Hello atheistforum

[brotherlylove]

If I were you, I'd be more disturbed by all the lies and contortions being passed off as truth I'd have been forced to swallow. It's not even so much that these quotes have been twisted into contexts their authors never dreamed of; what's really insulting to the intelligence is that they are so easily exposed.

I'll admit, quote #1 does not appear to be accurate. I apologize and retract it. It is sad that some would make things up to make a point, but I find this on both sides of the equation. For instance, the numerous frauds perpetrated by evolutionists, such as piltdown man and haekels embroyoes, frauds which served to insinuate evolution into the culture and curriculum. As far as the rest, Quote 2 is uncontested and Quote 3 is actually more revelent to my point because I was referring to science in general, and not evolutionary science in particular. There is no twisting on context for either of the other quotes; they plainly mean what they say they mean.

The inaccuracy in quote 3 is the insertion of the word "evolutionary", but it doesn't detract at all from the meaning of the quote to remove it. I have some more interesting quotes for you..Consider what they are saying:

“does acknowledge that scientists inescapably rely on ‘rhetorical’ proofs (authority, tradition) for most of what they care about; they depend on theoretical assumptions unprovable by hard science, and their promises are often absurdly overblown … Only the most simple-minded and philosophically naive scientist, of whom there are many, thinks that science is characterized entirely by hard inference and mathematical proofs based on indisputable data"

Richard Lewontin

“Could it be that, like ‘primitive’ myths, theories of human evolution reinforce the value-system of their creators by reflecting historically their image of themselves and of the society in which they live?’…This is precisely what we would expect of a scientific myth

“paleoanthropology alone among all the sciences operates within the fourth dimension, with humanity’s self-image invisibly but constantly influencing the profession’s ethos.

Roger Lewin (quoting John Durant)

Scientists are generally aware of the influence of theory on observation. Seldom do they recognize, however, that many scientific theories are essentially narratives … they may be unaware of the narrative presuppositions which inform their science … Multiple interpretations and ambiguity are no strangers to readers of evolutionary biology … by comparing the narrative ‘roles’ played by fossils, scientists may become more explicit about the subjective—and often highly imaginative—ways in which they reconstruct human ancestors.”

“Metaphors cast powerful spells not only in everyday life but also in science … When Stern and Sussman say that ‘A. afarensis had traveled well down the road toward fulltime bipedality,’ not only do they speak in metaphor, they also tell a story

Misia Landau

“If any of the rest of the scientific community is inclined to snigger at the embarrassment of paleoanthropologists over all this [the identification of theory as narrative], pause and reflect. I bet that the same basic findings would apply to the origin of mammals, or of flowering plants, or of life … or even the big bang and the cosmos

Glynn Isaac

we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical system, only a variety of wishful speculations.”

Franklin M. Harold