Libby von H
Platinum Member
- Nov 10, 2023
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- #261
Used hourly here mainly by Political Sheik.
Indeed it is her Main and Bogus line of attack.
Quote mining
Quote mining (also contextomy) is the fallacious tactic of taking quotes out of context in order to make them seemingly agree with the quote miner's viewpoint, to make the comments of an opponent seem more extreme, or to make it seem that the opponent holds positions they don't in order to make...rationalwiki.org
Quote mining (also contextomy) is the Fallacious tactic of taking quotes out of context in order to make them seemingly agree with the quote miner's viewpoint or to make the comments of an opponent seem more extreme or to make it seem that the opponent holds positions they don't in order to make their positions easier to refute or demonize.[note 1] It's a way of Lying. This tactic is widely used among Young Earth Creationists (YEC) in an attempt to discredit evolution.
Quote mining is an informal fallacy and a fallacy of ambiguity, in that it removes context that is necessary to understand the mined quote.
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Examples
Darwin
A famous example, possibly one of the most famous examples of quote mining, is the following misquotation of Charles Darwin, where the bold section is often presented without including the rest of the quote.
Readers,this silly person is dcing what he criticizes ALL THE TIME
“”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 possible degree. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound. —Charles Darwin[5]
So he never discusses the things Darwin actually said and did.
Here is an example of each and they are undeniable
SAID
“But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?
[To William Graham 3 July 1881]”
― Charles DarwinDID
Following Wallace’s warning that he had admitted limitations, Darwin wrote to Wallace “I hope you have not murdered too completely your own & my child” (referring to the entire theory of natural selection). When the review was published, Darwin was not happy. In the margin of his copy, Darwin wrote “NO!!!” He then responded to Wallace expressing his surprise, stating “if you had not told me I should have thought that they had been added by someone else.” Darwin then confirmed Wallace’s fears: “as you expected, I differ grievously from you, and I am very sorry for it.”
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