Lie #29. Lies are not proof and I have already listed 28 of them. These were not matters of opinion, but serious matters: out and out lies about things which a so-called PhD and science teacher should know the truth about, or could readily find out, as I did.

Hovind: "There are those that would like every child to believe that this world is billions of years old -- and it is not."

Lie #30.

Hovind: "They want children to believe that dinosaurs lived millions of year ago -- and they did not."

Lie #31.

Hovind: "On the back of my business card, there is a long-standing offer of $10,000 for anyone that can present scientific evidence proving evolution."

Lie #32. He won't pay - he cannot. When I challenged him, all he did was come up with excuses, not refutations of my material. I suspect Hovind's evolutionary descent was from a weasel. His stance is that no one has ever taken up his offer because evolution is not a science and cannot be proven. Not only is this a lie, his offer is a lie. He is the judge and jury over whether your evidence proves evolution. Naturally, in his eyes, it never will. That's why his money is safe and he can crow that no one has ever claimed it. The offer is a fraud.

I pursued this offer not to get $10,000 (I knew for a fact that he was never going to pay), but to demonstrate that creationists are the exception to evolution - they have never evolved beyond the level of snakes. The arrangement was that Hovind would submit my evidence to a panel of independent judges of his choosing. I requested that he tell me of whom this panel consisted, so I could verify their qualifications. I am still waiting, several months later.

I have heard nothing from any supposed panel member, and am forced to conclude that even this offer was a lie. Only one person responded other than Hovind. He (I assume it was male) refused to properly address the material and offered no evidence of his qualifications. All he did was insist on preaching, thereby proving that this was one of Hovind's cronies and not an independent judge. After I hit him up with a bunch of Kent Hovind's lies, this respondent has never written me again. This makes twice that this same thing has happened with Hovind's supporters.

Hovind: "Evolution is a religion: nothing more, nothing less! Evolution is just something people prefer to believe because of their life style."

Lie #33. No, that's religion! With his lie, Hovind insults millions, worldwide, who happen to hold beliefs different from him. He insults thousands of Christians who, regardless of whether one accepts their belief system or not, lead basically good lives. What Hovind is trying to do here is set everyone up for later chapters in his seminar material, where he will equate acceptance of evolution with an open door for evil.

Hovind: "Dinosaurs were nothing more than giant lizards in the garden of Eden. Dinosaurs lived with Adam and Eve."

Lie #34. There is no evidence whatsoever in the fossil record for dinosaurs alive a mere 4,000 years ago, or for dinosaurs cohabiting with humans, the majority of mammals or the majority of birds at any time in history. Dinosaurs are a specific group of (once-) living things. To call them lizards is to misrepresent them.

Hovind: "Did Noah have dinosaurs on the ark? Certainly! You ask, Dinosaurs on the ark? The Bible says that he had seven of every clean kind, two of every common kind."

Lie #35. As I and many others have demonstrated conclusively, there was no such thing as Noah's ark, at least when defined as something that could carry representatives of every species together with specialized food and fresh water for all of them, for over a year in a worldwide flood. There is no way eight people could begin to provide the necessary care for these animals, even if they could have caught them in the first place. I publicly challenge Hovind, personally, here and now (or any creationist), to:

1. Define 'kind'. No creationist has ever dared, because they know that they will be destroyed by the cladists and taxonomists when they do.

2. Explain and demonstrate scientifically, what mechanism it is that enables myriad variation within a 'kind', but stops that mechanism dead, unable to go further, when it runs up against the 'kind' barrier. There is no mechanism, and they know it.

3. Explain, scientifically, if chimpanzees do not share a common ancestor with humans, but animals can vary within a kind, how it is that we humans are closer to chimpanzees genetically, than rats are to mice, than the Indian elephant is to the African elephant, than the red vireo bird is to the white vireo bird.

4. Explain, in scientific detail how all the animals managed to get to the ark - and then away from it in a period of 4,000 years since the flood, to the places they now occupy.

5. Explain, in scientific detail, how it was that a worldwide raging flood managed to neatly sort out all animal species, without a single exception, into differing rock strata such that not a single animal thought by science to be many millions of years old and extinct, was mixed in with modern animals and vice versa. Explain how the most primitive animals are always in the lowest layers and how hydrologic sorting failed to grade the animals by density.

6. Given their psychotic obsession with the rarity of evolutionary mutation, explain in scientific detail how it was that these few 'kinds' on the ark managed to mutate at an evolutionary rate far in excess of anything any true evolutionist would dare postulate. Explain just how these few 'kinds' managed to populate the world with literally hundreds of thousands of distinct species in 4,000 years. When they have done that, they need to explain by what mechanism this fantastical rate of evolution suddenly halted in modern times that we do not see wholesale evolutionary changes with such dramatic rapidity nowadays.

If Hovind explains this to my satisfaction, I'll pay him $10,000. (In other words, I'll let him keep the $10,000 he owes me).

Hovind: "The ark was pretty big."

Not as big as Hovind's mouth, I'll warrant.

Hovind: "Americas leading systematic taxonomists list the number of species to be 3,500 mammals"

Lie #36. There are 4,600 so far discovered.

Hovind: "8,600 birds"

Lie #37. There are over 10,000 species of birds (including those known to have become extinct since humans started molesting the planet).

Hovind: "5,500 reptiles and amphibians"

Lie #38. There are 2,500 species of snake, 2,500 species of lizard, nearly 250 species of turtle, 22 species of crocodilian, and two species of tuatara. In addition to this are 4,400 amphibians. That seems to total out well in excess of 9,000.

Hovind: "and 25,500 worms"

Lie #39. Since when are worms insects? Notice how he carefully excludes insects! There are over 875,000 species of arthropods (insects, crustaceans and spiders), and those are just the ones so far discovered. Actually, almost a third of these are beetles. Any worms are numbered in addition to this figure. If you want to be a creationist, then you need to abandon humanity as the reason for the universe. Nematode worms, in terms of biomass, are undoubtedly the chosen ones.

Clearly Hovind's total of 43,100 is an outrageous lie. Obviously, he has to lie, because it is the only way to pretend that there was a worldwide flood and an ark which carried samples of everything to safety. Note that neither his nor my figures include any of the countless species that have become extinct since life began, all of which had to have been represented on the ark.

Hovind: "The overall average size of the animals was about the size of a sheep. They would easily fit into 150 box cars; so you see, they had plenty of room.

Ahem. Need I say it? Okay, Lie #40. By what method did he determine that everything can be treated like a sheep? I know it is standard Christian practice, but there are practical limits. How did Hovind decide that everything averages out to sheep size? By what authority does he determine that no animal needs better treatment or special consideration? Does he imagine animals could thrive for a year in a dark, dank, smelly, unstable and confined space with no room to exercise?

Hovind has obviously never acquainted himself with the history of zoos, where a simple study will reveal the appalling death rates of animals, even today (just check back in the news to find out how many animals perished when Disney, which made its fortune on cute animals, began its latest wild kingdom - and they had experts to take care of them). Animals, taken from their natural home, die early and often ugly deaths. With few exceptions, they are not 'designed' to be kept in captivity, whether they were designed by a god or by evolution. They die - especially the young ones. Hovind is a liar to even pretend you could treat all animals like sheep and keep them penned up in a dark, unstable, confined space for over a year. The carnage would have been appalling, not to mention the smell.

Hovind: "Twelve miles from Mt. Ararat, in another one of the mountains of Ararat, is a strange boat-shaped structure. The Bible says that the ark landed on the mountains of Ararat (plural) so it might be on a different mountain or valley. There is a strange boat-shaped structure pictured in a book by Ron Wyatt. Mr. Wyatt says that the boat-shaped object is Noahs ark. It is 515 feet long"

Lie #41. That is no boat, it is a natural rock feature. Hovind gives the length, which is completely different from the Biblical length in the inerrant Bible - so why even mention this? Does he want that to be the ark, thereby 'proving' (so he believes) his flood story and disproving the inerrancy of the Bible, or does he want the Bible to be exact, and that feature to be simply a rock formation? While he is at it, he might explain how it is that after a year afloat on a raging sea, Noah managed to land his unsteerable ark just a few miles from where he left....

Hovind: "Dinosaurs lived with man all along."

Lie #42. If this is the case, why is there not one - not one single instance - of human bones found with dinosaur bones? Why is there no evidence whatsoever of any dinosaur having been killed by humans?

Hovind: "After the flood, the climate changed which caused the dinosaurs to not grow as big and to not live as long."

Lie #43. Where is Hovind's climactic and geological evidence for this? This was only 4,000 years ago - evidence of it should be abundant. Let him show where the trend to smaller dinosaurs is, in the fossil record of 4,000 years ago. Let him do the science to show why it was, and how it was, that dinosaurs grew smaller, if there is no beneficial mutation and no evolution.

Hovind: "In 1572, an Italian scientist, Ulysses Aldravondus, documented the entire account of the killing of a dinosaur. He even had the dead body mounted for a museum....It was apparently a small tanystropheus dinosaur."

I publicly challenge Hovind to produce his evidence or references for this. Until then I shall call it Lie #44, and write it off as a creationist exaggeration of some perfectly ordinary creature that creationists like to pretend was a dinosaur in order to further their agenda.

Hovind: "Columbus had a hard time getting a crew because they were afraid of sea monsters."

Lie #45. Hovind offers no evidence, because he has none. From my reading, the only thing the crew were afraid of was that Columbus' stupidity would get them killed. They were reluctant to sign on only until a local patron, Martin Pinzon, signed up to captain one of the ships, then there was no problem at all getting crew.

Hovind: "The winds and currents are contrary and the seaweed in the Sargasso Sea is too thick. They just avoid those areas and sail around them."

Lie #46. Hovind has bought into the myth of the Sargasso Sea. Yes, it is a calmed area (which gives the lie to his claim of winds!), and there is a lot of seaweed, but it is not a living thing, waiting to devour unwary sailors, and no problem at all to powered boats.

Hovind: "In 1848, Captain Peter MQuhae of the H.M.S. Deadalus, and his crew, watched a sixty-foot sea monster swim directly under their boat. The sailors on board said, Captain, please dont say anything about this. Dont write it in the log book for sure because we are going to get laughed at for the rest of our lives. If we go back to port and tell them that we saw a dinosaur, they are going to laugh at us."

Lie #47. The word, 'dinosaur' was coined by Sir Richard Owen in 1842, to describe a specific type of prehistoric reptile. Prehistoric marine reptiles are not dinosaurs, neither are the airborne variety. It is highly unlikely, in my opinion, that a mere six years after Owen coined the word, uneducated sailors would be fretting over what was obviously some kind of large fish or whale, and calling it a dinosaur. Besides, if they were so insistent that the captain tell no one - how do we know it happened?

Hovind: "However, there are lots of stories of giant critters in the sea. There are stories of octopus pulling ships under water. There are many stories like that."

Lie #48. And it will stay a lie until and unless Hovind, or any creationist, offers some documentation for these "many stories."

Read a reader's comment on Lies #47 and #48.

Hovind: "You say, Wait a minute! The Guinness Book of World Records states that the largest octopus in the world was 36 feet, which was caught off the coast of Kodiak, Alaska. I have also read Guinness, but they did not perform their research very well this time. There have been bigger octopuses. The one shown in figure 2-10 washed up on the beach in St. Augustine, Florida in 1896. It was 200 feet across and weighed five tons."

Lie #49. The 1986 Guinness Book of Records (published ten years before Hovind's seminar) states clearly that that the octopus from Puget sound was 23 feet across and it weighed 118 pounds. Contrary to Hovind's second lie here, Guinness also mentions the creature from St. Augustine, and says that the creature is thought to have been a large fish or whale.

Hovind: "You see, whales like to eat octopus. Thats one of their most favorite things to eat."

Lie #50. Baleen whales do not eat octopus or any other large creature. They eat krill. Toothed whales eat squid, but in neither reference I checked, could I find reference to octopus except for Baird's beaked whale, where it was mentioned among other food items.

Hovind: "Did it ever occur to you that nothing ever occurred to God? Think on that one for a while. Stuff occurs to me all the time. I say, Wow, I never thought of that before. God never has that experience...He already knows. He knows it all."

Lie #51. God does not know it all. He had no idea where Adam and Eve were hiding in the Garden after eating of the tree - he had to yell at them to come out. God doesn't know it all He had to come down from heaven to see what the builders of the Tower of Babel were up to. He doesn't know as much as you or me. We know what it is like to give in to temptation. Not just to be tempted, but to actually succumb. If god doesn't know this, he isn't as knowledgeable as we are, or if he does know this, he is no more righteous than we are. You cannot have it both ways.

Hovind: "I believe behemoth was a brontosaurus."

Lie #52. It was not. Hovind's weasely comment about it moving its tail like a cedar, implying that the tail was huge, is nonsense. My opinion is that this reference relates to the tail swaying like a cedar, not being as big as a cedar. I challenge Hovind to prove me wrong.

Hovind: "Behemoth lived under the trees in the swamp.'

Yep, it was a hippo.

Hovind: "If you feel your fingers, you will find that you have different bones in there called flanges.

Lie #53. These bones are called phalanges. There are fourteen in each hand and foot. A real science teacher would know this name. Any PhD who didn't earn his PhD from a diploma-mill would know this name. Hovind is too stupid to know, too lazy to check.