If you don’t remember Kent Hovind, it might be because you’ve come into the atheism scene a little late. He’s currently in jail for failing to pay taxes on a number of his enterprises, including a religiously themed amusement park called “Dinosaur Adventure Playland“. This bastion to ignorance features not only depictions of humans and dinosaurs co-existing, but also a replica of the Loch Ness Monster. It’s to be expected when your “scientific” claim is these animals lived during the dawn of man some 6 millennia ago, and a few are still alive today.

Kent’s “education” includes a doctorate from a diploma farm that fancies itself a University. His hilariously unoriginal, grammatical nightmare dissertation has been the subject of some scrutiny. When Wikileaks obtained a copy of it from Patriot Bible University, they denied it was the completed version, and since then neither Patriot or Hovind have responded to critics demanding to see his thesis. I suspect some of this zeal may have partially to do with the fact that he insists on being listed as “Dr. Hovind” in the phone book. I imagine it’s insulting to anyone who actually bothered to get the real deal.

If you’re wondering about his conviction, it was a result of his fringe beliefs taxes are unconstitutional and therefore wrong. It didn’t even seem to matter to him that all he needed to do was “play ball” and bother to register as a church, thereby avoiding this pesky tax nonsense. Nope, he chose instead to declare total autonomy from the United States, and when the government came knocking on the door asking where their cut of the bread was, Hovind claimed the various enterprises were the property of God, and therefore exempt. This novel defense would later secure the guy 10 years in jail.

What I find hilarious about the whole thing is even in creationism circles, Hovind is considered a total hack. Answers in Genesis – the same brilliant minds that brought you the Creation Museum – thinks his arguments are so bad they’re actually harmful to “the cause”. It’s a nice reminder that creationism nonsense – mainly fueled by religious evangelicals – still comes loaded with all the divisive trappings of theology. There’s no unity there. Even Ken Ham, who started AIG in the US, was forced out of the parent organization in Australia. These Young-Earth Creationists are similarly vilified by Old-Earth Creationists who feel “the cause” is disservice by such literal interpretations of scripture. See the trend here?