On the dangers of arguing via quote (YEC-style)

[tas8831]

I noticed the same thing with his geology related quotes. They not only missrepresented the conclusions of the researchers, but they also had errors in what was quote mined.

With such a track record, one has to wonder why no creationist has called him out for giving their cause a black eye...

 

[tas8831]

Typical example of evolutionistic dishonesty.

Evolutionist: The evolution of microbes to man is a proven fact.
Creationist: Evolution has never been proven.
Evolutionist: Yes it has. Evolution simply means change over time. Are you denying that changes happen over time?
Creationist: Well, anyone can see that changes happen, and this takes time. I renovated my house - changed it over time. No one would deny that.
Evolutionist: There you have it. Evolution of microbes to man is a proven fact.
Creationist: !? What have changes over time got to do with microbes or men?

I love the smell of projection and strawmen in the morning...

Smells like.... Victory.

Funny thing - I provide documentation for my "accusations" (unless I am relaying an anecdote, but then, I do not present anecdotes as 'proof' or evidence of anything).

I have never seen a creationist provide documentation for ANY of their various untoward accusations or assertions. It is almost like you people expect everyone to just believe your claims. Like Fox News expects its viewers to believe everything except Shep Smith's reporting.

 

[tas8831]

I remember that!

I also enjoyed his use of "genetic strand", which I joked about. He then provided what he thought was a gotcha and a great example of his (and pretty much every other creationist's) 'research' style - 2 links to 2 sites referring to a guy's book about discovering his ancestry, titled 'The Genetic Strand'....

 

[Doctor.Sphinx]

I love the smell of projection and strawmen in the morning...

Smells like.... Victory.

Funny thing - I provide documentation for my "accusations" (unless I am relaying an anecdote, but then, I do not present anecdotes as 'proof' or evidence of anything).

I have never seen a creationist provide documentation for ANY of their various untoward accusations or assertions. It is almost like you people expect everyone to just believe your claims. Like Fox News expects its viewers to believe everything except Shep Smith's reporting.

If evolutionists just expect everyone to believe the evolutionary fairy tale when it's so clearly false, why is it so wrong for creationists to argue from experience?

Even if one or two are lying, the stories are far more plausible than anything ever spoken by evolutionists, and most certainly happened to someone, unlike evolution, which wouldn't even happen in 4 billion years.

 

[AirPo]

Typical example of evolutionistic dishonesty.

Evolutionist: The evolution of microbes to man is a proven fact.
Creationist: Evolution has never been proven.
Evolutionist: Yes it has. Evolution simply means change over time. Are you denying that changes happen over time?
Creationist: Well, anyone can see that changes happen, and this takes time. I renovated my house - changed it over time. No one would deny that.
Evolutionist: There you have it. Evolution of microbes to man is a proven fact.
Creationist: !? What have changes over time got to do with microbes or men?

What an excellent example of what the OP is positing.

 

[Doctor.Sphinx]

What an excellent example of what the OP is positing.

Except that this behaviour comes from the evolutionists, rather than the creationists (the OP stated this was behaviour typical of creationists).

 

[AirPo]

Except that this behaviour comes from the evolutionists, rather than the creationists (the OP stated this was behaviour typical of creationists).

Which the post I quoted was a perfect case study.

 

[expos4ever]

....unlike evolution, which wouldn't even happen in 4 billion years.

Is your Phd in biology from Harvard or Stanford?

And to anticipate your rejoinder: I have no relevant degree either. But those who
do all (or almost all) believe evolution happened.

 

[Bungle_Bear]

Typical example of evolutionistic dishonesty.

Evolutionist: The evolution of microbes to man is a proven fact.
Creationist: Evolution has never been proven.
Evolutionist: Yes it has. Evolution simply means change over time. Are you denying that changes happen over time?
Creationist: Well, anyone can see that changes happen, and this takes time. I renovated my house - changed it over time. No one would deny that.
Evolutionist: There you have it. Evolution of microbes to man is a proven fact.
Creationist: !? What have changes over time got to do with microbes or men?

Please provide a link to a relevant example. Or shall we just file this as yet another example of creationist dishonesty?

 

[Doctor.Sphinx]

Is your Phd in biology from Harvard or Stanford?

And to anticipate your rejoinder: I have no relevant degree either. But those who
do all (or almost all) believe evolution happened.

I would like to claim that this fact is due to my superior intelligence, but the truthful answer is actually that it is due to God's Amazing Grace.

 

[Ophiolite]

If evolutionists just expect everyone to believe the evolutionary fairy tale when it's so clearly false, why is it so wrong for creationists to argue from experience?

But you were not there when earlier lifeforms were evolving. You don't have any experience of them not evolving in the distant past. So how can you say that they did not evolve. You are just basing your rejection on weak assumptions and considerable misunderstanding. In contrast, evolutionists have multiply validated evidence to support their theory and they have the experience of examining fossils, anatomies, embryologies, genetics and the like.

Experience, evidence and validation win hands down over mistakes every time.

 

[Brightmoon]

As a geologist Ophiolite forgot to mention that we know what local environments from billions of years ago were like because of evidence . We know that there was very little oxygen in the early atmosphere because we find pyrite and uranite in sandstones . Neither will remain unchanged in a oxygen atmosphere . Sand with them forms only at the surface and only later solidified into sandstone . We find chemical isotope ratios that only living organisms produce in rocks that are billions of years old . We don’t have to be there to understand things . Only a science illiterate thinks so!

 

[mark kennedy]

We've all encountered these types of people. You bring up an issue or ask them a question, and you get a wall of text filled with quotes, often from obscure sources, purporting to support their position. They expect you to back down and admit defeat, I suppose - my goodness, QUOTES! Now, there is nothing wrong with using a quote to support a stated, reasoned argument or opinion - this is not what I am referring to. Not at all - I am referring to wall-o-quote trolling like this, employed by people that cannot make relevant or substantive arguments on their own, but nonetheless feel compelled to argue for a position because, well I guess they really really want their position to 'win.'
Creationists are famous for doing this. Professional creationists have even put out books that are little more than quotes that they claim prove evolution wrong.
History shows that creationists arguing with quotes generally have never read the source material. History shows that creationists arguing with quotes generally do not understand the subject matter and only use quotes as a sort of appeal to authority.

That is annoying enough. It is worse when a creationist uses quotes that he apparently hand-copied from a creationist source, and uses these typo-riddled, mangled quotes as an argument.

Over here, our current quote-bomb-spammer presented this quote in response to an abstract I had presented that mentioned human-chimp % similarities:

“It is clear that the genetic differences between humans and chimpanzees are far more excessive than previously thought, their genomes are not 98-99% identical”
-Todd Press Human Brain evaluation PNAS 109 20121 10709-16​

That is verbatim. Googling the quote returned several hits - all only to places where the quote-bomber had spammed before. So I searched for the citation:

-Todd Press Human Brain evaluation PNAS 109 20121 10709-16

Nothing. Well, except for the quote-bomber's footprint. Long story short, I finally found the source:

Human brain evolution: From gene discovery to phenotype discovery
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012 Jun 26; 109(Suppl 1): 10709–10716.
Todd M. Preuss​

So you can see why it was so hard to find - misspelled name... erroneous title.... garbled citation...

And even the quote was not correct- a comma where a semi-colon belonged:

"It is now clear that the genetic differences between humans and chimpanzees are far more extensive than previously thought; their genomes are not 98% or 99% identical."​

Now, that statement is unwarranted hyperbole in my opinion, especially when we consider what the author explains later in the paper:

Humans possess species-specific genes, as a result of the numerous tandem duplications of chromosome segments that occurred in human evolution, and also recombination events (46, 47). One consequence of the numerous duplications, insertions, and deletions, is that the total DNA sequence similarity between humans and chimpanzees is not 98% to 99%, but instead closer to 95% to 96% (41, 48, 49), although the rearrangements are so extensive as to render one-dimensional comparisons overly simplistic.​

Wow - 2-4% = extensive! Who knew?

Hmmm.... It is almost as if the creationist source of Tokien's copying hadn't read the paper (they usually don't). It is obvious that Tolkien didn't read it - or any of the quotes he copies from other creationists.
I had only checked 2 other quotes that this fellow has presented, 1 turned out to be a creationist lie and the other was a misrepresentation like this one.


TAKE HOME MESSAGE

1. Do NOT trust that quotes creationists provide are accurate in any fashion, especially those with ellipses in them.
2. Do NOT trust creationists that rely extensively on quotes to make their case to be honest in their intentions.
3. DO check quotes for accuracy and context.
4. DO call out creationists that employ out of context, irrelevant, or altered quotes as arguments.

The quote is accurate, I must have seen that statistic a dozen places, including The Initial Sequence of the Chimpanzee Genome, Nature 2005. Evolutionists don't like to admit the3-4% of divergence due to indels. The often cited 98% is simply not true and we've known this practically since the Human Genome project was completed.

Its not the creationist who are lieing here. Its Darwinians who don't want to admit the indels because they can be explained.

 

[Brightmoon]

Obviously that quote wasn’t accurate at . Misspelled the name of the author . Erroneous title. Garbled citation and a tempest in a teapot complaint that was as usual blown out of proportion by the creationist. I mean I misspell things occasionally but to get so much incorrect looks like either carelessness to the point of incompetence or it’s deliberate !

 

[DogmaHunter]

Typical example of evolutionistic dishonesty.

Evolutionist: The evolution of microbes to man is a proven fact.
Creationist: Evolution has never been proven.
Evolutionist: Yes it has. Evolution simply means change over time. Are you denying that changes happen over time?
Creationist: Well, anyone can see that changes happen, and this takes time. I renovated my house - changed it over time. No one would deny that.
Evolutionist: There you have it. Evolution of microbes to man is a proven fact.
Creationist: !? What have changes over time got to do with microbes or men?

I'm gonna respond with a picture.

 

[DogmaHunter]

I would like to claim that this fact is due to my superior intelligence, but the truthful answer is actually that it is due to God's Amazing Grace.

If that's an example of God's grace, then I'm sorry to say: it's not really amazing.
It's actually rather dishonest and groteskly wrong.

 

[ViaCrucis]

I would like to claim that this fact is due to my superior intelligence, but the truthful answer is actually that it is due to God's Amazing Grace.

If poor attempts at sounding religious were scented candles, this one would be doggie doo.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Doctor.Sphinx]

If poor attempts at sounding religious were scented candles, this one would be doggie doo.

-CryptoLutheran

Hey. If you want to attribute it to my superior intelligence, that's up to you.

 

[pitabread]

If evolutionists just expect everyone to believe the evolutionary fairy tale when it's so clearly false, why is it so wrong for creationists to argue from experience?

I asked you earlier if you had a specific example of what you were claiming about 'evolutionist' behavior (per your post #14) and you never responded.

That was telling.

 

[Doctor.Sphinx]

I asked you earlier if you had a specific example of what you were claiming about 'evolutionist' behavior (per your post #14) and you never responded.

That was telling.

Happens every time I speak with evolutionists. I just don't keep logs, that's all. But I'm glad you understand.