Creationist huckster Kent Hovind and his wife Jo have been found guilty of tax fraud in Florida, and each face over 200 years in prison. For more reactions to the verdict: Dispatches from the Culture Wars Pharyngula The Panda’s Thumb More on the trial may be found here. Hovind’s appearance on the Ali G Show may be found here.
Creationist Kent Hovind’s trial for tax evasion is proving to be quite a hoot. Some highlights from the Pensacola News-Journal’s coverage: Hovind attempted to manipulate funds from the start of his ministry, she said. In 1996, he filed for bankruptcy, a move Heldmeyer said Hovind designed to prevent the IRS from collecting taxes. The IRS later determined Hovind filed under an “evil purpose,” Heldmeyer said. She called Hovind a “very loud and vocal tax protester,” recalling a number of lawsuits he filed against the IRS over the past decade. Each was deemed frivolous and was thrown out, she said. And on April 13, 2004, when IRS officials issued a search warrant for Hovind’s property, he resisted.Hovind has some interesting theories about corporate liability and government action: Popp testified that Hovind warned employees not to accept mail addressed to “KENT HOVIND.” He said Hovind told the workers the government created a corporation in his “all-caps name.” Hovind said if he accepted the mail, he would be accepting the responsibilities associated with that corporation, Popp testified.Hovind uses Scientology-style tactics against the IRS (though without their success–apparently 50 separate lawsuits against agents from a large criminal cult has more effect): Hovind tried several bullying tactics against her, Powe testified. A recording that Hovind made of a phone conversation was then played. In the phone conversation, Hovind tried to make an appointment with Powe by 10 a.m. that day. When Powe said she couldn’t meet him because she had a staff meeting, Hovind threatened to sue her, which he did. “Dr. Hovind sued me three times, maybe more,” Powe testified. “It just seemed to be something he did often.” She testified that the cases were dismissed.Blog Coverage: Panda’s Thumb: Dr. Dino in the Dock (October 18) Panda’s Thumb: Workers testify in ‘Dr. Dino’ trial (October 19) Pharyngula: Pensacola Hilarity (October 20) Pharyngula: Hovind saga continues (October 21) Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Hovind Trial Begins (October 18) Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Hovind Trial, Day 2 (October 20) Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Hovind Trial, Day 3 (October 21) Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Hovind Trial, Day 4 (October 23)
Skeptic Michael Shermer is speaking about his new book, Why Darwin Matters, at noon on October 12 at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C. The Cato Institute is then showcasing a commentary on Shermer by “Intelligent Design proponent Jonathan Wells,” whose dishonest books Icons of Evolution and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism, have been shredded at The Panda’s Thumb. Wells, a follower of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, entered a Ph.D. program at the behest of Moon. Wells wrote: “Father’s [Moon’s] words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me to enter a PhD program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle." Rev. Moon, who was crowned in a bizarre ceremony on Capitol Hill thanks to the support of a number of Congressmen, has also been supported by a variety of evangelical Christians who would ordinarily oppose cult groups whose leaders claim to be the second coming of Christ, such as Left Behind co-author Timothy LaHaye, his wife and head of Concerned Women for America Beverly LaHaye, Jerry Falwell, Family Research Council head Gary Bauer, Pat Boone, and Christian Coalition leader and Jack Abramoff pal Ralph Reed. Also involved with Moon have been former president George H.W. Bush and his son and President George W. Bush. (More on Moon and his connections to Christian and Republican leaders here and here.) Why is the Cato Institute giving a forum to a purveyor of pseudoscience and an advocate of Moon’s cult? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Richard W. Rahn, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, is also a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and writes for Moon’s Washington Times?
The Discovery Institute has quote-mined an article co-authored by the National Center for Science Education’s Nick Matzke 16 days before it was officially published in print (it had early publication online). Nick Matzke explains how the quote, pulled from its context, was used to misrepresent the state of the debate about evolution of the flagellum.
Orac at Respectful Insolence recently commented on how he first got involved in responding to Holocaust deniers. In reading his commentary, I was reminded of my own limited involvement on GEnie and Usenet’s alt.revisionism in responding to the Holocaust deniers, at a time when Bradley Smith’s organization, Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) was placing full-page ads in student newspapers at universities across the United States. I did a Google Groups search and found this posting that I made on alt.revisionism in response to some people who were attacking Holocaust deniers using namecalling and without offering facts or evidence to refute their claims. As it turns out, Orac was also a contributor to this thread, as were the Scientology-supported “random poetry” bots, which forged the names of major contributors to various newsgroups in an attempt to drown them out and make the groups unreadable. (Read Scientology defector Tory Bezazian’s account of the spamming of Usenet.) This posting led to a short debate with science writer Andrew Skolnick, who strongly disagreed with me–his opinion was that Holocaust deniers should get nothing but ridicule, and no one should bother trying to respond to them. I think this is the wrong approach to Holocaust denial, the wrong approach to creationism, the wrong approach to 9/11 conspiracy theories, and the wrong approach to Scientology, for reasons I give below. I do agree that it can be a bad idea to give advocates of crackpottery wider exposure or a respectable forum, but there are plenty of fora on the Internet and elsewhere where these bad ideas should be responded to with good and accurate information. From: James J. Lippard Date: Fri, Sep 24 1999 12:00 am Email: lipp…@discord.org (James J. Lippard) Groups: sci.skeptic, alt.revisionism ...
At Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Ed Brayton has an excellent fisking of Seth Cooper, former attorney for the Discovery Institute. Cooper tries to argue that Judge Jones (of the Kitzmiller v. Dover School Board case) displayed bias and hostility towards Jon Buell of the Foundation for Thought and Ethics both in his behavior and by refusing to allow the FTE to intervene in the case. Brayton points out that there’s no evidence of any hostility in the questioning of Buell and that the facts and legal precedent strongly supported the refusal of FTE intervening one month before the end of discovery. He points out dishonesty by Buell, who falsely stated that “Neither “Creationism” nor its synonym, “Creation Science” was ever used in any Pandas manuscript, as alleged." The post is a pleasure to read, go see it here.
P.Z. Myers at Pharyngula reviews chapter 3 of Jonathan Wells’ new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, as part of a series of critiques of the book which will appear at The Panda’s Thumb. The chapter, titled “Why you didn’t ’evolve’ in your mother’s womb,” includes quote mining of this sort: This is the heart of Wells’ strategy: pick comments by developmental biologists referring to different stages, which say very different things about the similarity of embryos, and conflate them. It’s easy to make it sound like scientists are willfully lying about the state of our knowledge when you can pluck out a statement about the diversity at the gastrula stage, omit the word “gastrula,” and pretend it applies to the pharyngula stage.As background, it’s important to note that the “developmental hourglass” (Myers provides a couple of diagrams to illustrate) is a summary of a century and a half of observations showing that organisms tend to be diverse in form in the earliest stages of development (blastula, gastrula, and neurula), converge on a similar form at the pharyngula stage (from which Myers’ blog gets its name), and then diverge again into a diversity of adult forms. Thus, if a creationist engages in the above tactic, they will take a quote about differences at an early stage and make it look like a denial of similarity at the pharyngula stage. Myers points out a specific example where Wells does exactly this with a quote from developmental biologist William Ballard. Wells writes, quoting Ballard: It is “only by semantic tricks and subjective selection of evidence,” by “bending the facts of nature,” that one can argue that the early embryo stages of vertebrates “are more alike than their adults."As Myers points out, multiple quotes stitched together in a sentence like this are a red flag in the writings of creationists and intelligent design advocates. The full passage Wells is quoting says: Before the pharyngula stage we can only say that the embryos of different species within a single taxonomic class are more alike than their parents. Only by semantic tricks and subjective selection of evidence can we claim that “gastrulas” of shark, salmon, frog, and bird are more alike than their adults.Ballard did not mean to assert that these “semantic tricks” and “subjective selection of evidence” are used to claim that there is similarity at the pharyngula stage, as he also writes: All then arrive at the pharyngula stage, which is remarkably uniform throughout the subphylum, consisting of similar organ rudiments similarly arranged (though in some respects deformed in respect to habitat and food supply). After the standardized pharyngula stage, the maturing of the structures of organs and tissues takes place on diverging line, each line characteristic of the class and further diverging into lines characteristic of the orders, families, and so on.This is a clear case of deceptive writing by Jonathan Wells. Read the rest, which includes further examples of dishonesty by Wells, at Pharyngula.
After Paul Nelson was misquoted in the Guardian, this was discovered by Nick Matzke of the National Center for Science Education and pointed out at the Panda’s Thumb blog. Here’s how Robert Crowther at the Discovery Institute reports the misquotation and Nelson’s letter and blog post thanking Matzke for pointing out the misquotation: Today there is another urban myth building up a head of steam, and being helped along by Darwinists, about Discovery Fellow Paul Nelson. Gaurdian [sic] reporter Karen Armstrong reports: ‘Great shakings and darkness are descending on Planet Earth,’ says the ID philosopher Paul Nelson, ‘but they will be overshadowed by even more amazing displays of God’s power and light.’ And yet this is pure rubbish because Nelson never said anything like this, and it turns out that Armstrong never even interviewed him. Nelson points this out in his letter to the Guardian demanding a correction. (Note to Paul: don’t hold your breath) Emphasis added. I can think of numerous examples of nonsense, misquotes, bad arguments, and urban legends that are spread around by the creationists (there are many in Mark Isaak’s index to creationist claims, including the “Lucy’s knee joint” issue that I tried for years to stop creationists from spreading), but real examples of urban myths “being helped along by Darwinists” are much harder to come by. Crowther supplies no evidence that this spurious Paul Nelson quote has been “helped along by Darwinists”; the evidence I have shows that evolutionists were the first to try to stamp it out. (Hat tip: Dave Thomas at the Panda’s Thumb.)
Casey Luskin, responding to a point in a book review by John Derbyshire, argues that Judge Jones was incorrect in his decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover when he wrote that Intelligent Design is not supported by any peer-reviewed publications. As Wesley Elsberry shows, Luskin’s argument is not with Jones but with the defense in the Dover case, and in particular with the testimony of Michael Behe, who agreed in cross-examination that “there are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred." Q. [Rothschild] Now you have never argued for intelligent design in a peer reviewed scientific journal, correct? ...
The Pensacola News Journal reports that the law has finally caught up with tax-evading creationist Kent Hovind: 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. 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 Hovind, who often calls himself “Dr. Dino,” has been sparring with the IRS for at least 17 years on his claims that he is employed by God, receives no income, has no expenses and owns no property. “The debtor apparently maintains that as a minister of God, everything he owns belongs to God and he is not subject to paying taxes to the United States on money he receives for doing God’s work,” U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Lewis Killian Jr. wrote when he dismissed a claim from Hovind in 1996. … In the indictment unsealed Thursday, a grand jury alleges that Kent Hovind failed to pay $473,818 in federal income, Social Security and Medicare taxes on employees at his Creation Science Evangelism/Ministry between March 31, 2001, and Jan. 31, 2004. … The indictment alleges Kent Hovind paid his employees in cash and labeled them “missionaries” to avoid payroll tax and FICA requirements. On Thursday, a message on the Dinosaur Adventure Land telephone welcomed visitors to the place “where dinosaurs and the Bible meet” and stated that the museum and science center were closed temporarily. The indictment also says the Hovinds’ made cash withdrawals from AmSouth Bank in a manner that evaded federal requirements for reporting cash transactions. The withdrawals were for $9,500 or $9,600, just below the $10,000 starting point for reporting cash transactions. Most of the withdrawals were days apart. For example, the indictment shows three withdrawals of $9,500 each on July 20, July 23 and July 26 in 2001. … Over Kent Hovind’s protests, the judge took away his passport and guns Hovind claimed belonged to his church. Hovind argued that he needs his passport to continue his evangelism work. He said “thousands and thousands” are waiting to hear him preach in South Africa next month.There’s more (and comments) at Pharyngula and the Panda’s Thumb.