If it were a virtue to be prolific, Robert Sungenis would certainly be well on his way to sainthood. Unfortunately, without either a sufficient internal editor or an external editor who is willing and able to contain him, Sungenis’ prolificacy is far too often an engine of inaccuracy, misinformation, bigotry and a host of other negatives.
On the innocuous and humorous side, take this example from Sungenis’ latest attempt at a defense. On the homepage of CAI, the article is entitled, “Jacob Michael: An Ass in Sheep’s Clothing”. This title/link was likely entered by someone like CAI “Media Technician” Laurence Gonzaga. However, click on the link and look closely at the title on the actual article as entitled by Sungenis himself:
, Jacob Michael: as Ass in Sheep’s Clothing
Perhaps we will later learn that Sungenis inserted the leading comma for dramatic effect? And “as Ass in Sheep’s Clothing”? Will Sungenis perchance later inform us that he was framing the discussion as something along the lines of a television series?
Jerry Mathers: as the Beaver.
Jacob Michael: as Ass in Sheep’s Clothing.
Next, we move on to more serious matters in the body of Sungenis’ latest attempt at a defense of his shoddy scholarship:
Sungenis: Anyone who knows anything about Carl Sagan knows that the comment about God being an “overstuffed white male” is his. He’s said it many times in interviews and other venues. But Mr. Michael doesn’t know anything about Carl Sagan, obviously. (,JMAASC, p. 3)
Sungenis’ smugness is risible in light of the fact that he only just now scrambled to find documentation for this Sagan quote, well after the publication of his book. If he was so well-acquainted with Sagan, knowing that he has said it “many times”, then the documentation should have been a snap to provide from the beginning. But it was nowhere to be found in Galileo Was Wrong. Perhaps he ought to consider paying his critics for editorial oversight rather than complaining.
This is all the more eye-opening when one considers that he received a “doctorate” for the research that comprises the vast majority of this book. In fact, Sungenis’ research was specifically singled out by Calamus for its excellence. (As a side note, it turns out that the one bogus organization willing to sell “accreditation” status to Calamus is now out of business: click here.)
And yet, perhaps even more remarkably, when Sungenis knows he is being watched closely for accuracy, he still can’t help flubbing this simple quote. Notice, he quotes Sagan as writing of God as an “overstuffed white male”. But Sagan did not write this. Even earlier in Sungenis’ own piece, he managed to quote Sagan correctly as writing of God as “an outsize, light-skinned male” (The Varieties of Scientific Experience, p. 149) and "an oversized white male" (U.S. News and World Report, Dec 23, 1991, p. 61. Although, interestingly, U.S. News and World Report itself gives no source for this quote).
Certainly these are very similar, but even after all that has transpired, Sungenis still doesn’t seem to understand that when you claim someone said something and then you proceed to put quotation marks around what immediately follows, you are indicating that these are their actual words and you can’t simply substitute your own interpretation or paraphrase. This is a persistent problem that has been documented at length (and with calumnious impact) in regard to Sungenis’ treatment Pope John Paul II, Roy Schoeman and others.
Furthermore, and perhaps most ironically, one of the additional quotes Sungenis claims to have added to his newest edition of Galileo Was Wrong is inaccurate:
“In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next where God comes from? And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed?” (Carl Sagan, Cosmos, p. 257). (,JMAASC, p.3)
Cosmos is an extremely accessible book. It’s even available on-line. Here is a link to a pdf file of page 257: LINK
Notice the actual quote:
“In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next where God comes from? And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and decide that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question? Or, if we say that God has always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed?”
The reader will note that Sungenis erroneously combined the beginning of the fifth sentence with the end of the sixth sentence, omitting 26 words in the process. This is almost one half the length of the entire quote as originally provided by him. It is worth noting that a few websites present exactly the same inaccurate quote as Sungenis in this instance, such as this one. It seems likely that Sungenis once again relied on secondary sources while giving the impression of investigating primary ones.
Again, in this instance at least, the question is not whether Sagan said ignorant things about faith and God. The problem is that Sungenis failed to adhere not only to scholarly standards, but standards that would be expected in a high school classroom. Sungenis continues to pretend that all is simply a matter of a small incident here, a little goof there, but the record proves that Sungenis’ problem is far more serious than that. To date, he has barely attempted to interact with the evidence of his shoddy research methodology in Galileo Was Wrong: here. The fact is, Jacob Michael stopped checking Sungenis’ references after only reading about one quarter of the way through the book and still amassed many examples of shoddy scholarship, particularly for a purported “doctoral dissertation.” One need not plough through the remaining pages to realize that a leopard does not change his spots.
