We believe the quotation in each case speaks for itself concerning the issue at hand. This, of course, is standard procedure in scientific dialogue and argumentation. The latter would be quite impossible were writers expected to limit their citations to recognized authorities who already agreed with their position.
The last sentence is also a non sequitur . . . limiting citations is the red herring. Their positions don't have to agree, simply not be deliberately distorted or obscured when quoted . . . that's the issue.
Here, they are just plain wrong . . .
We believe the quotation in each case speaks for itself concerning the issue at hand.
I recall from memory the following example from the small blue creation book (I don't possess or read WTS lit anymore, so feel free to correct) . . .
They quoted Darwins Origin of Species . . .
To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.
The WTS conclusion was along the lines that evolution couldn't possibly account for the complexity of the human eye. Then the text prattled on about cameras and intelligent design etc.
But was this the real conclusion of Darwin? Read the rest of the quote carefully . . .
When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated; but I may remark that, as some of the lowest organisms, in which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiving light, it does not seem impossible that certain sensitive elements in their sarcode should become aggregated and developed into nerves, endowed with this special sensibility.
What Darwin was saying was essentially the opposite . . . by presenting the idea as an absurdity, and then proceeding to reason against the initial proposition. Note he said initially . . . "seems absurd ..."
To simply quote the initial proposition without that context . . . and then present it as sombody's viewpoint, is a straightforward and deliberate misrepresentation, while using the weight of the sources authority.
If that's not blatant dishonesty I'll go he.
