Throughout the many discussions I've engaged in with the religious, both on and offline, I've seen a recurring pattern of certain tactics, arguments, and misunderstandings from the Christian side. Since these come in up in almost every instance, I've decided to devote a short blog to each one, along with an explanation of how to deal with each tactic.
We'll start off with one that no Christian should ever use, considering the Christian proscription against dishonesty, but its one that happens with alarming frequency: Quote Mining. Christians often refer to quote mining as "taking out of context" when its done in reference to the Bible. Essentially what occurs with quote mining is that someone selectively quotes a small amount of a larger text or speech in an attempt to make it sound like someone is saying something they weren't actually saying.
To be fair, many Christians may not actively be aware when they are quote mining, as they very rarely attempt to verify any information before spreading it. Since many Christians would never consider the idea that their pastor or priest or bishop may possibly be wrong about something, the misinformation brought about by quote mining spreads very quickly.
As a first example I'll start off with an instance of quote mining I saw on a person's Facebook info page. This individual listed the following quote from U.S. President Barack Obama:
"To say that men and women should not inject their 'personal morality' into public policy debates is a practical absurdity; our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition."
This is in fact a correct quote - President Obama did actually say this. The quote comes from his "Call to Renewal" keynote address in 2006 at a conference that was sponsored by a Christian group. President Obama both discusses and defends his faith in Christianity. The quote mining occurs because the individual who posted this quote failed to post the next segment of his speech, in which he said:
"Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all."
Do you see how the first part of his quote now has a very different connotation when taken in the context of the whole speech? By only quoting the first half, it appears that President Obama is advocating that laws should be based on the Christian religion. But when you read the whole thing in context, it's very clear he's advocating for no such thing - he's actively stating the opposite, in fact. First he brings up his faith in order to set his religious audience at ease, and then he explains why religious faith alone cannot be used when passing laws - as not everyone is of the same faith, with some people having no religious faith at all. A clip of Obama stating the second half of the quote can be viewed below, while several clips showing the entire speech can be found at this location.
Quote mining most definitely isn't limited to selectively pulling quotes from political figures however, as evolutionary biologist and atheist author Richard Dawkins is probably the person most frequently quoted out of context by the religious. During a discussion with a family friend we'll call "DD" (You can see some of my previous discussions featuring "DD" here and here.), one of DD's acquaintances came on to defend Christianity and attack science. This individual quoted a single sentence from Dawkins that read, "I think any scientist would be unwise to commit himself to saying that there definitely is not anything," implying that even atheistic Dawkins believed in God.
What this person failed to understand was that Dawkins was stating that, scientifically speaking, absolutely nothing can be disproven with absolutely certainty. While I can't conclusively disprove the existence of the Christian God, Christians also can't conclusively disprove the existence of a giant fuzzy pickle named Bob who created the universe. The context of this statement is all important, however, as will become clear when you read the whole quote:
"I think any scientist would be unwise to commit himself to saying that there definitely is not anything. I mean, I can’t definitely commit myself to saying there are no fairies. I’m pretty sure there are no fairies, but I think it would be unscientific to do what the extreme religious people do and say ‘I know there is a god.’ I can’t say ‘I know there is no god.’ I can’t say ‘I know there are no pink unicorns.’”
Do you see the difference now? Dawkins wasn't saying that belief in God is reasonable - he was saying the exact opposite. He was stating that an inability to disprove something doesn't mean you have to accept it as a valid possibility. We can't disprove fairies, but that doesn't mean we have to accept fairies as valid possibilities without any evidence to back up their existence. A clip of Dawkins saying this quote in an interview with Bill Maher can be viewed below.
As a final example, we will delve into one of the most common acts of Christian quote mining, which comes from Charles Darwin himself. Creationists frequently quote a single paragraph from Darwin's book "Origin of Species," which seems to indicate Darwin wasn't sure his theory was actually correct. The quote reads:
"To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree."
When taken alone, it seems like Darwin is saying that the complexity of the eye disproves evolution. However, as before, the context is all important. The very next paragraph reads:
"When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei ["the voice of the people is the voice of God "], as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certain the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, should not be considered as subversive of the theory."
Do you see how the context changes everything? Darwin brought up a potential objection a reader might have to his theory, and then goes on to explain why that objection isn't valid. The next few pages of the book explains how eyes evolved, and even list specific examples of animals with eyes in some of those different stages of evolution.
So how do you tell if a quote from a religious person is being mined out of context? Simple: always assume they are quote mined.
Before responding to a quote, always look it up. Google is your friend, and always an easy way to tell if the quote is taken out of context. Type nearly any quote from Dawkins or Darwin in Google, and you'll see page after page of Christian apologetic websites listing the quote, but it will take some time to actually reach the original source of the quote. That's the easiest way to tell - if there are a huge number of religious sites posting the quote and the original source is hidden, it's probably been mined and then repeated without being verified first.
The religious have to rely on ignorance and dishonesty to get their points across. Don't stoop to their level. Truth and reality can win out over superstition and myth if enough people take the time to look at evidence and verify information.
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