Boy, this is not turning out to be a good week for the creationists. Now the famous museum of Kent Hovind, aka Dr. Dino, has been closed. Read “Park could face extinction” in the Pensacola News:
It may have been built with heavenly intentions, but a judge has ruled that the creationism theme park known as Dinosaur Adventure Land still must obey earthly laws. […]
Owners of the park, which shows how dinosaurs may have roamed the Earth just a few thousand years ago, did not obtain a building permit before constructing the building in 2002. They have argued in and out of court that it violates their “deeply held” religious beliefs, and that the church-run facility does not have to obtain permits.
After almost four years of litigation, the judge disagreed and said the county has the authority to close the building until the owners comply with regulations.
The judge also fined two church leaders $500 each per day for every day the building is used or occupied. If church officials continue to refuse to comply with local ordinances, the judge may decide that the building can be razed, Allen’s ruling said.
County commissioners showed no sympathy to members of the Creation Science Evangelism ministry who spoke out Thursday night at a commission meeting about the county’s actions.
“Scripture also says ‘Render unto Caesar what Caesar demands.’ And right now, Caesar demands a building permit,” County Commission Chairman Mike Whitehead said.
Be sure to check out the pictures. Hat tip to Lenny Flank.
Wow.
I don’t think there’s any possible response to that which would be funnier than the article itself.
OH man I wanted to go and play with the friendly dinosaurs.……
This is off-topic. Hope nobody minds too much. I saw a story either on Panda’s Thumb or on one of the blogs linked to it a few days ago about a story of two doors, and the choices made about them. One respondent suggested something to do with their choice being sitting and watching what goes on, drink in hand. It was beautiful. A friend of mine passed away a couple of days ago, and it actually seemed like a great epitath. I’d like to find the quote and send it to her husband.
Can anybody help with this? Thanks in advance.
our first mission, CBEB?
GvlGeologist, condolences on the loss of your friend. The story you’re looking for is http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/[…]03/doors.php
Back to the subject at hand…the stegosaurus fossil in that article looks designed to me, and it’s probably less than 6,000 years old.
GvlGeologist, is this what you were looking for? It doesn’t exactly match your description, but it’s kind of close.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/[…]omment-64238
chaos_engineer:
Many thanks. I feel a little unclean posting that request in the same posting about… yecch… Dino Adventure Land.
On the other hand, she was a geologist, and this would probably make her laugh her head off.
Off topic, for GvlGeologist; I think you want Doors at Pharyngula, and possibly this comment by Jim.
Back on topic for Hovind: BWAAHAHAHA.
This isn’t funny. If the park closes it could permanently damage kids education prospects!
I have to admit, the Stegosaurus is kinda cool. I think the NCSE should buy it when it gets auctioned off along with everything else that Hovind owns in order to pay his back taxes.
BTW, the IRS raid the article refers to was one of the first things I ever blogged here. I can’t believe it’s been two years already…
on perhaps a more positive dino museum note:
http://www.physorg.com/news63641065.html
world’s biggest T Rex skull?
Speaking of Hovind’s IRS problems:
Go to: http://www.ustaxcourt.gov/UstcDockI[…]p/CaseNo.asp Use the following Docket Number: 011894-05L The trial begins April 24.
Ever notice how the separation of church and state is a nuisance when it comes to issues like prayer or creationism in schools and Ten Commandments displays in courthouses, but when it comes to their own property, suddenly it’s something deeply precious and important.
Hmm…
Today April 6, the EFF finally got to submit their evidence for the existence of an indiscriminate NSA wiretapping program to a court…
April 14, SCO is almost certainly going to get 2/3 of their Linux case tossed out..
Kent Hovind’s trial for tax evasion starts April 24…
Looks like this is a good month for the American judiciary.
wow wonder what the creos think of this..will we see smears of the officials involved or will they finally wash their hands of an embarrassment
That stegasaurus looks like it’s made out of cardboard. Hmmm, perhaps it was the flood that killed them: they all got soggy and turned into a mushy brown mess.
Bob
If you want to see something funnier than the newspaper article, go to the museum website http://www.dinosauradventureland.com/ and click on “Click Here to Read An Important Message about Dinosaur Adventure Land”
The best part is how he lists 5 or 6 ways that this situation could be speedily resolved. Of course, he forgets to mention that it could also be resolved if he just paid the stupid permit fee. One assumes that money is not an object since he also says that “DAL can move to a more God fearing county.” Any God fearing counties out there that don’t require building permits?
By following some links in the comments I came across a slurry of legal documents. Here is a peculiar one (#11 on the left). Kent Hovind is the declarant:
I’m guessing this is all a long way of explaining why Kent Hovind doesn’t want to pay taxes like the rest of us, but is he really trying to say he is a citizen of Florida, but not a citizen of the United States?
I’ve been checking up, on occasion, the IRS story. The key to understanding the IRS part was the term “raided.”
Examiners don’t raid. Criminal Investigation Department (CID) raids. It usually takes them two or three years to get to the fraud case. It can go faster, but it typically doesn’t. And when the IRS does raid, it’s almost certainly because they think they’ll win the fraud case based on an internal referral from a revenue agent who has examined the books and come to the point the agent believes there is criminal fraud.
LMAO! He’s not only a fool, he’s a tax protester! This is the common tax protesting screed and if uses his “not a citizen of the US” defense he will lose in Court as all of this has been handled HUNDREDS of times. I’m just surprised to see no mention of the highly confused US v Lloyd Long who won his CRIMINAL case because the Court found he was TOO STUPID to realize he’d messed up. But still lost his CIVIL trial and owed tons of taxes.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution defines the basis for United States citizenship, stating that “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The Fourteenth Amendment by its nature settles the question as it simultaneously establishes state and federal citizenship. Claims, like Hovind’s, that your are a “state only” resident are malarkey and have never won in the Courts:
O’Driscoll v. I.R.S., 1991 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9829, at *5-6 (E.D. Pa. 1991) - the court stated, “despite [taxpayer’s] linguistic gymnastics, he is a citizen of both the United States and Pennsylvania, and liable for federal taxes.
United States v. Sloan, 939 F.2d 499, 500 (7 th Cir. 1991), cert. denied, 502 U.S. 1060, reh’g denied, 503 U.S. 953 (1992) - the court affirmed a tax evasion conviction and rejected Sloan’s argument that the federal tax laws did not apply to him because he was a “freeborn, natural individual, a citizen of the State of Indiana, and a ‘master’ - not ‘servant’ - of his government.
United States v. Ward, 833 F.2d 1538, 1539 (11 th Cir. 1987), cert. denied, 485 U.S. 1022 (1988) - the court found Ward’s contention that he was not an “individual” located within the jurisdiction of the United States to be “utterly without merit” and affirmed his conviction for tax evasion.
United States v. Sileven, 985 F.2d 962 (8 th Cir. 1993) - the court rejected the argument that the district court lacked jurisdiction because the taxpayer was not a federal citizen as “plainly frivolous.
United States v. Gerads, 999 F.2d 1255, 1256 (8 th Cir. 1993) - the court rejected the Gerads’ contention that they were “not citizens of the United States, but rather ‘Free Citizens of the Republic of Minnesota’ and, consequently, not subject to taxation” and imposed sanctions “for bringing this frivolous appeal based on discredited, tax-protester arguments.
Solomon v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1993-509, 66 T.C.M. (CCH) 1201, 1202-03 (1993) - the court rejected Solomon’s argument that as an Illinois resident his income was from outside the United States, stating “[he] attempts to argue an absurd proposition, essentially that the State of Illinois is not part of the United States. His hope is that he will find some semantic technicality which will render him exempt from Federal income tax, which applies generally to all U.S. citizens and residents. [His] arguments are no more than stale tax protester contentions long dismissed summarily by this Court and all other courts which have heard such contentions.
Anyway, this is MY area of expertise. Hovind is going to go down and go down hard. He will lose. He will appeal. The appeal will be rejected. The IRS will seize everything and possibly jail him if they go criminal on the case.
“Scripture also says ‘Render unto Caesar what Caesar demands.’ And right now, Caesar demands a building permit.
That’s funny!
This story made my day! Wow thanks for the early morning laughs! Ain’t poetic justice sweet?
If Hovind or his confederate(s) give in and pay the permit fees, will the county simply walk away or does he continue to face civil or criminal charges for his actions in opening and operating an unpermitted facility? After having listened to Hovind in Dover, PA I am appalled at the amount of damage he is doing in promoting his brand of (religious) ignorance to the masses.
Haha!!
This made my morning a lot more hilarious. I always expected to see this place get in trouble for teaching misleading religious beliefs as facts.. but to see it shut down for such a stupid, easily-satisfied reason is way funnier. Man, I’m going to be giggling about this one all day.
The quote from Whitehead seals the deal. Hahaha, this is great.
I also was at the Dover, PA speaking engagement of Dr. Hovind. I was hoping to hear his ideas brought into appropriate light by anyone opposing his ideas. I was disappointed to not have an articulate person with a different view even ask a question. I am not sure if that is funny (in a nervous way) or just sad.
Wow, Bush being identified as the source of the CIA leak and Dinoland shut down, all in the same week. Suddenly things seem all right with the world.
This is all standard lunatic right-wing militia-type boilerplate.
According to the nutters, there exists such a thing as a “14th Amendment citizenship”, in which people are born citizens of the state they live in, but not citizens of the USA. Therefore, they argue, US laws (such as, oh, IRS taxes) don’t apply to them.
Hovind has also, in the past, argued that he doesn’t actually own any property or make any income, since God owns it all.
Hovind reminds me a LOT of Larry – a nutter with delusions of lawyerhood. (shrug)
Speaking of nutters with delusions of lawyerhood, here’s a tidbit about Hovind’s, uh “tax lawyer”:
Hi David:
Most scientists now know better than to challenge Hovind in a venue where he controls the audience and the setting. A debate is not a proper forum for discussion of scientific ideas, and despite several attempts, Hovind has never agreed to a published, written debate or dialog for good reason. He knows he would lose.
Did you notice the following things he said during the Dover seminar:
1. On both days one of his first slides warned the audience that people who disagree with his Bible science presentation (“scoffers and deluders”) should not be listened to lest they lead the “little children” away from the faith. Right there he has primed the audience to disbelieve any dissent to his message.
2. On at least two instances, he defined what an ‘ad homenim’ argument is and how it is used by atheists and evolutionists to attack him rather than his message. Yet when one person questioned why he has been charged with anti-semitism, his first response was to character assasinate one of his critics by mentioning his critic’s alleged “sordid” divorce and charges of child molestation. He then claimed that he could not be anti-semitic because he did not know what a semite was! If that is the way he responds to questions, I doubt an “articulate” person would get any satisfactory answer from Mr. Hovind.
3. He told as fact an old Polish joke I heard 35 years ago about the polish scientist who trained a frog to jump on command. When the scientist removed the frog’s legs, the scientist concluded the frog was deaf. He told this story as a factual example of how stupid some of the research scientists do can be.
4. He called multiple times for the audience to question why they, as citizens and taxpayers, could not demand the right to have their tax dollars used to teach what they wanted to their children yet he failed to mention that he has been charged with tax evasion by the government and has also renounced his US citizenship.
These are just a few of the non-scientific statements he made. (I particularly liked his statement equating Mr. Bush with Hitler and Stalin, but that is another story.) I, too, would like to see Mr. Hovind honestly address his critics, but he is too clever to put himself in that position.
He could always apply for a job in AIG’s new creation museum ! Apparently AIG has removed the article “Arguments we think creationists shouldn’t use” from their website. From what I can remember these were mostly Hovind’s:
http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/[…]slipping.htm
AIG’s attitude towards him seems to be softening. This from AIG UK’s Paul Taylor:
http://www.justsixdays.co.uk/bb/vie[…]pic.php?t=35
So you never know. He may resurface in another form !
Thanks for that, Kevin. Not that it won’t all come out in the trial, I’m sure.…
Thanks, Anton. Mr. Sampson managed to quite nicely lampoon himself, much in the fashion of He-Who-Will-Not-Stick-To-A-Name. I just called him on it.
Should I mention that in the ~150 year old Gaelic Bible I own, Mark 12:17 translates most closely to “Give to [Caesar] what [Caesar] has claimed, and give to God what God has claimed…”
Not that far off from “demands”, is it? As usual, different Bibles carry different meanings. In fact, of the four Bibles I or my wife own, none of them have the exact wording that Mr. Sampson gave, nor do any of them share exact wording (obviously, one is written in another language, so that immediately disqualifies it, but none of the other three use the exact words of another)
Disclaimer: the ownership of multiple Bibles should not be used to construe any current religious affiliations on my part, or lack thereof. They are family heirlooms or titles from our youth.
Looks like they gave stegasaurus the head of a carnivore. (i.e., carivores were vegetarians before the Fall)
Why is everyone so concerned about a dinosaur theme park in pensacola, FL? Is there really nothing else you could do with your life than post mean little things about a guy that will never read them?
Pal Joey:
But isn’t it ever so much meaner of you, Joey-Boy, to slip in the devastating little fact that Dino-Guy never learned to read under the pretense of “defending” him?
I can’t believe it, my co-worker just bought a car for $56452. Isn’t that crazy!
I can’t believe it, my co-worker just bought a car for $56452. Isn’t that crazy!
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