Hovind: Lies in the Textbook

From what I just read on the Wiki article, the ambiguity isn't that they don't know if plasma is a gas or not - it's that, at high temperatures and pressures, gases and liquids are indistiguishable.And of course, when you have only a few atoms - less than several thousand - they exist in absolutely no state at all. This is because the states of matter are not some kind of fundamental organizing principle, but rather ambiguous epiphenomena that emerge from a system containing a sufficient number of atoms.So, no matter how many "states" there are, the number is functionally meaningless, be it 3 or any other number; and so should certainly not be taken as an instance of some kind of "magic number", as I sense Hovind was trying to do.

Right, but he's "keeping it simple" so that his audience will believe things about the universe that simply aren't true. Remember that Hovind's point is that a lot of scientists are just plain wrong. Being wrong about science himself undercuts that point.The universe is not a simple place, Buz. There's nothing to be gained, and much to be lost, by glossing over that complexity to make your point more compelling to an audience of laity. Hovind needs to raise his standards. His audience will follow.