Hi Faith,
I am very curious. How much of Kent Hovind's materials have you actually seen for yourself?
http://evolution.no-ip.net/seminar1.asp
This link looks to still work. I would be curious to see what you think of him given that may not have been exposed to much Hovind before. There are some people who come in here who either became YECs because of Hovind or use a lot of his work as their primary argument for a YE.
is it possible the guy (Hovind) is at least sincere
IMO there is no way this is possible unless he seriously has some kind of mental disease. I am not trying to just attack the man because I disagree with him. I sincerely believe he is nothing but a classic snake-oil swindler who preys on honest, innocent, gullable, and ill informed Christians.
My biggest reason for thinking this is that he still to this day uses "evidence" that is so far out of left field that to continue to use it only shows that he does not care about telling the truth.
If you go out and preach that the sky is orange and honestly believe it is so. When you finally are told and shown that they sky is blue yet continue to preach that it is orange there is no way to avoid the fact that you are lying.
Combine that with my impression that most of his seminars have that "used care salesman/pyramid scheme/rapid fire handy-dandy-mixer-dicer" look and feel, I would hope that most YECs would at least disown him in favor of the more legitimate YEC resources like AIG and ICR that are at least capable of abandoning arguments that are so long refuted as to be rediculous.
I would love to join a thread on Hovind if you are interested in discussing this further.
Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)