Evangelical Deception and the 150th Anniversary Edition of The Origin of the Species

From my other posts, I’m sure all of you know I’m a theistic evolutionist, but one very friendly to Intelligent Design and even Creationism. I see them as wrong, but understandable points of view that (like all points of view) belong in political debate. If they are wrong let the facts fell them. Therefore, I generally find the Atheist Evolutionists point of view right, but immoral.

However, nothing in life is that simple, is it?

I recently decided to listen to Darwin’s Origin of the Species on Librivox. But I still wanted a copy of the book to write notes in and underline good quotes. So I went online and bought a cheap used copy of the book.

When it arrived, I laughed because I had accidently ordered the Evangelical “Ray Comfort version” which consists of a long introduction of by Mr. Comfort full of disproven objections to evolution. The book itself is in very small text and is downplayed compared to the introduction. There is nothing on the outside of the book to suggest that it’s really an Evangelical Apologetic work.

Does this look like an Evangelical Apologetic work to you?

The back cover is carefully worded to hide the truth.

This higher-education edition of the Origin of the Species  is for use in schools, colleges, and prestigious learning institutions.

“Special Introduction” with thought-provoking information on:

• The history of evolution
• Timeline of Darwin’s life [i.e. makes fun of him]
• Intelligent Design vs. Evolution
• The 2009 discovery of the “missing link”
• DNA code
• Atheism, Darwin, and God [i.e. a call for all to reject Evolution of go to hell]
• Vestigial organs
• Einstein, Newton, Copernicus, Bacon, Faraday, Pateur, and Kepler.

While I find it all a little misleading and deceptive, I really wasn’t that worried. I just wanted the book to underline good quotes with and having sample Evangelical Apologetics on Evolution handy was a bonus. 

Also, I sort of agreed with Mr. Comfort’s point at the end.

Somone once gracious said, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defined to the death your right to say it.” However, it seems that some contemporary atheists don’t share such honorable convictions. When they learned about this publication they threatened lawsuits, book burnings, and even censorship in vowing to tear the Introduction out of the book.

In fact, I was going to do a post on atheistic intolerance to Evangelicals based on what Mr. Comfort wrote.

But now I can’t.

You see, I started using the book as intended to underline quotes that I heard, but something funny kept happening. I couldn’t find the dang quotes!

Finally, growing concerned, I looked up information about this “edition” and found that it’s “abridged.” It doesn’t say this anywhere on the book at all. Worse yet, Mr. Comfort’s website (according to Wikipedia) claims it’s not abridged, or at least used to make that claim. And even worse, when he finally admitted it was abridged, he claimed he only removed four chapters ‘at random’ whereas my experience includes removal of sentences from paragraphs. (One of which attacked ‘special creation.’)

This really does come across as being deceptive.

I wish I could say this is just one Evangelical, but this is precisely the type of deception I’ve grown used to from Evagelicals when dealing with Mormons. That whole religion has a systemic intolerance problem that seems intentionally propagated by their ministers. I think they literally don’t see the problem with misrepresenting their books and materials in hopes that someone might come across it by accident like I did.

Now I have to go buy another copy of the book and I’m out my $3, or whatever I paid.

And I’m thinking about burning the copy I have.