The people of Parkview may come upon this discussion on their own, and make their own judgements about him. I won’t chase after them. I don’t know the people of Parkview, so I don’t have a judge of what they value or what moral standards they hold to. Perhaps Pastor Tim is exactly what they want in a leader.

Not my church, not my god, not my battle.

Uh, we can see if the phone campaign works. After phoning comes…what, mailing? Road trip?

It was he who ended the dialogue, not us. I offered to go over the entire document point by point and vet it with him, it was he that declined. In his mind he may have removed the questionable parts, but he decided to end the discussion while we only had a couple of corrections on the table by way of illustrating the problems. I said up from that the document was “chock full” of errors and contained pages and pages of pseudoscientific crapola (a technical term).

But let’s look at how he addressed two of the items I brought up with regards to intellectual dishonesty, quote-mining, and just plain making stuff up (Bearing false witness, lying, tomato-tomahto)

In my very first post back in june, I pointed out to Pastor Tim his false quote supposedly by Dr. Colin Patterson.

For instance just as you falsely used National Geographic to bolster your case, you falsely quote Dr. Colin Patterson.

Here’s the story on the Patterson quote you use:

“I was too naive and foolish to guess what might happen:
the talk was taped by a creationist who passed the tape
to Luther Sunderland… Since, in my view, the tape was
obtained unethically, I asked Sunderland to stop circulating
the transcipt, but of course to no effect. There is not much
point in my going through the article point by point. I was
putting a case for discussion, as I thought off the record,
and was speaking only about systematics, a specialized field.
I do not support the creationist movement in any way, and in
particular I am opposed to their efforts to modify school
curricula. In short the article does not fairly represent my
views. But even if it did, so what? The issue should be
resolved by rational discussion, and not by quoting
‘authorities,’ which seems to be the creationists’ principal
mode of argument.” (Letter from Colin Patterson to Steven W.
Binkley, June 17, 1982).

Eugenie Scott wrote about this incident:
“The ‘Patterson story’ illustrates two common creationist enthusiasms: taking statements out of context, and refusing to recognize corrections when made.”

He didn’t remove or correct that.

I also pointed out his invented false quote from the Newsweek article from 1980. Here’s what I wrote at the time:

You quote the huckster and fraud suspect Hank Hanegraaff’s quote of Newsweek’s quote of “leading evolutionists” saying the fossil evidence overwhelmingly points away from classical darwinism. That’s blatantly out of context, and again, completely the opposite of what you take it to mean.

Here’s your quote from your letter:

‘Newsweek summarized the sentiments of leading evolutionists gathered together at a conference in Chicago: “Evidence from fossils now points overwhelmingly away from the classical Darwinism which most Americans learned in High School. Rather than becoming creationists, however evolutionists have simple become more creative.” ‘

Here’s the quote in context:

“Evidence from fossils now points overwhelmingly away from the classical Darwinism which most Americans learned in high school: that new species evolve out of existing ones by the gradual accumulation of small changes, each of which helps the organism survive and compete in the environment.
Increasingly, scientists now believe that species change little for
millions of years and then evolve quickly, in a kind of quantum leap-not
necessarily in a direction that represents an obvious improvement in
fitness.”

This Newsweek article appeared in 1980 and talks about “Presidential Candidate Ronald Reagan.”

You give the impression that Newsweek and the scientists were saying that the fossil record was overwhelmingly pointing away from Darwinism. In fact it points overwhelmingly toward Darwinism, but the writer was making a distinction between what was being discussed and Darwinism as it had been taught in high-schools in the 60’s and 70’s. This is a snapshot in time of a discussion of evolutionary rate of change happening in the scientific community thirty years ago, and you quote it completely dishonestly.

Further, you manufacture a quote (or use a quote manufactured by someone equally unscrupulous) : “Rather than becoming creationists, however evolutionists have simple become more creative.” This quote does not appear in the Newsweek article, but you use it as if it does.

http://friendlyatheist.com/2006/06/19/creationism-for-your-childs-teacher/#comment-131

This text has not been removed, changed or corrected. In fact, since he has seen and responded to my post on this matter, and SPECIFICALLY NOT CORRECTED the Newsweek cite, I take that to be blatant lying and dishonesty.

As before, I could go on and on with this document. It is CHOCK FULL of mistakes, and I could spend hours and hours taking apart every assertion. I merely chose some as representative of the whole.

I wrote this comment back in July, and it’s still, sadly, relevant:

Tim,

I’m sorry if this discussion has left a bad taste in your mouth. I think I have been measured and respectful, while still attempting to draw you into a deeper discussion. I’m not sure I’ve been successful at those points. I’ll remind you of them in passing.

My main questions still are unanswered, and would be these:

Do you believe that you have a responsibility when quoting other people, especially people who disagree with you, to quote them as accurately and honestly as possible?

Do you believe that as a figure of authority you have a responsibility, when writing documents that you provide to your church membership, to perform due diligence in checking the reliability of the materials you provide?

Do you believe that when you write something and sign your name to it, that you have a responsibility to those whom you quote and those whom you intend to read it, that you stood by and continue to stand by the accuracy and honesty of the statements therein?

Because if not, then all my writing here is moot.

It’s my hope that when I first posted a response to this document that you’d take a critical look at your own actions in creating it, your own level of scholarship when fact-checking it, and your own responsibility to your flock when posting it.

Instead, I see no response but defensiveness.

Take care.

-Siamang

http://friendlyatheist.com/2006/07/02/tims-response-to-siamang/#comment-311