I don't know if I've ever heard a political figure talk so personally from the heart. Amazing. Makes me feel bonded to him as a human being.

As Upworthy said, ignore the politics. This is just a man talking about grief.

Vice President Biden talks to TAPS--Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, an organization for the families of members of the military killed in action.

There's something profound . . . and profoundly moving . . . about having someone talk about deep tragedy and how it impacted them.

Watched at 2.3x regular speed using Enounce MySpeed (which, by the way, is still available [for a short time yet?] at 20% off using discount code 20R8MYSPD). [Oh. And some have asked: Should I get the "Regular" or "Premium" edition? Honestly: I don't see why or how the Premium version makes sense. --My opinion.] Save your time while watching almost any video online.

Precision . . . Corrections . . . and Apologies

As someone who deals with words, I was struck by this article from The Atlantic.

Osama bin Laden was dead, and Frank Lindh -- father of John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban" -- had been invited on [San Francisco's KQED Forum show] to discuss a New York Times op-ed piece he'd just published about his son's 20-year prison sentence. The moment host Dave Iverson completed his introduction about the politically and emotionally charged case, Lindh cut in: "Can I add a really important correction to what you just said?"

Iverson had just described John Walker Lindh's 2002 guilty plea as "one count of providing services to a terrorist organization." That, Frank Lindh said, was simply wrong.

Yes, his son had pled guilty to providing services to the Taliban, in whose army he had enlisted. Doing so was a crime because the Taliban government was under U.S. economic sanctions for harboring Al Qaeda. But the Taliban was not (and has never been) classified by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization itself.

This distinction might seem picayune. But it cut to the heart of the disagreement between Americans who have viewed John Walker Lindh as a traitor and a terrorist and those, like his father, who believe he was a fervent Muslim who never intended to take up arms against his own country.

That morning, the clash over this one fact set host and guest on a collision course for the remainder of the 30-minute interview. . . . The collision was set in motion nine years before by 14 erroneous words in the New York Times.

The 14 erroneous words? "Mr. Lindh agreed to plead guilty to one of the 10 counts in the indictment against him. It charged he had provided service to the Taliban, which is a felony because President Bush and former President Bill Clinton had declared the party a terrorist organization."

Reality: Neither president, Bush or Clinton, ever formally declared the Taliban to be a terrorist organization. Okay. But in most Americans' minds, does it really matter whether the Taliban was formally declared to be a terrorist organization? After all, the Taliban gave Al Qaeda a haven and Al Qaeda attacked the United States. So aren't we merely splitting hairs to try to distinguish whether the Taliban was a terrorist organization?

Absolutely not! says Frank Lindh.

"It is no small thing to accuse a person of being a terrorist, or of providing assistance to or conspiring with a terrorist organization. . . . It's basically calling the person a murderer." His son, John, maintained that his purpose in joining the Taliban army had been to defend Muslim civilians from attacks by the insurgents who would later come to be known as the U.S.-allied Northern Alliance.

The record of the Lindh legal proceeding shows that federal prosecutors wanted very badly to hang the "terrorist" label on Lindh, but they [didn't]: either they didn't have the evidence, or they had some other reason to drop all of the terrorism-related charges. As New York Times Justice Department correspondent David Johnston reported in a front page companion piece to [the] story [that contained the error], U.S. officials "had grown skeptical that Mr. Lindh played any meaningful role in Islamic terrorism." They allowed Lindh to limit his guilty plea to two violations of the Taliban economic sanctions.

Lindh's statement to the court carefully maintained this distinction. He said: "I provided my services as a soldier to the Taliban last year from about August to December. In the course of doing so, I carried a rifle and two grenades. I did so knowingly and willingly knowing that it was illegal."

The [Times'] mistaken description of the Taliban as a federally sanctioned terrorist organization was therefore far from a minor detail. For Lindh and his sympathizers, it was the crux of the story.

Besides the fine legal distinction, I am intrigued by The Atlantic article's discussion about making corrections in news stories online.

After the KQED show hoisted the mistake into the spotlight, MediaBugs, an online service for recording and fixing problems in news coverage, filed an error report and contacted the Times about the matter. And within a week, the Times had corrected the error--in a way.

If you look up that July 16, 2002, story today, you find the words "correction appended" inserted, a little awkwardly, between the byline and the first paragraph. And if you press "next page" three more times to get to the conclusion of the story and scroll all the way down, you'll find the following notice:

"Correction: This article gives an imprecise explanation for why providing assistance to the Taliban was a felony. Executive orders by Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush forbade such assistance because the Taliban was considered a threat to the United States and had provided haven to Al Qaeda, but those orders did not declare the Taliban to be a terrorist organization. (The error was brought to The Times's attention after related news reports in June 2011.)"

One might quibble with this wording's halfhearted walk-back: After all, the article's explanation wasn't "imprecise" -- it was wrong. But correction notices have a long history of defensive phrasing; minimizing your missteps is human nature. The main thing is that the Times noted, and corrected, its goof.

Or is it?

I noted a similar problem with a young-earth creationist site that modified and, from my perspective, wildly misrepresented something Charles Spurgeon once said in a sermon. (See Honesty . . . it's such a lonely word . . . and Editorial license.)

As I complained there, so the author of the Atlantic article complains in his article: the Times' correction is way too difficult to find. Indeed, it almost begs to be ignored:

[T]he paper did not edit the story's original text to reflect the correction. The same erroneous 14 words still sit, live, on the Times' website. To learn that they've been superseded, you have to click through three more pages. (Or, if you're really unlucky, Google might send you to a different version of the same story that shows no trace at all of any correction.)

Philip Corbett, the Times' associate managing editor for standards, explained in an email, "For practical and technical reasons in this case, we decided simply to append the correction, rather than trying to rewrite a passage in a nine-year-old article." (Editor's note: The Atlantic approaches corrections on a case-by-case basis. However, in a similar situation, we would probably leave the original wording intact but provide a linked asterisk at that spot in the text, which would take you to the full correction at the end of the piece.)

Is that enough? Corrections expert Craig Silverman, author of the book and blog "Regret the Error" and Columbia Journalism Review columnist (he is also an adviser to MediaBugs), doesn't think so.

"If you only read the first two pages of that story," Silverman says, "you're not going to get to the correction, and you're going to get the mistaken piece of information, and so it's just not effective. That's a very long article. What percent of people are going to read to the end of that and get to the correction, or even know that 'correction appended' means that it's necessarily on the exact last page? The basic principle of 'Let's make sure that this error stops spreading' is not really being upheld here."

Institutions like the Times honed their correction practices in the age of print, when appending a notice was the best feasible option. But an always-available digital page is also always editable -- and is part of a rapidly evolving news ecosystem in which stopping the spread of misinformation is more important [than] ever. Post-publication edits can uphold that principle without being furtive or seeming to rewrite history. Any changes to long-published articles can be made transparently, either in the text of an accompanying correction notice or in an archive of previous story versions.

So how should newspaper editors take care of errors in news stories? (According to a study referenced by the Atlantic author, "59 percent of local news and feature stories were found by news sources to have at least one error.")

"For starters," writes Atlantic author,

[editors] can demonstrate that they invite and welcome pointers to potential errors from readers. Today's stance -- "we're willing to consider fixing our mistakes if you hunt down our contact information and pester us" -- is too passive. But it can be upgraded to an active pursuit of truth via some simple interface changes on a news website. Put a button on every page of every story, current and archived, that says "Report an error" -- and then follow up on what the public tells you. Think of this as a customer service feedback loop, or a quality-control system. That's how the most efficient large businesses that produce software or cars run their operations today; surely the information we use to run our society deserves at least as much care.

There's more at TheAtlantic.com and on the KQED webpage dedicated to the Frank Lindh interview. (I encourage you, especially, to read the Listener Comments.)

"Sinner!"

Well, it appears my correspondence with Mark Looy, chief communications officer of Answers in Genesis, is coming to an end.

Apparently, I have sinned again. This time by making public what he would have preferred remained private.

I will let you be the judge.

******

From: Mark Looy
Sent: Monday, March 02, 2009 7:57 PM MST
To: John Holzmann
Subject: reply from Answers in Genesis to Mr. Holzmann

John,

I wrote to you in private in an attempt to resolve this matter out of the public eye – which included an earnest appeal for us to meet, rather than using ongoing email exchanges and public blog postings. Then I see that you have posted my private email, without asking for permission. You justified your action by stating on your blog that you regret that I “did not also respond in public,” adding; “I think, considering the charges he leveled against me and ‘other [unnamed] Christians,’ and considering my response, he really owes us all a more open, public reply. In hopes of eliciting such a reply, I am posting his response.”

This is not a sign of a good faith effort on your part to bring resolution when my private attempt to arrange a private meeting with you- - to get this out of the public eye (so that non-Christians wouldn’t be gleeful over this or immature believers not be shaken in their new faith) -- is treated in such a fashion. I told you that I did not wish to carry on the dialogue via web postings or emails but to engage this in private (hence the private email I sent to you), but you have explicitly ignored my wishes. (I wrote in that email that we should “communicate face to face as opposed to web postings and emails.”)

Incidentally, I did a search on the words Sonlight and Holzmann on our 6,000-article website and found nothing. I learned that as a gesture of goodwill towards your work, we took down an article about Sonlight that concerned you -- at the suggestion of a Christian brother we both know. Now, however, this old article has been brought up again – by you -- and you direct people to it on your site. If you knew we no longer had the article posted on our site and yet you still referred to it, why are you still holding a grudge against us when someone had intervened and we followed his suggestion to remove the article that bothered you?

With my private email to you, I had extended an olive branch to discuss these matters in private but was essentially rebuffed when you posted my private correspondence -- in a dialogue which merely started a few days ago as an admonition to follow Proverbs 18:13 to check something out and get the full story before going public against us. As you have written in a prior article that chastised us, “we need to speak with grace” about differences of opinion. But I submit that jumping to conclusions and speaking harshly is not following that grace model.

Because you have made a private email public, and have rebuffed my clearly expressed desire to handle this in private (including through a private meeting), I will now break off total communication with you -- until such time you respond and indicate that you will meet and resolve your concerns in private, and cease your public campaign. Perhaps at that time you might share with me what position you hold on Genesis.

Regards,

Mark

My reply:

Unbelievable, Mark!

Your behavior absolutely boggles my mind!

Before I get into the substance of my reply, I would like to note the following.

At this point, it seems, you are primarily upset because I took your "private" letter public.

Sorry. I don't hold out much sympathy for you because of my supposed "revelation" of your so-called "private" correspondence (written in response to very public comments and in your "official" capacity from your Answers in Genesis email account on Answers in Genesis internet "letterhead")!

On what grounds can you complain about my behavior when Answers in Genesis itself launched its public vilification campaign [against me and against Sonlight Curriculum -- explanatory/clarificatory note added 3/4/09 at 11:05 AM MST] by exposing my very private secrets in a very public manner . . . without provocation?

And you dare to complain about my behavior, here?

[Remember the first article Answers in Genesis published that referenced me? Talk about taking something private into the public sphere--without permission, and without discussion, and with absolutely no sense on my part that such a thing would ever be done!

Please--read the third paragraph of Tas Walker's article (plus, more particularly, Footnote #5)--an article and footnote that your organization published in a print magazine and that was available on your website for over eight years (until last year).

Oh. And your organization then published another article some four and a half years later that similarly referenced the same privacy-busting section in the first article. And that second article was distributed in print and online by Answers in Genesis.

Let me describe the privacy that your organization invaded. May I? (After all, it was my privacy you-all ignored.)

Here I had been looking for answers to excruciating personal questions and a certain man--I had no idea he had any association with AiG--offered counsel and hope. I wrote to him, man to man. I wasn't representing any organization. I was representing myself. Personally. And I bared my soul to this other man who claimed to be a Christian and concerned to help me.

And what do I find as a result? Somehow my name is "splashed across the pages" of a very public magazine published (or at least distributed as if it were published) by your organization. Twice.]

Again: Sorry. I am not prepared to apologize for doing the very thing that your organization has done, without apology, toward me!

*******
You complain: "I wrote to you in private in an attempt to resolve this matter out of the public eye. . . . Because you have made a private email public, and have rebuffed my clearly expressed desire to handle this in private (including through a private meeting), I will now break off total communication with you -- until such time you respond and indicate that you will meet and resolve your concerns in private, and cease your public campaign."

Excuse me. You started this conversation in public. You publicly charged me and others with wickedness for declaring publicly the truth about a document your organization had posted publicly. . . . And my supposed wickedness? That I did not first go to you privately to notify you of the things I found deficient in your public document to see if you could "explain" the deficiency.

I asked for clarification of your charges against me, because, as I noted, your organization has consistently and repeatedly acted toward me in exactly the manner you say is so wicked. Answers in Genesis has consistently and repeatedly made all kinds of public statements about me without having ever--not once--attempted to get the "straight scoop" from me. Worse, unlike the comments I made about your document (which were accurate), the statements AiG has made about me have repeatedly been shown false.

But when I laid out the details of your organization's behavior in order to get a better sense of what you could possibly mean by your condemning words . . . you suddenly expressed your preference to "go private"--"so that non-Christians wouldn’t be gleeful over this or immature believers not be shaken in their new faith."

I'm sorry. I prefer to keep this very public discussion public.

So whose preference--and, after all, that is all that it is--should win? Yours? Automatically? By default?

I appreciate your concern for the few "non-Christians" and "immature believers" who might wander by my blog. But I can assure you, the vast majority of my readers are Christians, and, generally, relatively mature Christians at that. And I think you and I need to consider their interests as well. Indeed, on the issues that you and I are discussing, I believe their interests may need to take precedence over those (non- and immature Christians) who have no natural interest in these kinds of matters. Why? Because mature Christians--people whom you and your organization have long asked to support Answers in Genesis . . . and whom your organization has long asked to shun John Holzmann and Sonlight Curriculum--need to know about and discern the deeper integrity of your organization.

You-all put yourselves forward as possessing the right publicly to judge and condemn fellow brothers and sisters in Christ as "bibliosceptics" and worse. You-all seem perfectly comfortable declaring that I "hardly manifest[ed] the fruit of the spirit (Galatians 5) and . . . ultimately [engaged in] tale-bearing" because of my original post. I asked, in essence, in reply: "[Y]ou, therefore, who teach another, do you . . . teach yourself?" (Romans 2:21)

But let us get back to the issue at hand.

You made a public post. I responded publicly. You engaged me publicly in my venue. . . . I don't see why one of us, unilaterally, should be granted the right, suddenly, to declare the discussion must become private. . . . I imagine we might come to a mutual agreement to go private. But I don't see the grounds for acceding to your unilateral desire to go private. . . .

*******
You wrote: "I learned that as a gesture of goodwill towards your work, we took down an article about Sonlight that concerned you -- at the suggestion of a Christian brother we both know. Now, however, this old article has been brought up again – by you -- and you direct people to it on your site."

You are correct in the first of your several statements, here.

I, too, am aware that Ken responded to the pleas of a mutual acquaintance to take that article down. (Actually, he removed references not just to the one article, but to two or three articles on your site.)

I deeply appreciate Ken's desire to honor me in that way. (At the same time, however, [strangely], I should note that I did not request to have those articles taken down. That was the idea of our mutual acquaintance. Since I believe it is helpful to have a record of what different parties have said through the years, I was actually a bit disappointed that, after having had them "up" for all these years, he suddenly decided to pull them down. They are still readily available elsewhere, but they were most readily available on the AiG website. And I had referenced them in the context of your website.)

Someone may wonder: Why would I want to keep such articles available?

Well, as already noted, you-all made them available for years. The damage--what damage can be done--has been done. Moreover, the articles, as a result of y'all's promotion and publication of the same, are available in numerous places on the web.

The Jonathan Sarfati Hold on, Mr Holzmann article you published (without having ever "done the Proverbs 18 thing," as you suggested I should have done with you)-- . . . that article is rather mean-spirited, and the author makes many false leaps-to-judgment about me; but he also makes a number of good, incisive comments--comments I used as the basis for improving the article he was critiquing. (I was [and still am] so appreciative of his insights and input that I mention this in the online version of my article. One of the problems with Ken having removed the article from its original URL is that the link back to Mr. Sarfati's article is now broken--not only in my article, but in any- and everyone else's articles that similarly referenced his work. --Not a really big deal. Someday I should get around to having it fixed by linking to another copy.)

But there is one more thing I want to be clear about: You are correct: No one will find Sarfati's article by doing a search using your site's search engine. But it is still available via at least one link to your site available by doing a search on Google. That's how I found it. And it is to that copy of the article that I linked in my blog comment.

Catch what I just said. You said I direct people to a copy of the article on my site. Except you are wrong about where the article is hosted. If you follow the link in my blog comment (search for "Hold on, Mr Holzmann"), you will find that the article is hosted on an AiG server! It is surrounded by live links that go to all current pages on your web site.

No big deal as far as I'm concerned where it is hosted. And I do appreciate, as I have said, that Mr. Ham attempted to show goodwill by having the primary, on-site-search-engine-referenced copy of the article removed. I am "simply" wanting to note that you have made another false claim about me: that I created a link that directs people to a copy of Mr. Sarfati's article on my site.

Not true. It's on a version of your site that is accessible to the Google search engine spider. Today.

Again, though, please hear me out: Having that article "up" or "down" is neither here nor there to me. And it was never "here" nor "there" to me. Having information correct and accurate, however: that is very important to me.

******
In your original post to my blog, you complained about behavior on my part that your organization has engaged in repeatedly. Behavior you have engaged in repeatedly without apology.

You said you wish I would have gotten and talked about a few additional facts that might have put your error in a different light.

Well, as soon as I had those additional data points, I made them available.

But, as far as I reported the facts before these few additional data points, what I reported was (and still is) correct. Your article evidenced (and, in some cases still evidences--see my On taking away in fine print what is stated in bold type post) the problems I highlighted.

And you and AiG? You who complain about others not fact-checking and not giving you every benefit of the doubt? Oh! Based on your track record, not only do you not check your facts, but you misspeak and mislead . . . and, it appears, you fight tooth and nail to avoid having to admit any fault.

How sad.

Peace.

John Holzmann

PS: I would like to encourage you to read On taking away in fine print what is stated in bold type. Despite the addition of the "missing" endnote to Spurgeon's sermon, I believe there is still good reason for impartial witnesses to hold AiG in contempt for the way it has handled the text.

PPS: I would like to conclude as I concluded my comment responding to yours back when I published my first post following your publication of the Spurgeon sermon:

[A]re you saying AiG has now dedicated itself never to "use a public arena like the worldwide web [and/or magazine articles and/or homeschool conventions and/or radio programs and/or seminars, etc.] to denigrate other Christians/ministries for [any shortcoming that AiG believes it has discovered] without first contacting those persons (or ministr[ies]) to get [their] perspectives--and thus hear all sides before coming to a conclusion (per Proverbs 18:13)-- and certainly before going public"?

If so, let me congratulate you heartily, and tell you how glad I am to hear of your organization's wonderful new commitment!

. . . But/and, moreover, if this is so,

* I would sincerely appreciate learning from you how AiG works these things out in practice. I mean, for example, how do you make sure you have contacted your presumed opponent? How much time do you give him or her or them to respond? How many rounds will you go with him/her/them in private before bringing the issue out into the public sphere? . . .

If Answers in Genesis has established those kinds of policies and practices, would you please share them with us? . . . I think your open leadership and guidance in these matters could . . . go a long way toward revolutionizing relationships among Christians for the good.

And y'know something? I still believe that. You could provide some supremely valuable leadership in this arena. And I think you might actually gain some credibility when you speak about dealing biblically with those with whom you disagree.

Right now, however, I'm afraid your behavior makes your protests quite hard to listen to.

I continue to hope for the best.

I think the ball is in your court.

You may reply in public on my blog . . . or in private. I "just" want you to be aware of what I'm thinking . . . and saying.

On taking away in fine print what is stated in bold type

As I'm sure you can tell, if you've been following this blog for the last few days, I am pretty exercised over various behaviors by people associated with the organization known as Answers in Genesis (AiG).

When Mr. Looy first announced how AiG had "corrected" its revision of Charles Spurgeon's sermon so that they included a footnote that included a reference to the original text, I didn't look at the revised page. I simply "took his word for it" and said I was pleased that they had noted the change.

But the more I have thought about what he said they have done, the more I thought I should look directly at what, exactly, they did . . . to see it for myself. And now that I have looked at it and thought about it, I've become upset over the deception inherent in what they have done. It's just plain misleading (at least). Though I think it would be more accurate to call it dishonest.

Consider how they present the amended portion of the sermon. Can you see the substantive changes?

I can't.

But they are indicated. Kind of.

Oh. You say you are like 99% of all the people I know who rarely if ever take the time to read endnotes--especially endnotes that are referenced immediately after an obvious direct quote from Scripture--and, more particularly, a Scripture with which you are very familiar?

That's where the deception comes in (my opinion). It's like the online ads that imply--in standard-size print--that something is free . . . but then, in small print, below the response button, declare that, by pressing the button, you are agreeing to pay a $4.95 monthly "delivery charge" to be charged to your cell phone. . . .

"Hey! Wait a second!" --It's in that fine print where you'll find all the information you'd really wish you'd known.

So it is here, on the AiG website: the fact that this conservative Christian icon [Spurgeon] was clearly not a young-earth advocate: hidden, "below the fold," as it were. Way below the fold.

Internet advertisers who engage in such practices when it comes to financial transactions: such people can expect to be prosecuted for fraud.

I wonder if AiG and those who are aware of their behavior in this matter should think of their revisions in a similar light. Is it equivalently fraudulent?

Read the modified text and those portions of text closest to the portion that has been modified:

In Ge 1:2, we read, “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”^a Our planet has passed through various stages in creation, and different kinds of creatures have lived on its surface, all of which have been fashioned by God. But before that era came, when man should be its principal tenant and monarch, the Creator initially created the world as a chaotic mass on the first day of creation. It was entirely without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. The Spirit came, and stretching his broad wings, bade the darkness disperse, and as he moved over it, all the different portions of matter came into their places, and it was no longer “without form, and void;” but became round like its sister planets, and moved, singing the high praises of God—not discordantly as it had done before, but as one great note in the vast scale of creation.

Can you see the alterations? Do you have any idea how it may have been altered? Would you be alarmed enough by the endnote marker to scan down to the end of the article in order to figure out where and how the alterations were made? I mean, really: Would you scan down there based on an endnote attached to an obviously unmodified direct quote from Scripture?

Yeah. I didn't think so.

Frankly, considering how this passage appears in its original context, I doubt I would scan down to read the endnote anyway--and I'm notorious (notorious with my wife, anyway!) for reading endnotes and footnotes and all such "scholarly" apparatus. She "never" reads those things; I "always" do.

But, honestly, I didn't even see the endnote marker the first time I read this passage . . . even when I knew it existed (i.e., yesterday morning, after people had told me the note existed and after I decided I wanted to see the note in context). It simply doesn't pop out at a reader.

But there is more I "have against" AiG in this context.

I believe they are disingenuous, at best, in indicating what exactly they have modified. Please: read the endnote and tell me what, exactly they did. Where did the indicated emendation take place?

Note

(a) [We do not know how remote the period of the creation of this globe may be—certainly many millions of years before the time of Adam. Our planet has passed through various stages of existence, and different kinds of creatures have lived on its surface, all of which have been fashioned by God. But before that era came, when man should be its principal tenant and monarch, the Creator gave up the world to confusion. He allowed the inward fires to burst up from beneath and melt all the solid matter, so that all kinds of substances were commingled in one vast mass of disorder; the only name you could give to the world then was, that it was a chaotic mass of matter; what it should be, you could not guess or define.] Bracketed text removed from the sermon. As brilliant as Spurgeon was, even he did not understand the age issue. –Editor

And, of course, they didn't note how and where and what specific text they added in its place and/or substituted in certain other places.

No. I think for full transparency, they should have provided in-line notes right at the spot . . . or, if they really believe endnotes are so fair, then let them add their notes at the end, and let Spurgeon speak honestly for himeself.

He was no young-earth, 6,000-year-old-earth, creationist. . . . but you'd have to be quite the detail-oriented scholar to know it from the way they have modified his sermon!

Honesty . . . it's such a lonely word . . .

To quote Billy Joel:

Honesty is such a lonely word.
Everyone is so untrue.
Honesty is hardly ever heard.
And mostly what I need from you.

I am so disappointed!

Answers in Genesis claimed their "Charles Spurgeon-Reloaded" series would "update" Spurgeon's sermons, "not to change the meaning, but to make them more easily understood by modern readers." Moreover, they said, "the original text [would] also [be] included so that [readers] can see what was changed."

How disappointing, then, to find what they have done with only the 30th sermon they have "updated."

Due to limitations of the blogging software I'm using (I can't get any table cells to align vertically to the tops of their cells), I am breaking sentences apart into separate cells within the following table . . . so the actual quotes will align as closely as possible one with the other. However--as you will see if you visit the referenced sites, I have removed no sentences from either quotation, nor altered the wording in any way. I have added italics and bolding to call attention to the obvious tampering that AiG has done with the text of Spurgeon's sermon as preached:

Original	AiG's "Modernized" Version	John's Comments
In the 2d verse of the first chapter of Genesis, we read, "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."	In Ge 1:2, we read, “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”	Yes. Very minor update.
We know not how remote the period of the creation of this globe may be--certainly many millions of years before the time of Adam.		!!!! Oh! Can you say "point-of-view censorship"?!? How about honoring Spurgeon enough at least to point out the massive emendation? Spurgeon's actual views about the age of the earth--views he expressed four years before Darwin's Origin of Species came out--didn't align with AiG's. "Too bad! Down the memory hole with them!" How incredibly dishonest, don't you think?!?
Our planet has passed through various stages of existence, and different kinds of creatures have lived on its surface, all of which have been fashioned by God. But before that era came, wherein man should be its principal tenant and monarch, the Creator gave up the world to confusion.	Our planet has passed through various stages in creation, and different kinds of creatures have lived on its surface, all of which have been fashioned by God. But before that era came, when man should be its principal tenant and monarch, the Creator initially created the world as a chaotic mass on the first day of creation.	Sorry! "Pass[ing] through various stages of existence" isn't quite the same as "pass[ing] through various stages in creation. Close, but not quite the same. Worse, however, "[giving] up the world to confusion" has a very different meaning than "initially creat[ing] the world as a chaotic mass on the first day of creation." Not even close. The original leaves plenty of room for a gap of millions of years (as is rather clear Spurgeon allowed for, based on what he actually said in the sentence two up from this one--the sentence AiG's "modernizers" so carefully removed!). But AiG's rephrasing leaves no such option. Anyone who would speak as AiG has made Spurgeon to speak would have to be a literal, six-day, young-earth creationist. But based on what he actually said, Spurgeon--at least at the time he preached this sermon--obviously believed in a world that was "certainly many millions of years" old. Is AiG being honest with the historical record? I don't think so!
He allowed the inward fires to burst up from beneath, and melt all the solid matter, so that all kinds of substances were commingled in one vast mass of disorder. The only name you could give to the world, then, was that it was a chaotic mass of matter; what it should be, you could not guess or define.		Oops! Another major emendation. And AiG expects us to believe this is a faithful rendition of Spurgeon's meaning? (Remember their promise "not to change the meaning"?)
It was entirely "without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." The Spirit came, and stretching his broad wings, bade the darkness disperse, and as he moved over it, all the different portions of matter came into their places, and it was no longer "without form, and void;" but became round, like its sister planets, and moved, singing the high praises of God—not discordantly, as it had done before, but as one great note in the vast scale of creation.	It was entirely without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. The Spirit came, and stretching his broad wings, bade the darkness disperse, and as he moved over it, all the different portions of matter came into their places, and it was no longer “without form, and void;” but became round like its sister planets, and moved, singing the high praises of God—not discordantly as it had done before, but as one great note in the vast scale of creation.	Ah! How nice! Back to our regular broadcast . . . having first eliminated one of those damning pieces of evidence that AiG's version of Christian theological history may not, in fact, be accurate.

A few days ago, in anticipation that AiG just might engage in this kind of dishonesty, but with sincere hopes and expectations that they wouldn't, I wrote,

If [AiG does, indeed, decide to engage in such behavior,] I go back to my original post that kind of sparked this entire discussion: Are you being treated like a child? Who controls what you get to hear?

Apparently, if you can't win your argument on the merits, AiG believes in winning through altering the historical record--as I intimated above, the old "memory hole" trick.

Oh. And in case, for some reason, you are unaware, the memory hole was not merely a literary device dreamt up by George Orwell. No. He got his idea from a master of such historical lies. Look at how Joseph Stalin dealt with inconvenient history. . . .

--Thanks to Tim Martin and Jeff Vaughn for bringing this story to my attention. (See their comments yesterday in answer to my post in which I asked, Does old-earth/old-universe creationism=Liberalism? Atheism?)

I wrote my comments above before reading Tim's post on the same subject.