…and this is a 
A convenient deletion
Category: Creationism
Posted on: February 7, 2007 3:48 PM, by PZ Myers
The other day, I shredded Pat Boone for mindlessly parroting the Lady Hope story. You'll have to take a look at the Pat Boone evolution article now, though: mysteriously, that entire paragraph has vanished without acknowledgment. Aren't computers wonderful?
Alas, the rest of the article is still there, and it's still crap. If we take it apart paragraph by paragraph, can we make the whole thing disappear?
Comments
We have always been at war with EurAsia. Don't you remember?
Posted by: kyle | February 7, 2007 4:04 PM
Republicans have always favored nation-building. Don't you remember?
Posted by: Blake Stacey | February 7, 2007 4:15 PM
I have always loved George W Bush.
Posted by: No1uno | February 7, 2007 4:20 PM
Great, delete the most glaring example of his ignorance and stupidity, while neglecting to rectify the causes of such embarrassingly moronic judgment.
Learn the ways of the ID/Cists, my child, and you too will be able to create disconnected "arguments" merely by throwing out the BS that failed, while keeping the BS which succeeds in bamboozling the public.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm
Posted by: Glen Davidson | February 7, 2007 4:21 PM
We've never been "stay the course"!
Posted by: Rey Fox | February 7, 2007 4:27 PM
He replaced the Lady Hope hooey with this:
'With his "The Origin of Species" about to be released, he wrote to fellow British biologist George Bentham, "Thank you heartily for what you say about my book; but you will be greatly disappointed; it will be grievously too hypothetical. It will very likely be of no other service than collocating some facts; though I myself think I see my way approximately on the origin of species. But, alas, how frequent, how almost universal it is in an author to persuade himself of the truth of his own dogmas. My only hope is that I certainly see very many difficulties of gigantic stature." '
Posted by: Philboid Studge | February 7, 2007 4:32 PM
Sigh. When will Winston Smith stop spending all his free time looking for new places to have sex, and get on with the revolution?
Posted by: llewelly | February 7, 2007 4:35 PM
The letter to Bentham appears in the Quote Mine Project as a standard creationist ploy. John Wilkins says of it, "Darwin clearly anticipates that he will be taken to task by a good many of his fellow naturalists for proposing a speculative theory, as it was not the fashion at the time for British naturalists to propose theories (they left that to the French and German speaking Europeans). He seeks here and elsewhere to defuse some of this. It didn't work — from the outset he was attacked for speculation."
Posted by: Blake Stacey | February 7, 2007 4:39 PM
And the human body [...] is made of such a myriad collection of mechanisms and infinitesimal organisms, all functioning in unexplainable synchronicity...
Hmm. I have sleep apnea. I am also legally blind before I'm even legally an adult. I don't think most people's bodies are as 'perfect' as his watch comparison was making them out to be.
It's a lot easier to believe that natural forces made me blind and with a crappy nighttime breathing system than it is to believe that an all-powerful, all-loving god did.
Posted by: Chinchillazilla | February 7, 2007 4:54 PM
Most importantly, the letter to Bentham was true. At the time Darwin wrote, his ideas were quite speculative. And there were all sorts of difficulties and gaps. That is inherently the nature of a new scientific theory of such scope. Einstein could have said exactly the same thing when he published the theory of special relativity, in 1905.
But Darwin's ideas have been tested, revised, and expanded for a century and a half, by many thousands of researchers. What once was a daring hypothesis is now buttressed by libraries of empirical data and over a century of theoretical advance. It is to Darwin's credit that he recognized the nature of his work when he wrote it, and a mark of Boone's ignorance that he thinks this hasn't changed.
Posted by: Russell | February 7, 2007 4:54 PM
Another case of spinning honest self-criticism as fatal doubt - Creationists could learn a few things about humility from Charles Darwin. And incidentally they're ignoring plenty of research since that's filled in many of the gaps Darwin saw and worried about.
Posted by: Zombie | February 7, 2007 4:59 PM
If you click on the link to the Pat Boone you will see an offer of 3 'Conservative' books for $1. The list includes Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, etc. You cant parody this stuff.
Posted by: OilBoy | February 7, 2007 5:31 PM
I missed the original post-but its nice to see Pat Boone has stayed conistant all these years. Not an original thought his whole life, his whole career spent catering to the racism of the times by re-recording black songs for a white audience. Now he parrots the anti-science movement (and largely, I'd bet, to the same audience).
Posted by: RobertC | February 7, 2007 5:38 PM
Darwin wrote self deprecating covering letters for his first editions of the Origin. He knew it was a far from complete theory. If only other people took a similarly critical view of their sacred books, and asimilar self deprecating tone in their writings. Darwin even stayed away ffrom the annoucement of his theory to the Linnaean, and was hiding in Yorkshire - a long way from London by rail in 1859 - as The Origin wa published. Can upi see any of Boone and his ilk not strutting around had they published a book that proved the existence of God. Me neither. Gah. Deep pits and snakes.
Posted by: Peter McGrath | February 7, 2007 6:05 PM
Errata:
Can you see Boone..
The cat used my laptop keyboard as a scratching post uprooted half the alphabet. ibooks are great but they're not made for that kind of abuse. It's back together, but types erratically.
Posted by: Peter McGrath | February 7, 2007 6:09 PM
Glen Davidson:
So, they're applying mutation and not-quite-natural selection to their arguments to refute evolution? Gosh, why didn't we think of that?Posted by: John Owens | February 7, 2007 6:43 PM
worldnetdaily frequently edits or removes work by their columnists. I am shocked that no one noticed David Kupelian's last article. He wrote an article on what happened if the Democrats took back the Whitehouse. The article described nuclear weapons going off in cities shortly after inauguration and the US collapsing into chaos. The article disappeared within a couple of days. I can't even locate it in google cache.
Posted by: yoshi | February 7, 2007 6:46 PM
My mistake. It was actually Kevin McCullough. Its so hard to tell the wingnuts apart.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/KevinMcCullough/2007/02/04/why_america_was_nuked!
t.s
Posted by: yoshi | February 7, 2007 7:02 PM
Heh. This whole mysterious disappearance of embarrassing verbiage is par for the course with WingNut Daily. After all, it happened with a particularly over the top piece (even for him) by Vox Day.
Posted by: Orac | February 7, 2007 7:22 PM
Regarding Darwin's absence at the Linnean Society Meeting.
Darwin was tending to one of his children (iirc it was one of his sons who had gone down with scarlet fever.) If he hadn't been doing this he might not have attended.
Wallace wasn't there either, inconveniently he was still in Malaysia.
Posted by: Dave Godfrey | February 7, 2007 7:43 PM
Still way too expensive.
Posted by: John Marley | February 7, 2007 9:03 PM
Oh, so WND is removing irrational shit from their website huh?
Well, then explain this.
Posted by: Jimbo | February 7, 2007 10:30 PM
This piece of blurb is at the bottom of the article:
"Pat Boone, descendent of the legendary pioneer Daniel Boone, has been a top-selling recording artist, the star of his own hit TV series, a movie star, a Broadway headliner, and a best-selling author in a career that has spanned half a century. During the classic rock & roll era of the 1950s, he sold more records than any artist except Elvis Presley. To learn more about Pat, please visit his website."
I'd like to know how all of this qualifies him to write an article on evolution? especially when he is only getting his scientific facts from 2 or 3 scientists, and the stuff he has just made up.
He also mentions this:
"Consider this. In 1925, in the infamous Scopes "Monkey Trial," ACLU attorney Clarence Darrow took the position that it was bigotry to teach just one view of human origins! He was defending the right of the science teacher to offer the theory of evolution as an alternative to the long-accepted account of creation. And now, that same ACLU is instituting lawsuits all over America wherever anybody dares to offer Intelligent Design or any other alternative to the theory of evolution! What blatant hypocrisy!"
If i remember rightly from the new article I read, aren't some American states banning the teaching of evolution in schools because it contradicts creationism and ID?
Luckily I live in the UK where we get taught both sides of the "argument"
Posted by: Southy | February 8, 2007 8:01 AM
Between Pat Boone and Chick tracts, why should anyone bother going to college? Or even high school?
Posted by: mark | February 8, 2007 12:00 PM