Jo Hovind Update
Kent Hovind’s site reports that his wife Jo will be sentenced tomorrow, Jun. 29, at 9:00 a.m. I guess we’ll see what happens.
AIG’s Creation Museum
I’ve finally written up my visit to the Creation Museum.
Drawing the Wrong Conclusion from Giant Bacteria
DaveScot has an article over at Casa Dembski about Epulopiscium fishelsoni. Judging by the article that he links to (from the Journal of Bacteriology, 1998), this bacterium looks like a pretty interesting beastie: it changes size by up to 20 times. That’s individual cells, not variation in a population: a single E. fishelsoni can grow to become 10-20 times larger than it was some hours ago. Not only that, but at its largest, it’s over half a millimeter long, making it visible to the naked eye.
But what interests DaveScot is the size of its genome: about 1 trillion base pairs, more than 300 times as much as in humans, which he evidently takes to be evidence for intelligent design. Unfortunately, to do so he must ignore the conclusions of the very paper he cites.
“But It’s Still Just an X!”
I realize that “DaveScot says something incredibly boneheaded” is about as newsworthy as “dog bites man”, “Pope is Catholic”, and “Hollywood remake not as good as original”, but this time I couldn’t resist.
Every time someone tries to demonstrate evolution by pointing to one of the numerous instances when new species have arisen through evolution, e.g., fruit flies speciating into two distinct species in the lab, you can bet that the creationists will say, “but they’re still fruit flies!” This raises the question of just how much change creationists will accept as microevolution.
Getting Information from Creationists Is Like Pulling Teeth
Some of you may remember threads on time.com and Pharyngula where Egnor challenged “Darwinists” to say “how much new information can Darwinian mechanisms generate?”
For completeness, you should read those threads, but the summary is that when people tried to answer his question, e.g., by showing that point mutations increase the Shannon information of the genome, or pointing at the literature for gene duplication, Egnor said that wasn’t what he meant by “biologically meaningful information” and refused to provide a definition.
On the Mar. 26, 2007 episode of the ID the Future podcast, Casey Luskin interviewed Michael Egnor. They talked about these discussions. Egnor accused Darwinists of being angry and implied that they were unsure of the soundness of their own theory (start listening at 12:42, if you care).
Then (around 14:16), Egnor said
I, for example, if a Darwinist approaches me, and asks me politely about Intelligent design, I’m delighted to talk about it!
I took this as an invitation to ask him to clarify his remarks.
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Hovind on Hold
The Pensacola News Journal reports:
An appeal by Pensacola creationist Kent Hovind and his wife, Jo Hovind, seeking acquittal on tax-fraud charges was denied.
U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers upheld the Hovinds’ November 2006 conviction on 44 counts of bank-structuring — the withdrawal of bank funds under the $10,000 threshold that triggers bank reports to the Internal Revenue Service.
During the trial, prosecutors presented evidence that showed the couple routinely withdrew $9,500 and $9,600, from their bank.
In November, a jury found Kent Hovind guilty on 58 federal counts, including failure to pay $845,000 in employee-related taxes. In January, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Jo Hovind was convicted of 44 counts of evading bank-reporting requirements. Her sentencing was delayed pending the appeal and should soon be set.
Is anyone surprised by this? If so, I have some lovely oceanfront property in Oklahoma to sell you. As I recall, Hovind started by screwing with the judge, by pleading “Subornation of false muster”, whatever that means; then hired a lawyer with a long history of involvement with tax evasion; then didn’t even mount a defense.
And now, like a kid who has finally realized that there’s only so much he can get away with before mommy gets mad and really punishes him, he wants a mulligan.
Allow me to predict that he’ll continue claiming that he hasn’t done anything wrong (unless he thinks that repentance will play well with the parole board); he’ll rationalize his problems by saying that God wants him in prison, spreading the Word™ through his prison ministry; and his followers will continue to defend him.
(Thanks to for the headline. Better than what I could come up with: “God to Hovind: HA-ha!”)
More Godless Numbers
Newsweek reports the results of a religious identification survey they recently conducted. The bits of interest to me are:
- 91% of Americans “believe in God”.
- 82% identify themselves as Christian.
- 10% have “no religion”.
- 6% “don’t believe in a God at all”.
- 3% “self-identifies as atheist”
Discovery Institute Doesn’t Think God Loves Them Enough
The Mar. 16 episode of Intelligent Design the Future has this blurb:
On this episode of ID The Future CSC Fellow, Dr. Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler asks, “does Darwinism devalues human life?” Some Darwinists deny that Darwinism has any ethical implications at all. In this short clip, Dr. Weikart looks at comments from Darwinists about the animal ancestry of humans and shows how that blurred the distinction between the animal kingdom and humanity, and negates the idea of human exceptionalism.
(Transcribed from the MP3 file, in case you notice differences between this and what’s on the episode web page.)
Read that last sentence, and then look at the title of the episode:
Does Darwinism Devalue Human Life?
Conservapedia Now Slightly Less Fun
Readers of talk.origins may remember Ray Martinez, a particularly dense and combative young-earth creationist. I’d been having fun this past week or so reading his antics at Conservapedia.
Hovind Figures Out the Whole “Defense” Thing
Kent and Jo Hovind were back in the news last week:
Kent and Jo Hovind were back in federal court this week seeking acquittal on charges of bank structuring.
The couple’s attorneys argued there was no intent to defraud the government by making large deposits just under the $10,000 threshold that triggers bank-reporting requirements.
I can’t help wondering why they didn’t make these arguments the last time they were in court. It could have saved everyone a world of bother.
Frankly, Hovind comes across as a child who’s finally learned out that mommy really means it this time.
The article also notes:
He remains in the Escambia County Jail awaiting transfer.
Hurm. I’d’ve thought the state of Florida would’ve managed to transfer him by now.
A date for Jo Hovind’s sentencing has been delayed pending a ruling by U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers on the request for acquittal on the bank structuring conviction.
No date has been set for her ruling.
This was originally set for this coming Thursday, but I guess it’s been postponed.