The Watchtower, Scholar and Misrepresentation of Source References

by AlanF 46 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  Spook

  "When the Creator/Creation was first published there was no such thing as the ID movement"

  Fallacy!
• 

  eljefe

  Typing How to Quote A Book Source returns these hits. It returns a link to The ABC's of Referencing.
  
  I remember when we learned how to reference a book in school. I had never seen this due to the fact that I had spent my youth only reading WT publications. With the exception of the Creator book, I have seen only a handful of times where the WT references a book properly (as mentioned in the above link). The thread has already given plenty of evidence showing how the Watchtower doesn't properly quote. How about some direct and unedited quotes that show how the WT quotes properly (Creator book excluded).
• 

  AlanF

  scholar pretendus said:

  : When the Creator/Creation was first published

  With every post you prove the increasing depth of your stupidity.

  We were talking only about the Creator book with respect to the ID movement.

  : there was no such thing as the ID movement as it was only in its embryonic stage.

  Not so. The movement, as a cohesive set of ideas, has been around since the mid-1980s. In 1985, Michael Denton published his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, which sparked people like Phillip Johnson (the spiritual father of today's ID movement) to action. In 1986, Dean Kenyon published Of Pandas and People, which quickly became a textbook for many people who subscribe to the idea of intelligent design.

  Eugenie Scott, head of the National Center for Science Education, wrote ( http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/996_intelligent_design_not_accep_9_10_2002.asp ):

  Since Pandas was published in 1986, the two major innovations in ID have been Michael Behe's concept of "irreducible complexity," presented in Darwin's Black Box in 1996, and William Dembski's "design inference," presented in Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology in 1999.

  Thomas Woodward, a proponent of ID, in his recent book Doubts about Darwin: A History of Intelligent Design (Baker Books, 2003, p. 24) wrote:

  Four principle spokespersons represent the Design Movement. Proceeding in the order that their work in this area was published, the first is Michael Denton, whose Evolution: A Theory in Crisis inspired the second and third figures, Phillip E. Johnson and Michael Behe. The fourth figure, William Dembski, is both the leading intellectual theorist of Design and a symbol of the rising generation of young scholars who are joining the movement. My rhetorical history will devote two chapters to Denton and the setting in which he wrote, three to Johnson, one to the "aftermath" of Johnson's Darwin on Trial and the rapid growth of Design in the 1990s, and one each to the labors of Behe and Dembski.

  An anonymous author at http://www.meta-library.net/history/id-body.html wrote:

  Intelligent Design

  The most visible antievolutionist in the 1990s was neither a scientist nor a theologian but a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, Phillip E. Johnson. After reading a popular polemic for atheistic evolution, Richard Dawkins?s The Blind Watchmaker (1986), he became convinced that the case for evolution was more rhetorical than factual. In such books as Darwin on Trial (1991) and Reason in the Balance: The Case against Naturalism in Science, Law and Education (1995) Johnson evaluated the evidence and arguments for naturalistic evolution and concluded that evolutionists (like virtually all other scientists) had constructed a theory based on the unwarranted assumption that scientific explanations should bar any appeal to the supernatural. By the mid-1990s Johnson was collaborating with other critics of naturalistic evolution in forming the intelligent-design (ID) movement, which welcomed God back into the domain of science as the Master Designer of the physical world.

  The ID cause received a major boost in 1996, when the Free Press, a major New York publisher, brought out Michael J. Behe?s Darwin?s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, which stirred up a storm of publicity, both positive and negative. Behe, a Catholic biochemist on the faculty of Lehigh University, argued that the "astonishing complexity of subcellular organic structure" testified to necessity of intelligent design. "The result is so unambiguous and so significant," he claimed, "that it must be ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science."

  The Society, by its failure to attribute its ideas to those from whom it grabbed them, is doing exactly the same thing with the ID movement as it did with the young-earth creationist movement beginning around 1965. In 1961, John Whitcomb and Henry Morris published The Genesis Flood, which was largely based on various writings of the prolific Seventh-Day Adventist author George McCready Price, who was almost singlehandedly responsible for all of modern-day young-earth creationism. Morris went on to found the Institute for Creation Research, which is a prolific publisher of YEC literature today. By 1965, the Society's writers had got hold of Whitcomb and Morris' book, and pretty much adopted its teachings, lock, stock and barrel, except for the notion of a six-literal-day creation. The Society taught these ideas almost verbatim until about 1980 -- entirely without attribution to the sources, i.e., the writings of Whitcomb and Morris, and other YECs.

  : Its major proponents were publishing their research for the first time

  Right. Like in 1985 and 1986.

  : and so as single authors, their books were commented on by the Society as time progressed.

  What a misrepresentation! In his 1996 book, Behe himself credits a number of ID people with help or as source references. Included are Phillip Johnson (spiritual leader of today's ID movement), Tom Bethell (a longtime writer on old-earth and ID topics), William Dembski (referred to above), Steven Meyer (another popular ID author), Dean Kenyon (author of the seminal ID textbook referred to above), Alvin Plantinga (an ID apologist philosopher who has written extensively in support of ID), and Jonathan Wells (a Mooney ID apologist who has written a great deal in defense of ID). If the Creator book's author actually read Behe's book Darwin's Black Box with understanding, and as a competent author should, he would have found and investigated all of these people.

  : Now as a more identifiable novement, the Society may well comment on their theories as appropriate.

  Sure. Just like between 1965 and 1980 they attributed their YEC ideas to the YECs who first published them.

  : The Society has no allegiance or connection with these Creation or Design organizations

  Not officially, but it doesn't hestitate to steal ideas as needed and pretend to the JW community that they're its own.

  : but if their spokesmen have something useful to say regarding the Bible and God's existence then such comments can be utilized by the Society.

  Most often without attribution, or without acknowledging that such sources are completely religiously motivated.

  : Your petty and irrelevant claim that you have found 100 misquotes in the 1985 Creation book is childish and juvenile.

  LOL! What an astute response! It's about on a par with the Society's defense of this book from specific criticisms. I.e., ZIP.

  : It seems to me that this publication has unnerved in its debastating analysis of the Evolution nonsense.

  Quite the contrary. A quick perusal of the Net shows that the book is a laughingstock.

  : All of the sources are as usual are fully correct

  You've checked them all, then.

  : but I would be the first to admit that many of these authorities would not like their views used to undermine a pet theory.

  Their views, when used that way, have been misrepresented. I appreciate your admission.

  : When is all said and done it is the reader of WT publications that decides whether the information presented is factual and well written

  That's certainly true, and again a quick perusal of the Net shows that most readers of WTS publications agree that these are full of deliberate misrepresentations and flat-out stupidity.

  : and the Society receives many thank you and appreciative letters from the public including many academics so your claims are simply pathetic.

  Sure. And the Society fails to publish any criticisms, so what you read in these boasting publications is an extremely selective set of letters. Kind of like George Bush selecting letters from admirers and claiming that these represent all Americans.

  : The Society follows it own style of referencing when writing to the general public

  Which is a direct admission by you that all of my criticisms of its quoting practices are correct.

  Readers will note that you're now entirely ignoring your original claim, namely, that all of the Society's references are in "accordance with academic conventions". Now you've reduced this self-evidently false claim to one that it "follows it own style of referencing when writing to the general public". Yes, one of obfuscation rather than clarity.

  : but if an interested reader requires a fuller reference then a simple letter to the publisher will suffice.

  What happened to all that talk of references being honest, of being in "accordance with academic conventions"? Nothing but smoke.

  : We must remember that our publications are multi-lingual and therefore expediency demands that the material be as simple as possible.

  Right. Which explains why the Italian version of the Creator book contains many complete source references in "accordance with academic conventions" whereas the English version contains almost none.

  How about explaining this difference, Neil, instead of running away?

  : It is foolish to think that a person in a Third World country is going to take a long trip to the city library and seek a old or the latest published book.

  Precisely why WTS references ought to be complete and honest.

  You've really shot yourself in the foot with this admission, Neil. It's precisely what I've been saying for years.

  : Back to Thiele, the reader alone must determine if Thiele was in fact misrepresented by the Aid article.

  Not at all. While readers are always free to form their own opinions, as I have explained until I'm blue in the face, the proper use of quotations most often can be objectively judged. And in this case, readers presented with the full text of Thiele's book as opposed to the incomplete and deliberately misrepresentative quotations from WTS literature will come to a unanimous conclusion: the Society lied.

  This is easy enough to test, Neil. You post a new thread with the objective of getting readers to judge. Let's find out how many readers support your claim as opposed to my claim. I'm willing to bet that you won't get any. And of course, you can even get some of your JW friends to participate.

  But of course you won't agree to do this. Why? Because you know as well as all other participants on this board that your claims are lies, and you don't want them exposed to your fellow JWs.

  : I believe that his Note is in context with his thesis and is also in context with the Aid article.

  You can believe that the earth is flat, but you'd be wrong on both counts.

  : That is whu you had to dragged kicking and screaming to scan the relevant pages.

  What nonsense. The scans showed no more and no less than what I had already posted.

  : I am confident that it is only Gruss, Thiel e and Alan F only believe that there is a misrepresentation.

  Ok, then you'll agree to post a thread that will test this claim.

  But I think not.

  : The average person uipon seeing the evidence would simply be amused at such controversy.

  That's probably true, but not the way you think.

  : Apostates are very desparate people.

  Apostates are actually very dedicated people -- people dedicated to truth and to exposing the kind of lies that you and your Mommy in Brooklyn like to tell.

  AlanF
• 

  Pistoff

  Man this is entertaining.

  and so as single authors, their books were commented on by the Society as time progressed.

  Scholar is one poster whose prose must be translated; what this statement means is, "The society will steal ideas from these men, and expects them to be happy about it; any quotes that are out of context, tough luck."

  Keep up the good work, Alan.

  And Scholar, you amaze me. Do you get migraines from the mental backflips?
• 

  GetBusyLiving

  : It is foolish to think that a person in a Third World country is going to take a long trip to the city library and seek a old or the latest published book.

  I can't even believe that scholar admitted something like this. Even scholar.

  GBL
• 

  AlanF

  "Scholar" should be promoted as a poster boy for the Stupid Sayings of the Year award.

  AlanF
• 

  hillary_step

  Scholar,

  The Society follows it own style of referencing when writing to the general public

  Why?

  Best regards - HS