The Dishonest Creationist Tactic of 'Quote Mining'

[Tom Paine 1949]

One of the great pleasures of reading Evolutionist Stephen Gould’s writings on the history of science is that he had deep sociological insights into usually unexamined prejudices that scientists inevitably bring to social and even biological science.

He also publicly examined possible “prejudices” he may have brought to his own studies. Hence he openly discussed at length everything from his own family background to the politics of his generation to the way his passion for baseball may have subtly effected his own scientific views and interpretations of evidence. He was a rather brilliant sociologist of scientists and their tendency to misread evidence in subtle — and sometimes not so subtle — ways.

Of course crude, dishonest, totally ignorant and anti-scientific people who support nonsensical creationist theories have no ability to examine their own prejudices whatsoever.

 

[james bond]

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.
...
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.

“”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]

..
.........

abu afak you're quote mining yourself you dumbass POS using that idiotic RationalWiki website.

 

[abu afak]

Plagiarize???? Only Liberals do that......
Let's get this straight, and, at the same time, reveal yet another of your lies.
1. I never plagiarize: I always link and source quotes I use to construct an unchallengeable thread.....as you've found.
2. You, and every Liberal, plagiarize in every post.
You quote Obama, MSNBC, the NYTimes, the DNC.....all of the talking points never giving credit to the source of the propaganda.
3. I only have about a hundred thousand posts......surely you can find an example of me plagiarizing.

You source them of course.
Otherwise you wouldn't be Quote Mining!
Strawman Non-answer. Another Misleading tactic.

Also, using sourced, but unlinked quotes in the identical series they are listed on a website IS Plagiarism, as it takes a creative purpose and ability.

However, you do Not always link them, just put a name on a quote.
Links would probably reveal even more Creationism BS websites. A Position you are too embarrassed to take despite the fact that IS your position CreationChic, and the very reason for your Dishonest/Fake 'science'/quote-mining tactic.

You are DISHONEST FRAUD, LYING/MISLEADING FOR THE LITERALIST CHRISTIAN CULT, Seven-Eleven Adventists.

(PS: I would suggest you quote and answer PoliticalChic here in this thread and that would RUIN her DISHONEST DAILY Multi-Thread SPAMMING OF THE SAME QUOTES DOZENS OF TIMES in different threads.
Apparently I did indeed discourage her from posting/spamming in this section for two days by using this thread to reply)


`

 

[PoliticalChic]

Plagiarize???? Only Liberals do that......
Let's get this straight, and, at the same time, reveal yet another of your lies.
1. I never plagiarize: I always link and source quotes I use to construct an unchallengeable thread.....as you've found.
2. You, and every Liberal, plagiarize in every post.
You quote Obama, MSNBC, the NYTimes, the DNC.....all of the talking points never giving credit to the source of the propaganda.
3. I only have about a hundred thousand posts......surely you can find an example of me plagiarizing.

You source them of course.
Otherwise you wouldn't be Quote Mining!
Strawman Non-answer. Another Misleading tactic.

Also, using sourced, but unlinked quotes in the identical series they are listed on a website IS Plagiarism, as it takes a creative purpose and ability.

However, you do Not always link them, just put a name on a quote.
Links would probably reveal even more Creationism BS websites. A Position you are too embarrassed to take despite the fact that IS your position CreationChic, and the very reason for your Dishonest/Fake 'science'/quote-mining tactic.

You are DISHONEST FRAUD, LYING/MISLEADING FOR THE LITERALIST CHRISTIAN CULT, Seven-Eleven Adventists.

(PS: I would suggest you quote and answer PoliticalChic here in this thread and that would RUIN her DISHONEST DAILY Multi-Thread SPAMMING OF THE SAME QUOTES DOZENS OF TIMES in different threads.
Apparently I did indeed discourage her from posting/spamming in this section for two days by using this thread to reply)


`

"Quote mining" is a phrase one uses when they can't dispute an accurate quote.

I never have to use the phrase.

 

[Hollie]

Plagiarize???? Only Liberals do that......
Let's get this straight, and, at the same time, reveal yet another of your lies.
1. I never plagiarize: I always link and source quotes I use to construct an unchallengeable thread.....as you've found.
2. You, and every Liberal, plagiarize in every post.
You quote Obama, MSNBC, the NYTimes, the DNC.....all of the talking points never giving credit to the source of the propaganda.
3. I only have about a hundred thousand posts......surely you can find an example of me plagiarizing.

You source them of course.
Otherwise you wouldn't be Quote Mining!
Strawman Non-answer. Another Misleading tactic.

Also, using sourced, but unlinked quotes in the identical series they are listed on a website IS Plagiarism, as it takes a creative purpose and ability.

However, you do Not always link them, just put a name on a quote.
Links would probably reveal even more Creationism BS websites. A Position you are too embarrassed to take despite the fact that IS your position CreationChic, and the very reason for your Dishonest/Fake 'science'/quote-mining tactic.

You are DISHONEST FRAUD, LYING/MISLEADING FOR THE LITERALIST CHRISTIAN CULT, Seven-Eleven Adventists.

(PS: I would suggest you quote and answer PoliticalChic here in this thread and that would RUIN her DISHONEST DAILY Multi-Thread SPAMMING OF THE SAME QUOTES DOZENS OF TIMES in different threads.
Apparently I did indeed discourage her from posting/spamming in this section for two days by using this thread to reply)


`

"Quote mining" is a phrase one uses when they can't dispute an accurate quote.

I never have to use the phrase.

“Quote mining” is a tactic used by the hyper-religious such as yourself and is typically accompanied by the dishonest tactic of editing, parsing and clipping a single sentence out of an entire paragraph.

You don’t understand the phrase and relentlessly use the dishonest tactic. It’s a symptom of religionism as practiced by the angry, self hating types.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

"Quote mining" is a phrase one uses when they can't dispute an accurate quote.

This shows you have absolutely no grasp of what "quote mining" means.

 

[Lewdog]

This happens ALL the time, and despite it being against the rules, because the rule comes down to whether those in control 'feel' it was purposefully edited to to take it out of context, it doesn't always get enforced. People will simply use the excuse they didn't want to reply to your total post, so they broke the quote down, knowing full-well they did it with malicious intent.

 

[abu afak]

I can destroy Darwin's theory without any reference to reliigon.
The fact is, Darwinism is part of the Left's religion, Militant Secularism.
"Darwinism, by contrast, is an essential ingredient in secularism, that aggressive, quasi-religious faith without a deity. The Sternberg case seems, in many ways, an instance of one religion persecuting a rival, demanding loyalty from anyone who enters one of its churches -- like the National Museum of Natural History.” The Branding of a Heretic
There are many examples of evidence that prove the very opposite of what Darwin proposed.

"Darwins said simple to complex….what if the opposite is in the evidence? The premise that Darwinian evolution is false is nowhere better revealed than in the Cambrian explosion. Consider the evaluation of Roger Lewin, former staff member of New Scientist in London for nine years. He, then, went to Washington, D.C. to write for Science for ten years. In "A Lopsided Look At Evolution," Lewin wrote "Several possible patterns exist for the establishment of higher taxa, the two most obvious of which are bottom-up and top-down approaches. In the first, evolutionary novelties emerge, bit by bit. The Cambrian explosion appears to conform to the second pattern, the top-down effect." A Lopsided Look at Evolution | Science

Yet Darwin-believers accept it on faith....because it is a part of their religion.

You cannot do ANYTHING WITHOUT DISHONEST QUOTE MINING As above.

You're a ONE TRICK PHONY.

A CULT NUTBAG WHO NEEDS TREATMENT.

.

 

[abu afak]

DISHONEST NUTBAG 7/11 ADVENTIST NUTBAG PoliticalChic is back Quote Mining!
I Shut her up for at least a week/ten days and she must have though I was gone since I've been sparse for a few days,
so she's trying a new thread.
But I'm still here WACK JOB.
You got NO Game but quote mining you Cultist Freak.

….that human beings would be along soon.
....
2. Freeman John Dyson (15 December 1923 – 28 February 2020) was an English-born American physicist, mathematician, and futurist, famous for his work in quantum mechanics, nuclear weapons design and policy, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. He was the winner of the Templeton Prize in the year 2000. Freeman Dyson - Wikiquote
...
4. Another physicist, an American one, Alan Lightman, wrote in Harper’s Magazine The accidental universe: Science's crisis of faith, http://www.harpers.org/archive/2011/12/0083720, which included the following:

“Theoretical physicists, on the other hand, are not satisfied with observing the universe. They want to know why. They want to explain all the properties of the universe in terms of a few fundamental principles and parameters. These fundamental principles, in turn, lead to the “laws of nature,” which govern the behavior of all matter and energy.
....
As another example, if the relationship between the strengths of the gravitational force and the electromagnetic force were not close to what it is, then the cosmos would not harbor any stars that explode and spew out life-supporting chemical elements into space or any other stars that form planets. Both kinds of stars are required for the emergence of life. The strengths of the basic forces and certain other fundamental parameters in our universe appear to be “fine-tuned” to allow the existence of life. [/B]

 

[abu afak]

12 IQ Priktor starts a 100% Classic Quote Mining thread. (see my sig too)

"Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are
great con-men, And the story they are telling may be the GREATEST HOAX
EVER." -- Dr.T.N.Tahmisian, Atomic Energy Commission

"We must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian-- Franklin Harold, Emeritus
Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Colorado State
University, in an Oxford University Press text.

"Darwinian evolution - whatever its other virtues - does not provide a
fruitful heuristic in experimental biology. This becomes especially
clear when we compare it with a heuristic framework such as the atomic
model, which opens up structural chemistry and leads to advances in
the synthesis of a multitude of new molecules of practical benefit.
None of this demonstrates that Darwinism is false. It does, however,
mean that the claim that it is the cornerstone of modern experimental
biology will be met with quiet skepticism from a growing number of
scientists in fields where theories actually do serve as cornerstones
for tangible breakthroughs." --U.S. National Academy of Sciences
member Philip Skell


"[The] Darwinian claim to explain all of evolution is a popular
half-truth whose lack of explicative power is compensated for only by
the religious ferocity of its rhetoric." --National Academy of
Sciences member Lynn Margulis

"Mutations have a very limited ?constructive capacity? . No matter how
numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution."
--Past president of the French Academy of Sciences Pierre-Paul Grasse

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major
transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our
imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has
been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of
evolution." --Late American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould

"Phylogenetic incongruities can be seen everywhere in the universal
tree, from its root to the major branchings within and among the
various taxa to the makeup of the primary groupings themselves." --The
father of molecular systematics, Carl Woese

"Most of the animal phyla that are represented in the fossil record
first appear, 'fully formed,' in the Cambrian . The fossil record is
therefore of no help with respect to the origin and early
diversification of the various animal phyla." --Invertebrate Zoology
Textbook

"It remains a mystery how the undirected process of mutation, combined
with natural selection, has resulted in the creation of thousands of
new proteins with extraordinarily diverse and well optimized
functions. This problem is particularly acute for tightly integrated
molecular systems that consist of many interacting parts." --Two
leading biologists inAnnual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics

"New species usually appear in the fossil record suddenly, not
connected with their ancestors by a series of intermediates."
--Eminent evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr

Science now know that many of the pillars of the Darwinian theory are
either false or misleading. Yet biology texts continue to present them
as factual evidence of Evolution. What does this imply about their
scientific standards? - Jonathan Wells

The bacteriologist Alan H. Linton wrote:

"None exists in the literature claiming that one species has been
shown to evolve into another. Bacteria, the simplest form of
independent life, are ideal for this kind of study, with generation
times of twenty to thirty minutes, and populations achieved after
eighteen hours. But throughout 150 years of the science of
bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has
changed into another. Since there is no evidence for species changes
between the simplest forms of unicellular life, it is not surprising
that there is no evidence for evolution from prokaryotic to eukaryotic
cells, let alone throughout the whole array of higher muliticellular
organisms."

Evolutionary biologists Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan echoed the same
thing in 2002:

"Speciation, whether in the remote Galapagos, in the laboratory cages
of the drosophilosophers, or in the crowded sediments of the
paleontologists, still has never been traced."

 

[abu afak]

The mathematics that indicts Marxism is found in the more than 100 million human being slaughtered in the name of Karl Marx during the century of slaughter, the 20th. But, just as Karl Marx used the myth that Darwin’s theory explained the diversity of life on earth, mathematics proves that Darwinian evolution is not possible.



1.Karl Marx came from a family that was very Jewish, rabbinic scholars on both sides. But, to prosper in Germany, his father converted the family to Protestantism when Karl was only six years old.

“Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818, in the German city of Trier. His family was Jewish but later converted to Protestantism in 1824 in order to avoid anti-Semitic laws and persecution. For this reason, among others, Marx rejected religion early on in his youth and made it absolutely clear that he was an atheist.”
Religion as Opium of the People

His economic theories revolved around Jews, money, and how the two had corrupted the world. Nothing could have worked better for Karl Marx than a tract in science that would obviate any need to premise God as an explanation for the biodiversity of our world.
Darwin was the answer to Marx’s prayers, if Marx could figure out to whom to pray…..and among the many problems with Darwin’s theory, mathematics obviates any claim that Darwin's theory works.



2. Karl Marx was thrilled when he became aware of Darwin’s work.

The major antithesis of religion, communism and all of its iterations, has a need to banish religion… One of the first readers of 'On the Origin of Species' was Friedrich Engels, then living in Manchester. He wrote to Karl Marx: "Darwin, by the way, whom I’m reading just now, is absolutely splendid. There was one aspect of teleology that had yet to be demolished, and that has now been done. Never before has so grandiose an attempt been made to demonstrate historical evolution in Nature, and certainly never to such good effect."
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, "Marx-Engels Collected Works" , vol. 40, p. 441.





3. While the 20th century proved the fallacy that is Marxist communism, unfortunately our neo-Marxist government schools persist in propping up that love of Marx’s, the theory with more holes than Swiss cheese, Darwin’s Origin of Species thesis.
Certainly the fact that in a century and a half, with more professional scientists at work now than in all of history combined, there has never….NEVER….been even one case of one species becoming another, not in nature, nor in a laboratory, should be a clue to how poor an explanation or evolution, Darwin's thesis is.

But, some clearly false narratives survive….like socialism….and Darwinian evolution.




4. It isn’t just biologists, biochemists, paleontologists, geneticists, who have a bone to pick with Darwin. Lots of mathematicians are hostile, as well.
“Mathematicians over the years have complained that Darwinism’s numbers just do not add up. In 1966 leading mathematicians and evolutionary biologists held a symposium at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia because the organizer, Martin Kaplan, had overheard “a rather weird discussion between four mathematicians … on mathematical doubts concerning the Darwinian theory of evolution.

A mathematician who claimed that there was insufficient time for the number of mutations apparently needed to make an eye was told by the biologists that his figures must be wrong. The mathematicians, though, were not persuaded that the fault was theirs. As one said: There is a considerable gap in the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, and we believe this gap to be of such a nature that it cannot be bridged with the current conception of biology. Schützenberger, M. P. (1967) “Algorithms and the Neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution” in Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, ed. P. S. Moorhead and M. M. Kaplan, Wistar Institute Press, Philadelphia, p. 75.
[Found in Behe’s “Darwin’s Black Box: The-Biochemical-Challenge-to-Evolution”]



So…when Darwin’s theory fails the test of mathematics…..who ya’ gonna call….ghost busters???

 

[LittleNipper]

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.
...
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.

“”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]

..
.........

Even the "simplest" of eyes is miraculous. And in all sincerity, how would any organism know that it couldn't see, in a world devoid of sight? Why would an organism become able to see if it lived for millions of years in the dark? "Nature did it", sounds far arrogant, than a CREATOR envisioned it and fashioned it.

 

[abu afak]

Even the "simplest" of eyes is miraculous. And in all sincerity, how would any organism know that it couldn't see, in a world devoid of sight? Why would an organism become able to see if it lived for millions of years in the dark? "Nature did it", sounds far arrogant, than a CREATOR envisioned it and fashioned it.

Your logical fallacy is personal incredulity

Because you found something difficult to understand, or are unaware of how it works, you made out like it's probably not true.

yourlogicalfallacyis.com

personal incredulity
Because you found something difficult to understand, or are unaware of how it works, you made out like it's probably not true.

Complex subjects like biological evolution through natural selection require some amount of understanding before one is able to make an informed judgement about the subject at hand; this fallacy is usually used in place of that understanding.

Example: Kirk drew a picture of a fish and a human and with effusive disdain asked Richard if he really thought we were stupid enough to believe that a fish somehow turned into a human through just, like, random things happening over time.

`

 

[Hollie]

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.
...
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.

“”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]

..
.........

Even the "simplest" of eyes is miraculous. And in all sincerity, how would any organism know that it couldn't see, in a world devoid of sight? Why would an organism become able to see if it lived for millions of years in the dark? "Nature did it", sounds far arrogant, than a CREATOR envisioned it and fashioned it.

The ''eye'' claim is standard fare for creationers. There's nothing ''miraculous'' about the eye.

Claim CB301:
The eye is too complex to have evolved.

Source:
Brown, Walt, 1995. In the Beginning: Compelling evidence for creation and the Flood. Phoenix, AZ: Center for Scientific Creation, p. 7.
Hitching, Francis, 1982. The Neck of the Giraffe, New York: Meridian, pp. 66-68.
Response:

1. This is the quintessential example of the argument from incredulity. The source making the claim usually quotes Darwin saying that the evolution of the eye seems "absurd in the highest degree". However, Darwin follows that statement with a three-and-a-half-page proposal of intermediate stages through which eyes might have evolved via gradual steps (Darwin 1872).
   
   • photosensitive cell
   • aggregates of pigment cells without a nerve
   • an optic nerve surrounded by pigment cells and covered by translucent skin
   • pigment cells forming a small depression
   • pigment cells forming a deeper depression
   • the skin over the depression taking a lens shape
   • muscles allowing the lens to adjust
2. All of these steps are known to be viable because all exist in animals living today. The increments between these steps are slight and may be broken down into even smaller increments. Natural selection should, under many circumstances, favor the increments. Since eyes do not fossilize well, we do not know that the development of the eye followed exactly that path, but we certainly cannot claim that no path exists.
   
   Evidence for one step in the evolution of the vertebrate eye comes from comparative anatomy and genetics. The vertebrate βγ-crystallin genes, which code for several proteins crucial for the lens, are very similar to the Ciona βγ-crystallin gene. Ciona is an urochordate, a distant relative of vertebrates. Ciona's single βγ-crystallin gene is expressed in its otolith, a pigmented sister cell of the light-sensing ocellus. The origin of the lens appears to be based on co-optation of previously existing elements in a lensless system.
   
   Nilsson and Pelger (1994) calculated that if each step were a 1 percent change, the evolution of the eye would take 1,829 steps, which could happen in 364,000 generations.

Links:
Lindsay, Don, 1998. How long would the fish eye take to evolve? How Long Would The Fish Eye Take To Evolve?

CB301: Eye complexity

 

[LittleNipper]

Even the "simplest" of eyes is miraculous. And in all sincerity, how would any organism know that it couldn't see, in a world devoid of sight? Why would an organism become able to see if it lived for millions of years in the dark? "Nature did it", sounds far arrogant, than a CREATOR envisioned it and fashioned it.

Your logical fallacy is personal incredulity

Because you found something difficult to understand, or are unaware of how it works, you made out like it's probably not true.

yourlogicalfallacyis.com

View attachment 389191
personal incredulity
Because you found something difficult to understand, or are unaware of how it works, you made out like it's probably not true.

Complex subjects like biological evolution through natural selection require some amount of understanding before one is able to make an informed judgement about the subject at hand; this fallacy is usually used in place of that understanding.

Example: Kirk drew a picture of a fish and a human and with effusive disdain asked Richard if he really thought we were stupid enough to believe that a fish somehow turned into a human through just, like, random things happening over time.

`

Isn't this exactly as atheists are ---- because they are unaware how GOD works, they made out like HE simply doesn't exist --- since GOD seemingly doesn't do their bidding? Personally, I do not believe in random chance. I believe everything (no matter how seemingly trivial events might appear to the observer) happens for a reason.

 

[LittleNipper]

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.
...
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.

“”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]

..
.........

Even the "simplest" of eyes is miraculous. And in all sincerity, how would any organism know that it couldn't see, in a world devoid of sight? Why would an organism become able to see if it lived for millions of years in the dark? "Nature did it", sounds far arrogant, than a CREATOR envisioned it and fashioned it.

The ''eye'' claim is standard fare for creationers. There's nothing ''miraculous'' about the eye.

Claim CB301:
The eye is too complex to have evolved.

Source:
Brown, Walt, 1995. In the Beginning: Compelling evidence for creation and the Flood. Phoenix, AZ: Center for Scientific Creation, p. 7.
Hitching, Francis, 1982. The Neck of the Giraffe, New York: Meridian, pp. 66-68.
Response:

1. This is the quintessential example of the argument from incredulity. The source making the claim usually quotes Darwinsaying that the evolution of the eye seems "absurd in the highest degree". However, Darwin follows that statement with a three-and-a-half-page proposal of intermediate stages through which eyes might have evolved via gradual steps (Darwin 1872).
   • photosensitive cell
   • aggregates of pigment cells without a nerve
   • an optic nerve surrounded by pigment cells and covered by translucent skin
   • pigment cells forming a small depression
   • pigment cells forming a deeper depression
   • the skin over the depression taking a lens shape
   • muscles allowing the lens to adjust
2. All of these steps are known to be viable because all exist in animals living today. The increments between these steps are slight and may be broken down into even smaller increments. Natural selection should, under many circumstances, favor the increments. Since eyes do not fossilize well, we do not know that the development of the eye followed exactly that path, but we certainly cannot claim that no path exists.
   
   Evidence for one step in the evolution of the vertebrate eye comes from comparative anatomy and genetics. The vertebrate βγ-crystallin genes, which code for several proteins crucial for the lens, are very similar to the Ciona βγ-crystallin gene. Ciona is an urochordate, a distant relative of vertebrates. Ciona's single βγ-crystallin gene is expressed in its otolith, a pigmented sister cell of the light-sensing ocellus. The origin of the lens appears to be based on co-optation of previously existing elements in a lensless system.
   
   Nilsson and Pelger (1994) calculated that if each step were a 1 percent change, the evolution of the eye would take 1,829 steps, which could happen in 364,000 generations.

Links:
Lindsay, Don, 1998. How long would the fish eye take to evolve? How Long Would The Fish Eye Take To Evolve?

CB301: Eye complexity

Might I ask why scientists haven't taken a species with "naturally" poor/inferior eyesight and bred it to have superb/far superior eyesight? Better yet, why haven't scientists developed a biological eye for a species which has none? With all the expert directive surely they should be able to consolidate the steps just a bit. I mean, mother nature could care less whether anything sees or not. And clearly and organism that has no eyes, has no clue that it's missing anything.

 

[abu afak]

Isn't this exactly as atheists are ---- because they are unaware how GOD works, they made out like HE simply doesn't exist --- since GOD seemingly doesn't do their bidding? Personally, I do not believe in random chance. I believe everything (no matter how seemingly trivial events might appear to the observer) happens for a reason.

Actually you should be talking about "Scientists", who go out and look for answers, and do not accept doctrine (Yes more Goddit/permanent ignorance.) as an answer.

As to atheists, they/we prefer the overwhelming EVIDENCE for Evolution rather than No-evidence god/s as an answer.

`

 

[Hollie]

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.
...
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.

“”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]

..
.........

Even the "simplest" of eyes is miraculous. And in all sincerity, how would any organism know that it couldn't see, in a world devoid of sight? Why would an organism become able to see if it lived for millions of years in the dark? "Nature did it", sounds far arrogant, than a CREATOR envisioned it and fashioned it.

The ''eye'' claim is standard fare for creationers. There's nothing ''miraculous'' about the eye.

Claim CB301:
The eye is too complex to have evolved.

Source:
Brown, Walt, 1995. In the Beginning: Compelling evidence for creation and the Flood. Phoenix, AZ: Center for Scientific Creation, p. 7.
Hitching, Francis, 1982. The Neck of the Giraffe, New York: Meridian, pp. 66-68.
Response:

1. This is the quintessential example of the argument from incredulity. The source making the claim usually quotes Darwinsaying that the evolution of the eye seems "absurd in the highest degree". However, Darwin follows that statement with a three-and-a-half-page proposal of intermediate stages through which eyes might have evolved via gradual steps (Darwin 1872).
   • photosensitive cell
   • aggregates of pigment cells without a nerve
   • an optic nerve surrounded by pigment cells and covered by translucent skin
   • pigment cells forming a small depression
   • pigment cells forming a deeper depression
   • the skin over the depression taking a lens shape
   • muscles allowing the lens to adjust
2. All of these steps are known to be viable because all exist in animals living today. The increments between these steps are slight and may be broken down into even smaller increments. Natural selection should, under many circumstances, favor the increments. Since eyes do not fossilize well, we do not know that the development of the eye followed exactly that path, but we certainly cannot claim that no path exists.
   
   Evidence for one step in the evolution of the vertebrate eye comes from comparative anatomy and genetics. The vertebrate βγ-crystallin genes, which code for several proteins crucial for the lens, are very similar to the Ciona βγ-crystallin gene. Ciona is an urochordate, a distant relative of vertebrates. Ciona's single βγ-crystallin gene is expressed in its otolith, a pigmented sister cell of the light-sensing ocellus. The origin of the lens appears to be based on co-optation of previously existing elements in a lensless system.
   
   Nilsson and Pelger (1994) calculated that if each step were a 1 percent change, the evolution of the eye would take 1,829 steps, which could happen in 364,000 generations.

Links:
Lindsay, Don, 1998. How long would the fish eye take to evolve? How Long Would The Fish Eye Take To Evolve?

CB301: Eye complexity

Might I ask why scientists haven't taken a species with "naturally" poor/inferior eyesight and bred it to have superb/far superior eyesight? Better yet, why haven't scientists developed a biological eye for a species which has none? With all the expert directive surely they should be able to consolidate the steps just a bit. I mean, mother nature could care less whether anything sees or not. And clearly and organism that has no eyes, has no clue that it's missing anything.

Might I ask why religionists haven't done that?

 

[LittleNipper]

Isn't this exactly as atheists are ---- because they are unaware how GOD works, they made out like HE simply doesn't exist --- since GOD seemingly doesn't do their bidding? Personally, I do not believe in random chance. I believe everything (no matter how seemingly trivial events might appear to the observer) happens for a reason.

Actually you should be talking about "Scientists", who go out and look for answers, and do not accept doctrine (Yes more Goddit/permanent ignorance.) as an answer.

As to atheists, they/we prefer the overwhelming EVIDENCE for Evolution rather than No-evidence god/s as an answer.

`

I pray to GOD and get responses. You pray to your scientists if you like. There is no evidence that they care one way or the other. All the evidence I see "overwhelming" shows me that there was once a terrible FLOOD.

 

[Hollie]

Isn't this exactly as atheists are ---- because they are unaware how GOD works, they made out like HE simply doesn't exist --- since GOD seemingly doesn't do their bidding? Personally, I do not believe in random chance. I believe everything (no matter how seemingly trivial events might appear to the observer) happens for a reason.

Actually you should be talking about "Scientists", who go out and look for answers, and do not accept doctrine (Yes more Goddit/permanent ignorance.) as an answer.

As to atheists, they/we prefer the overwhelming EVIDENCE for Evolution rather than No-evidence god/s as an answer.

`

I pray to GOD and get responses. You pray to your scientists if you like. There is no evidence that they care one way or the other. All the evidence I see "overwhelming" shows me that there was once a terrible FLOOD.

I prayed to the gods of science and got a response. Antibiotics cured my bronchitis last year.