There is a quote that I've seen all over the place, and I believe even used myself over the years, from the founder of the ID movement, Phillip Johnson. Here is the quote as it is usually given:
"The objective is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism vs. evolution to the existence of God vs. the non-existence of God. From there people are introduced to 'the truth' of the Bible and then 'the question of sin' and finally 'introduced to Jesus.'"
The quote appears on over 400 webpages according to Google, and the source cited is the April 1999 edition of Church and State magazine. That magazine is published by Americans United for Separation of Church and State and this article was written by Rob Boston. The problem is that this is not a quote from Phillip Johnson, it's a quote about Phillip Johnson, and as it has gotten passed around it has often been attributed to Johnson himself. For the full text of the article, go here. Given how often we have criticized the creationists about inaccurate and out of context quotations, it is imperative that we avoid using this quotation ourselves.
Update: This is a good example, I think, of how our side handles such situations compared to the other side. I emailed Michael Shermer, the editor of Skeptic, last night because he had recently used the quote in an article, and I informed him that it was a paraphrase, not a quote. His immediate response was to say thank you for the correction and to call his publisher because the quote also appears in his forthcoming book and he wanted to make sure it got taken out so it wouldn't get disseminated any further. Kudos to Shermer.
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...and the real quote is hidden in a paraphrase, is that right? I'm not sure how quotes and such work when they're written like quotes but they're not in quatations.
Nice work in bringing this up, though. I agree. It's very important to be both honest and correct.
If the paraphrasing is still accurate, then it's still useable as long as it isn't attributed to Philip Johnson.
Then again, it's not like we're broke for ammunition in this debate.
thank you so much for this tip! I liked to used that quote but, as FishyFred said, we got lots.
"Phillip" Johnson. 2 ls. A small thing, but perhaps not inappropriate in a post about accuracy.
I've now had several people point out to me that it's "Phillip" Johnson. I honestly did think that he spelled it with one 'l' and when I did a google search with that spelling it brought up hundreds of hits so I figured I must be right. I'll make that change.
Ed writes:
Phillip or Philip...I've heard them both also, although we should try and spell it the way the person himself spells it.
Turns out you're not the only one to make this sort of error.
Interesting. This article seems to give the source of the base canard that Carl Saga repudiated evolution on his deathbed: "Geoff Stevens, a ministerial student and former physics major at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, told the crowd that evolution leads to abortion, homosexuality and pornography. He blasted colleges for teaching it and took a shot at the late scientist and author Carl Sagan, telling the audience to much laughter, "[Sagan] used to be an evolutionist. He died a couple of years ago. I think hes a creationist now.")"
That should be "Carl Sagan" of course.
Monado said:
Usually the canard is to say Darwin himself recanted, via the so-called Lady Hope story. Sheer stupidity of course.
I think he means that Sagan is a Creationist not because he recanted on his deathbed, but because he's now burning in Hell.
Funny...if you're an ignorant jackass like this Stevens character.