Quote-mining

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Quotes from many non-creationist authorities show that evolutionists themselves find many various failures of evolution.

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[edit] Responses

  1. "Quote-mining" is a term much used in the talk.origins newsgroup. It refers to the Creationist practice of extracting (mining) quotations from their proper context so as to make the quoted-mined person appear to be saying something very different than what he really did say. Here is a basic example of an out-of-context (i.e., mined) quote:
    "There is no God." (Psalms 14:1)
    If you check your Bible, you will find that those four words, in that order, really do occur in Psalms 14:1. However, you will also find that the author of Psalms was not denying the existence of God; rather, he was making a point about those persons who are foolish enough that they deny the existence of God. A more honest quotation, with the mined words in bold, would be:
    "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good." (Psalms 14:1)
    Other techniques are available to the dedicated quote-miner. For example, if you can't find any continous series of words which say what you want them to say, you may be able to find two unrelated passages which, when juxtaposed, do say what you want them to say:
    "The Lord . . . is evil." (Genesis 8:21)
    Again, if you check your Bible, you will find those four words do indeed occur in that order within Genesis 8:21 -- but you will also find that there are a number of other words in Genesis 8:21 which somehow failed to make it into the quotation. Here is a more complete excerpt from Gen 8:21, with the quote-mined words in bold:
    "...the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil..." (Genesis 8:21)
    The practice of quote-mining is roundly despised for its inherent dishonesty, and is one more reason that real scientists tend to view Creationists as intellectually dishonest.
  2. You can also mine a quote without changing the sentence it came from. Sometimes surrounding sentences provide context. It is very common for scientists to begin an article describing a position the remainder of the article refutes. Carefully chosen sentences can thus appear to support the position the article is opposed to.
  3. Yet another version of the same is to redefine terms used in quoted material. The classic example are the hundreds of quotes where scientists deny the existance of "macroevolution", where the scientists mean "a special process of evolution that leads to speciation", a defunct idea from the 1960's and before. Creationists define the term differently ("Evolution beyond the created kind"), then present the quotes from scientists as if they were in agreement with the creationists.
  4. Real scientific research does not consist of merely quoting other scientists, but either going out into nature or doing research in a laboratory to gather physical evidence to support a position or claim.
  5. Misrepresenting a professional person can be damaging to them and is therefore immoral. It may even lay the quote-miner open to legal charges.
  6. An argument from ignorance could be committed here. Let's say that some highly respected math professor found a math problem he couldn't solve. He didn't know the answer to 1+1. Does this mean that the answer doesn't exist and that we can say that 1+1=God? Of course not. So, when a creationist quote-mines some problem with evolution that some leading biology expert couldn't answer, does that mean that the answer doesn't exist and that God did it? Of course not. It's not logical to conclude that.
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[edit] Fallacies contained in this claim

[edit] External Links

  • Mark Isaak's page for this claim [1]
  • CreationWiki's comments [2]
  • Pieret, John. 2005. The Quote Mine Project: Or, Lies, Damned Lies and Quote Mines [3]
  • Hopkins, Michael, 2002. Quotations and Misquotations: Why What Antievolutionists Quote is Not Valid Evidence Against Evolution [4]
  • Foley, Jim, 2002. Creationist Arguments: Misquotes [5]

[edit] Further Reading

  • Holloway, R., n.d. Evolution of a Creationist Quote [6]
  • Ho-Stuart, Chris, 2003. Muller and Mutations [7]
  • Lindsay, Don, 2003. Famous Quotes found in books [8]

[edit] Related claims

[edit] See Also

Why is Creationism not a Scientific Theory?

[edit] Acknowledgments

  • Cubist
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