{"id":834,"date":"2008-03-23T05:25:32","date_gmt":"2008-03-23T11:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/austringer.net\/wp\/index.php\/2008\/03\/23\/frank-hagans-point\/"},"modified":"2008-03-23T05:28:32","modified_gmt":"2008-03-23T11:28:32","slug":"frank-hagans-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/austringer.net\/wp\/index.php\/2008\/03\/23\/frank-hagans-point\/","title":{"rendered":"Frank Hagan’s Point"},"content":{"rendered":"

Check out frankhagan.com \u00bb Quote Mining Examples<\/a>. That’s a follow-up comment to a post about a documented quote mine by the Discovery Institute’s Casey Luskin.<\/p>\n

Hagan simply cannot overlook the fact that antievolution materials and antievolution advocates often do not tell the truth.<\/p>\n

\nIts uncomfortable agreeing with the strident atheists and hostile agnostics, and they certainly don\u2019t welcome me to their fold. But lies are the not the product of the Spirit of God. They are a product of our own failed natures at best.<\/p>\n

One reason I reconsidered my position on the origins was that I found lies in the Creationist\u2019s literature when I started checking out the original sources. I encourage Christians to visit The Quote Mine Project<\/a> and see for themselves.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some time ago, I wrote the following<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\nThe topic of debate that Dr. Silver reported was \u201cIs ID science?\u201d One approach is to show that the claims of ID fail as science. That\u2019s how I approached the task I had in 2001, and that\u2019s the approach of Why Intelligent Design Fails from Rutgers University Press. The other approach is to show that religion underlies \u201cintelligent design\u201d. In 2002, I gave a talk on evolution and \u201cintelligent design\u201d at the CSICOP Fourth World Skeptics Conference. In that one, I did show how the \u201cintelligent design\u201d movement was run by religious people for religious purposes. And that\u2019s the approach of Creationism\u2019s Trojan Horse from Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n

But in neither case was my goal to tell the followers of ID that their own views of religion were wrong. And it is that part of Dr. Silver\u2019s first report that strikes me as not just poor tactics, but as Lenny Flank notes, directly counter to the cause of promoting good science education. It sure wasn\u2019t something that would separate ID advocates from their followers. It isn\u2019t even exposing the ID movement as inherently religious, which I have used as a tactic myself (CSICOP 2002). If you want to drive a wedge between an audience of evangelical Christians and the professionals in the ID movement, you need a third approach: show that the ID advocate on stage with you has been lying to his followers. Show misquote after misquote; demonstrate error after checkable error, and make the audience understand that if the ID advocate claims that the sky is blue, their next step had better be to look out the window to see for themselves. Evangelicals do want to take Christ\u2019s message to the world, but they also have a deep loathing of liars. Of the three approaches, the last one requires the most preparation and care in delivery.<\/p>\n

Dr. Silver\u2019s approach, on the other hand, requires very little in the way of preparation. One does not need to acquaint oneself with the arguments of the opposition, with the history of the opposition, or even the failings of the opposition. Irrelevancy does have some benefits after all. But the downside is that simply doing forty minutes of religious nay-saying does not convince people that \u201cintelligent design\u201d is not science; it does not convince people that \u201cintelligent design\u201d is another religious form of antievolution; and it does not convince people that \u201cintelligent design\u201d advocates are unreliable sources of information. It does help to convince those people that the \u201cintelligent design\u201d advocates are right when they cast the issues in terms of atheists attempting to indoctrinate kids.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I came in for a fair amount of criticism from antievolution cheerleaders, mostly because they mistakenly thought I was talking about inventing<\/i> stuff about IDC advocates lying. Why invent something that exists in copious abundance? But beyond that, I’d just like to note that Frank Hagan is an example of the sort of person who may not agree on various points of technical discussion, but who can readily appreciate when it is pointed out that one side of this socio-political controversy can’t seem to do much of anything without the aid of fibbing.<\/p>\n

And, Frank, if you happen to read this, not everyone actively opposing the antievolution movement is an atheist or “hostile agnostic”. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Check out frankhagan.com \u00bb Quote Mining Examples. That’s a follow-up comment to a post about a documented quote mine by<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antievolution","category-law-and-politics"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"colormag-highlighted-post":false,"colormag-featured-post-medium":false,"colormag-featured-post-small":false,"colormag-featured-image":false,"colormag-default-news":false,"colormag-featured-image-large":false},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"Wesley R. Elsberry","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0397e612e6e0615428fba05fe25422d5920a74e203aa8a035183297dcb4ffe5e?s=96&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":false,"magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"Check out frankhagan.com \u00bb Quote Mining Examples. That’s a follow-up comment to a post about a documented quote mine by","magazineBlocksPostCategories":["Antievolution","Law and Politics"],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":38,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":4,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":false,"medium":false,"thumbnail":false},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"Wesley R. Elsberry","author_link":"https:\/\/austringer.net\/wp\/index.php\/author\/austringer\/"},"magazine_blocks_comment":3,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0397e612e6e0615428fba05fe25422d5920a74e203aa8a035183297dcb4ffe5e?s=96&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"Antievolution<\/a> Law and Politics<\/a>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/austringer.net\/wp\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/austringer.net\/wp\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/austringer.net\/wp\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/austringer.net\/wp\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/austringer.net\/wp\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/austringer.net\/wp\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/austringer.net\/wp\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/austringer.net\/wp\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/austringer.net\/wp\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}