The apple doesn't fall

It seems Hovind Jr. has been out beating his straw horse recently. There's a few gems in this article that are worth going into:

Hovind said that evolutionists believe that by adding energy (which assumes the universe is an open system into which energy can be added), the Second Law of Thermodynamics can be overcome. However, Hovind pointed out, the universe is a "closed system," and further, adding energy is always destructive without a complex mechanism to harness the energy. He cited examples of the sun's destructive effects on your house, you car's paint, and other materials. According to Hovind, chlorophyll is the only exception, using light to synthesize carbohydrates.

There's a lot of problems with this. First off, there's no assumption that the universe is an open system. In fact, quantum physics has shown things pop in and out of existance all the time (but everything averages out so there doesn't appear to be any difference on any scale we can readily observe).

However, even if that weren't true, you don't need to assume the universe is open to make the 2nd law work. Assuming a closed universe, the 2nd law is upheld perfectly, assuming you're using the right 2nd law and not the BS layman's definition that creationists use.

The funny thing is that the last sentence shows that Hovind is aware of one of the ways that the 2nd law can be "violated", although I doubt he's smart enough to understand why. It's perfectly true that the sun's effects induce plants to make "more ordered" chemicals. Or, using real science words, decreasing the entropy within the plant. Normally, entropy should increase, but since, when you take the sun and plant in the same system, the total entropy does increase, there is no violation.

Thus, the 2nd law works perfectly dispite Hovind's claims otherwise.

He also shows that he doesn't understand his population growth history:

One of the inconsistencies in evolution theory which Hovind pointed out was that of population. Hovind drew attention to a study which said that even though the current rate of population growth is 1.7%, if you assumed an extremely modest growth rate of .01% for the past 1 million years, you would end up with a current world population represented by the number 1 followed by 43 zeros.

There's nothing to suggest that population growth has in any way been constant. Additionally, he's just happening to ignore plagues that wiped out more than half the worlds population repeatedly. Perhaps if he bothered to include all the factors in his equation he would come up with some better results.

I also like this bit:

He said he got into this work full time after completing college

Emphasis added.

I wonder if he got his degree the same way daddy did: from a diploma mill.