Carl Sagan's remark brings up a related instance. In 1978 evolutionary zoologist Richard Lewontin wrote a Scientific American article "Adaptation" ( https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwju752x5vHYAhVC-mMKHbJhBG0QFggpMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdynamics.org%2F~altenber%2FLIBRARY%2FREPRINTS%2FLewontin_Adaptation.1978.pdf&usg=AOvVaw2ZNdeinrKEjSk8hpWf9RcZ ). On the first page he wrote:
<< The manifest fit between organisms and their environment is a major outcome of evolution. . .
The theory about the history of life that is now generally accepted, the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection, is meant to explain two different aspects of the appearance of the living world: diversity and fitness. . . By the time Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859 it was widely (if not universally) held that species had evolved from one another, but no plausible mechanism for such evolution had been proposed. Darwin's solution to the problem was that small heritable variations among individuals within a species become the basis of large differences between species. . .
Life forms are more than simply multiple and diverse, however. Organisms fit remarkably well into the external world in which they live. They have morphologies, physiologies and behaviors that appear to have been carefully and artfully designed to enable each organism to appropriate the world around it for its own life.
It was the marvelous fit of organisms to the environment, much more than the great diversity of forms, that was the chief evidence of a Supreme Designer. Darwin realized that if a naturalistic theory of evolution was to be successful, it would have to explain the apparent perfection of organisms and not simply their variation. . .
These "organs of extreme perfection" were only the most extreme case of a more general phenomenon: adaptation. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection was meant to solve both the problem of the origin of diversity and the problem of the origin of adaptation at one stroke. Perfect organs were a difficulty of the theory not in that natural selection could not account for them but rather in that they were its most rigorous test, since on the face of it they seemed the best intuitive demonstration that a divine artificer was at work. >>
A couple of years later the young-earth creationist author Gary Parker wrote an article in a creationist publication where he referenced Lewontin's Scientific American article:
<< As Harvard's Richard Lewontin recently summarized it, organisms ". . . appear to have been carefully and artfully designed." He calls the "perfection of organisms" both a challenge to Darwinism and, on a more positive note, "the chief evidence of a Supreme Designer." >>
My question is: Did Parker fairly quote Lewontin, or did he quote-mine Lewontin?
Please explain your answer.
Do Jehovah's Witnesses Accept Evolution?
by jukief 131 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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jukief
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cofty
Quote-mine.
Lewontin - a key player in the 'Marxist Radical Science' movement of the 60s - was describing the challenge that faced a naturalistic explanation for the diversity and adaptation of life. Parker's selective quote makes it sound as if Lewontin was conceding that these challenges remain unconquered.
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Earnest
Richard C. Lewontin, "Adaptation," Scientific American, Vol. 239, No. 3 (September 1978), p.213:
Organisms fit remarkably well into the external world in which they live. They have morphologies, physiologies and behaviors that appear to have been carefully and artfully designed to enable each organism to appropriate the world around it for its own life.
It was the marvelous fit of organisms to the environment, much more than the great diversity of forms, that was the chief evidence of a Supreme Designer. Darwin realized that if a naturalistic theory of evolution was to be successful, it would have to explain the apparent perfection of organisms and not simply their variation.
Gary Parker (Oct 1, 1980). "Creation, Selection, and Variation". Impact. Institute for Creation Research:
In the article by Richard Lewontin he says that "the marvelous fit of organisms...was the chief evidence of a Supreme Designer". This was a view that was held. But in the Impact newsletter (1980) Gary Parker implies that Lewontin is calling the "perfection of organisms...the chief evidence of a Supreme Designer."Living things also have properties of organization that clearly transcend the potential of their parts. As Harvard's Richard Lewontin recently summarized it, organisms " … appear to have been carefully and artfully designed." He calls the "perfection of organisms" both a challenge to Darwinism and, on a more positive note, "the chief evidence of a Supreme Designer."
This is, therefore, not a fair quote, as it implies something the author did not intend.
However, in Creation: Facts of Life: How Real Science Reveals the Hand of God, 2006, Master Books, Gary Parker writes (p.63):
In the Scientific American book Evolution, Harvard evolutionist Richard Lewontin says that "the marvelous fit of organisms to their environment...was [and I say is] the chief evidence of a Supreme Designer." In fact, Lewontin says that organisms "appear to have been carefully and artfully designed." Lewontin himself sees it only as a tough case to be solved by evolutionary theory, but other scientists might logically infer from their observations that living things were "carefully and artfully designed."
In this quotation, which is essentially the same, Gary Parker clarifies that "Lewontin himself sees it only as a tough case to be solved by evolutionary theory, but other scientists might logically infer..." etc., so to my mind that is a fair quotation.
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jukief
Earnest and cofty, your answers are spot on. Parker most certainly misrepresented Lewontin's views. But in his 2006 book, Parker fairly quoted Lewontin, because the reader was not led to believe something false about his views.
Of course, Parker had already been criticized by Lewontin and others for his 1980 quote-mining.
Parker's original quote-mining led to a series of entertaining quote-mines that involved the Watch Tower Society. Here is Parker's quote-mine again:
<< As Harvard's Richard Lewontin recently summarized it, organisms " … appear to have been carefully and artfully designed." He calls the "perfection of organisms" both a challenge to Darwinism and, on a more positive note, "the chief evidence of a Supreme Designer." >>
In 1982 paranormalist author Francis Hitching published a book "The Neck of the Giraffe", in which he criticized the Theory of Evolution partly by misrepresenting scientists' views. In a section "Scientific doubts" he argued that Darwinism is full of dead ends, and that Richard Lewontin supports this claim (pp. 83-84):
<< Nowhere is this more true than in the biological enigma we come to next: what Darwin called 'organs of perfection'. To quote Richard Lewontin of Harvard again, who provided the keynote admission at the beginning of this chapter that almost nothing is known about the genetic changes involved in species formation, many organisms 'appear to have been carefully and artfully designed'. It is, he says, both a challenge to Darwinism and 'the chief evidence of a Supreme Designer'. >>
It's obvious that paranormalist Francis Hitching quote-mined Lewontin's Scientific American article by way of young-earth creationist Gary Parker.
In 1985 the Watch Tower Society published its book "Life - How Did It Get Here? By Evolution or by Creation?", which used "The Neck of the Giraffe" as a major source of its argumentation, having directly quoted him thirteen times and indirectly many more times. On page 143 the Creation book quote-mined Lewontin by way of Hitching by way of Parker:
<< Zoologist Richard Lewontin said that organisms "appear to have been carefully and artfully designed." He views them as "the chief evidence of a Supreme Designer." >>
The Watch Tower Society received a lot of flak over this bit of quote mining, via letters and emails, complaining about the misquote. My husband AlanF went into Bethel in 1996 and personally confronted the author, Harry Peloyan, about it. Peloyan was Editor-in-chief of Awake! magazine for decades. He denied any misquoting of Lewontin or any misquoting elsewhere in the book.
In 2004 the Society did a bit of revision to tone down the worst of it. Compare the pre-2004 version of Creation above, with the post-2004 version:
<< Evolutionist Richard Lewontin admitted that organisms "appear to have been carefully and artfully designed," so that some scientists viewed them as "the chief evidence of a Supreme Designer." >>
The later version corrected "he views them" to "some scientists viewed them". Of course, the quotation loses all of its punch without the misrepresentation.
Of course, it's easy to see that even the revised version misrepresents Lewontin's article by failing to point out that Lewontin's "admission" was merely a statement of what SOME 19th-century scientists believed, and that Lewontin himself rejects the view that organisms really are designed, but merely SEEM to be designed.
Some JW apologists have argued that this is unfair criticism of the Watch Tower's misrepresentations of Richard Lewontin's article in Scientific American. But here are some statements from Lewontin himself complaining about the selective quoting done by creationists such as Gary Parker of his SA article:
<< Partly through honest confusion, but also partly through a conscious attempt to confuse others, creationists have muddled the disputes about evolutionary theory with the accepted fact of evolution to claim that even scientists call evolution into question. By melding our knowledge of what has happened in evolution with our doubts about how this has happened into a single "theory of evolution," creationists hope to challenge evolution with evolutionists' own words. Sometimes creationists plunge more deeply into dishonesty by taking statements of evolutionists out of context to make them say the opposite of what was intended. For example, when, in an article on adaptation, I described the outmoded nineteenth-century belief that the perfection of creation was the best evidence of a creator, this description was taken into creationist literature as evidence for my own rejection of evolution. Such deliberate misuse of the literature of evolutionary biology, and the transparent subterfuge of passing off the Old Testament myth of creation as if it were creation "science" rather than the belief of a particular religion, has convinced most evolutionists that creationism is nothing but an ill-willed attempt to suppress truth in the interest of propping up a failing institution. But such a view badly oversimplifies the situation and misses the deep social and political roots of creationism. >> -- Laurie R. Godfrey, Scientists Confront Creationism, p. xxiv, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1983.
Lewontin also complained about the practice of misquoting scientists, in the magazine Creation/Evolution, Fall 1981, on page 35 (see pages 35-44 for more details):
<< Modern expressions of creationism and especially so-called "scientific" creationism are making extensive use of the tactic of selective quotation in order to make it appear that numerous biologists doubt the reality of evolution. The creationists take advantage of the fact that evolutionary biology is a living science containing disagreements about certain details of the evolutionary process by taking quotations about such details out of context in an attempt to support the creationists' antievolutionary stand. Sometimes they simply take biologists' descriptions of creationism and then ascribe these views to the biologists themselves! These patently dishonest practices of misquotation give us a right to question even the sincerity of creationists. >>
My husband tells me that, when he was researching the above quote-mining back in 1992, he came to realize the level of incompetence of the entire creationist community, especially of the Watch Tower's Writing Department. -
jukief
The above material brings up the idea of "the design of life" and "the apparent perfection of organisms" and the fact that Richard Lewontin said that "organisms have morphologies, physiologies and behaviors that appear to have been carefully and artfully designed". What did he mean by the word "appear"? Does the Creation book accurately reflect Lewontin's meaning? Clearly not.
English can be fuzzy when terms such as "design" and "appear" are used. One can refer to "the design of a snowflake" without any intention that some intelligent entity actually designed it. One can refer to the appearance of something, and imply that that appearance reflects reality or is just a seeming appearance of reality. It can be ambiguous: "John appears to be intelligent".
In his SA article, Richard Lewontin clearly argued that "the design of life" is an illusion that has been well explained by Evolution by natural selection. He also argued that the "apparent perfection" and seeming "artful design" of organisms is merely an illusion. He certainly never intended his audience to think that he himself viewed these things that way.
This brings up an interesting question: Can an atheist be logically consistent in acknowledging that "the apparent perfection of organisms" is the "chief evidence of a Supreme Designer"? Carl Sagan said that the fossil evidence "could be consistent" with that, and I agree. But I will also argue that such evidence is far from conclusive in favor of a Supreme Designer, because it basically amounts to "The Argument From Personal Incredulity".
In other words, I argue that one can accept that certain things are evidence in favor of some claim without in any way accepting, or even admitting, that such a claim is one's own view, or that it is true. -
jp1692
Actually, JWs DO accept evolution. They believe--without critically examining how foolish it is--that all present living organisms are the offspring of the animals (sea creatures excepted) that were on Noah's ark.
This belief would require a much more aggressive and accelerated form of evolution than that posited by any evolutionary biologist. In other words, JWs and all other fundamentalist Christians believe in a form of evolution that took place in a few thousand of years instead of the many millions or even billions of years posited by evolutionary biologists. Let that sink in.
That being said, the important issue for JWs is not whether living things change over time--that well-established fact is unremarkable in the respect that it should have little or no consequence for a fundamentalist Christian of any stripe--but rather how life began in the first place: the origins of life.
How did life begin?
While biologists are certainly interested in that question and have some ideas, it is not directly related to the issue of biological evolution over the course of time since life's inception.
But the majority of JWs are not educated and/or intelligent enough to appreciate this very important distinction.
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Earnest
jukief : In other words, I argue that one can accept that certain things are evidence in favor of some claim without in any way accepting, or even admitting, that such a claim is one's own view, or that it is true.
I agree that is the honest thing to do whether for or against a belief in a Supreme Designer. Misrepresenting the other side always weakens an argument as one would not do so if the argument was sufficiently strong in itself.
Interestingly, Michael Behe argues in an open letter to Nature, that assuming that no god was involved in evolution is also an argument from incredulity.
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WhatshallIcallmyself
"Interestingly, Michael Behe argues in an open letter to Nature, that assuming that no god was involved in evolution is also an argument from incredulity."
Assuming that the universe was not wished into existence by a Genie is an argument from incredulity.
Assuming that my keys were not left in that silly place by the key demon is an argument from incredulity.
Assuming that everything we see around us did not appear only last Thursday and we only think we've been around for longer is an argument from incredulity.
The fact that something is an argument from incredulity means nothing in and of itself. Perhaps Behe (or any creationist come to that) could do some actual research to back up their claims instead of making up stupid 'just so' stories to tickle the ears of the eager flock of gullible fools who love their echo chambers...
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Earnest
WhatshallIcallmyself :
- Assuming that the universe was not wished into existence by a Genie...
- Assuming that my keys were not left in that silly place by the key demon...
- Assuming that everything we see around us did not appear only last Thursday and we only think we've been around for longer...
None of these are arguments from incredulity.
If you read Behe's letter, which I have linked, you will see he is arguing that people find it difficult to believe (i.e. are incredulous) that an intelligent designer would have engineered the backwards wiring of the vertebrate eye, and so they assume there is no intelligence (i.e. god) in the design.
Also, creationists find it difficult to believe (i.e. are incredulous) that the apparent perfection of organisms is not evidence of a Supreme Designer, and so they assume there is a designer.
Both are arguments from incredulity.
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cofty
This is a disingenuous argument by Behe - no surprise there.
Of course it is conceivable that any example of suboptimal design can be explained away - I actually think a decent case can be made for the way the eye is wired which is why I have never used it in my evolution series. But that is irrelevant.
Evolution rests on a mountain of positive evidence from multiple fields of science. It does not depend even slightly on negative evidence or arguments from incredulity.
On the other hand 'Intelligent Design' has absolutely no evidence to offer and rests entirely on arguments from incredulity.