Isacc, you are stating quite well how I feel about this. I also would like to comment on something you said.
Also, putting the burden on the reader to fact you just isn't good enough. You're the author. Fact checking your work is your job, not mine. If I need to go to a library to check your facts and discover that your book isn't half as convincing as it seems, then you haven't done your job. Also, again, that's really underhanded. You gave me a presentation that made your work seem more convincing than it really was and used this as a lame excuse in case you got caught. I won't trust anything else you write ever again.
The 2011 Yearbook had a section on "Tracing all things with accuracy" where it boasted about how much attention is given to using secular information in an accurate way, making sure that nothing unsubstantiated or untrue is used (i.e. they won't use Wikipedia, and will even cross-check what are often viewed as reputable sources). They will even go to the means of calling an original researcher to verify things as shown in the following excerpt of that section:
Take, for example, the following statement in the brochure Was Life Created? about spider silk being one of the strongest materials on earth: “If enlarged to the size of a football field, a web of dragline silk 0.4 inch thick with strands 1.6 inches apart could stop a jumbo jet in flight!” Although the source for this statement was a reputable science magazine, it was not the original source, and the original source was ambiguous. Therefore, it became necessary to contact the researcher who made the original statement and check how he reached this conclusion. Our researchers also had to find the formula and the information needed to calculate for themselves what impact a jumbo jet might have on a spiderweb the size of a football field. Many hours of research and meticulous calculations eventually confirmed the accuracy of this astounding piece of information.
All this to help JWs think that the information the WBTS prints is nearly perfect, and any mistakes will be few, and the ones that do get exposed will be abandoned in further publications. This later point they site an unsubstantiated Isacc Newton quote as an example, engendering this sense that any further mistakes will humbly be acknowledged that might exist today. Now, I realize they aren't talking about anytimes they have quoted out of context (and likely for good reason), but the average JW is going to have the sense of trust in the WBTS publications, that they are thoughly vetted and as accurate as possilbe.
I refered to Carl Sagan's define misquote at the beginning of this thread and didn't get into it much. That quote I believe was in both the Creation book and Reasoning book. Here's the quote again:
The fossil evidence could be consistent with the idea of a Great Designer.
The full quote and context is as follows (you can read it on google books
here - note the underlined quote and the missing context which I highlighted for emphesis):
Many people were scandalized – some still are – at both ideas, evolution and natural selection. Our ancestors looked at the elegance of life on Earth, at how appropriate the structures of organisms are to their functions, and saw evidence for a Great Designer. The simplest one-celled organism is a far more complex machine than the finest pocket watch. And yet pocket watches do not spontaneously self-assemble, or evolve, in slow stages, on their own, from say, grandfather clocks. A watch implies a watch-maker. There seemed to be no way in which atoms and molecules could somehow spontaneously fall together to create organisms of such awesome complexity and subtle functioning as grace every region of the earth. That each living thing was specially designed that one species did not become another, were notions perfectly consistent with what our ancestors with their limited historical records knew about life. The idea that every organism was meticulously constructed by a Great Designer provided a significance and order to nature and an importance to human beings that we crave still. A Designer is a natural, appealing and altogether human explanation of the biological word. But, as Darwin and Wallace showed, there is another way, equally appealing, equally human, and far more compelling: natural selection, which makes the music of life more beautiful as the aeons pass.
The fossil evidence could be consistent with the idea of a Great Designer; perhaps some species are destroyed when the Designer becomes dissatisfied with them, and new experiments are attempted on an improved design. But this notion is a little disconcerting. Each plant and animal is exquisitely made; should not a supremely competent Designer have been able to make the intended variety from the start? The fossil record implies trial and error, an inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with an efficient Great Designer (although not with a Designer of a more remote and indirect temperament).
Okay so the quote is used in the Reasoning book under the heading, What does the fossil record actually show? Is Carl Sagan backing the idea that the fossil record supports special creation by God, and not evolution? It’s rather obvious he is saying the opposite in a quite sarcastic way. So why then use his quote to uphold the idea that the fossil record does not support evolution? This is blatantly a mistake. So has this inaccuracy been acknowledged, or at the very least, it's use abandoned?
It certainly hasn't been acknowledged to JWs that this was an incorrect quote of Carl Sagan. They did appear to stop using this quote after the 80s, as it doesn't show up in publications since then (AFAIK). However, we are encouraged to use the reasoning book still in ministry (there was a part a couple weeks ago on the service meeting about how to use it with people that believe in revelation and Sagan's quote is in that section). A recent watchtower (w09 9/1 pp. 12-15) refers readers to the Creation (and Creator) books. So while Sagan's blantant misquote was never reused later (which seems to suggest to me that the WBTS knows it was misleading), two publications that utilize it are still current, active publications used by JWs for the purposes of recruitment and keeping existing members from doubting evoultion.
Sidenote: Speaking of that meeting, The brother handling the part started his introduction with the something akin to the following:
For many of us science may not be our strong point, or even something that interests us. Nonetheless, in the ministry, and in school, we will encounter people that do believe in evolution. He went on to say that it is important to draw common ground to understand exactly what the person believes, because after all there are so many different versions of what evolution is, for example some believe in theistic evolution, others in Darwinian evolution. If we can’t understand their background and then adapt, they might view us as being biased, or be biased against us even.
After spending just a short time going over some responses in very limited fashion (this was just a 10 minute part including a demo) he encouraged everyone to not memorize these responses, but to use your own words. What should we do if a person wants to talk more in-depth? Well, don’t be shy, use the material referenced in the reasoning book, open it up and share it with the person.
This part really frustrated me and makes me upset! First of all, if someone isn’t interested in science and doesn’t really know much about it, how can they tell someone else that a particular field of study in science is, well, not scientific, or the fossil record doesn't support evolution, etc?
One time I tried the pull-out-the-reasoning-book approach when a householder wanted to get into the details about some subject. When I did this he stopped me and said, "I want to know what you think, not what one of your books has to say." That reply made a lot of sense to me. It certainly didn’t sound open-minded and reasonable to answer with something along the lines of, “well my thoughts are not going to be any different than what is found in this book.” I didn’t give that answer, even though that pretty much is what I thought at the time. I couldn’t give that answer because it sounded so, well, unreasonable, even cult-like, to an outsider. Now though, I can't say anymore that my thoughts are the same as those in the Reasoning book. Yet, I'm sure many JWs today feel like I did in the past. I find it very poignant that many are being mislead about certain things, evolution being one of them.
