Tuesday, April 09, 2013
Family Research Council Endorses Dishonesty or Stupidity
In a post entitled "President Endorses Intelligent Design!" he "quotes" Thomas Jefferson to the effect:
…the Theist, pointing to the heavens above, and to the earth beneath, and to the waters under the earth, asked if these did not proclaim a first cause, possessing intelligence and power; power in the production, and intelligence in the design, and constant preservation of the system; urged the palpable existence of final causes, that the eye was made to see, and the ear to hear, and not that we see because we have eyes, and hear because we have ears…... and claims:
In this letter, the former president, Thomas Jefferson, one of the leading scientific minds of his day, rejects the atheism of some of the French philosophes with whom he shared so many ideas. He ascribes to the Creator "power in the production, intelligence in the design, and constant preservation of the system…" [Emphasis in original]Really?
Here's the original, To John Adams, April 8, 1816, in which Jefferson is writing to John Adams about a certain Baron Grimm:
Did I know Baron Grimm while at Paris? Yes, most intimately. He was the pleasantest and most conversable member of the diplomatic corps while I was there; a man of good fancy, acuteness, irony, cunning and egoism. No heart, not much of any science, yet enough of every one to speak its language; his forte was belles-lettres, painting and sculpture. ...Clearly (to anyone with at least as much honesty as intelligence), Jefferson is not "endorsing" ID, he is comparing two schools of thought, atheist and theist. His sympathy for "traditional" theism can be seen in his description of "fabricated Christianity" in the thrall of pagan priests.
Although I never heard Grimm express the opinion directly, yet I always supposed him to be of the school of Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach; the first of whom committed his system of atheism to writing in ''Le bon sens,'' and the last in his "Systeme de la Nature.'' It was a numerous school in the Catholic countries, while the infidelity of the Protestant took generally the form of theism. The former always insisted that it was a mere question of definition between them, the hypostasis [underlying state or substance; fundamental reality] of which, on both sides, was ''Nature,'' or ''the Universe;'' that both agreed in the order of the existing system, but the one supposed it from eternity, the other as having begun in time. And when the atheist descanted on the unceasing motion and circulation of matter through the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms, never resting, never annihilated, always changing form, and under all forms gifted with the power of reproduction; the theist pointing "to the heavens above, and to the earth beneath, and to the waters under the earth," asked, if these did not proclaim a first cause, possessing intelligence and power ; power in the production, and intelligence in the design and constant preservation of the system ; urged the palpable existence of final causes; that the eye was made to see, and the ear to hear, and not that we see because we have eyes, and hear because we have ears; an answer obvious to the senses, as that of walking across the room, was to the philosopher demonstrating the non-existence of motion.
I have lately been amusing myself with Levi's book ... His style is inelegant and incorrect, harsh and petulant to his adversary, and his reasoning flimsy enough. Some of his doctrines were new to me, particularly that of his two resurrections; the first, a particular one of all the dead, in body as well as soul, who are to live over again, the Jews in a state of perfect obedience to God, the other nations in a state of corporeal punishment for the sufferings they have inflicted on the Jews. ... He alleges that the Jews alone preserve the doctrine of the unity of God. Yet their God would be deemed a very indifferent man with us; and it was to correct their anamorphosis [a deformed image] of the Deity, that Jesus preached, as well as to establish the doctrine of a future state. However, Levi insists, that that was taught in the Old Testament, and even by Moses himself and the prophets. He agrees that an anointed prince was prophesied and promised; but denies that the character and history of Jesus had any analogy with that of the person promised. He must be fearfully embarrassing to the Hierophants [chief priests] of fabricated Christianity ; because it is their own armor in which he clothes himself for the attack. For example, he takes passages of Scripture from their context, (which would give them a very different meaning,) strings them together, and makes them point towards what object he pleases; he interprets them figuratively, typically, analogically, hyperbolically ; he calls in the aid of emendation, transposition, ellipse, metonymy, and every other figure of rhetoric; the name of one man is taken for another, one place for another, days and weeks for months and years; and finally, he avails himself all his advantage over his adversaries by his superior knowledge of the Hebrew, speaking in the very language of the divine communication, while they can only fumble on with conflicting and disputed translations. Such is this war of giants. And how can such pigmies as you and I decide between them? For myself, I confess that my head is not formed tantas componere lites [to settle such great disputes].
And if you can't see the mockery in "one of the leading scientific minds of his day" declaring himself (and John Adams) to be "pigmies" incapable of addressing such issues, you are so tone deaf that wearing 200 pounds of woofers and tweeters strapped to your head isn't going to help.
Moronic or mendacious ... does it matter?
Labels: Quote Mining
Friday, November 26, 2010
Debate and Deswitch
Formal debates -- the pitting of two sides of an issue against each other with more-or-less formal rules, lasting an hour or two -- are essentially useless as far as the audience is concerned -- though the participants can learn much about how to structure and present an argument, which is why schools often have debating societies. But any issue worth debating cannot be fairly aired in the span of an hour or two by participants who may not have equal debating skills. The Lincoln-Douglas debates, spanning twenty-one hours over seven dates, might be an exception, but notably debated slavery from only the perspective of white Americans.It's worse if the audience comes to the debate with a set opinion on the question -- and who is likely to be interested in attending a formal debate unless he or she already knows something of the issue? But when the organizers of the event prime the audience with arguments in favor of one side and against the other, it can hardly be called a "debate" at all. As noted at Open Parachute and Friendly Atheist, the recent "debate" between William Dembski and Christopher Hitchens falls very much in the latter category.
The event was held at Prestonwood Christian Academy, primarily before the middle school and high school students. Hitchens amusingly says, after surveying the audience, that he feels "like a Daniel being introduced to a den of, I'm sure very charming, lion cubs." To its credit, the audience got the joke even before he finished and laughed.
What wasn't amusing in the least was the "Discussion Guide" the school published as "a tool used either to prepare students for this debate or answer questions following the debate." A better description would be "a tool to load the dice so there is no debate."
I said it wasn't amusing but that's not strictly true. It's intent wasn't, but the execution was, in several instances, quite amusing ... such as this:
A nation once strong in its faith in God, once labeled a "Christian nation" and dubbed as the "city on a hill," America has lost its spiritual moorings and is adrift in the relativistic sea of tolerance, equality, and affluence.
But if tolerance and equality are something to be "adrift" in, rather than the faith of God, then that God must be intolerant and biased. And if affluence is a bad thing, why are so many Christians today in favor of free enterprise and against communism on the grounds that some people should be allowed to be more affluent than others?
Another funny bit:
C.S. Lewis, tongue-in-cheek, wrote this, "If Darwin's theory of Evolution was correct, cats would be able to operate a can-opener by now." Funny, yes; but also profound.
It's funny to the rest of us because we see that, instead of arguing against the modern science of evolution, these people are stuck arguing against something like Lamarck's version, where species are on a kind of escalator, becoming more complex (and "higher" on the "Chain of Being") over time. Maybe in such a scheme cats could be expected to become human-like but not in modern science. In short, it is one small step above asking "if humans came from apes, why are there still apes?"
Then this "Guide" trots out the hoariest and perhaps most dishonest of all quote mines:
To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.
~ Charles Darwin
But to see just how low these supposedly "godly" people will go, consider this "discussion" of Hitchens' cancer:
Hitchens is going through chemotherapy fighting the cancer that is ravaging his body. From the evolutionary standpoint this effort appears to be counter-productive to the death sentence that nature has given Hitchens, and one would question why someone who believes so strongly in evolution would attempt to counter its effects on mankind.
Since humans have evolved as a social species, we have an even more complex "fitness." In a troop of early hominids, an old male who knew how to make good stone tools but who could no longer scramble up a tree to avoid a predator likely died. However, if some individuals in that troop were smart enough to recognize the value of the old tool maker to their own survival and were brave enough to drive off the predator, even at the risk of their own lives, their fitness could be improved by their continued ability to use superior tools.
But the inanity of the "argument" isn't what rankles. Why even go there at all? If you had the slightest confidence in the strength of your case, why not pass in silence over Hitchens' misfortune? I'm sure Hitchens, confronted with such an "argument" (I haven't watched the debate itself), would respond with complete grace and all the acerbity it deserves.
But it says much about the authors of this "Guide" that they thought the best way to teach "morality" to children was to stoop to such tactics.
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* With many caveats that a blog post is no better able to address than a formal debate.
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Update: William Eric Meikle and Eugenie C. Scott have an article (pdf) in Evolution: Education and Outreach entitled "Why Are There Still Monkeys?"
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Labels: Quote Mining
Sunday, April 25, 2010
IDing Anatidae
Ah, I see that quote mining and arguments from misplaced authority are as alive and unwell among Intelligent Design advocates as they are among more traditional creationists. I wonder why that is? The technique is identical, as this letter by Richard Kirby to the editors of The Newnan (Georgia) Times-Herald shows. The first thing you notice is the near absence of any references and the complete absence of any context.While Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box is named, it is not mentioned that Behe accepts common descent (as the Disco 'Tute is fond of reminding us, precisely because it is such an anomaly in their ranks), which is what most people think of when evolution is raised. It is mentioned that "Loren Lovetrup" (actually Søren Løvtrup ... accuracy is not the forté of quote miners) is not a creationist, but it is not mentioned that Behe and David Berlinski are in the pay of the Disco 'Tute or that A. E. Wilder-Smith was a young-Earth creationist. Of course, one contrarian scientist like Løvtrup is evidence of nothing except that science is done by human beings and the necessity of peer review and scientific consensus.
Sir Fred Hoyle is invoked, though why an astronomer's opinion as to biology should be credited is not explained. The opinion of Karl Popper -- a philosopher -- that Darwinism is "a metaphysical programme" is cited, without any understanding of what Popper meant by that or mention of the fact that he changed his mind. Pierre P. Grasse is recalled but not the part where he said "Zoologists and botanists are nearly unanimous in considering evolution as a fact and not a hypothesis. I agree with this position ...".
And there is the mandatory creationist quote mine from Stephen Jay Gould to the effect that "The fossil record with its abrupt transitions offers no support for gradual change," without explaining why that in any way refutes evolution ... obviously because the writer has no clue what evolution is.
But my favorite is this:
Sir Francis Crick, discoverer of DNA, now favors intelligent design.
So, how much does the duck need to quack before we decide what ID is?
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Labels: Quote Mining
Saturday, February 20, 2010
The Confluence of All Lunacy
That would be the ever ridiculous WingNutDaily and, in particular, the even more ridiculous Ellis Washington, who "graces" its virtual pages. His latest screed, "Darwin is freezing over," really has to be seen to believed. The manner in which he connects Anthropogenic Global Warming, evolution, humanism and "shyster lawyers" is truly a textbook case of muddled thinking, the engine of which is willy-nilly correlation without any attempt to demonstrate causation, as exemplified in this:In America we have record-shattering snowstorms and cold fronts from Florida to Alaska. Presently there is snow in 49 of our 50 states. Global-warming patron saint Al Gore is nowhere to be found because he knows he would be laughed to scorn at any venue where he appeared. Even a Senate committee hearing discussing the impacts of global warming was canceled last week due to record-breaking snowstorms in America's capital.Of course, weather is not the same as climate (though sometimes lay people on the other side of the "debate" can make the same error, as in proclaiming a particularly bad hurricane season as evidence of warming). There is good reason to expect snow to get worse, at least for a time, as the planet warms. But there is no need for Washington and his ilk to actually examine the evidence because their minds can only go directly between their prejudices and their conclusions, with only the briefest stopover to visit anything approaching "fact."
Ordinary citizens can just look out their windows and see that the premise behind anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming is a complete deception that the United Nations has wasted untold hundreds of billions of dollars funding.
And, indeed, if no, even faux, fact exists, they will simply fill one in, as Washington does when he calls Darwin "an unremarkable British naturalist." In fact, Darwin was a well-respected naturalist with a reputation for important and careful work long before he published the Origin, which was one of the reasons his theory (as far as common descent was concerned, though not natural selection) was so quickly accepted by the scientific community. And when made-up facts are not enough, there is simply name-calling, as where Washington calls Darwin's theory "diabolical."
But the bottom line is this from Washington:
I cannot help to see this manmade climate change scam being our modern-day equivalent to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution 150 years ago, which I consider scientific mythology or fairy tales for adults.Washington is exactly correct about that ... just not in the way he thinks he is.
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P.S. As the Sensuous Curmudgeon has reminded me, Washington starts out with a quote mine of Darwin:
… I am quite conscious that my speculations run beyond the bounds of true science. ... It is a mere rag of an hypothesis with as many flaw[s] and holes as sound parts.You can go to the Quote Mine Project to see the context.
~ Charles Darwin, letter to Asa Gray
I had noted the quote mine and intended to comment on it but, after such a concentrated dose of stupidity, even my brain, well-acclimatized as it is to creationist bafflegab, can become stunned and unresponsive.
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Labels: Quote Mining
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Ideal Christian Moviegoing
The Sensuous Curmudgeon has already justly rained scorn on this "review" of Creation, the British film about Charles Darwin now just coming to American shores, that appeared at the supposedly secular Detroit News website.The "review" is actually a commentary that appears on the Editorial page. It should have appeared, if at all, on the Religion page. The Curmudgeon has already pointed out the "review's" theological, sermon-like content, such as this gem:
Despite its title, "Creation" is not about God creating the Earth. Instead, it's the story of evolution's founding father, Charles Darwin, and his struggle to write the book that would "kill God."
Another failure is the movie's neglect to tell viewers that Darwin's wife was a Unitarian. Unitarian beliefs are unbiblical and heretical, but they were widespread in England and parts of America at the time Darwin lived.
Curious about the reviewers, Ted Baehr, Jeff Holder and Tom Snyder, respectively founder/publisher, managing editor and editor of Movieguide, I looked up their website. The "review" originally appeared at Movieguide but was edited, for reasons that will become obvious, before it appeared in the Detroit News. In the unedited "review," immediately before the paragraph that begins "'Creation' uses fallacious 'straw men' arguments by crudely depicting the Christians in its story as closed minded, cruel people," appears this:
There is a constant discussion of science vs. religion in "Creation" and evolution as the only rational truth. This is a one-sided bit of propaganda, however, because there is much that is not said. For instance, evolutionists have yet to produce any tangible evidence of intermediary species, that is, evidence that an ape turned into a human. Scientists should have found thousands upon thousands of transitional species in the fossil record, if Darwinism were true, but such fossils have never really been found. In fact, the evidence against the gradual evolution of Darwin is so startling that many alleged scientists have either had to fake the evidence or change the theory completely, as in the "punctuated equilibrium" theory of the late Stephen Gould. Either way you look at it, Darwinism has been proven false.
Also, the movie does not mention that in his book, "The Origin of Species," Darwin wrote about the human eye, "To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree." Evolution scientists have never produced an adequate explanation for the creation of the human eye, much less for the complexity of a single gene or of the human brain, the seat of rational human thought and the physical connection to our individual souls or spirits. Neither can they explain the origin of such abstract concepts as the laws of logic, love, morality, or ethics.
It seems likely that the editors of the Detroit News could not stand the exquisite irony of people spouting such ignorant drivel in order to deny science immediately before kvetching about being called closed minded. Another gem left out by the newspaper is this:
The Charles Darwin depicted in the movie uses "teaching moments" with his children, telling them stories about Christian missionaries attempting to convert "savages" who only went back to being savages. This part of the movie seems slightly racist.
There's more disingenuous dreck in the "review" but let's close out with a quote from the site's "review" of Avatar, which they also did not like for theological reasons, entitled "Capitalism, Christianity and AVATAR":
When you watch a movie like AVATAR know that the filmmaker is playing with your mind and emotions. Every frame is carefully planned to lure you to come to the conclusion the filmmaker wants you to accept. By the time the final scene comes, you don't just want the bad guy killed; you want him to die some spectacular death. The filmmaker picks the bad guy. James Cameron could have made you hate the Na'vi and love the Colonel. Michael Moore could interview people that make Capitalism look glorious. Al Gore could go shoot a movie about global cooling.
If you want the truth, read the Bible.
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Labels: Quote Mining
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Duane Gish Rides Again!
The Rev. Charles Welch, pastor of the Meadowbrook Church in Howard, Wisconsin, has an article in the Green Bay Press-Gazette, "Scientific fact or philosophy?". It is a classic example of a "Gish Gallop," a series of bogus (if not outright dishonest) arguments that take much longer to debunk than to make. Fortunately, we have resources that greatly help, including Mark Isaak's "Index to Creationist Claims" (also available in book form as The Counter-Creationism Handbook); 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent; and the Quote Mine Project and other resources on creationist abuse of quotes.Pastor Chuck says:
Let me ask a few honest questions.
Turn a frog into a prince? Even a child recognizes it is not fact, but fiction.
1.Really, the claim is "I can't conceive that (fill in the blank)." Others might be able to find a natural explanation; in many cases, they already have. Nobody knows everything, so it is unreasonable to conclude that something is impossible just because you do not know it. Even a noted antievolutionist acknowledges this point: "The peril of negative arguments is that they may rest on our lack of knowledge, rather than on positive results" (Behe 2003).
2.The argument from incredulity creates a god of the gaps. Gods were responsible for lightning until we determined natural causes for lightning, for infectious diseases until we found bacteria and viruses, for mental illness until we found biochemical causes for them. God is confined only to those parts of the universe we do not know about, and that keeps shrinking.
He next trots out a quote mine of Darwin:
"Why, if species descended from other species by gradual transcending orders of complexity, do we not find embedded in the earth (fossil record) or living (in the present), innumerable transitional forms?"
1. Some important factors prevent the formation of fossils from being common:
• Fossilization itself is not a particularly common event. It requires conditions that preserve the fossil before it becomes scavenged or decayed. Such conditions are common only in a very few habitats, such as river deltas, peat bogs, and tar pits. Organisms that do not live in or near these habitats will be preserved only rarely.
• Many types of animals are fragile and do not preserve well.
• Many species have small ranges. Their chance of fossilization will be proportionally small.
• The evolution of new species probably is fairly rapid in geological terms, so the transitions between species will be uncommon.
Passenger pigeons, once numbered in the billions, went extinct less than 200 years ago. How many passenger pigeon fossils can you find? If they are hard to find, why should we expect to find fossils that are likely from smaller populations and have been subject to millions of years of potential erosion?
2. Other processes destroy fossils. Erosion (and/or lack of deposition in the first place) often destroys hundreds of millions of years or more of the geological record, so the geological record at any place usually has long gaps. Fossils can also be destroyed by heat or pressure when buried deep underground.
3. As rare as fossils are, fossil discovery is still rarer. For the most part, we find only fossils that have been exposed by erosion, and only if the exposure is recent enough that the fossils themselves do not erode.
As climates change, species will move, so we cannot expect a transition to occur all at one spot. Fossils often must be collected from all over a continent to find the transitions.
Only Europe and North America have been well explored for fossils because that is where most of the paleontologists lived. Furthermore, regional politics interfere with collecting fossils. Some fabulous fossils have been found in China only recently because before then the politics prevented most paleontology there.
4. The shortage is not just in fossils but in paleontologists and taxonomists. Preparing and analyzing the material for just one lineage can take a decade of work. There are likely hundreds of transitional fossils sitting in museum drawers, unknown because nobody knowledgeable has examined them.
5. Description of fossils is often limited to professional literature and does not get popularized. This is especially true of marine microfossils, which have the best record.
6. If fossilization were so prevalent and young-earth creationism were true, we should find indications in the fossil record of animals migrating from the Ark to other continents.
Where are the half-bird, half-reptile creatures today? Where are the half- ape, half-man creatures today?
1. The claim might be true if there were no such thing as extinction. But since species do become extinct, intermediates that once existed do not exist today. Since extinction is a one-way street, species can only become less connected over time. This is clear if we look at the fossil record, in which early members of separate groups are much harder to tell apart.
2. Environments (and ecological niches) are not really as continuous as the claim pretends. Dogs bring down their prey through long chases, and cats ambush their prey; dogs are made for long-distance running, and cats are made for short sprints with high acceleration from a standing start. These requirements are quite different, and it is hard to achieve both in a single body. Compromises between the two have disadvantages in competition with specialists for either type, and thus natural selection culls them. Intermediates are competitive only so long as specialists are absent; so when specialists evolve, the intermediates are likely to become extinct.
3. In part, distinctness is an illusion caused by our choice of which groups to give names to. Groups with unclear boundaries tend not to get separate names, or groups in which intermediate forms exist are chopped in half arbitrarily (especially obvious if fossil forms are considered; e.g., the line between dinosaurs and birds is arbitrary, increasingly so as new fossils are discovered).
4. There are indeed several cases of continua in nature. In many groups, such as some grasses and leafhoppers, different species are very hard to tell apart. At least ten percent of bird species are similar enough to another species to produce fertile hybrids (Weiner 1994, 198-199). The most obvious continua are called ring species, because in the classic case (the herring gull complex) they form a ring around the North Pole. If we start in Western Europe and move west, similar populations, capable of interbreeding, succeed each other geographically. When we have traveled all the way around the world and reach Western Europe again, the final population is different enough that we call it a separate species, and it is incapable of interbreeding with herring gulls, even though they are connected by a continuous chain of interbreeding populations. This is a big problem for creationists. We expect kinds to be easily determined if they were created separately, but there are no such obvious divisions:
They are mistaken, who repeat that the greater part of our species are clearly limited, and that the doubtful species are in a feeble minority. This seemed to be true, so long as a genus was imperfectly known, and its species were founded upon a few specimens, that is to say, were provisional. Just as we come to know them better, intermediate forms flow in, and doubts as to specific limits augment. (de Condolle, quoted in Darwin, 1872, chap. 2)
Where are the transitional forms today, evolving from one species to another? The honest study of fossils do not show it. They merely show a vast array of organisms that have become extinct over time.
[A]ll living organisms can be thought of as intermediate between adjacent taxa in a phylogenetic tree. For instance, modern reptiles are intermediate between amphibians and mammals, and reptiles are also intermediate between amphibians and birds. As far as macroevolutionary predictions of morphology are concerned, this point is trivial, as it is essentially just a restatement of the concept of a nested hierarchy.
Why did the eruption of Mount St. Helens a few years ago give evolutionary appearance as though it took millions of years in its formation, while in reality it occurred within a short number of days?
1. The sediments on Mount St. Helens were unconsolidated volcanic ash, which is easily eroded. The Grand Canyon was carved into harder materials, including well-consolidated sandstone and limestone, hard metamorphosed sediments (the Vishnu schist), plus a touch of relatively recent basalt.
2. The walls of the Mount St. Helens canyon slope 45 degrees. The walls of the Grand Canyon are vertical in places.
3. The canyon was not entirely formed suddenly. The canyon along Toutle River has a river continuously contributing to its formation. Another canyon also cited as evidence of catastrophic erosion is Engineer's Canyon, which was formed via water pumped out of Spirit Lake over several days by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
4. The streams flowing down Mount St. Helens flow at a steeper grade than the Colorado River does, allowing greater erosion.
5. The Grand Canyon (and canyons further up and down the Colorado River) is more than 100,000 times larger than the canyon on Mount St. Helens. The two are not really comparable.
Why do scientists ignore the observable evidence of a huge flood? Fish fossils, for example, were found in the high mountains of Wyoming and elsewhere.
1. Shells on mountains are easily explained by uplift of the land. Although this process is slow, it is observed happening today, and it accounts not only for the seashells on mountains but also for the other geological and paleontological features of those mountains. The sea once did cover the areas where the fossils are found, but they were not mountains at the time; they were shallow seas.
2. A flood cannot explain the presence of marine shells on mountains for the following reasons:
• Floods erode mountains and deposit their sediments in valleys.
• In many cases, the fossils are in the same positions as they grow in life, not scattered as if they were redeposited by a flood. This was noted as early as the sixteenth century by Leonardo da Vinci (Gould 1998).
• Other evidence, such as fossilized tracks and burrows of marine organisms, show that the region was once under the sea. Seashells are not found in sediments that were not formerly covered by sea.
How about the many places where petrified tree trunks stand upright through various layers of sediment, showing a rapid laying down of strata, not following the proposed idea of the geologic time scale?
Sudden deposition is not a problem for uniformitarian geology. Single floods can deposit sediments up to several feet thick. Furthermore, trees buried in such sediments do not die and decay immediately; the trunks can remain there for years or even decades.
The same is true of so-called evolutionary family trees, which are based on speculation and not true science.
If it was just speculation, we wouldn't be able to make predictions based on them, as pointed out in 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution, Prediction 1.4: Intermediate and transitional forms: the possible morphologies of predicted common ancestors:
[A] phylogenetic tree does make significant predictions about the morphology of intermediates which no longer exist or which have yet to be discovered. Each predicted common ancestor has a set of explicitly specified morphological characteristics, based on each of the most common derived characters of its descendants and based upon the transitions that must have occurred to transform one taxa into another (Cunningham et al. 1998; Futuyma 1998, pp. 107-108). From the knowledge of avian and reptilian morphology, it is possible to predict some of the characteristics that a reptile-bird intermediate should have, if found. Therefore, we expect the possibility of finding reptile-like fossils with feathers, bird-like fossils with teeth, or bird-like fossils with long reptilian tails. However, we do not expect transitional fossils between birds and mammals, like mammalian fossils with feathers or bird-like fossils with mammalian-style middle ear bones. ... (See the article for numerous examples of confirmation in bird-reptiles, reptile-mammals, human-hominids, land mammal-whales and land mammals-seacows.)
Why the unscientific circular aging of the fossils by the rocks and the rocks by the fossils?
Claim CC310:
1. Many strata are not dated from fossils. Relative dates of strata (whether layers are older or younger than others) are determined mainly by which strata are above others. Some strata are dated absolutely via radiometric dating. These methods are sufficient to determine a great deal of stratigraphy.
Some fossils are seen to occur only in certain strata. Such fossils can be used as index fossils. When these fossils exist, they can be used to determine the age of the strata, because the fossils show that the strata correspond to strata that have already been dated by other means.
2.The geological column, including the relative ages of the strata and dominant fossils within various strata, was determined before the theory of evolution.
And:
Claim CD103:
1.The geologic column was outlined by creationist geologists. For example, Adam Sedgwick, who described and named the Cambrian era, referred to the theory of evolution as "no better than a phrensied dream" (Ritland 1982). The geologic column is based on the observation of faunal succession, the fact that organisms vary across strata, and that they do so in a consistent order from place to place. William "Strata" Smith (1769-1839) recognized faunal succession years before Darwin published his ideas on biological evolution.
2.The geologic column is validated in great detail by radiometric dating, which is based on principles of physics, not evolution. Furthermore, different dating techniques are consistent, and they are consistent with the order established by the early pioneers of stratigraphy.
Speaking of origins, where did matter come from to begin with? The philosophy of evolution has no answer.
Yes, and the science of evolution also does not answer why chemistry works reliably or why your car can turn gasoline into mechanical energy. Here, Pastor Chuck is confusing biology with physics and cosmology. The important point is: however matter and the universe first came into existence in the Big Bang, once it did, biological evolution became possible.
Evolution has to assume that nonliving matter gave rise to living matter, contradicting the proven Law of Biogenesis, that only life reproduces life.
What exactly is "nonliving matter"? All of life on Earth is made up of the same carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, etc. that is found in the crust of the Earth and its atmosphere. It is just arranged in molecules that come about through the ordinary "laws" of chemistry, where elements will combine in certain ways given a proper energy source. Life is an ongoing chemical reaction no less understandable than any high school chem lab experiment.
As for the so-called "Law of Biogenesis":
Claim CB000:
The spontaneous generation that Pasteur and others disproved was the idea that life forms such as mice, maggots, and bacteria can appear fully formed. They disproved a form of creationism. There is no law of biogenesis saying that very primitive life cannot form from increasingly complex molecules.
See, also, John Wilkins' excellent article "Spontaneous Generation and the Origin of Life."
There you have it. Pastor Chuck, in an article of a mere 592 words has misrepresented science to such a degree that it has taken 2,830 words to give even a sketchy reply to him. Hundreds of thousands of more words could be expended and still not fully lay out the case on science's side. Truly, a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get it's boots on.
Pastor Chuck describes himself as having a degree in chemistry and natural sciences from the University of Wisconsin-Madison ... no doubt to the great chagrin of UWM. It's a shame he learned so little.
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Labels: Quote Mining
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Poor Kids!
Barbara Forrest has been following the shenanigans of the creationists in Louisiana as they rig the system to make it possible to foist their anti-science materials on students in public schools in the state. It all started with the "Louisiana Science Education Act," the name of which would fill George Orwell full of envy.One of the main perpetrators of this educational three card monty game is the Louisiana Family Forum, a state affiliate of James Dobson's Focus on the Family. And ... surprise, surprise! ... the LFF has its own supplementary materials ready to go. I just opened one up, more or less randomly (the "addendum" for Biology by K. R. Miller and J. Levine, 2002) and, sure enough, it's as bad as you'd expect:
An addendum is necessary because the authors have written the text around the idea that evolution is an essential part of biology. It should be remembered that biology is the study of living things . It is not necessary to know about an organism's origin to determine how it functions internally and extern ally, to how it relates to other organisms and to make predictions about other organisms. Origin of and similarity to other organisms, while interesting, is not necessary to understand the detail functioning of a specific organism.
But it doesn't end just with a plea to students to squelch their curiosity. There is also the old guff about microevolution (okay) and macroevolution ("Has no proven examples"). And what would any creationist bafflegab be without a quote mine?:
All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups.
The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolution trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches, the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.
Why then is not every geologic formation and stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic change, and this is perhaps the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory [of macro-evolution].
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Labels: Quote Mining
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Misguided Missal
The Dishonesty Institute has released a "College Student's Back to School Guide on Intelligent Design."All you need to know about this piece of crap is that, within two short paragraphs, it perpetrates a quote mine of Darwin:
Part I: Letter of Introduction: Why This Student's Guide?
Welcome to College, Goodbye to Intelligent Design?
The famous Pink Floyd song that laments, "We don't need no education / We don't need no thought control," is not just the rant of a rebellious mind; it is also a commentary on the failure of education to teach students how to think critically and evaluate both sides of controversial issues.
Few scientists understood the importance of critical thinking better than Charles Darwin. When he first proposed his theory of evolution in Origin of Species in 1859, Darwin faced intense intellectual opposition from both the scientific community and the culture of his day. To help restore objectivity to the debate over evolution, Darwin wisely counseled, "A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question." [Emphasis in original]
But what about that quote? Here it is in context, with the quote-mined part in bold:
This Abstract, which I now publish, must necessarily be imperfect. I cannot here give references and authorities for my several statements; and I must trust to the reader reposing some confidence in my accuracy. No doubt errors will have crept in, though I hope I have always been cautious in trusting to good authorities alone. I can here give only the general conclusions at which I have arrived, with a few facts in illustration, but which, I hope, in most cases will suffice. No one can feel more sensible than I do of the necessity of hereafter publishing in detail all the facts, with references, on which my conclusions have been grounded; and I hope in a future work to do this. For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question; and this cannot possibly be here done.Contrary to the implication arising from the period the DI inserted where none existed, the quote-mined part was not a complete thought. Darwin was not saying that every alleged theory has to be weighed before a fair scientific result can be reached. He was saying that he had many more facts in support of his theory but could not fit them all in the scant 490 pages he had at his disposal in the Origin.
One aspect of "critical thinking" is that, if someone has lied to you from the outset, you probably shouldn't believe anything else they say without a whole lot more evidence ... something that ID is distinctly missing.
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Labels: Quote Mining
Thursday, July 23, 2009
False Spring
Michael Barton has a very interesting post at his excellent blog, The Dispersal of Darwin about an instance of multiple quote mining of John Tyndall, the 19th century Irish physicist and prominent supporter of evolution and Darwin. In the usual fashion, a scientist is made to look like he opposes evolution when, in fact, the opposite is true. As John Wilkins says: "It seems that the dishonesty is unchanging."What also is of interest is another example of a prediction of the imminent demise of "Darwinism." This one wasn't in Glenn Morton's collection so I passed it along to him. It involves a lecture, at the meeting house of the Society of Friends in New York on November 24, 1884, given by one Thomas Kimber, apparently an author of several works on the history and theology of Quakers. The anonymous article in the New York Times, “Turn in the Tide of Thought: Thomas Kimber’s Lecture on Science in Relation to Divine Truths,” a pdf copy of which can be found here, describes Kimber as saying:
[T]he lecturer spoke of evolution's failure as a strong theory and the downfall of Darwinism. When the theory came out it was seized upon with avidity, and most of the great scholars examined it and accepted it. Now they had given it up.Not only is dishonesty unchanging, but hope against hope springs eternal.
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Labels: Quote Mining
Friday, June 26, 2009
Dissembling For God
David Klinghoffer is trying to claim that even a "deist" like Thomas Jefferson supported Intelligent Design. He bases this on a quote mine that I've already addressed:I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition....Unfortunately, conservative theists are not the only ones who try to dig up Jefferson and flop him around after his death like the poor Ayatollah. Sometimes atheists do too.
The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces, the structure of our earth itself, with its distribution of lands, waters and atmosphere, animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles, insects mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organised as man or mammoth, the mineral substances, their generation and uses, it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regenerator into new and other forms.[Emphasis Klinghoffer's]
Jefferson was neither a deist nor an atheist (nor, perhaps, a Christian, depending on how you define the term). But he certainly was a theist and a providentialist and a believer in an interventionalist God.
But Klinghoffer adds a layer of stupidity by emphasizing Jefferson's understanding of biology. As a commenter there, "freelunch," says:
So, David, you have to go back before scientists had any idea how the complexity of life came to be to find a sensible person whose speculation fits your biases. Wow.Before Copernicus, many, if not most, intelligent people perceived and felt a firm conviction that the sun orbited the Earth ... and why not? In the absence of science, it certainly seems that the Earth is immovable and that the sun moves around it. The point of science is to extend our knowledge beyond so-called "common sense" and to discover how the world really works.
Your problem is that you cannot find us a scientist of today who believes this. You have to ignore two centuries of discoveries to defend your thesis.
Jefferson's letter makes it clear beyond any doubt that he is discussing a theological argument of the sort made by William Paley in his book Natural Theology. His statement that he is not appealing to revelation is not, as Klinghoffer tries to imply, a claim that it is a scientific or secular claim. Quite the contrary.
Klinghoffer is either incapable of reading English; did not read Jefferson's letter in full, in which case he mislead his readers about his knowledge of Jefferson's intent; or he is deliberately dissembling. He's a professional writer and can obviously write in English.
That leaves one option.
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Labels: Quote Mining
Friday, May 22, 2009
Here We Go Again!
Sigh!Are they just dumb or are they duplicitous?
That's always the question with quote miners.
Of course, they throw these quotes around with the pretense of understanding what they mean when, in fact, most of the miners have never read the source of the quote and few would understand it if they had. In that sense they are being dishonest. That is particularly the case when, by virtue of a person's job, an air of authority is leant to any pronouncement he or she might make.
That's the situation with Gailon Totheroh, Health Editor for the Christian Broadcasting Network News, even though nothing in his résumé would recommend him for any such expertise. The closest thing to any scientific education is an associate degree in chemistry from a community college. He has a B.A. in German from a real university and an advanced degree from a phony one: an M.A. in Public Affairs Journalism from Regent University. His work history before his CBN gig was in public relations, human resources, property management, and "publication research."
Anyway, he's trying to cast doubt on the overwhelming evidence for common descent, and, in particular, on poor Ida, who we already know is being shamelessly over-hyped, by dragging out a quote mine of David Raup, that already is in the Quote Mine Project and, typically, involves Punctuated Equilibria, a common target of quote miners everywhere. The perpetrator of the most recent example I dealt with actually came back to "defend" himself ... by doing more quote mining!
I wonder if really they think such tactics reflect well on their beliefs?
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Labels: Quote Mining
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
A Family Affair
A down and dirty bit of quote-mineontology:A certain John Herbst, in a Letter to the Editor in the Glenwood Spings (Colorado) Post Independent offers the usual "evidence" for Intelligent Design Creationism, amounting to "Golly gee, the world sure looks designed to me!" capped by this:
All I can summarize with is, how much more evidence for intelligent design does one need? There is indeed more, for those honestly seeking truth. And here's one more quote to brood on for Darwinists:Having some little experience with quote mining, particularly of Gould, I already knew that the "gradual mutation" in the purported quote signaled some discussion of "Punctuated Equilibria," the proposition by Gould and Niles Eldredge that evolution evinces a "jerky, or episodic, rather than a smoothly gradual, pace of change," as Gould himself put it. This in no way challenges the fact of evolution, the overwhelming evidence for common descent or even that natural selection is a major mechanism bringing about evolution (as discussed in response to another quote mine from the same article by Gould).
"The theory of evolution by gradual mutation is effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy."
— Steven J. Gould, evolutionist
By searching on fragments of the quote, I quickly found a more complete version from Stephen E. Jones, a creationist, but one who generally provides more honestly complete quotes:
"I well remember how the synthetic theory beguiled me with its unifying power when I was a graduate student in the mid-1960's. Since then I have been watching it slowly unravel as a universal description of evolution. The molecular assault came first, followed quickly by renewed attention to unorthodox theories of speciation and by challenges at the level of macroevolution itself. I have been reluctant to admit it - since beguiling is often forever - but if Mayr's characterization of the synthetic theory is accurate, then that theory, as a general proposition, is effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy." (Gould, Stephen Jay [Professor of Zoology and Geology, Harvard University, USA], "Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?," Paleobiology, Vol. 6, No. 1, January 1980, pp.119-130, p.120).You can see why I had to search on fragments: someone has substituted that "theory of evolution by gradual mutation" for Gould's much more specific "Mayr's characterization of the synthetic theory ... as a general proposition." So Gould was not challenging evolution by mutation and natural selection, but a particular "received view" of it. This is, of course, the normal way that science proceeds. Theories are proposed and expounded on; other scientists propose modifications, large and small; and the theory changes over time to more closely reflect our knowledge as we learn more. Science is an ever changing field ... and that's a good thing! It's not even important whether Gould and Eldredge were right in this instance, it is only important that you understand the process.
So who made the substitution in the alleged quote? Well, here we can apply a little of the technique that has led scientists to so firmly accept evolution in the first place and see if we can find a characteristic of the quote mine that shows its descent from the original. Searching on the nearly complete quote mine ("gradual mutation is effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy") discovers only one source on the web: a certain Nate Herbst, also from Colorado, who contributes to a site called "Sermon Central," "dedicated to equipping pastors worldwide in excellence in preaching," apparently by sharing things of (sometimes dubious) value for use in sermons. In turn, Nate Herbst, lays the likely blame on "Winkie Pratney, Ravi Zacharius, Josh McDowell and others."
That's all the dishonesty I have the time or stomach for at this point. But, John Herbst, assuming you are related to Nate, don't forget that "let the buyer beware" applies to family members too.
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Labels: Quote Mining
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Hi, Ho ... Hi, Ho ...
About the quote mine of Stephen Jay Gould that Don McLeroy uses in his bafflegab piece in The Austin American-Statesman, Jeremy Mohn included it in his Collapse of a Texas Quote Mine. It is one of the quote mines McLeroy got from Genesis Park, which describes itself as presenting:... in a graphical, easily accessible manner the evidence that dinosaurs and man were created together and have co-existed throughout history. ... Genesis Park questions the evolutionary illusions surrounding the dinosaurs and approaches the subject of origins with a literal adherence to the scriptures and an emphasis on creation demonstrating God's power.Here, from the Quote Mine Project, is a bit more explanation of what Gould meant by "stasis is data," which was one of his favorite catchphrases:
[Niles] Eldredge and I proposed that stasis should be an expected and interesting norm (not an embarrassing failure to detect change), and that evolution should be concentrated in brief episodes of branching speciation.In short, as is so often the case in quote mines of Gould, this is about Punctuated Equilibria. Those wanting to know more about Punctuated Equilibria can see Wes Elsberry's piece at the Talk Origins Archive. We know McLeroy won't bother since his objective is not to learn or promote education but to confuse and obfuscate.
But since McLeroy's campaign is, he keeps telling us, not about religion, what then is his "supernaturalist explanation" of stasis in the fossil record?
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Update: Larry Moran has a nice explanation of Punctuated Equilibria as well.
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Labels: Quote Mining
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
McLeroy Gives Away the Farm
You really have to see this to believe it.Don McLeroy is in The Austin American-Statesman making some amazing admissions (as well as deploying some unamazing quote mines). It will take more time to deconstruct than I have tonight because it is such a muddle of disingenuousness and/or stupidity that it rivals the lunatic book he endorsed. But some things leap out immediately:
McLeroy admits that he sees the dispute, not as a matter of good science or good education, but, rather, as a "culture war over evolution" he's waging against "academia's far-left, along with the secular elite opinion-makers." Damn! I love being among the elite.
McLeroy proposes a definition of science as "the use of evidence to construct testable explanations and predictions of natural phenomenon as well as the knowledge generated through this process" that he claims comes from the National Academy of Sciences booklet Science, Evolution, and Creationism (
The bottom line is: he's claiming that "supernaturalist explanations" are somehow not religious explanations and that they should have equal places in public school science classrooms.
Nobody can say McLeroy lack chutzpah ... but maybe he should lay off the nitrous oxide.
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Update: McLeroy's definition is in the NAS booklet (late night confusion caused me to search the wrong document) but, as Jeremy Mohn has already pointed out, the NAS made it clear that "testable explanations" and "natural explanations" are synonymous as far as its definition is concerned:
Natural causes are, in principle, reproducible and therefore can be checked independently by others. If explanations are based on purported forces that are outside of nature, scientists have no way of either confirming or disproving those explanations. Any scientific explanation has to be testable - there must be possible observational consequences that could support the idea but also ones that could refute it. Unless a proposed explanation is framed in a way that some observational evidence could potentially count against it, that explanation cannot be subjected to scientific testing.In other words, McLeroy is quote mining again.
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Labels: Quote Mining
Leading the Blind
Lisa Falkenberg of the Houston Chronicle has a refreshingly blunt piece on the fiasco threatening to happen this week in the Texas State Board of Education.Ever seen a cat-dog? Of course not! That just proves it's impossible for one species to evolve into another.
The human brain seems not to have changed since homo sapiens first appeared 150,000 years ago. That means evolution is false.
We don't have every bone, so the fossil record undercuts the theory of evolution.
A few scientists have fudged proof of evolution, so that calls into question all the other evidence.
These are the brilliant observations and insinuations of a particularly dangerous right-wing fringe group: the seven-member social conservative bloc of the State Board of Education.
Falkenberg also finds out a bit more about the quote mining Don McLeroy, the creationist Chairman of what may turn out to be the Board of Miseducation, did at the January meeting of the Board:
Board Chairman and ardent Darwin-denier Don McLeroy, R-Bryan, pushed through one of the amendments after reading aloud a long list of quotes attempting to cast doubt on evolution from reputable science publications and authoritative books by revered scientists. ...
But blogger and Kansas biology teacher, Jeremy Mohn, revealed McLeroy's bad clip job in his extensive blog posting, "Collapse of a Texas Quote Mine." Mohn also provided the context and authors' explanations lacking in McLeroy's quote list.
In short, McLeroy quote mined his quote mines. Falkenberg asked McLeroy about the quote mining:
McLeroy acknowledged to me that he had copied some of the research from the creationist site because he liked "the format," although he said he had indeed read one of the books. He added: "A lot of the quotes I did get on my own."
Yet another fine testament to the level of scholarship that goes on at the State Board of Education.
Labels: Quote Mining
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Finis
Mike Dunford at The Questionable Authority has noticed Casey Luskin, Gofer General of the Discovery Institute, quote mining a review article in Biochemical Journal by Kevin Padian and Nick Matzke. By all means, go to Mike's place to see the details. I'm interested in something a bit different; namely, another example of projection by a DI drone:It's always amusing how evolutionists continually proclaim, and then re-proclaim, the apparent demise of intelligent design (ID) (i.e. 'no really, this time ID actually is dead!'!).Glenn Morton is a former creationist of the young-Earth variety who was a minor celebrity in their circles for having written a number of articles on "creation science" ... until he began working as a geologist for an oil company and realized that what he was seeing in the course of his work belied his own arguments. To explain his prior blindness to the evidence, he posited "Morton's Demon" as an explanation of creationist psychology. It's well worth the read, if you're interested in understanding creationism and other movements that ignore the plain evidence in front of their noses.
Another service that Glenn has performed is to gather examples of claims of "The Imminent Demise of Evolution: The Longest Running Falsehood in Creationism." Here's where the projection comes in. If you look at the last ten entries in Glenn's list, eight of them are by DI stalwarts or their allies. A few examples:
In the next five years, molecular Darwinism -- the idea that Darwinian processes can produce complex molecular structures at the subcellular level -- will be dead.And, of course, that is merely the tip of the iceberg. Glenn's list goes back to even before Darwin published the Origin. Casey's proclamation would be more honestly recast as follows:
- William Dembski, Touchstone, 2004
Darwinian evolution is little more than a historical footnote in biology textbooks.
- Jonathan Wells. World, 2004
It's almost not worth deciding what to do about Darwinism, because it is on the way out anyway.
- Denise O'Leary, Theology Web, 2006
The Darwinist/materialist hegemony over our culture has definitely peaked, and we are privileged to watch the initial tremors that are shaking the Darwinist house of cards.
- Barry Arrington, webmaster at William Dembski's blog, Uncommon Descent, 2008
It's always amusing how creationists continually proclaim, and then re-proclaim, the apparent demise of evolution (i.e. 'no really, this time evolution actually is dead!'!).Wrong again!
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Labels: Quote Mining
Saturday, February 21, 2009
More Quote Mines From Texas
Jeremy Mohn, who has already done yeoman's work, in his "Collapse of a Texas Quote Mine," uncovering the quote-mining of the creationists on the Texas State Board of Education, has found more examples, this time by the truly execrable Terri Leo. Her method in this instance is the tried-and-untrue method of cutting off the quote before the thought is complete: If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.
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Labels: Quote Mining
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Prepare to Inspect
Abbie at ERV has detected the infestation of the University of Oklahoma's student newspaper, The Oklahoma Daily, with Sal cordovaitis. Abbie snaps on her surgical gloves, probes the infection in its nether regions, and determines that it has the usual symptom of making large numbers of people laugh.What I noted was the presence of another symptom ... open and running quote mines, in particular this one taken from Jerry Coyne:
In science's pecking order, evolutionary biology lurks somewhere near the bottom, far closer to phrenology than to physics.
In science's pecking order, evolutionary biology lurks somewhere near the bottom, far closer to phrenology than to physics. For evolutionary biology is a historical science, laden with history's inevitable imponderables. We evolutionary biologists cannot generate a Cretaceous Park to observe exactly what killed the dinosaurs; and, unlike "harder" scientists, we usually cannot resolve issues with a simple experiment, such as adding tube A to tube B and noting the color of the mixture.
The latest deadweight dragging us closer to phrenology is "evolutionary psychology," or the science formerly known as sociobiology, which studies the evolutionary roots of human behavior. There is nothing inherently wrong with this enterprise, and it has proposed some intriguing theories, particularly about the evolution of language. The problem is that evolutionary psychology suffers from the scientific equivalent of megalomania. Most of its adherents are convinced that virtually every human action or feeling, including depression, homosexuality, religion, and consciousness, was put directly into our brains by natural selection. In this view, evolution becomes the key--the only key--that can unlock our humanity.
But for a beautiful bit of irony, Sal is so clueless that, for his original posting of this quote mine at (where else?) Uncommon Descent, he even labels it and others as "quote mines," apparently unaware at the time of what the term means.
In short, he quote mined "quote mines."
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Labels: Quote Mining
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Stupidburn
Ow! Ow! Ow!Does anyone know how to treat third-degree irony burns?
The Discovery Institute has issued a press release (the closest it ever gets to science) that should only be viewed after applying a thick layer of SPF 100 sunscreen or above. Be warned before reading further!
SEATTLE, Feb. 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- "We're celebrating Charles Darwin's birthday by supporting what he supported: academic freedom," says Robert Crowther, Director of Communications at Discovery Institute. "Like Darwin, we recognize the importance of having an open and honest debate between evolution and intelligent design."
Discovery Institute today announced the launch of Academic Freedom Day in honor of Charles Darwin's 200th birthday on February 12, 2009.
In his revolutionary On the Origin of Species, Darwin wrote, "A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question." This quote is the cornerstone of the Institute's Academic Freedom Day efforts.
How, might you ask, does the DI "honor" Darwin? Why, by quote mining him, of course!
Here is the actual quote in context, with the quote-mined part in bold:
This Abstract, which I now publish, must necessarily be imperfect. I cannot here give references and authorities for my several statements; and I must trust to the reader reposing some confidence in my accuracy. No doubt errors will have crept in, though I hope I have always been cautious in trusting to good authorities alone. I can here give only the general conclusions at which I have arrived, with a few facts in illustration, but which, I hope, in most cases will suffice. No one can feel more sensible than I do of the necessity of hereafter publishing in detail all the facts, with references, on which my conclusions have been grounded; and I hope in a future work to do this. For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question; and this cannot possibly be here done.
Well, the quote mine might be dishonest but they were certainly truthful that such activity is the cornerstone of their Freedom Day efforts. After all, if they didn't have dishonesty to fall back on, the DI wouldn't have any arguments at all!
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Labels: DI Quote Mining, Quote Mining
