Mod Hat — Brief note
It always feels unfortunate when greeting new members with both welcome mixed into warning, but here is some irony: Your list of three names can help people find a seventeen year-old page from a well-known conspiracist website, discussing three teachers accused of inappropriately weaving religion into science education, such that lessons sounded like sales pitches. Interestingly, what those names have to do with the rest of the post is unclear, but the next paragraph of your post, quoted above, is lifted, word for word, from Olivia McFadden, A Bird in the Hand: Some Thoughts Concerning Evolution, Creation, and the Teachings of the Catholic Church (Bloomington: Xlibris, 2009), page 19↱, and reads in your post like a sales pitch.
If the quote is somehow otherwise connected to the Ashton book, that would be one thing, but you haven't really made that clear, and that last paragraph is quite clearly a lift of the subsequent paragraph in McFadden.
Nonetheless, the paragraph quoted above does constitute plagiarism, and we really need people to avoid that. You don't even need modified MLA or anything formal like that; just author and title tends to be sufficient, and, it's true, sometimes the year is important. And in some cases, sure, famous quotes are often simply attributed. But the one paragraph is definitely plagiarism, and the other, about Ashton, would likely require citation in a university paper, or similar endeavor.
It always feels unfortunate when greeting new members with both welcome mixed into warning, but here is some irony: Your list of three names can help people find a seventeen year-old page from a well-known conspiracist website, discussing three teachers accused of inappropriately weaving religion into science education, such that lessons sounded like sales pitches. Interestingly, what those names have to do with the rest of the post is unclear, but the next paragraph of your post, quoted above, is lifted, word for word, from Olivia McFadden, A Bird in the Hand: Some Thoughts Concerning Evolution, Creation, and the Teachings of the Catholic Church (Bloomington: Xlibris, 2009), page 19↱, and reads in your post like a sales pitch.
If the quote is somehow otherwise connected to the Ashton book, that would be one thing, but you haven't really made that clear, and that last paragraph is quite clearly a lift of the subsequent paragraph in McFadden.
Nonetheless, the paragraph quoted above does constitute plagiarism, and we really need people to avoid that. You don't even need modified MLA or anything formal like that; just author and title tends to be sufficient, and, it's true, sometimes the year is important. And in some cases, sure, famous quotes are often simply attributed. But the one paragraph is definitely plagiarism, and the other, about Ashton, would likely require citation in a university paper, or similar endeavor.
