Kirk Hastings' Pants Are on Fire

CREDIT: PhotoBucket

We last saw Kirk Hastings when he wrongly accredited some creationist mumbo-jumbo to a respected science journalist. He has yet to correct the FaceBook page Freedom From Atheistic Scientism. Isn't there a word when a person makes a claim he knows to be false?

This is not the only time Kirk has distorted the truth, but first let me insert here my thanks to Question Kirk Hastings, a FaceBook page dedicated to documenting Kirk. 

Here is Kirk quoting Colin Patterson, a paleontologist affiliated with the British Museum and a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Out of context that statement might seem to express doubt in modern biological theories. However, when one reads that statement in context, it takes on a whole new meaning.

Gillespie's book [Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation]is a historian's attempt to explain the amount of space that Darwin gave to combating the creationist arguments. Gillespie shows that what Darwin was doing was trying to replace the creationist paradigm by a positivist paradigm, a view of the world in which there was neither room nor necessity for final causes. Of course, Gillespie takes it for granted that Darwin and his disciples succeeded in this task. He takes it for granted that a rationalist view of nature has replaced an irrational one and of course, I myself took that view about eighteen months ago. Then I woke up and realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way. 

Furthermore, Patterson gave the "fairly rumbustious talk" that this statement came from at an informal meeting dealing with systematics (classification).  In a letter, Patterson wrote "my talk was addressed to professional systematists, and concerned systematics, nothing else."

One more example of taking something out of context. Here Kirk repeats a statement from a radio and YouTube commentator.

What did Stephen J. Gould really write? 

The fossil record with its abrupt transitions offers no support for gradual change. All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt.

 How does Gould feel about being quoted in such a dishonest manner?

Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists -- whether through design or stupidity, I do not know -- as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. The punctuations occur at the level of species; directional trends (on the staircase model) are rife at the higher level of transitions within major groups.

I find it funny that this example is used on Wikipedia as an example of quoting out of context.

What does Kirk have to say for himself. On a different FaceBook page he administers, The Question Irreligiosophy Project, he writes

Creationists can make mistakes like anyone else, and I haven't seen that they generally have any problem correcting them when necessary (after all, they believe the Bible when it says "You shall not lie"). 

Lest I be accused of lying, here is the screen shot.