ADVERTISEMENTS

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:

Let's not forget that the Darwin they are touting as someone who would listen to them is the same person that they've called a racist and an eugenicist (who would have probably advocated forced sterilization if only the technology was available in his day and age) and, of course, a person whose ideas lead to Nazism and the Holocaust.

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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