Oh What Tangled Webs They Weave...

There are few things quite as amusing as watching ID advocates pretend that ID is not about promoting a particular religious view. It's just fun to see them wiggle and dance when they get caught up in this web of pretend objectivity. A perfect example of this is Casey Luskin, of the IDEA club, a group that starts pro-ID groups on college campuses. Luskin seems to have a particular problem with getting caught distorting reality, then getting all huffy when he does. PZ Myers just nailed him completely on his feigned outrage at the IDEA club being called a ministry by the organizers of a bible camp when their own mission statements declared it to be one as recently as two years ago (see also his previous article about Luskin).

Wes Ellsberry had previously caught Luskin in the act of completely distorting a quote from Steven Stanley. He had the chance to plead ignorance, but instead he insisted that he really did know what he was talking about. Yet after Wes published this post showing beyond a shadow of a doubt that the quotation was a complete distortion of the truth, he is now throwing a fit at being accused of having done so intentionally. He insists that he really does understand evolutionary biology:

Feel free to disagree with what I say in there, but please know that I read through dozens of papers and used the knowledge I learned from the numerous grad and undergrad courses in evolution I took at UCSD to write the article.

But when he is caught red-handed making foolish claims about it and misquoting authors so that it appears they are saying the opposite of what they do, he thinks it's horribly unfair that his insistence on his own understanding leads to the conclusion that he is distorting the record intentionally to deceive.

You can see more examples of either rank ignorance or dishonesty (you can decide which it is) here and here.

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