65 Facts About Kent Hovind

Kent E Hovind was born on January 15,1953 and is an American Christian fundamentalist evangelist and convicted tax evader.

Kent Hovind established Creation Science Evangelism in 1989 and Dinosaur Adventure Land in 2001 in Pensacola, Florida.

Kent Hovind frequently spoke on Young Earth creationism in schools, churches, debates, and on radio and television broadcasts.

In September 2021, Kent Hovind was convicted of domestic violence against his estranged wife.

At the age of 16, Kent Hovind became a born-again Christian within the Independent Fundamental Baptist church.

Kent Hovind entered Illinois Central College and then transferred to the unaccredited Midwestern Baptist College in 1972, attaining a Bachelor of Religious Education in 1974.

Kent Hovind married his wife Jo in 1973 and they had three children between 1977 and 1979.

Between 1975 and 1988, Kent Hovind served as an assistant pastor and teacher at three private Baptist schools, including one he started.

In 1998, Kent Hovind created his Dr Dino web site and began producing articles and selling video tapes, books, and fossil replicas.

In 1999, his son Eric Kent Hovind began traveling to present his arguments and seminars.

In 1988 and 1991 respectively, Kent Hovind received a master's degree and doctorate in Christian Education through correspondence from Patriot University, then in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Karen Bartelt, an organic chemistry professor who debated Kent Hovind, examined Kent Hovind's dissertation and found it is incomplete, contains numerous spelling errors, lacks references, shows flawed reasoning, and states that it does not present any original research.

Kent Hovind established Creation Science Evangelism in 1989 to evangelize and teach creationism.

In 2003, with the aid of Glenn Stoll, Kent Hovind set up a series of entities starting with "an unincorporated association of pure trust" on May 13, under which a corporation sole and several ministerial trusts were established starting on May 23.

Kent Hovind is associated with the Unregistered Baptist Fellowship, a loosely affiliated group of roughly 100 churches which share a "theology of Christian resistance" to civil governments.

The UBF holds that governmental authority stops "at the threshold of the church", and Kent Hovind has likened his ministry's status to that of the Vatican City State.

Kent Hovind was convicted of 58 felony counts in November 2006 and sentenced to ten years in prison in January 2007; Eric Kent Hovind took over Creation Science Evangelism.

In 2001, Kent Hovind started Dinosaur Adventure Land, a young Earth creationist theme park located behind Kent Hovind's home in Pensacola.

Eric Kent Hovind kept the park and CSE operating throughout 2008, but in July 2009, a judge allowed the government seizure to proceed.

Kent Hovind presented a version of young Earth creationism he calls the "Kent Hovind Theory" in lectures and in the book Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution.

The Kent Hovind Theory is entirely rejected in the scientific community, and its plausibility has even been criticized by other young Earth creationists.

In Kent Hovind's narrative, dinosaurs and humans coexisted and Tyrannosaurus rex was a vegetarian prior to the fall of man.

Where Jews interpret the Hebrew through Talmud and Midrash, Kent Hovind relies on a direct reading of English.

Kent Hovind contends that "Darwinism" produced "Communism, Socialism, Nazism, abortion, liberalism and the New Age Movement".

Kent Hovind blamed the forced Cherokee resettlement on a belief in evolution, although the Trail of Tears preceded On the Origin of Species, the book which first presents the theory of evolution by natural selection, by roughly two decades.

Kent Hovind maintains that biology textbooks are lying in order to brainwash youth.

In 1993, Kent Hovind announced that he would debate the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, who had a longstanding opposition to debating Creationists and had turned down numerous challenges.

Kent Hovind has repeatedly declined offers for written debates where his claims would be scrutinized by scientists, including his decline of a debate offer from Dave Thomas.

In 1990, Kent Hovind made a $10,000 offer to anyone who could meet a set of requirements he said would prove evolution, and he later raised the amount to $250,000.

The premises of Kent Hovind's offer have been rejected both by scientists and fellow creationists as fundamentally flawed.

Kent Hovind was criticized for his involvement with Arkansas state Representative Jim Holt's Anti-Evolution Bill in 2001.

Kent Hovind believes that the King James Version is the most accurate English-language Bible translation.

Kent Hovind has made controversial remarks regarding conspiracies, science, creation, equal rights, religion, and government.

Kent Hovind has promoted several conspiracy theories about the US government.

Kent Hovind claims that the cyanide-releasing compound laetrile is a "cancer cure" which the US government is conspiring to suppress and that diseases including HIV, Gulf war syndrome, Crohn's colitis, and rheumatoid arthritis and Alzheimer's were engineered by "the money masters and governments of the world" for the purpose of global economic domination.

Kent Hovind has denounced democracy as "evil and contrary to God's law", and called global warming a communist conspiracy.

On his website, Kent Hovind associated the UPC bar code with the Mark of the Beast, and wrote that there were reports of people paying for groceries by having their hands scanned in 1999.

On September 13,2002, Kent Hovind was charged with failure to observe county zoning regulations for Dinosaur Adventure Land, a misdemeanor.

Kent Hovind argued he did not need a permit due to the nature of the building, but after a 5-year court battle over the $50 building permit, on June 5,2006, Kent Hovind pleaded nolo contendere as charged to three counts: constructing a building without a permit, refusing to sign a citation, and violating the county building code.

Kent Hovind was originally reported to the Internal Revenue Service by Pensacola Christian College senior vice President Rebekah Horton in the mid-1990s, after she learned of Kent Hovind's anti-tax stand.

Kent Hovind's organization had neither business licenses nor tax-exempt status, nor was it considered a church by people who worked there.

The ministry's organizational structure was described by the United States Tax Court as appearing to be "based on various questionable trust documents purchased from Glen Stoll, a known promoter of tax avoidance schemes", leading the Court to conclude that Kent Hovind used these trust documents as well as other fraudulent means to conceal the ownership and control of his activities and properties.

However, Kent Hovind derived "substantial revenue" from these activities that appeared to be "income to [him] personally".

On March 1,1996, Kent Hovind filed a Chapter 13 bankruptcy petition to avoid paying federal income taxes, claiming he was not a citizen of the United States and that he did not earn income.

Kent Hovind claimed that as a minister, everything he owned belonged to God and he was not subject to paying taxes for doing God's work.

In 2002, Kent Hovind was again delinquent in paying his taxes, and unsuccessfully sued the IRS for harassment.

At various times, the government alleged that Kent Hovind had not filed personal US federal income tax returns for the years 1989 through 1997.

That day, Kent Hovind withdrew $70,000 from the CSE bank account, half in cash.

On July 11,2006, Kent Hovind was indicted on 58 counts in the District Court in Northern Florida in Pensacola.

Kent Hovind protested, arguing that he needed his passport to continue his evangelism work, and that "thousands and thousands" were waiting to hear him preach in South Africa the following month.

Kent Hovind hoped to convince a jury that his amusement park admission and merchandise sales, over $5 million from 1999 through March 2004, belonged to God and could not be taxed.

IRS agents told the court how Kent Hovind had attempted "bullying tactics" and had sued the government three times to pressure them to stop investigating.

On January 19,2007, Kent Hovind was sentenced to ten years in prison with three years' probation and ordered to pay the federal government restitution of over $600,000.

On June 29,2007, Jo Kent Hovind was sentenced to one year of imprisonment, three years of supervision upon release and fined $8,000.

Kent Hovind appealed the amount of his 2006 US Tax Court ruling on personal income taxes to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, but on July 2,2007, a three-judge panel denied the appeal, finding that Kent Hovind had failed to raise the issue at the appropriate time.

In November 2010, Kent Hovind filed a motion in US District Court Northern District of Florida claiming the prosecution and defense erred at various stages of the case; it was denied the following May It was one of at least six motions to dismiss he filed that year on various procedural or constitutional grounds.

In July 2015, Kent Hovind was released to home confinement for roughly one month to finish his prison sentence for his 2006 conviction.

Almost a year after his release, Kent Hovind said he would continue to fight his conviction and the property seizure.

In October 2019, Kent Hovind filed a motion to vacate in the trial court without obtaining the required certification from the appellate court; the motion was dismissed, summarily.

On October 21,2014, Kent Hovind was indicted by a federal grand jury in Pensacola, Florida, on two counts of mail fraud, one count of conspiracy with Paul John Hansen to commit mail fraud, and one count of criminal contempt for interfering with the sale of Pensacola properties Kent Hovind was forced to forfeit as a result of the 2006 case.

On March 12,2015, Kent Hovind was found guilty on one count of criminal contempt, Hansen on two counts of criminal contempt, and the jury was hung on the remaining charges.

Second, the Court rendered a judgment of acquittal on the criminal contempt charge on which Kent Hovind had been found guilty by the jury.

On that point, the Court concluded that in the specific order that Kent Hovind had been found guilty of violating, there was no actual language that prohibited Kent Hovind from doing anything.

Kent Hovind was arrested in Alabama on July 30,2021, for allegedly throwing his estranged wife, Cindi Lincoln, to the ground in October 2020.

Kent Hovind has stated that she had been threatened by one of Hovind's associates.