From _Why People Believe Weird Things_, Michael Shermer, W. H. Freeman
and Company, New York, 1997, pp. 131-132.

It would be difficult to find a supposedly scientific belief system more
extraordinary than creationism, whose claims deny not only evolutionary
biology but most of cosmology, physics, paleontology, archaeology,
historical geology, zoology, botany, and biogeography, not to mention
much of early human history.  Of all the claims we have investigated at
_Skeptic_, I have found only one that I could compare to creationism for
the ease and certainty with which it asks us to ignore or dismiss so
much existing knowledge.  That is Holocaust denial.  Further, the
similarities between the two in their methods of reasoning are
startling:

   1.  Holocaust deniers find errors in the scholarship of historians
   and then imply that therefore their conclusions are wrong, as if
   historians never make mistakes.  Evolution deniers (a more
   appropriate title than creationists) find errors in science and
   imply that all of science is wrong, as if scientists never make
   mistakes.
   
   2.  Holocaust deniers are fond of quoting, usually out of context,
   leading Nazis, Jews, and Holocaust scholars to make it sound like
   they are supporting Holocaust deniers' claims.  Evolution deniers
   are fond of quoting leading scientists like Stephen Jay Gould and
   Ernst Mayr out of context and implying that they are cagily denying
   the reality of evolution.
   
   3.  Holocaust deniers contend that genuine and honest debate between
   Holocaust scholars means they themselves doubt the Holocaust or
   cannot get their stories straight.  Evolution deniers argue that
   genuine and honest debate between scientists means even they doubt
   evolution or cannot get their science straight.

The irony of this analogy if that the Holocaust deniers can at least be
partially right (the best estimate of the number of Jews killed at
Auschwitz, for example, has changed), whereas the evolution deniers
cannot even be partially right -- once you allow divine intervention
into the scientific process, all assumptions about natural law go out
the window, and with them science.

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