From: rpjday@cuug.ab.ca (Robert P.J. Day 277-3175)
Subject: Re: Is Antti a JW? (was Re: macroevolution)
Organization: Calgary UNIX Users' Group
Distribution:  world
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 23:10:25 GMT

In article <1992Sep5.223500.9657@sdf.lonestar.org> corey@sdf.lonestar.org (Corey Carroll) writes:
>In article <2AA7AEEC.6798@ics.uci.edu> bvickers@ics.uci.edu (Brett J. Vickers) writes:
>>asiivo@cs.joensuu.fi (Antti Siivonen) writes:
>>>	Have you read the little blue book "Life - how did it get here, by
>>>	evolution or creation ?".
>>
>>Do you consider this little disingenuous, flawed and deceptive piece of
>>crap a scientific source?  I think the JW tract you are referring to has
>>been taken apart throroughly in this forum already.
>
>Hey, I'm working on a big list of bad things that I found in that book.
>I posted some to talk.religion.misc..

  Last year, a couple of Witnesses came to my door, waving that particular
book around.  I invited them into the living room, where they had no choice
but to stand next to my bookshelf filled with all of my books on 
religious criticism and evolutionary biology.  They were just a touch
uncomfortable but, sensing an open mind, pulled up a couple of chairs
and we were off to the races.
  The elder of the two (with a young, thoroughly brainwashed acolyte in
tow), proceeded to quote at me from their little blue book.  At one point,
he brought up Francis Hitching, quoting him, "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."
  I stopped him there, and tried to explain the difference between an
acceptance of evolution, and an adherence to Darwinism.  To no avail.
I did not have my Hitching ("The Neck of the Giraffe") handy, but I
told the elder to please call back in a few weeks and I would be happy
to dissect his little tome.
  Shortly after they left, I tracked down Hitching, and perused carefully
the first few pages.  The little blue book gives a reference for the
above quote as page 12 -- that's wrong, it's on page 4.  What is more
shocking is what follows immediately (and I mean IMMEDIATELY) after
that quote in the text.  And I quote from Hitching:
  "Evolution and Darwinism are often taken to mean the same thing.
But they don't.  Evolution of life over a very long period of time is
a FACT (emphasis added), if we are to believe evidence gathered during
the last two centuries from geology, paleontology, molecular biology
and many other scientific disciplines.  Despite the many believers in
Divine creation who dispute this ..., the probability that evolution
has occurred approaches certainty in scientific terms."
  In addition, in the edition I have, the opposite page has a chart
of the geological ages, quite clearly going back hundreds of millions
of years.
  It is difficult to believe that whoever wrote the little blue JW book
could have actually read Hitching and not continued to read the very next
paragraph or seen the geological chart.  To present Hitching as rejecting
evolution is either blindingly incompetent or hideously dishonest.  
Quite simply, "Life -- how did it get here?" seems no better or worse
than the standard dishonest creationist dreck one would get from the
ICR or the Creation Research Society Quarterly, possibly even a little
worse.  Hard to believe.

R. Day
Member, Alberta Skeptics
... the pit bull of skepticism ...