Creationist Misquotes
As we will see throughout this website, the entire creationist "case" is built on intellectual dishonesty. While a few of the creationist blunders can charitably be assumed to be honest mistakes, misunderstandings or misinterpterations brought about by their almost complete lack of scientific understanding, many such instances cannot be viewed as anything other than deliberate, calculating attempts to deceive their readers.
The most common tactic seen from creationists is the use of "quotations" from "evolutionists" which, they say, "prove" that evolutionary theory has insurmountable problems. In fact, the creationists even have their own Little Red Quote Book, the Revised Quote Book (Creation Science Foundation, Australia, 1990), which lists page after page of "quotations".
Looking at these quotes more closely, however, shows that in every instance, the writers of the quoted pieces are not at all saying what the creationists would like us to believe they are saying.
Several examples of creationist misquoting come from the anti-evolution booklet Life: How Did It Get Here? by the Jehovah’s Witnesses. (Watchtower Tract and Bible Society (WTBS), 1985). The booklet says of evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, referring to his book The Selfish Gene, "At this point a reader may begin to understand Dawkins' comment in the preface to his book: "This book should be read almost as though it were science fiction." (WTBS, 1985, p. 39). The implication here is that Dawkins is "admitting" that his evolutionary theories are uncertain and should be treated as "fiction". In context, though, we can see that Dawkins is saying no such thing at all: "This book should be read as though it were science fiction. It is designed to appeal to the imagination. But it is not science fiction: it is science. Cliche or not, "stranger than fiction" expresses exactly how I feel about the truth. (Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, p.ix)
In another page, the Jehovah’s Witness Life booklet quotes biologist Richard Lewontin as saying: ""Zoologist Richard Lewontin said that organisms 'appear to have been carefully and artfully designed.' He views them as 'the chief evidence of a Supreme Designer.' " (WTBS, p. 143). The implication here is that Lewontin himself believes that life was intelligently designed by a "Supreme Designer". In fact, Lewontin believes no such thing. As he explained in a letter to a creationist publication debunking the misquote, "The point of my article, 'Adaptation' in Scientific American, from which these snippets were lifted, was precisely that the 'perfection of organisms' is often illusory and that any attempt to describe organisms as perfectly adapted is destined for serious contradictions. Moreover, the appearance of careful and artful design was taken in the nineteenth century before Darwin as 'the chief evidence of a Supreme Designer.' The past tense of my article ('It was the marvelous fit of organisms to the environment ... that was the chief evidence of Supreme Designer') has been conveniently dropped by creationist Parker in his attempt to pass off this ancient doctrine as modern science." (Lewontin, "Misquoted Scientists Respond," Creation/Evolution VI, Fall 1981, p. 35) Parker’s selective editing, repeated later by the Witnesses in their tract, can only be viewed as a deliberate attempt to distort Lewontin’s meaning and make him say what creationists would like to hear him say.
Another prominent biologist who has been the victim of creationist misquotes and dishonesty is Dr Colin Patterson of the British Museum of Natural History. In a private letter to creationist Luther Sunderland, who had asked Patterson why no transitional fossils were illustrated in his book, Patterson responded: "I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. . .I will lay it on the line, There is not one such fossil for which one might make a watertight argument." (Creation Science Foundation, Revised Quote Book, 1990). Since then, creationists in both the US and Australia have widely circulated this quote, contending that Patterson is "admitting that there aren’t any transitional fossils".
This is absurd on the face of it, since Patterson’s book contains several descriptions of different transitional fossils: "In several animal and plant groups, enough fossils are known to bridge the wide gaps between existing types. In mammals, for example, the gap between horses, asses and zebras (genus Equus) and their closest living relatives, the rhinoceroses and tapirs, is filled by an extensive series of fossils extending back sixty-million years to a small animal, Hyracotherium, which can only be distinguished from the rhinoceros-tapir group by one or two horse-like details of the skull. There are many other examples of fossil 'missing links', such as Archaeopteryx, the Jurassic bird which links birds with dinosaurs (Fig. 45), and Ichthyostega, the late Devonian amphibian which links land vertebrates and the extinct choanate (having internal nostrils) fishes." (Patterson, 1978, p. 130)
However, when one researcher wrote to Patterson to ask about the much-repeated quote, Patterson responded with yet another example of creationist selective editing: "The specific quote you mention, from a letter to Sunderland dated 10th April 1979, is accurate as far as it goes. The passage quoted continues ‘... a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question.’ " (Lionel Theunissen, "Patterson Misquoted: A Tale of Two 'Cites', 1997) Thus, it becomes apparent from the full context that Patterson was referring to the impossibility of establishing direct lines of descent from fossils, a position fully in keeping with his cladistic outlook. Patterson was not saying there were no fossil transitions, and Sunderland’s attempt to claim otherwise can only be viewed as an effort at deception.
A final example of distortion and misquoting from the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Life quotes writer Francis Hitching as saying "For all its acceptance in the scientific world as the great unifying principle of biology, Darwinism, after a century and a quarter, is in a surprising amount of trouble." (WTBS, p. 15) The implication here is that evolutionary theory is being rejected by biologists. However, the Witnesses neglect to quote the very next sentence in Hitching’s book, which goes on to say: "Evolution and Darwinism are often taken to mean the same thing. But they don't. Evolution of life over a very long period of time is a fact, if we are to believe evidence gathered during the last two centuries from geology, paleontology, molecular biology and many other scientific disciplines. Despite the many believers in Divine creation who dispute this ..., the probability that evolution has occurred approaches certainty in scientific terms." (Hitching, p. 4) The Witnesses’ claim that Hitching concludes that evolution is "in trouble" is simply untrue. Hitching himself, in a passage that was conveniently edited out by the authors of Life, explicitly states that evolution is "a fact" and "approaches certainty in scientific terms". What is being questioned, Hitching writes, is the prevelance of the Darwinian mechanism in evolution, not the validity of evolution itself.
The creationist fascination with spitting out long lines of out-dated and out-of-context quotes is directly tied with their literalistic Biblical outlook. Since in their interminable arguments with each other over religious doctrines and Biblical interpretations, their usual method of argument is to quote Bible verses at each other, they apparently think that it is a valid scientific argument to quote this or that person as saying this or that, and therefore somehow in this manner invalidate the data and evidence in favor of the evolution of life. The whole strategy is one of "argument from authority"----"X must be true because Mr Y says it’s true". While this method might (or might not) make sense within the context of fundamentalist arguments over which particular interpretation of this or that Bible verse is authoritative, it has no use in science, which depends solely on data and evidence, not on the say-so of this or that prominent scientist. Thus scientists, quite apart from all the distortions and inaccuracies, reject all of the creationists’ "quotes" as irrelevant, no doubt leaving the fundamentalists completely baffled as to why nobody seems to be impressed by all their quotations from authorities.