Tuesday, January 29, 2013

FacePlant of the Day - Debunking Christianity: Mindlessly Quote-Mining the Bible is Not Thinking

John Loftus posted the picture on the left. The fact that he endorsed  such a lack of thinking leads either the conclusion that Loftus is either dishonest or ignorant to what"quote-mining" really means. Instead of continuing to mock and ridicule Loftus, Let's instead assume that he is merely mistaken and not a dishonest. Therefore let's help him and anyone else who may be confused:

Quote-Mining:

Quoting out of context or "quote mining" is a logical fallacy and type of false attribution in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning.
Source:Engel, Morris S., With Good Reason: An Introduction to Informal Fallacies (1994), pp. 106-107ISBN 0-312-15758-4

Therefore we see that quote-mining is invariably associated with twisting the quoted material out of context. Obviously the Bible can be quoted in context and it is the only way you can really find out if it is true or not. That is of course if you care about if its true or not. Of course, given that Loftus engages in quote-mining on occasion maybe he doesn't care about if the Bible is true or not.  For example check his recent post here. I show how he quotes the scripture out of context here.

Debunking Christianity: Mindlessly Quote-Mining the Bible is Not Thinking