Morris -- wacko? or elder stateman?

In http://EvC Forum: Honorable Opponents -->EvC Forum: Honorable OpponentsWe all think that this assertion needs some suport.

You've been away. Welcome back------------------
Common sense isn't

Ned, what about an elder wacko?

Hi, Thanks for the greeting.I haven't been away, exactly, just extremely busy.I work in that famous MI food shop, remember? AND, it's the holiday season. I'm so tired right now that I can't go to sleep. Anyhow, I'd be happy to elaborate on the elder Morris' tactics.The following is a site which rebuts a piece written by Morris called "What they Say":http://home.att.net/~troybritain/articles/justmorris.htmNext we have another example of misquoting form a different publication:Quotations and MisquotationsI own a copy of Morris' and Parker's "What is Creation Science", and the very first chapter is a long list of out of context quotes of biologists, including one by Futuyama!At the end of the book, there is a FAQ section, and one of the questions on page 304 is, "Isn't it unethical for creationists, in order to support their arguments, to quote evolutionists out of context?"Morris' reply:(emphasis added)"The often repeated charge that creationists use partial quotes or out of context quotes from evolutionists is, at best, an attempt to confuse the issue. Creationists do, indeed, frequently quote from evolutionist literature, finding that the data and interpretations used by evolutionists often provide very effective arguments for creation. With only rare exceptions, however, creationists are always meticulously careful to quote accurately and in context. Evolutionists have apparently searched creationist writings looking for such exceptions and, out of the hundreds or thousands of quotes which have been used, have been able to find only two or three which they have been able to interpret as misleading. Even these, if carefully studied, in full light of their own contexts, will be found to be quite fair and accurate in their representation in their representation of the situation under discussion. On the other hand, evolutionists frequently quote creationist writings badly out of context. The most disconcerting practice of this sort, one that could hardly be anything but deliberate, is to quote a creationist exposition of a Bbblical passage, in a book or article dealing with Biblical creationism, and then to criticize this as an example of the scientific creationism which creationists propose for the public schools. Another frequent example is that of citing creationist expositions of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and charging them with ignoring the "open system" question, when they are specifically dealing in context with that very question. In any case, evolutionists much more frequently and more flagrantly quote creationists out of context than creationists do evolutionists.The irony is delicious.Morris spends many pages in the begining of this book quoting scientists out of context, then says in the back of the book that the charge that creationists do what he just spent a chapter doing actually has only happened two or three times. Also, according to Morris, of those two or three times, they actually weren't misquotes at all, but were actually completely accurate!He also accuses evolutionists of being horrible misquoters, yet does not give any specific examples.

As one interested in HERPS I was taken aback by the picture of cladogram of squamates by

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Futuyama!

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. It seemed that the LIZARD pictures on F's book "EVOLUTION" took the cover day for any thing I could write and thus reduces your ! point period for me at least. If you read my link to WOFRAMSCIENCE in the origin of symmetry thread you can notice that THERE IS NOT EVEN A POSSIBLE DIGIT BIT of room for me to have any "context" but this is something that time and due dilligence can gainsay. You will have to find my other post on that cite about Mendel perhaps to realize that but indeed it is all there!![This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 12-22-2003]

We'll wait for someone who wants to defend our statesman and stay on the topic. Who was it who thought he was a credible source in the first place?

Do you actually have some idea of what "stay" on the topic means?? beats me. You likely rather missed the content. It was not said that gould quoting was "off" subject. I will explain back further. I used to only USE this site by reading the topic and discussing within the topic I choose and depending on how the thread went I went whereever the topic sequed into. I tried to say that there IS NO context left so that if S wanted to assert "taste" IT COULD ONLY BE BITTER and Morris would understand this. The inability to see linakage to physics only meant that by claiming Natural Selection was oversold means that one academically avoided creationism as to context that Morris might (Idoubt it) quoted "out of context". I have rarely but by Loudmouth and notable other been quoated in and IN LINE WITH THE THIS topic I sighted that the phrase "out of context" leaves NO PLACE to lexically find any such "context" text. That makes the irony"" bitter not delcious unless one assumes to begin with falsity of religion which Morris DOES NOT hold to. I do not need to "Defend" you all need to learn to read differently if you disagree. The facts will discover you/one who does not.So IN fact while evolutionism does not depend on words creationism does. When the subject goes polar only C/E dualism remains as"" topic for I have found being called "on topic" to be ambivalent here and THERE IS NO WAY I CAN TELL AHEAD OF TIME WHICH IT IS. Look at MrH in TOP TEN for instance. Do you think this board is ready to split letters that it has a hard enough time to spell??Why specifically did you start this one? There were plenty of places in the other thread to defend Morris. I already did. I would not object if you did not use "we'll" and simply said I'"ll". Instead you must have meant some "group" and there already is some other place for me to talk that way here.[This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 12-23-2003]

I agree with your point there. I should not attempt to put words in other people's mouths.The rest I don't understand at all.

Ok, Ill leave it at that for now. I can not say for sure but I may not have responded if you said "me" instead of "us". Thanks for the real time response. Best Brad.

I got a little off topic in the honourable opponents thread.On the topic of whether Morris has been misleading about Lyell:

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One of the surprising developments of the past decade has been the resurgence of catastrophism in geological interpretation. Although the great men who were the real founders of geology (Steno, Woodward, et al) were not only catastrophists but believed in the Noahic Flood as the most important geologic event in earth history, the principle of uniformitarianism has dominated geological thinking for the past 150 years. The Scottish agriculturalist, James Hutton, and then the British lawyer, Charles Lyell, persuaded their contemporaries to reject the Biblical chronology and its cataclysmic deluge in favor of very slow processes acting through aeons of time. In his widely used textbook, Zumberge stated as recently as 1963:

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from: Acts and Facts Magazine | The Institute for Creation ResearchNot a very serious breach here, but an unnecessary reference to him being a lawyer and leaving out his real claim to fame.(very wrong about what uniformitarianism is/was as well of course)From: Acts and Facts Magazine | The Institute for Creation Research

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It is significant that this uniformitarian revolution was led, not by professional scientific geologists, but by amateurs, men such as Buckland (a theologian), Cuvier (an anatomist), Buffon (a lawyer), Hutton (an agriculturalist), Smith (a surveyor), Chambers (a journalist), Lyell (a lawyer), and others of similar variegated backgrounds. The acceptance of Lyell’s uniformitarianism laid the foundation for the sudden success of Darwinism in the decade following the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859. Darwin frequently acknowledged his debt to Lyell, who he said gave him the necessary time required for natural selection to produce meaningful evolutionary results.

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That one is a deliberate attempt at misleading the reader. That is dishonest in it's intent and clearly so.------------------
Common sense isn't

The following is something I first posted at the "Kenneth R. Miller - Finding Darwin's God" topic. It is from pp. 172-173 of the book.

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Are such opponents of evolution sincere? Several years ago, I was invited to Tampa, Florida, to debate the issue of evolution with Henry Morris, founder of the Institute for Creation Research and one of the most influential of the young-earth creationists. The debate had been occasioned by the passage of a curriculum mandating the inclusion of so-called creation science in high school biology. In front of a large audience, I hammered Morris repeatedly with the many errors of "flood geology" and did my best to show the enormous weight of scientific evidence behind evolution. One never knows how such a debate goes, but the local science teachers in attendance were jubilant that I scored a scientific victory.17

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As luck would have it, the organizers of this event had booked rooms for both Dr. Morris and myself in a local motel. When I walked into the coffee shop the next morning, I noticed Morris at a table by himself finishing breakfast. Flushed with confidence from the debate, I asked if I might join him. The elderly Morris was a bit shaken, but he agreed. I ordered a nice breakfast, and then got right to the point. "Do you actually believe all this stuff?"

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I suppose I might have expected a wink and a nod. We had both been paid for our debate appearances, and perhaps I expected him to acknowledge that he made a pretty good living from the creation business. He did nothing of the sort. Henry Morris made it clear to me that he believed everything he had said the night before. "But Dr. Morris, so much of what you argued is wrong, starting with the age of the earth!" Morris had been unable to answer the geological data on the earth's age I had presented the night before, and it had badly damaged his credibility with the audience. Nonetheless, he looked me straight in the eyes. "Ken, you're intelligent, you're well-meaning, and you're energetic. But you are also young, and you don't realize what's at stake. In a question of such importance, scientific data aren't the ultimate authority. Even you know that science is wrong sometimes."

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Indeed I did. Morris continued so that I could get a feeling for what that ultimate authority was. "Scripture tells us what the right conclusion is. And if science, momentarily, doesn't agree with it, then we have to keep working until we get the right answer. But I have no doubts as to what that answer will be." Morris then excused himself, and I was left to ponder what he had said. I had sat down thinking the man a charlatan, but I left appreciating the depth, the power; and the sincerity of his convictions. Nonetheless, however one might admire Morris's strength of character; convictions that allow science to be bent beyond recognition are not merely unjustified - they are dangerous in the intellectual and even in the moral sense, because they corrupt and compromise the integrity of human reason.

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My impromptu breakfast with Henry Morris taught me an important lesson-the appeal of creationism is emotional, not scientific. I might be able to lay out graphs and charts and diagrams, to cite laboratory experiments and field observations, to describe the details of one evolutionary sequence after another; but to the true believers of creationism, these would all be sound and fury, signifying nothing. The truth would always be somewhere else.

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So, in Miller's view, Morris was sincere. Morris just had an all overriding faith that somewhere down the line, the science would turn out to be wrong.Moose

By hinting that there may be a "breach" are one not *not* recognizing that Morris clearly sees or thinks he sees more modern catastrophists trends as both either "against" or "in response to" Creationist Catastrophism. After I read Morris on this in the Modern Creation Trilogy I realized that a creationist could indeed have been seeing most-some-any of the post tectonic influenced geology in part as induced from creationary geology. I have no means to evaluate how much non-creatioary rock studies are NOT even by any intent linked to creationist influence but the possibility that some non-creationary geology is actually AGAINST creationist geology would mean that conceptually creationist geology has some faculty and not merely a minor critical role in discussions of the horizon of landscapes. It seems to me the *thought* of a "breach" would NOT recognize this documentable possibility.[This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 12-26-2003]

I replied in the other thread before I saw that this new one was made.In the intro to The Genesis Flood, Henry Morris states (my paraphrase), "Charles Lyell is called the father of geology, but he wasn't a geologist, but a lawyer. If Lyell could talk about geology without being a geologist, then so can I."It's Morris' justification for writing a book on geology, even though he's not a geologist. I don't have access to a library right this minute, but I'll find the quote next week some time if y'all want me to. It's easy to find, as Morris hadn't corrected it last time I checked, which was about 1995. The quote is in the introduction to the book.

truthlover writes:

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In the intro to The Genesis Flood, Henry Morris states (my paraphrase), "Charles Lyell is called the father of geology, but he wasn't a geologist, but a lawyer. If Lyell could talk about geology without being a geologist, then so can I."

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It's Morris' justification for writing a book on geology, even though he's not a geologist.

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But that's just the problem: Lyell was a geologist. Yes, he studied to be a lawyer, but then he gave it up to be a geologist.Or are you saying that a person can be only one thing in his life? Judd Hirsch has his degree in physics...does that mean he's not really an actor? David Robinson has his degree in mathematics...does that mean he's not really a basketball player? Even though he's the only male basketball player to medal in three Olympics for the USA?Morris was simply distorting reality.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

That was my point. Sorry, I guess I thought the people in this thread would have read the other thread and known my point. I was giving an example of Morris lying on purpose. I didn't make the context of what Morris said clear, so my post was just to give the context.