by cantleave 10 Replies latest watchtower bible
Hitching is also a paranormalist, an advocate of psychic evolution.... [Hitching's book] Earth Magic is a wild, extremely entertaining and thoroughly psychic interpretation of megalithic structures.... Hitching also includes in his scheme cosmic cataclysms, Atlantis, pyramidology, dowsing, ESP, miraculous healing, and astrology.
Creation/Evolution Newsletter, 7, No. 5, pp. 15-16, September/October 1987
Sounds like JUST the sort of guy they like to quote (or miss-quote or part quote) as an authority if it suits them, whilst ignoring what the guy believes or what his qualifications are.
Where did they quote him ? perhaps it was a mistake and they meant to quote Christopher Hitchens (Tee Hee) , one of his :
" Faith is the surrender of the mind, the surrender of reason "
Love
Wobble
He is quoted extenisvely in the Cretion book. One example chapter 4 pg 41 para 12. There are a list of references at the back of the book which I am far too lazy to look through extensively but will get hubby to do the research when he comes in.
The same reason they quote Arthur Weigall. Taken out of context, Arthur appears to support a WT doctrine.
They just hope like hell that you won't buy his book and read it.
I did.
Cheers
Chris
Like Wobble and Black Sheep said, they will quote absolutely anybody (usually out of context) to try to support their claims. If you haven't already checked the references in that book, you're in for an eye-opening good time! That's what got me hooked on the writings of Stephen Jay Gould
It's stranger still if you look here:
http://www.dimaggio.org/Heretic/critical.htm
Are you sure they are quoting him; as against running him down?
fokyc
Some Hitching quotes from Creation book
Chapter2
Francis Hitching, an evolutionist and author of the book The Neck of the Giraffe, stated: “For all its acceptance in the scientific world as the great unifying principle of biology, Darwinism, after a century and a quarter, is in a surprising amount of trouble.”
The Neck of the Giraffe, by Francis Hitching, 1982, p. 12
Summarizing some of the unsolved problems confronting evolution, Francis Hitching observed: “In three crucial areas where [the modern evolution theory] can be tested, it has failed: The fossil record reveals a pattern of evolutionary leaps rather than gradual change. Genes are a powerful stabilizing mechanism whose main function is to prevent new forms evolving. Random step-by-step mutations at the molecular level cannot explain the organized and growing complexity of life.”—Italics added.
No reference given
Chapter 4
Thus Professor William Thorpe of the zoology department of Cambridge University told fellow scientists: “All the facile speculations and discussions published during the last ten to fifteen years explaining the mode of origin of life have been shown to be far too simple-minded and to bear very little weight. The problem in fact seems as far from solution as it ever was.”
The Neck of the Giraffe, by Francis Hitching, 1982, p. 68
Chapter 5
Evolutionist Hitching says of this foremost evolutionary model (accepted model of horse evolution): “Once portrayed as simple and direct, it is now so complicated that accepting one version rather than another is more a matter of faith than rational choice. Eohippus, supposedly the earliest horse, and said by experts to be long extinct and known to us only through fossils, may in fact be alive and well and not a horse at all—a shy, fox-sized animal called a daman that darts about in the African bush.”
The Neck of the Giraffe, by Francis Hitching, 1982, p. 31
Chapter 6
Francis Hitching observes: “The curious thing is that there is a consistency about the fossil gaps: the fossils go missing in all the important places.”
The Neck of the Giraffe, by Francis Hitching, 1982, p. 19
Chapter 7
So the depictions of “ape-men” are, as one evolutionist admitted, “pure fiction in most respects . . . sheer invention.”
27. The Neck of the Giraffe, by Francis Hitching, 1982, p. 224.
Here's the RichardDawkins.net forum page on Hitching's 'The Neck Of The Giraffe Book'.
http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=11077&start=50
Here's the Wikipedia entry for Hitching.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Francis_Hitching
Well, my thoughts have always been that the Creation book was a selection of misquotations and wrenching out of context to plant seeds of doubt about evolution. The Hitching stuff is not one of the sources I've looked at before.
You'd think with the wide availability of fundie Christian material ripe for plunder on the net that the writing committee would have updated the Creation book by now. It's mid '80s.
Oh yes that Ch4 quote seems to be WT Org quoting Hitching quoting Thorpe.
Oh yes, and ignore the Dawkins link. I was completely up the wrong tree on that one.
How do we edit previous posts?
Because they never thought any of their sheeple would bother to double-check their sources. And at the time this was written (before the internet), it took quite a bit of time and effort to verify these things. And dubs don't have free time.
They put Hitching forward as a scientist or expert on evolution, and 99.9% of the dubs just accept it. It was quite shocking to me when I first checked him out when trying to verify the creation book. This was a big first step on my exit.
