I'm trying to understand what the appeal of quote mines is to creationists and why they so fervently insist that they are legitimate evidence. I've said these things before but I'll repeat them and maybe someone can address them.

First, just because someone says something is true, does not make it true. Providing quotes as stand-alone evidence is a logical fallacy called the argument from authority. This invalidates quote mines completely for a start.

However, for those who persist in using them. I've shown you how the process is done. The Wikipedia article showed you how the Discovery Institute did it. You take a text, select pieces out of it that support whatever point of view you want to get across, and put the pieces back together in such a way that they convery that point of view -- regardless of whether it has anything to do with the original intention. Or, you lift a sentence or two out of the context in which they originally had a different meaning than they would if they stood alone. Many of the Darwin quote mines fall into this category, such as the PRATT about the structure of the eye.

This sort of evidence would be thrown out of a court of law because it does not represent what was actually being said. You'll remember I even quote mined one of Bex's posts (or was it SoSick's)? and claimed that it showed that she hated God and the Bible. I then said that by her own standards these were her own words so this must be what she said. The point being that the whole practice is ludicrous. And yet . . . creationists persist with it. Is there a belief that scientists secretly think their own work is worthless and every now and then they somehow trip themselves up and betray their true feelings? Does anyone honestly believe this?

A final point about quote mines, which LinearAQ touched on earlier. Many of them are decades old. Science has moved on just a bit. Ideas change as new evidence comes to light. Strange how I very rarely see any up-to-date quote mines being posted.

I'll address other points here later, unless someone else wants to field the horse stuff first. I just had to ask these questions because I have to admit I'm flummoxed. (Don't quote-mine me on that.)