breaking news creationist dishonestly

Breaking News: A Creationist Dishonestly Doctors a Quotation

Yes, I know it is not really breaking news. Creationists have been

dishonestly doctoring quotes for years. But still, each new episode

can be breathtaking in its chutzpah.

The latest dishonesty comes from that paragon of boot-licking virtue,

Salvador Cordova. In a recent post at Uncommon Descent, he says of

intelligent design

Some critics claim that it's `creationism in a tuxedo'. My response to

them is: what's so bad about being in a tuxedo?"

Although it's true that some people have called intelligent design

"creationism in a tuxedo", the original citation is the far more

damning appraisal that intelligent design is "creationism in a cheap

tuxedo". I can understand why ID advocates would want to omit the

modifier "cheap". After all, if your tuxedo is expensive, almost

anyone can look good. But a cheap tuxedo demonstrates the wearer to be

a poseur.

The phrase originates with Leonard Krishtalka, a professor at the

University of Kansas and director of the Natural History Museum and

Biodiversity Research Center. He used it in a presentation held in

2000 at the Lied Center at the University of Kansas. His use of it is

documented in this article from November 2000 by Kansas physicist

Adrian Melott, who would later go on to use it as a title of an

opinion piece in Physics Today.

So, yet another example of creationists doctoring a quotation to make