You’ve probably all heard by now that Ray Comfort is coming out with his own butchered version of Darwin’s Origin, with big chunks cut out of it, and a deeply stupid introduction slapped on. It’s within his rights to do that, since the book is in the public domain now (as is, say, the KJV Bible), but it’s also a metaphor for the sleaziness of creationism. They have no original ideas, so all they can do is steal the work of real scientists; their ideas are contradicted by the evidence, so their only strategy is to delete the parts that make them uncomfortable, and put a false spin on what’s left. Ray Comfort also has a lot of gall; he doesn’t understand the concepts Darwin discussed, so he’s got no foundation on which to base his editorial decisions. What next? Will he decide to put out a special creationist edition of Relativity: The Special and General Theory with the math chopped out and his own clueless introduction that calls it all bunk?

Anyway, Ray Comfort tries to defend his act of intellectual vandalism online in a written debate with Eugenie Scott, who shreds him. This is going to be interesting, since what’s up so far is only part 1; next week, they’re going to reply to each other’s initial argument.