Barry Duke, the Angry Atheist

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A VISITOR to evangelist Kent Hovind’s Dinosaur Adventure Land (DAL) in Alabama brought a young Black kid to the tacky attraction and ended up sleeping with the boy in a bed provided by the man known as “Dr Dino.“

In a lengthy report about criminal activities and other dodgy goings-on at the “Darwin-free” DAL, Kelly Weill, writing for Yahoo! revealed that the visitor—Chris Jones—was a friend of Hovind who had been convicted of three charges of lewd acts with children.

In 2017, another visitor to the park—Billy Summers— questioned Hovind’s close friendship with Jones.

Hovind, who was jailed for 10 years in 2006 for tax related offences, explained that Jones was indeed a convicted child sex offender, but that the charges were “trumped up”, and that Jones had had “merely” been playing strip poker with under-age kids.

Summers was not convinced by Hovind’s explanation and made a YouTube video about his concerns. A furious Hovind called him and demanded the video’s removal.

Jones also called Summers, blaming his arrest on “the New World Order”, and downplaying his conviction.

Jones never explained why, during the game, one child noticed that his “dick was getting larger and you could see it through his pants.”

Summers’ video contributed to “a creeping awareness” of Jones’ past. By November 2019, when Jones made one of his visits to DAL, residents became uneasy.

Julie Shunk, Hovind’s then-secretary, recalled Hovind coming into her office and explaining that Jones was innocent but that people were “freaking out.”

Some grabbed their kids and fled.

Hovind’s third wife spoke out too

Hovind’s abused third wife, Cindi Lincoln, had “grave concerns about her new husband,” according Weill’s report. She spoke of a cover-up involving long-simmering allegations of drug use and paedophilia at DAL.

I discovered there was a coverup going on, and they tried to silence me. They had me shunned. And ultimately, basically, he just kept doing strange and mean things to me until, basically, I fled.

Hovind used a drowning death to spread Jesus around a hospital

Within two years of opening in 2018 the park, which does not have liability insurance, was the scene of a drowning accident.

In March 2020, a visiting family’s five young children were swimming in DAL’s pond, which doubles as the theme park’s baptism pool. One, a boy aged seven, was found unconscious and taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Shunk revealed that, instead of comforting the grieving family. Hovind began parading through the hospital, handing out biblical tracts and encouraging people to visit DAL.

Hovind didn’t dispute her account.

Yes, I probably did that. My business card has the plan of salvation. They’re actually gospel tracks [sic]. So I do that everywhere I go. I’m trying to get people saved. I’m an evangelist.

Hovind’s new video targets a group that barely exists

On February 1—my birthday—Hovind posted a YouTube video entitled “Wack an atheist Wednesday.“

Dressed in a white coat and wearing a stethoscope, the self-styled medic focused on the “Brights” movement, which barely exists.

Launched 20 years ago it failed to gain traction, and, thankfully, has has practically died out.

Atheists, proud of their godlessness, would rather stick their heads up a dead bear’s bum than try to hide behind that meaningless term, briefly adopted by Michael Shermer, founder and publisher of Skeptic Magazine.

In the year the movement was launched, Shermer had second thoughts and wrote:

The reaction was swift and merciless—almost no one, including and especially nonbelievers, agnostics, atheists, humanists, and free thinkers, liked the name, insisting that its elitist implications, along with the natural antonym ‘dim,’ would doom us as a movement.

The word “dim” certainly applies to Hovind. And to that you add “liar”, “con-artist”, “wife-beater” and “heartless bastard”.

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