Question for creationists: Do you believe it is important to interpret texts in context?

Question

If so, then why do so many young-earth creationists take quotes from scientists out of context to make them sound like they are critical of evolution, like they find something wrong with it or something unpersuasive about it?

Individuals like Stephen Jay Gould devoted their lives to helping us understand more about how humans and life in general developed within an evolutionary framework. He also proposed innovative suggestions which he submitted to the scientific community rather than the court of popular opinion to be rigorously investigated and assessed. Yet young-earth creationists quote him as though he had found fatal flaws in evolution. They do this by taking his words out of context so that their meaning can be twisted.

My main question is this: Can you not have the decency of character and the integrity to not treat the writings of scientists in a way that you yourselves find objectionable when done to the Bible? Be consistent.

http://blue.butler.edu/~jfmcgrat/blog/

Many thanks to the first two answers for illustrating PRECISELY THE SORT OF PROOF-TEXTING I WAS TALKING ABOUT. Have you no shame or decency?

There's an example at http://www.allaboutscience.org/darwins-theory-of-evolution.htm There they quote Darwin but conveniently leave out the next sentence where he says "But I know of no such example".

Helpful discussion at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/denton.html of Denton's _Evolution: A Theory in Crisis_ which is a perfect example of such quote-mining.

The point is that all of the individuals quoted are evolutionary biologists whose books are all about helping us to understand, and helping scientists to improve, the theory of evolution. None of them is a former biologist looking for other work because evolution is a 'theory in crisis'. None of them says anything of that sort when their words are taken in context. They do (as all scientists do) discuss and debate specific evidence and mechanisms, but there is so much cumulative evidence that one detail doesn't make or break the theory.

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/misconceps/IIBcrisis.shtml

Answer 1

Creationists (especially "young earth" creationists) use an ancient book, thousands of years old, written by people belonging to a relatively primitive society, as their basic text book, for biology, geology, astronomy, cosmology, and the formation of languages, to name but a few things. Their views are absolutely absurd, and they will say anything to sound intelligent and to prove that their "theories," derived straight from the bible, somehow stand up to any sort of scientific scrutiny. And yet so many Americans seem to buy into this nonsense. It's very disheartening.

Answer 2

It is my proposal that creationism and evolution are two sides of the same page of the history of man. Evolution explains a lot but no everything. Not the rapid rise of man and especially the development of such a large and expensive to maintain brain.

Creationism explains a lot but people must take it for what it is. It is the work of people who knew something far advanced to knowledge level of those who would be reading or hearing the text. As such, it is written in a way that helps such limited creatures to understand. All analogies, all explanations have to be done using terms and examples these simple people could relate to.

It is my current conclusion that the Bible and the works that are excluded form the Bible hold many important keys to answers we seek.

Imagine, for a moment, that God in the Bible is actually an advanced life form from another level or dimension or plane or whatever. Earth is already here and primates already exist.

He does a bit of genetic tampering an within a relatively short time, he creates homosapien. Why? I don't know why but it fits the facts does it not?

I am beginning to suspect the answer lies between the realm of natural selection and creation. I don't think one trumps the other but that one compliments the other.

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Answer 3

I used to have to read Stephen Jay Gould in my high school physics class. The only thing the guy did consistently was talk in circles & contradict himself. He didn't help me to understand anything about Evolution accept that people like him had an a priori committment towards anti-God naturalism. How is that taking his writings out of context? That's taking him at his word.

Evolution is just a set of speculations. If Evolutionary scientists were honest, they'd admit it instead of trying to shove their beliefs down the throats of public school children.

Granted there may be times when Creationists take Evolutionist quotes out of context. They're not perfect. (Give specific examples though, don't make a blanket accusation.) But Evolutionists many times open their mouths & utter complete contradictions. What is a person to do with these contradictions? It simply can't be both ways. In essence they set their own traps.

I sincerely don't understand how an Evolutionist can insist on consistency when their speculations don't line up with reality, not to mention they rid science of it's foundation for consistency--God is the source of objective truth. Sorry. Creationists may not be perfectly consistent all the time, but at least they have a foundation for the idea of consistency in the first place.

Answer 4

It is amazing to me that those who push evolution theory so vehemently don't even know what most evolutionary scientists have said about the fossil record....

Even Charles Darwin was honest when he confesses in 'Origin of Species'; " But as by THIS THEORY innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we NOT find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?" -Charles Darwin

To the above fact, even the most world renown (evolutionary) biologists agree...." New species almost always appear suddenly in the fossil record with NO intermediate links to ancestors in older rocks in the same region. The fossil record with its abrupt transitions OFFERS NO SUPPORT for gradual change". - Stephen J. Gould (Natural History , June, 1977, p.22)

"The extreme rarity (of transitional forms) in the fossil record persists as the 'trade secret' of palentology. The evolutionary tree (diagarms) that adorn our textbooks is.....NOT the evidence of fossils". - Stephen Gould (Natural History, 1977, vol.86, p.13)

The thing to remember is that evolution is still just a theory - a hypothesis, a speculation, an unproven assumption, and certainly is NOT supported by the fossil record.

According to Scripture NOTHING evolved but everything was created "AFTER THEIR KIND"....which is directly consistent with the fossil record.

"From the beginning of the Creation God made them male and female..."-- Jesus (Mk. 10:6)

Scripture says God SPOKE all things into existence with His Word:
" By the Word of the Lord were the heavens created, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.... For HE SPAKE AND IT WAS DONE; HE COMMANDED AND IT STOOD FAST". (psalm 33:6-9)

Answer 5

A call for consistency and quoting in context is commendable. Do you think these quotes meet the standard you are calling for?


Professor D.M.S. Watson, one of the leading biologists and science writers of his day, demonstrated the atheistic bias behind much evolutionary thinking when he wrote:

Evolution [is] a theory universally accepted not because it can be proven by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible.1

So it’s not a question of biased religious creationists versus objective scientific evolutionists; rather, it is the biases of the Christian religion versus the biases of the religion of secular humanism resulting in different interpretations of the same scientific data. As the anti-creationist science writer Boyce Rensberger admits:

At this point, it is necessary to reveal a little inside information about how scientists work, something the textbooks don’t usually tell you. The fact is that scientists are not really as objective and dispassionate in their work as they would like you to think. Most scientists first get their ideas about how the world works not through rigorously logical processes but through hunches and wild guesses. As individuals, they often come to believe something to be true long before they assemble the hard evidence that will convince somebody else that it is. Motivated by faith in his own ideas and a desire for acceptance by his peers, a scientist will labor for years knowing in his heart that his theory is correct but devising experiment after experiment whose results he hopes will support his position.2

It’s not really a question of who is biased, but which bias is the correct bias with which to be biased! Actually, Teaching about Evolution admits in the dialogue on pages 22–25 that science isn’t just about facts, and it is tentative, not dogmatic. But the rest of the book is dogmatic that evolution is a fact!

Professor Richard Lewontin, a geneticist (and self-proclaimed Marxist), is a renowned champion of neo-Darwinism, and certainly one of the world’s leaders in promoting evolutionary biology. He recently wrote this very revealing comment (the italics were in the original). It illustrates the implicit philosophical bias against Genesis creation regardless of whether or not the facts support it:

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfil many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

Answer 6

Absolutely, I do interpret them in context and thus have I learned the truth about almost everything that goes on in this WORLD of Illusion :-))

Its all explained clearly in the Quran, and I say without a sliver of a doubt that the so called "Muslims" have absolutely no clue about the religion they claim to follow.

May God have Mercy on Mankind

Answer 7

ya'll reap what you sow;if you're gonna do such to us,then dont be suprised when it gets done to you.

But yes I do agree they shouldnt do that.