Lying for Jesus, part 2

Ian Juby is a young-earth creationists I have not mentioned previously in this blog. He is somewhat of a celebrity, especially on YouTube, and he's especially infamous for the blatant lies and distortions about science and evolution.

There would be hundreds and hundreds of examples of his lies, but I thought I would mention one in which he resorts to quite blatant quote mining.

In one of his videos he quotes Dr. Louis Jacobs, a doctor of paleontology, and his book Quest for the African Dinosaur like this:

"co-occurrence of men and dinosaurs ... would dispel an earth with vast antiquity. The entire history of creation, including the day of rest, could be accommodated in the seven biblical days of the Genesis myth. Evolution would be vanquished."

Jacobs seems to be making an admission here that humans living contemporaneously with dinosaurs would confirm the Genesis story of creation.

However, attentive viewers should become suspicious when they notice that this is a very partial quote: It starts with a lowercase letter (indicating that it's not, in fact, a full sentence) and it has an ellipsis, indicating that something has been left out. While one could commend Juby for this kind of academic honesty (ie. he didn't technically try to hide the fact that this is only a partial quote), it's still extremely dishonest: When quoting, parts should be left out for the sake of brevity only when doing so does not alter the meaning of what is being said. If leaving parts out changes the meaning or the spirit of what was said, that's extremely dishonest, especially when done to drive an specific agenda.

When we see the full paragraph, the meaning of the original text is quite different:

"There is a very simple reason why creationists cling to the Glen Rose footprints and insist on the co-occurrence of men and dinosaurs: Such an association would dispel the necessity of an Earth with vast antiquity. The entire history of creation, including the day of rest, could be accommodated in the seven biblical days of the Genesis myth. Evolution would be vanquished."

What Jacobs is doing here is explaining why creationists are so eager to defend the Glen Rose footprints, even though they are easily demonstrated as fakes: Because they would provide an argument to defend the biblical stories. Jacobs is not admitting that the biblical stories would become believable if men co-existed with dinosaurs; rather, he's explaining why creationists defend the idea, ie. what they think would be the consequence of that.

This becomes even clearer in the broader context of the book, ie. the other paragraphs surrounding this one, and the rest of the book.