Lying 101. Let's look at what Darwin said in "Origin": "On the other hand, I do believe that natural selection will always act very slowly, often only at long intervals of time, and generally on only a very few of the inhabitants of the same region at the same time."

Darwin said it before anyone - and this is precisely what Eldredge (note spelling - Hovind didn't) and Gould have said - in other words, their "new theory" as the creationists try to pretend, is nothing more than Darwin said. Evolution seems, according to the fossil record, to happen most quickly when groups of animals are isolated. It occurs much more slowly in large populations.

Hovind: "The textbooks state that one of the evidences is homology structures. Homology structures, what does that mean?"

It doesn't mean anything because it is lousy grammar, and if Hovind really was an honest PhD, he would know this. What he means is 'homologous' structures. Such structures exhibit homology.

Hovind: "That means that different types of animals have the same body pattern to perform different things. For instance, the human has two bones in their wrist, the radius and the ulna."

Lie #102. These two bones are in the forearm. The wrist actually has 8 bones, known as the carpals. Hovind is an idiot.

Hovind: "The bat has two bones in his leg, and they are called the radius and the ulna."

Lie #103. These specific bones in the leg, regardless of what quadruped they are in, are called the tibia and the fibula. The radius and the ulna in a bat are in its wing.

Hovind: "For instance; they show in the textbooks that the human baby has gill slits. Do you remember being taught that when you went to school? A human baby has gill slits?"

Lie #104. Nope - embryos, regardless of whether they are human, have gill arches. These are not the same as actual gill slits. From Microsoft Encarta:

"In a blastocyst less than two weeks old...the microscope reveals the amnion (a sac surrounding the embryo), chorion (a membrane that develops around the amnion and lines the uterine wall), yolk sac, and distinct germ layers...At the beginning of its fourth week the embryo, now about 4 to 5 mm (about 0.16 to 0.2 in) long, has the rudiments of eyes and ears, and each side of the neck shows four gill clefts. A tail is also present."

A yolk sac? A tail? Gill clefts? If god designed adam as an entirely independent, perfectly created creature literally from the ground up, where do humans get off having gill clefts? Why do they have a tail? Why on Earth do we need a yolk sac? These features only make sense within the theory of evolution. They make no sense whatsoever from a creationist point of view.

Nobody ever said the gill clefts are gills, or that the baby ever breathes through them. These are not gills and do not function in humans as gills; however, this same feature - the gill cleft, is precisely what develops to cover the gills in a fish. It is from the same origin, but used for a different purpose. If it is not for the purpose of developing gills, why do fish have it? If it is for the purpose of developing gills, why do humans have it, together with aortic arches and a two-chambered heart at that stage?

Hovind: "The woman that started Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger...is a strong believer in abortion. Most folks dont realize that she was also a racist. She wanted to wipe out the Spanish, the Blacks, and the Jews. She hated them. That was the total purpose for Planned Parenthood, and any taxpayer dollars going to Planned Parenthood ought to be against the law."

Lie #105. Can you say 'ad hominem'? Unless Hovind can show evidence for his display of hatred, then I have no problem calling him a liar and a psycho. He is doing nothing but trashing the reputation of a woman whose only effort to prevent birth was in the education of people, particularly poor people (the majority of which always seem to be non-whites) as to contraception and to venereal diseases. Obviously Hovind would rather have no contraception. This sadistic swine would rather have people catch all manner of venereal diseases by withholding education from them, and bring multitudes of unwanted children into a life of misery. What would be more in keeping with the traditional view of Satan's purpose on Earth than that?

I have noticed that it is a trait of Hovind's to pretend that people he does not like are racists. He does this because of his own brand of racism. Hovind thinks that non-whites are so dumb that he can seduce them into joining his cause if he can only label his opponents as racists. He forgets that non-whites have brains and can think just as well as whites. This is a tactic of all creationists, since not a single thing Hovind says or publishes on creationism is original with him. He steals everything he preaches from other creationists without offering them a shred of credit. It just proves there is no honor among thieves.

Hovind: "One of the evidences that they will state in the textbooks as proof of evolution...is: Boys and girls, we come from simple life forms."

Lie #106. I don't know of any evolutionist who uses this ridiculous creationist argument - we come from simple life forms therefore we must have come from simple life forms? Hovind is an imbecile.

Hovind: "There is no such thing as a simple life form."

Lie #107. Does Hovind know what the definition of algae is? "A group of structurally simple organisms that carry out oxygen-evolving photosynthesis." How about anaerobic life? "All anaerobes are simple organisms, such as yeast and bacteria." I'll bet he hasn't heard of Chytrids: "A common name for small, simple life forms that make up the phylum Chytridiomycota in the fungi kingdom." Heard of hydra? "A number of small, aquatic, free-living animals characterized by a simple, two-layered, cylindrical body." Need I go on? Okay, how about a virus? Is it a life form? Is in non-living? Or is it precisely between the two - a form that Hovind and his lying brethren claim does not exist?

Hovind: "One paramecium is more complex than the space shuttle"

But just like the space shuttle, it is made up of very simple parts, some of which bear a strong resemblance to even more primitive life forms than the paramecium.

It is rather unfortunate for Hovind that he chose the paramecium for his example. The paramecium will occasionally reproduce by endomixis, a process involving total nuclear reorganization of individual organisms - something Hovind pretends does not exist, because it is proof of evolution!

The paramecium is a protozoan, which, as a member of the protista, is actually part of an entire kingdom of living things. This kingdom includes slime molds, which are single-celled organisms that are known to congregate at times of stress into a multi-cellular life form and carry on their sporing business in that fashion. The simple spontaneously generating the complex. Doesn't this fly in the face of the laws of thermodynamics, according to Hovind?!!!

At the level of protista, there is another kingdom called monera. The monera are prokaryotes, unlike the paramecium which is a eukaryote. The protista exhibit a nuclear envelope, mitochondria, and, in some forms, chloroplasts. The eukaryotes exhibit none of these, although some types do have photosynthetic membranes in place of the chloroplasts. In other words, there is evidence of evolution here! At some point in the past, something akin to a eukaryote ingested a bacterium which it could not then expel or digest. This bacterium enjoyed its environment so much that it thrived. This is apparently how the eukaryotes got their mitochondria and chloroplasts.

What Hovind (indeed every creationist) is too stupid to understand is that the ancestors were all in the past (duh - that's what ancestry means). Creationists are fond of picking an organism alive today and saying that it didn't evolve into something else alive today. Well it is so nice to hear them agreeing with the evolutionists! Of course present living organisms didn't evolve into present living organisms. No evolutionist ever said they did. What evolutionists say is that living things today had common ancestors. This is why you have to look into the past to find ancestors - you cannot look in the present, except as a rough guide to what to look for in the past.

Hovind: "The DNA found in you body is also extremely complex. Because it is smaller does not mean it is simpler."

Lie #108. Four bases, sugar, phosphate; how much simpler can it be? If god made DNA from scratch, perfectly, how come there is so much duplication and junk in it? Evolution explains this completely - it's precisely what you would expect to find if we evolved. The creationist camp can only explain it by their god's incompetence.

Hovind: "Maybe you work with computers in your line of work. Imagine this, take those forty Grand Canyons full of books, and condense them into software, and when you are done the software must fit into two tablespoons. Ah, God did it, and it reproduces itself! Do you know what the odds are of that happening by random chance? The odds are 1 x 10119,000. That is a big number, since there are only 1041 electrons in the known universe.

Lie #109. There are 10^41 (10 raised to the power of 41 - i.e. a 1 followed by 41 zeroes) atoms in all the living things on Earth. Obviously Hovind stole this figure from some other creationist and completely misunderstood it. There are 10^80 electrons, protons and neutrons in the universe (obviously no one counted these - it's a kind of guesstimate), so Hovind is way, way, way out on this one. So much for his repeated claims of being a science teacher. For all his hatred of the scientific method, he sure likes to steal scientists' work whenever he can, doesn't he? If this figure of 10^41 had been quoted as something in favor of evolution, he would have called it a lie and tried to destroy it, but because it doesn't say that - it says something he can use to pump up his position, then he swallows it whole. The man makes a science out of rank stupidity.

Hovind: "Neither will you get DNA to arrive by random chance. It just did not happen."

No it didn't - there was nothing random about it. Chemicals do not intermix and form compounds randomly - they adhere to strict rules. If it were not so, water could turn into wine randomly, and Hovind's god would be robbed of another miracle.

Hovind: "Another argument that the evolutionists give that I just love is: Boys and girls, we can prove evolution because we can arrange these animals in order and prove their common ancestors."

Lie #110. What evolution says, is that according to the evidence, these animals evolved from earlier, similar animals.

Finding a series of them in ever younger rock strata does not absolutely prove anything, but if these animals are found in a series of strata, and have similar, but changing anatomies, then what is more likely? Is it most likely that they evolved from one another by means of accumulating small and ultimately beneficial changes over a period of many years? Or is it more likely that they were created all at once, over a period of a few days, and then a worldwide flood, which is scientifically impossible and which left no evidence, managed to magically sort millions of different and unrelated animals and plants into layers in such a way that it gives every reasonable appearance of them all having evolved from earlier forms, in a pattern which matches almost precisely the genetic information we are gathering from animals living today? Your call.

Hovind: "Just because they can be arranged in some predetermined order does not prove that is the way that it happened."

I could say this about the books of the Bible! So what Hovind is saying is that the English word 'procrastination', which is usually understood to mean the act of putting off something until tomorrow, has no relationship whatsoever with the Latin word 'cras', which means, 'tomorrow'? Is Hovind saying that the sun has no relationship whatsoever to the heat we feel on a warm summer's day - it is just coincidence that the sun happens to be out when it's hot? The rain we feel when a cold front comes through has nothing whatsoever to do with the water evaporating from the ocean downwind of us - the proximity of the two are a mere coincidence?

Hovind: "If I die, and I am buried on top of a hamster, does that prove thats my grandpa?"

No - try a snake. Hamsters are much too nice to have given rise to Kent Hovind.

Hovind: "Take, for instance, the horse theory. They have taken critters from all over the world, South America, Europe, and Asia, and put them all together in a predetermined idea. They have already decided to start off with the smallest to the largest animals. That is not the way they are found. They find them in all kinds of different layers...The eohippus is nothing more than the hyrax running around South America today....God created the horses."

. Lie #111. Hovind again admits to evolution! Actually the correct name for eohippus is...hyracotherium - which is no doubt why this numb skull Hovind made the mistake of thinking it is pretty much a hyrax. The hyrax looks somewhat like a groundhog. It is about the size of a rabbit, but seems to be related according to internal anatomy to both elephants and...horses!.

Hyraxes have virtually no tail, but have toes on their feet (the same number in the same place as hyracotherium!) which are very well adapted to climbing steep rocks and trees. 'Eohippus' was about the size of a medium dog, and adapted to running. If Hovind can admit that eohippus can, over the course of 4,000 years, have evolved into something looking like a rodent that feeds on insects, lizards, eggs, berries and other plant material, then why cannot something akin to a chimpanzee evolve into a human? The chimpanzee, after all, shares with humans 99.6% of our active DNA. I would love to know what scientifically proven mechanism it was that allowed the former but prohibited the latter.

As to the order of discovery, yes, the horse fossils were not found (i.e. discovered) in the order they are arrayed to show evolution - but they _are_ arrayed in the order of their appearance in the fossil record. For Hovind to weasel his way around this by his inaccurate portrayal is deceitful at best, but it is the only way he can cast doubt on this.

The chain of horse evolution is an example. No one is claiming that every single specimen in this lineage gave rise to every subsequent specimen, but in terms of development, the animals grew larger (this is not a guaranteed facet of evolution, by the way), and their toes dwindled from four on the floor, to three and a splint, to three and a tiny splint, to one and two splints, to one and two tiny splints which is what today's horses have. Either this is a sequence of evolution, or god just absolutely could not get those critters perfect, could he?

By the way - the hyrax is not found in South America, but in the Middle East. It is what is referred to in the Bible as a coney. So if Hovind is right, not only did eohippus have to shrink to rabbit size in 4,000 years, it had to run all the way across the Atlantic in the process....

Hovind: "I was in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, Rush Limbaughs home town..."

Nothing to boast about....

Hovind: "...I do a lot of debates. I win every time I believe..."

There's nothing like a humble man...and Hovind is nothing like a humble man.

Hovind: "...These university professors' entire argument was this: Boys and girls, we can prove evolution because of amino acid sequencing inside cytochrome C."

Once again it does not, in and of itself, prove evolution, but it is very hard to explain, if you think some god, in six days, created 60 kinds just 6,000 years ago...wait a minute - six, six, six...hmm - could satan have written Genesis just to turn people away from god's plan to have us learn the details of our creation by evolution?!!

Seriously now, it is hard to understand how it came to be that animals long understood to be related (from the fossil record and comparative anatomy) have similar DNA and amino acid sequences unless those very sequences give rise to varying anatomies and species. Why did god do this? From the evolutionist point of view, there is nothing to explain - it is a natural and perfectly reasonable (and even predictable) consequence of genetic evolution.

Let's look at the cytochrome C evidence, shall we? Cytochromes play an essential role in transporting chemical energy in both plant and animal cells. Interesting that we all have them, if there is no evolution, isn't it? Cytochrome C consists of about 100 amino acids. Here is a sequence comparison of how many of that hundred differ (in other species) from humans:

Organism ------------- # different from humans
Rhesus monkey ------- 1
Dog ------------------ 11
Rattlesnake ----------- 14
Bullfrog --------------- 18
Tuna ------------------ 21
Silkworm ------------- 31
Wheat ---------------- 43
Yeast ----------------- 45

Hovind: "Did you know that you can look at the chart and the only difference between a man and a duck is 11 percent in the amino acid sequencing. We only missed being a duck by 11 percent. Thats close man! We only missed being a rattlesnake by 14 percent."

Once again, (apart from seemingly confusing a duck and a dog) Hovind is misleading you. This is one amino acid sequence. If all you were is one amino acid sequence, then Hovind might have a point, but there is much more to an organism and its relatedness (or non-relatedness) to others than the sequence of one set of amino acids. This is a deceitful thing creationists are expert at - remove one piece from the framework and pretend that it, in isolation, equals evolution. Destroy it with lies, and you have overturned evolution. Well, it doesn't work that way and this is why creationism stands whining hopelessly at the door of science like a hungry dog instead of hammering down that door with published scientific papers refuting evolution.

Hovind: "Evolution is a religion. It is not a science."

This is lie #2 revisited, so I won't count it again, but if this is the case, then I want Hovind and all the other morons who chant this mantra to detail what the religious traits are. Where is the hierarchy of clergy? Where are the churches? Where are the evangelical evolutionists touring the country at their flock's expense, preaching evolution and trying to get it into the churches? Where is the unprovable mythology? What are the holy scriptures of evolution? Where are the religious relics? Where do people meet to worship? To which god do they pray?

Hovind: "How many things have to be wrong on the car to make it not run? Any one of thousands, like not having your keys, or not having any gas, or not having any oil or letting your wife drive it first. A lot of things will cause your car not to run...If I gave you one tire, a running board, a frame, a steering wheel, and a windshield wiper, and said, Okay, take off. Head for Dallas. Youre not going to make it. Its just too complex. Im sorry you had better start over."

Yet another pathetic attempt to equate the supposed complexity of living things, for which there is no evidence of intelligence design whatsoever, with an obviously human artifact. Well let's run with it! Way, way back in the, say, eighteenth century, did someone suddenly make a car out of nothing? No - it didn't happen. Did they say, let's make a car, but we'll work up to it with a tire, a running board, a frame, a steering wheel, and a windshield wiper? No - it didn't happen, so where is the logic to this comparison? The way a car arrived, was via a wheel, a carriage, a steam engine, a simple gas engine and eventually, a modern vehicle. In other words, it evolved!

Did any of these stages prove worthless in and of itself? What was the use of a wheel without an interstate highway? What was the point of a carriage? How on Earth did it get from place to place without a motor? What was the use of a (steam) motor with no gasoline to run it? Did they give up on it because it had no gas engine, no roof, no rubber tires, no windshield? No, they built the modern car in steady stages, each appropriate to the time and place, and eventually, with demonstrably little far-sighted planning, arrived at the thing we have today.

Why is it that creationists ignore this comparison when talking about evolution? Why is it that creationists can so readily ask what use is half a wing, but never ask what use is a two wheeled vehicle? Obviously because they are liars and they do not want you to know they are liars, so they ask you not to think beyond their simple, kindergarten comparisons. In fact, if you are going to follow their religion, do not think at all - just join the flock.