Kent Hovind
Dr Kent Hovind (1953- ), the self-styled Dr Dino, is an American Young Earth Creationist evangelist who is currently offering USD $250,000 to anyone who can prove evolution "is the only possible way", although the offer is widely considered to be spurious.Hovind was formerly a high school teacher in private American Baptist schools.
While he uses the title "Doctor", many do not take this seriously, as he has a Ph.D. in "Christian Education" from the unaccredited correspondence school Patriot University (a known diploma mill).
Critics charge that Kent Hovind's sermons are a mix of pseudoscience, Christian Fundamentalism and conspiracy theories. Hovind considers the Bible the inerrant word of God and must be taken literally to its word, and because of this, all findings of science must be adapted so as to agree with scripture -- which he claims is a priori known to be truth. But, he claims that evolutionists also have a priori assumptions as well, namely that God does not exist (or at least not one that performed special Creation). He does however not take the Bible as literal as Flat Earth Creationists, who believe the Earth is (or at least was) flat because of their particular interpretation of the Bible. The reason for this, he says, is because the Bible talks about the 'circle of earth' in Isaiah chapter 22. This, he says, is evidence that the Bible describes a circular earth rather than a four-cornered flat earth. The references to the 'four-corners of the earth' are clearly parabolic, according to Hovind.
Hovind is mostly known for his debates with evolutionists. The best known contemporary evolutionists, Richard Dawkins and the late Stephen Jay Gould, have in the past refused to debate Hovind on the grounds that debate is not how science works and gives charlatans more of an advantage than systematic inquiry (see: scientific method). In science, they claim, it is not important who is the best rhetorician; rather, it is important who can come up with the theory which best fits the facts.
In Hovind's debates, he traditionally focuses on "discrediting" evolutionary theory rather than providing evidence for Creationism. He is regarded, even among many other Young Earth Creationists [1], as being crude in his argumentation. Needless to say, the vast majority of scientists, including creationists, do not take Hovind's work very seriously or agree with his interpretation of the facts.