Texas School Board Creationists: Darwin Would Have Liked Us
The latest jaw-dropping spin from the creationists on the Texas State Board of Education: Darwin would have wanted us to teach creationism.
Complete with classic out of context, deceptive Darwin quotes! They’re shameless.
Darwin himself would not have supported censorship of the scientific weaknesses of his own theory. Indeed he wrote a whole chapter in his book, On the Origin of Species, about the difficulties with his theory. Darwin said, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”
Note the very next sentence in this quote from “On the Origin of Species,” chapter 6:
If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.
But Republican BOE member Terri Leo wasn’t satisfied with only one lie. Her post ends with another one:
As Charles Darwin so aptly stated in On the Origin of Species, “A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.”
The complete quote shows that Darwin was saying he didn’t have space to list all the facts that support the theory of evolution.
This Abstract, which I now publish, must necessarily be imperfect. I cannot here give references and authorities for my several statements; and I must trust to the reader reposing some confidence in my accuracy. No doubt errors will have crept in, though I hope I have always been cautious in trusting to good authorities alone. I can here give only the general conclusions at which I have arrived, with a few facts in illustration, but which, I hope, in most cases will suffice. No one can feel more sensible than I do of the necessity of hereafter publishing in detail all the facts, with references, on which my conclusions have been grounded; and I hope in a future work to do this. For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question; and this cannot possibly be here done.
Utterly shameless.