Lies, damn lies, and quote mining.
Anyone who knows me, knows that I am heavily involved in the evolution/ID-creationism debates online. Even though I am no scientist, rather instead a budding historian, I am staunchly on the evolution side of the debate. However, this being said, I enjoy the back and forth discussion over evidence and have found it possible to agree to disagree peacefully with people on the other side of the debate. There is, however, one tactic used in the debate primarily by creationists, although I have seen evolution supporters use it as well, that never fails to offend me both as a historian, and as a human being. I honestly hate to single out the creationist side of the debate for the use of quote mining. However, in my participation in the debates on line, 95% of the quote mining is from the creationist side of the debate. This tactic is quote mining. Quote mining simply is taking a snippets of a book or article radically out of context to use to support your position. Take this quote t