism” was the scheme whereby “the Rothschilds and Rockefellers are out to rule the world,” Griffin (2002). Griffin’s Emissary Publications is still highlighting the Hovind family’s DVDs (including Hovind’s nephew Chad Hovind’s “godonomics” theories) along with an audio cassette of the notorious anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of Zion, rubbing shoulders with the regurgitated Jewish conspiracy theories of Henry Ford and more recent Holocaust revisionism, Griffin (2013a-c).

One can also get the Joseph McCarthy jitters every time Hovind mentions the ACLU, which (as he almost invariably reminded listeners) stands for either the “American Communist Lawyers Union” or the “Anti-Christian Lawyers Union,” Hovind (1996; 1999e-f, 2003b-d; 2006). Though in one instance from my preliminary research notes (an early 1990s squib warning of the New World Order “Illuminati” from a long-vanished URL, home1.gte.net/dmadh/hovind2.htm) Hovind referred to “the ACLU (The American Communist Lawyers Association, no, I’m sorry, it’s the Anti-Christian Lawyers Association)”—thus showing some difficulty at that time differentiating “A” from “U” in the organization’s acronym.

Hovind’s Creation Science Evangelism involved gallivanting around North America lecturing on the perils of evolution and even constructing a little “Dinosaur Adventure Land” theme park in Florida, brushing him up against the law on several occasions, from circumventing zoning regulations in his rural neighborhood to dismissed assault charges, Greg Martinez (2004). Hovind and his wife hit a much bigger speed bump in 2007, though, after it became clear (even to people at the neighboring creationist Pensacola Christian College) that he was able to afford his sundry hobbies by creative accounting, passing his employees off as “missionaries” and paying them in cash, which forsaking of that “rendering unto Caesar” income withholding tax thing earned him a $3 million tab leading to a 10-year Federal vacation and his wife a 2-year reservation, the legal details covered extensively by Peter Reilly (2012; 2013a-e; 2014a-f; 2015a-g) for Forbes magazine, leaving his son Eric to keep the family bonfires lit in the meantime. Incidentally, Chad Hovind (2011) disapproved of uncle Kent’s tax evasion and Black Helicopter conspiracy theories, but did not express an opinion on Kent’s Creation Science assertions.

SABBSA (2004b) expressed qualms over Hovind’s brushes with the law from the get-go, potentially doing harm to their creationism movement “founded on our belief in God and hard science.” SABBSA (2013h) thought Hovind might consider following the advice of the Creation Science Hall of Fame’s Nick Lally and give up the “nonsense” of the “alternative tax theories” he had embraced. The SABBSA did not consider whether any of the creationist arguments of Dr. Hovind might likewise fall into the “nonsense” category, but that would be looking into the YEC mirror too closely for genuine “critical analysis.”

World Net Daily (2009; 2012a) covered the affair even more gingerly, admiring Hovind’s evangelical zeal and reputation for slaying evolution, while tiptoeing around his acknowledged connections to the tax resistance subculture (Hovind likened the IRS repeatedly to a foreign power like Japan or Mexico, and thus of no jurisdictional relevance to a humble man of God such as himself). The WND reportage did not press too deeply into the amazing world of Hovindian litigation, though, especially whether the quality of people Dr. Dino was listening to on tax statutes might have accounted for how he ended up walking into his current pickle eyes wide open.

One of Hovind’s advisors interviewed by WND in 2009 was “IRS watchdog” Lindsey Springer (“head of Tulsa-based Bondage Breakers Ministries”) whose novel ideas about tax theory soon landed him in prison in 2010, Accounting Web (2010). Another pundit quoted by WND early in 2012, the “attorney” Paul J. Hansen of Omaha, Nebraska, was a bust beaver in the antigovernment movement there, ignoring building code violations on his properties and pretentiously signing legal documents as “Lawyer/Counsel without the United States,” Kelly (2011). Later in 2012, Hansen’s homespun legal practice (including retailing a “Do-It-Yourself eviction kit” and a “Common Law Lien kit”) drew the interest of the Nebraska Supreme Court Commission on Unauthorized Practice of Law, Nebraska Reports (2013). The commission cited Hansen’s written admission (“including grammatical, typographical, and spelling errors”—a quality matching up quite well with Hovind, appropriately enough) that he had never actually obtained a license to practice law (in Nebraska or anywhere else), and after Hansen (so clearly above that sort of thing as someone not “of” the United States) did not even bother to appear in court, a cease and desist injunction was issued.

WND was equally insouciant when it came to the AiG criticism of Hovind’s claims, which they mentioned but never illustrated by specific example, thereby perhaps sparing some of WND’s more sensitive readers any “say it ain’t so” cognitive dissonance moments should they be among the many creationists who believe things like the Lunar Dust story or the Paluxy mantracks too. Like the SABBSA, what WND definitely did not consider was a grimmer alternative: whether any of Hovind’s arguments (or AiG’s by extension) could pass logical muster outside the sturdy creationist barricade.

During this period, discomforted Hovind supporters rallied a web-linking international phalanx of 18,210 signatories (including a few double-posters and the many first-name only or purely pseudonymous entries) to a petition directed initially at President Bush but spilling ineffectually over into the Obama administration, Free Hovind (2014). Expressions of righteous indignation over Hovind’s persecuted innocence and wrongful imprisonment as a “political prisoner” wrestled with a strong leavening of anti-tax absolutism—mixed with contributors who couldn’t quite let go of their CAPS LOCK, along with stray providential rationalizing like that of James Trotter: “GOD has put him there to reach someone inside.”

A more common sentiment was that of Belgian evangelist David Merlevede (perhaps failing to calibrate his scale of outrage first against such real world specters as North Korean prison camps or Syrian chemical weapon stockpiles) when he characterized Hovind’s incarceration as “a major offense to humanity!” There was also a curious dearth of prominent creationists on the Hovind petition, apart from Jerry Bergman: “I do not agree with Kent on many things but his case is clearly unjust!” Indeed, as World Net Daily (2009) noted, “Hovind has received virtually no public support from prominent evangelical leaders.”

Not that Free Hovind was particularly discerning when it came to vetting who did sign their petition. Tax Evasion Is Fun tripped over a typo in their parody: “’Dr.’ Hovind should be allowed to willfully evade and subvert tax law, because dinosaurs were on the ark. The difference between the honorific ‘Doctor” and ‘felon’, is that you actually eared [sic: likely “earned”] the title ‘felon’.” Charles Darwin made it on board criticizing Hovind’s “use of the Bible for scientific reference” along with his “fake doctorate” and tax evasion, as did Thomas Huxley in similar vein. Rot in Jail Kent, Kent Is GUILTY, He Is Guilty As Can Be, SATAN, Atheist, Jesus Christ, Julius Caesar, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Osama Bin Laden and many other trolls opted for more graphic or still ruder brevity. Milder entries in this category would include several professing to be from Kent Hovind himself, one announcing he’d turned gay while in stir and requesting some “NUBILE YOUNG MEN!” be sent to his cell, shortly after Ted Haggard had advised: “Don’t drop the soap Kent, it’s gonna hurt and I know hot it feels!” All were still on the petition in January 2014. They may only have been avatars of the same pissed critic, of course (though the same could therefore be said of some of the remaining pro-Hovind 18,000 or so too, especially the spurt of dozens of gibberish signatories with single entry names like Qhcllcma and Wjgbfnmc that all landed on May 23, 2012).

The evolutionary gang at The Panda’s Thumb website couldn’t resist chop licking over the scofflaw Hovind, P. Z. Myers (2006k), which may be compared to the stone wall at Hovind-friendly Chick Publications. Chick (2004) had an enthusiastic page on the career and evangelical testimony of “Dr.” Hovind, including his “doctoral dissertation” (but with no mention of Patriot University). My check in January 2014 found they had made no changes at all to thus puffery, neither regarding the questionable provenance of Hovind’s degrees, nor his more recent involuntary change of residence away from Pensacola (embarking on a travelogue as he has been shunted from facilities in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Colorado and New Hampshire)—thus offering yet another graphic measure of how evolutionists and creationists can differ when it comes to digesting juicy information.

The Free Kent Hovind campaign has chugged along since, including supporter videos (such as by anti-LGBT Pastor James David Manning), Reilly (2015a-d), and fierce Twitter defenses I observed firsthand, painting Dr. Dino’s plight as one of conspiratorial Christian persecution (though ironically, while Hovind fuels that trope, Kent’s own son Eric doesn’t claim dad’s troubles related to anything other than imprudent tax evasion), Gettys (2015) and Reilly (2015c). “What is so annoying about Hovind’s attitude is that the tax law is generally quite friendly to religion, much to the frustration of our friends at the Freedom From Religion Foundation who recently lost their case against the parsonage exclusion in the Seventh Circuit,” Reilly (2014e), adding (to none of my surprise), “Hovind seems to be incapable of ever admitting that he was wrong about anything.” Ironically, Hovind’s lasting legacy might well be to prompt a progressive rethink of America’s cumbersome criminal justice and penitentiary system, Reilly (2015f).

In March 2015 Hovind hit the courts again over misuse of mailing privileges in pursuit of extricating his property from a government lien, prompting a fury of umbrage from his supporters, reported by Heather Clark (2015) for Christian News with only a tangential note that “Dr.” Hovind’s pre-conviction activities consisted of being “an evolutionary foe” (no allusion to or defense of any of its content) and being equally vague concerning the worldview swirling around Hovind and his supporters. Various online commentators were not so aloof, however, reflecting the intense rightwing Kulturkampf character of Hovind’s demographic, one Christian News poster revealing “Kent Hovind is in jail because he exposed the illuminati and ruffled many evolutionist feathers including infiltrators at a Christian college.” Another opined:

Kent is in jail because of his position, status, and unwillingness to follow Satan’s agenda. The IRS has been the attack dog of the socialist party for some time now. Protecting their own, but destroying anyone that opposes them. The only way to free Kent is to abolish the IRS and dig up their records.

Yet another warned of impending persecution: “Don’t think it isn’t coming for other Christians. I have seen Christian preachers arrested in Michigan for preaching against Islam, for praying at an abortion center. Look what Obama did to Nakoula Bassely Nakoula. It’s here.” Nakoula being a convicted check-kiting fraud whose side hobby of making a virulent anti-Muslim video sparked riots in Egypt, Pakistan and elsewhere leaving over 50 dead, and whose use of concealed identities along the way landed him in jail on a parole violation, CNN (2012) and Nagourney & Kovaleski (2012).

Tortucan shell-girding manifested also as another Christian News poster warned against heeding the independent reportage of “false accusers" like Peter Reilly. Such is the insular self-reinforcing worldview of those prone to admire Dr. Hovind.