If you thought last night’s video featuring Chris Matthews interviewing a ducking, dodging Mike Pence about the GOP’s inexplicable attachment to creationism was something, wait ‘til you see this one.

This time Matthews interviews Tom Tancredo, who spouts Discovery Institute talking points about “intelligent design” creationism as expected (including his desire to have this anti-science nonsense taught in science classes, and a bogus, out of context Charles Darwin quote), but the surprising thing is that Matthews comes off as only slightly less ignorant than Tancredo, agreeing with him that “intelligent design” is a valid scientific theory and nodding along as Tancredo advocates teaching it to children. Pathetic.

This is how “intelligent design” creationism advances its agenda, through ignorance and misrepresentation. See: The Wedge Strategy.

UPDATE at 5/6/09 8:05:00 pm:

Here’s the entire Charles Darwin quote that Tom Tancredo misrepresented. Note that in much of “The Origin of Species,” Darwin asks questions about weaknesses in his theory, then answers them. Creationists and ID advocates invariably quote the questions, but leave out the answers. This is from The Quote Mine Project: Darwin Quotes:

But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth? It will be more convenient to discuss this question in the chapter on the Imperfection of the Geological Record; and I will here only state that I believe the answer mainly lies in the record being incomparably less perfect than is generally supposed. The crust of the earth is a vast museum; but the natural collections have been imperfectly made, and only at long intervals of time.

The Quote Mine Project fills in more of the missing context:

Besides leaving out the context, this is misleading in a subtler way when used for the proposition that there are no transitional forms. Darwin is not talking about the existence or nonexistence of transitionals here, but of an “innumerable” series of finely-graded transitionals linking together all extinct and existing forms. As he says later in Chapter XI of the sixth edition on page 342:

These causes [the imperfection of the fossil record, the limited exploration of the record, poor fossilization of certain body types, etc.], taken conjointly, will to a large extent explain why — though we do find many links — we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all extinct and existing forms by the finest graduated steps. It should also be constantly borne in mind that any linking variety between two forms, which might be found, would be ranked, unless the whole chain could be perfectly restored, as a new and distinct species; for it is not pretended that we have any sure criterion by which species and varieties can be discriminated.

In short, the use of the quote to imply there are no transitionals misstates Darwin’s argument, intentionally or out of ignorance. Darwin was not stating that there was an absence of transitionals but, in fact, stated there were “many links.” Instead, he was discussing why there are not more transitionals in an easily read pattern of gradual change. As Darwin correctly noted, where the fossil record does not approach “perfection,” it is difficult, if not impossible, to tell by morphology alone exactly where any particular organism would fall within such a graduated series. Thus, such an organism might be classified as a distinct species from either the original or the subsequent ones. However, such organisms, being general morphological intermediates between different forms, as in the case of Archaeopteryx, would, along with other evidence, support an inference of evolutionary change over time through common descent. The fossil record may not be easy to read, but it is not devoid of information either.

Even if the quote stood for what the quote miners claim it does, Darwin was writing almost 150 years ago, at a time early in the scientific study of fossils and when few scientists were expecting to find “transitional forms.”