Kent Hovind

Kent Hovind ( born January 15, 1953) is an American representative of the religious fundamentalist Kurzzeitkreationismus.

Life

Hovind was born in 1953. In his conversion, on 9 February 1969 he took, as he says: "Jesus Christ as my personal Savior " on. He joined the East Peoria High School in 1971 and in 1974 he received a bachelor's degree in " Religious Education" from Midwestern Baptist College. Hovind is married and has three children and five grandchildren.

From 1975 to 1988, he worked as a pastor and as a science teacher at a high school. In 1989, he called Creation Science Evangelism to life.

With the boom of the Internet, Hovind created his website www.drdino.com and began offering videos, books and replicas of fossils. At the beginning of his work his videos were not provided with a copy. The success of his work led to popularity and many public lectures with some hundreds to thousands of spectators. According to information he held every year in hundreds of churches, schools and other places lectures. His son Eric began to hold similar events some time ago.

On 2 November 2006 Hovind was convicted by a federal court in Pensacola, Florida in 58 cases of tax evasion and non-payment of social security contributions guilty and sentenced to ten years in prison. He is expected to be released in 2015 from prison.

Challenge to the theory of evolution

Kent Hovind offers a large amount of money for the proof that the theory of evolution is a verifiable fact:

His arguments are not shared by all proponents of creationism. The organization Answers in Genesis holds a part of his argument for obsolete and ultimately his $ 250,000 challenge for counter-productive.

In a clarification to his challenge, he mentioned that the empirical evidence of evolution " without reasonable doubt " ( "without any reasonable doubt " ) must take place.

What Kent Hovind mean by evolution, he explains thus:

So Hovind understands the theory of evolution in a much broader sense, as it is common practice, because in general, so that only those founded by Charles Darwin theory is called: The change of life forms as the effect of mutation and selection. The tacit inclusion of the development of space, planets and life therefore quickly lead to misunderstandings about the scope of the allegations, demands a proof of the Hovind.

In particular, the need to provide evidence that a God could not have intervened in these processes and the formation processes mentioned are the only ones possible, make a fulfillment of the desired thing impossible.

John Pieret, a critic Hovinds goes, assuming that this will keep his $ 250,000 - already its demand for a proof fall back on a very superficial understanding of the methodology of scientific research, because scientific theories can not in principle be proved (see problem of induction ). His offer had therefore to be understood more as a PR stunt.

The reward Hovinds for a proof of the theory of evolution was parodied about the blog Boing Boing - for proof that " Jesus is not the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster" is a million dollars has been awarded.

PhD

Kent Hovind wrote his doctoral thesis in "Christian Education" entitled The Effects of Teaching Evolution on the Students in our Public School System ( "The impact of the theory of evolution - teaching to the students in our public schools " ) on the correspondence University Patriot Bible University, the study lasted for four weeks. The work has not been published properly, because it can not be viewed or ordered through university libraries. This contradicts the norm, since research will be accessible to other scientists as well as students. Repeated requests by critics to submit his work, Hovind has not complied. Its proponents argue that the work that has allegedly been expanded to 250 pages, will be further revised before they finally appear in book form. This basically contradicts the academic tradition which prohibits a subsequent change of accepted scientific work.

The chemist Karen Bartelt received the original, 101 -page work Hovinds of his former university. My judgment was that Hovinds dissertation by no means the name of " thesis " deserve - because almost all the criteria to be met by scientific works, were not met: Instead of writing about the relationship between the teaching of the theory of evolution and the school he fill his work with long refuted criticism of the accepted theory (such as William Paley ); and he even draw parallels between Darwinism and the Nazi ideology (Kent Hovind: Preview video: Public School Presentation - "Evolution theory [ ... ] it's a foundation for humanism, racism, nazism, communism and a new world order. " Part 5, The Dangers of Evolution [spoken between insertions of a waving Nazi flag and rolling tanks. ] ). Formulations and spelling does not even correspond to the level of a college Abgängers. As the main point of criticism is that the work 've ever created no new knowledge. It is suspected that the Patriot Bible University, a mailbox University (English " diploma mill" ) is.

Dinosaur Adventure Land

Between 2001 and 2009, Hovind operating a theme park called " Dinosaur Adventure Land" in Pensacola, Florida. The park visitors suggested that humans and dinosaurs had lived in the years 4000-2000 BC together. The park had to be closed in 2009 because of Hovinds tax offenses until further notice.