Of course he does! God forbid Hovind should ever have to say that dirty 'E'-word - although that is precisely what this weasel is doing when he talks about his miraculous variation which can create any kind of creature within a kind, but somehow magically halts dead at the invisible 'species barrier'.

Hovind: "Its true that all of the finches probably had a common ancestor, and it was a finch. The Bible does not say that they shall bring forth after their species. The Bible says that they shall bring forth after their kind."

And what is a kind if not a species? The creationists do not dare define kind, because they know that when they do, zoologists will hammer them. Kind is nothing more than the Biblical word for species. Period. Let Hovind try to prove otherwise, since he is making this distinction.

Hovind: "If you stand ten feet back from it and look at it, it is still the same kind of animal."

Lie #84. This is a deliberate distortion, aimed at focusing you on anatomy. Evolution does not take place at the anatomical level, but at the genetic level - anatomy has nothing to do with it. Anatomy is merely a consequence of embryological development which in turn is a consequence of genetics. It is unfortunate that we only lately came to learn of genes and their function, because what this has meant is that we have been forced to focus on anatomy though out history, but it is chronically misleading. Many animals and plants that look physically very similar are quite different in the details of their genetic patterning and vice-versa.

Creationists love to talk anatomy rather than genetics. It is really easy to show you a finch and a tree and pretend that if they look dissimilar, they must be dissimilar, but on a cellular level, plants are all very similar, as are animals on their cellular level. Animal and plant cells are not as similar when compared to each other as they are within their own groupings, but there are living things that sit between animals and plants with equal claim to either group. How is this possible if everything is an individual "kind"? Besides, if you go below cellular level to genetic level, the same four base chemicals make up both. Never doubt it, and never ever let the creationists pull the wool over your eyes - they are con artists, pranksters, masters of sleight of hand.

Hovind: "You could scramble up the chromosomes and get something strange once in a while. For example, take the word Christmas. By rearranging the letters you can develop thousands of words....There are numerous words that you can form, but you are never going to get, Xerox, or queen. The letters are not there."

I am glad Hovind finally admitted to evolution. Yes, you cannot get Xerox from Christmas, because the letters are not there, but evolution does not take place on 'Christmas'. It does not need that many letters. You know how many letters it needs? Just four: A, C, G and T. Those four letters account for all of evolution. Those four letters exist in every living thing. I am glad Kent Hovind finally simplified it enough so that even he can understand it, and finally agreed that evolution is entirely possible. It is made possible through the four bases upon which DNA is built: adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. Mix these with sugar and phosphate and you get DNA. It's that simple.

Besides, how many DNA chains are as short as "Christmas"? None. How many DNA chains are as short as the 26 letters of the alphabet? Even a virus has more 'letters' in its 'word' than this, yet those 26 letters make up every word in the English language. How many more words (or species) can nature make from such a large 'alphabet'?

Hovind: "Rearranging the known information in the chromosomes is not going to produce anything new...Mutations only rearrange the material that is already there."

Lie #85. Until and Unless Hovind proves his assertion. Scientists have studied genes in detail. Mutations do not automatically produce a monster. Mutations are very small things and many of them occur to parts of your DNA chain that is not in use. Yes! A good portion of your DNA is nonsense information that has accumulated through mutation over the history of living things. It is not possible to explain this if you believe that a god created everything from nothing only 6,000 years ago.

No evolutionist pretends that all that happens is that the same genes shuffle back and forth. Genetics is much more complicated than this. Oops - sorry! I gave it away. The creationists didn't want you to know that.

Fortunately, your DNA chain ignores these mutations since they are marked and turned off, as it were. It is only when the switch is flipped and one gets turned back on that it becomes of concern. It is only when a critical mutation hits the wrong place at the wrong time that they cause problems. Most of the mutations in your own genes leave you completely unaware that they are there, but mutation takes place all the time, adding, removing, and changing information in your genes. This is a fact. Occasionally, the right set of mutations combine and switch on, and something changes. The white swamp buffalo and the river buffalo can interbreed and produce viable offspring even though they have differing numbers of chromosomes (source: Discover magazine, April 1999). So much for Hovind's brain dead challenge.

Hovind: "Mutations are harmful or fatal."

Lie #86. Except when Hovind needs them to explain how a few "kinds" evolved in the minuscule time period since they got off the ark, of course.

There are two varieties of peppered moth in England - dark and light. The dark version is actually the standard version - the light is a mutation. This is an example of a mutation which was not harmful - not of itself. It was actually beneficial, because due to lichen infestation, many trees were light colored. The mutated light variation did better than the dark variation on these trees. At least it was that way until the industrial revolution began polluting the atmosphere and the lichen on the trees began darkening. Now the normal version had the advantage of camouflage and the lighter variety began to die out. When England began cleaning up its atmosphere, the lighter version made a comeback. This is not an example of speciation, but it is an observed and documented example of evolution in action in our own time. Hovind is a liar to claim mutations are harmful without some serious clarification.

Is there anyone who would deny that cancer is a mutation in a cell? Cancer is harmful to humans, although medical science, now it has new roots in evolutionary theory, is helping a lot more humans overcome it than prayer is. The thing is that humans are nothing more than a conglomeration of single cells. Which cell is the more successful - the normal body cell, or the mutated cancer cell? If mutations are always harmful, how come cancer cells do so well? If these cells lived independently, instead of as part of a human, then which cell would do better in the wild, the 'normal' cell, or the mutated cell?

Hovind rambles on about fruit fly experiments and concludes: "After raising eighty-thousand generations of flies, somebody wrote a report and said, Ladies and gentlemen, weve raised eighty-thousand generations of flies. We have seen millions of mutations, but we have never seen a beneficial mutation."

I am not going to call this one, although I bet it is a lie, but there are two deceptions here. The first is that Hovind's purpose is to force your mind off the fact that no one ever raised fruit flies to prove evolution. Fruit fly experiments were and are done to understand genetics. This is one of the reasons we know so much about how genes work.. This work was done to benefit those of us who do have harmful mutations to live with. It is only because evolutionary theory has shown us the way that we can do these kinds of experiments. If we had followed Hovind's dumb ass ideas about creationism, no one would ever have learned about DNA or genes, and we would not now be seeing genetic treatments and some cures coming to light because of these fruit fly and other experiments. For Hovind to cheapen this work to further his ungodly cause is pathetic and a measure of the kind of snake he is.

The second deception is that Hovind is trying to force you to believe that evolution is supposed to take place in a laboratory over one or two human lifetimes. It does not and no evolutionist ever said that it did. It takes place over millions of years in the natural world. It cannot be replicated in a few decades with a few fruit flies under laboratory conditions designed to do anything but prove evolution. The best we can do in the laboratory is to try and understand the mechanisms of evolution. Genetic experiments on fruit flies have contributed to this knowledge, but they do not represent this knowledge.

Hovind: "He continued to say in the report, Therefore, we must conclude that flies have evolved as far as they can go."

Lie #87. I am calling this because this sounds to me to be another creationist fairy tale. I cannot imagine any real scientist stating that evolution has gone as far as it can go. Until and unless Hovind comes up with a reference to this report so that I can read it myself, I am claiming this as a lie by default.

Hovind finally catches up with me on the peppered moth: "Thats not evolution. They started off as a peppered moth and they ended up as a peppered moth."

Lie #88. No, that's not speciation. It is evolution.

Hovind: "Actually, I think because there are two varieties of the same species, dark and light, that this provides good evidence of an intelligent creator."

Lie #89. Brilliant - he finally gets it! But how does this provide good evidence of an intelligent creator? Surely an intelligent creator would never put his creations into the situation we have here with life on earth - which is definitely a lottery - unless he wanted to test the principles of evolution!!

How does Hovind imagine that there became two varieties of peppered moth? Did Noah have both of these on the ark? I doubt it - by Hovind's own admission, Noah supposedly took only a pair of each kind (with some exceptions). This means that he can have had only two moths - male and female of a generic kind, on the ark - from which every single extant (and all extinct) species of moth have evolved. Even creationism requires evolution (which they have to call 'variation' so they do not use that nasty 'E'-word).

There are 11,000 species of butterflies and moths in North America, 148,000 worldwide. I don't know whether Hovind considers these to be two separate kinds - the creationists have no scientific basis for their "kinds." Let's count them together. They are more similar than some of the varieties Hovind listed as being in the same dog "kind," for example, although this is purely a subjective view. On the other hand, subjective is the only 'kind' of view creationism has, since there is no science there.

What this all means is that those two things from the ark - let's call them motherflies - in addition to not dying out, had to generate over 30 new species per year in the 4,400 years since the flood. That's almost three new species every single month, every single year since Noah. Why do we not see this rate of 'variation' today? How come it has never been seen? Remember that this does not include any extinct species.

Creationists are going nuts and frothing at the moth - sorry - mouth because they claim science cannot show evolution going on today. Next time they mention this, ask them where is this super-rate evolution going on today - the evolution of Hovind's two generic motherflies into 148,000 distinct, non-interbreeding species? If they say it has stopped, ask them when, and how and why. Ask them how this myriad variation came about - was it through mutation? How is this possible if, as they claim, mutation is consistently harmful.

Hovind: "They ought to be learning real science while they are there and forget all of this stupidity about evolution. It has nothing to do with science. Its a waist of time and a waist of textbook space."

Sorry, this isn't a lie so much as a testament to Hovind's poor scholarship and rank stupidity. I agree - it was unhip to use it. It was a 'waist' of your time. I just thought it might get a belly laugh.

Hovind: "Evolutionists will say: Boys and girls, dinosaurs slowly turned into birds....Hold on a second! There are a few differences between a dinosaur and a bird."

Not in the fossil record, where either birds built like dinosaurs, or dinosaurs with feathers and wings are found in many places.

Hovind: "By the way, in the movie Jurassic Park, the whole plot was dinosaurs turning into birds."

Lie #90. The plot of that movie was nothing of the sort.

Hovind: "There are a few differences between a reptile and a bird. Reptiles are covered with scales, and birds are covered with feathers."

Lie #91. Some 'reptiles' in the fossil record have feathers, and birds have scales on their legs. How is this a difference? Birds also have hair when they are chicks and fine, feathery hairs on the bottom of their feathers. Both reptiles and birds (and some mammals) lay eggs, even though one group is endothermic and one is exothermic. Where are the distinct kinds here?

Hovind: "Evolutionists may say, Yeah, but they are both made out of carotene."

Lie #92. Actually this is not so much a lie as a demonstration of Hovind's complete and utter ignorance. Carotene is a substance that your body converts into vitamin A. What Hovind meant to refer to here is keratin, which is a protein that makes up most of the material in the cells forming the beaks, feathers, hair, hooves, horns, nails, scales and skin of animals.

In other words, no matter how different the 'kind' of animal, no matter what its needs are, apparently Hovind's creationist god was so limited in his abilities that he had to use and reuse the same substance over and over, and over again. He couldn't even once come up with a new substance, better designed to suit the animal's lifestyle! That's why your tender skin and a lion's nasty claws, a horse's strong hooves and a bird's delicate feathers, a cow's horn and a husky dog's warm fur are all basically the same thing. And there is no evolution?

Hovind: "Reptiles have a sack-type lung, and they breathe in and out. Birds have a tubular-type lung, and they breathe through their lungs, not in and out of their lungs."

Lie #93. Look it up in a good book that was not written by a creationist. The evolutionary paths to both styles of lungs are not so far apart as Hovind would like you to believe. Both types 'breathe in and out' - they have to.

Hovind: "Evolutionists would say, Some of the dinosaurs had hollow bones. Okay, maybe so, for structural reasons, but not so they could fly"

This from the same two-faced moron who claims the T. Rex has hollows in its head not for structural reasons, but so that it could blow smoke and fire from its nostrils? See Lie #70.

Hovind on archaeopteryx: "Only six of them have been found...All of them come from the same place in Germany. There is also a very strong indication that all six of them are deliberate frauds. It is possible that they are super-imposed fossils."

Lie #94. Rest assured they are not in the same class as Hovind when it comes to fraud. If Hovind has any evidence they are frauds, then he needs to put up or shut up lying. What is his strong indication of fraud? One of these so-called frauds was not even recognized as archaeopteryx until relatively recently, when John Ostrom identified it.

Hovind's claim is probably stolen from Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, (an astronomer and a mathematician -not biologists, zoologists, anatomists, or paleontologists), who for some unknown reason decided to believe the archaeopteryxes were a fraud. Let Hovind try to find an evolutionary biologist (with a real degree) who thinks they are a fraud. When called as a witness for the creationists during the Louisiana Balanced Treatment Act 590 trial in 1981, Wickramasinghe stated that no rational scientist would believe that the Earth was less than a million years old or that the world's geology could be explained by a worldwide flood.

Hovind: "What is a archaeopteryx? Its a bird about twelve inches long or about the size of a pigeon."

Lie #95. If Hovind is here stating that the archaeopteryx is a bird, where does he get off whining that the feathered impressions in the rocks are fraudulent? The truth of the matter is that archaeopteryx is hard to place precisely because it has characteristics of both a bird and a reptile.

Hovind: "Evolutionists say: We can prove that dinosaurs turned to birds because of the archaeopteryx. Well, whats the proof? Dont you see, he has claws on his wings right there by his elbows."

Lie #96. By his elbows? Hovind is so pathetically ignorant that he believes that, because the claws are halfway along the wing, they must be coming from the elbow!

Hovind: "It is true that most birds do not have claws, but some do. An ostrich has claws; the hoatzin has claws; and the South American archaeopteryx has claws."

Lie #97. The south American archaeopteryx? This from the guy who just got through saying there are only six specimens and they all come from the same place in Germany?

Hovind: "Going from having claws to not having claws is an example of loosing something and not gaining something. Is that how evolution works."

Lie #98. I am counting this because it is another lie about what evolution says. There is no aspect of evolutionary theory that claims that to evolve, a living thing always has to gain a body part. It is quite possible to "loose" things, too as Hovind so ignorantly puts it.

Now there were unquestionably flying 'lizards' - these were technically not dinosaurs but are included as such in popular thinking.. The pteranodon, dimorphodon, rhamphoryncus and pterodactyl had wings and flew. This is not a matter of faith or of opinion, but of fact. If one group of primitive reptiles could grow wings and fly, why could not another grow wings and feathers? If Hovind is going to say no, then he needs to come up with scientific proof of the mechanism which prevents such genetic changes from occurring.

Hovind: "No, man never had a tail. This business of the missing link is just plain crazy."

Lie #99. I am glad he agrees there is no missing link, but humans do have tails. They have a coccyx - a tail bone, which is not one bone but a fusion of several and has no real purpose - it is a remnant of when we had a tail. We can see evidence of this in embryology. The human embryo begins to develop a tail and then effectively reabsorbs it. This is a fact.

Hovind: "Actually, missing links have never been found. Zero, none! No missing links have been found because the whole chain is missing."

Lie #100. Let's see what Darwin said in "Origin": "the chance of discovering in a formation in any one country all the early stages of transition between any two forms, is small, for the successive changes are supposed to have been local or confined to some one spot"

Even back then, Darwin was smarter than any modern creationist. He knew that the fossil record is imperfect and could not begin to show a complete record of every transition, but to pretend, as the creationists do, that there are no transitional forms is nonsense. To claim, as the creationists do, that the lack of a complete set of all transitional forms means there are none and that this in turn disproves evolution is a lie, plain and simple. This quote, by the way, is also evidence that Darwin anticipated the proponents of punctuated equilibrium by 140 years.

According to this web page of the Talk.origins archives, far from there being no transitional forms, there have been found actually more transitional forms in the fossil record than we had any right to hope for!

At this page, Kathleen Hunt lists transitional forms galore. Here are a few:

Transitional from mammal to primate: Cantius, Palaechthon, Pelycodus, Purgatorius.
Transitional from reptile to mammal: Biarmosuchia, Haptodus, Procynosuchus, Varanops.
Transitional from reptile to bird: Coelophysis, Compsognathus, Deinonychus, Oviraptor.
Transitional from amphibian to reptile: Hylonomus, Limnoscelis, Paleothyris, Proterogyrinus.
Transitional from fish to amphibian: Cheirolepis, Eusthenopteron, Osteolepis, Sterropterygion