From: cj@eno.corp.sgi.com (C J Silverio)
Subject: this is jw dishonesty (was This is what Corey says)
Followup-To: talk.origins
Reply-To: cj@eno.corp.sgi.com (C J Silverio)
Organization: SGI TechPubs
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 18:30:49 GMT

---
[followups to t.o]
simon@dcs.warwick.ac.uk (Simon Clippingdale) writes:
|Tim.ONeill@english.utas.edu.au (Tim O'Neill) writes:

[about the JW anti-evolution book]

|> How about we do it, one point at a time, on talk.origins, then we should
|> get a lot of useful feedback by experts in the appropriate fields. Good idea?
|
|Yes. Please. I, among others no doubt, would rather this happened on the net
|than in e-mail. Corey has recently posted a few comments on the JW book on
|talk.origins, but I'd like to see a more thorough and systematic treatment,
|"in long and glorious detail" if you've got the inclination, Tim.

Let me second this!  I'm subscribing to t.o so I can follow the
discussion.

This book is the straw that broke the JW's credibility for me as
a "Witness youth".  Five minutes with this book & some of the
references, and I realized how boldly dishonest the JWs are.
How can they get away with it?  They have their rank & file too
cowed to check references.  

I hate being lied to, especially when the liars are people who
label themselves as "The Truth".  Hypocrites!

An easy example:

    Then, according to Dawkins' description, "a particularly
    remarkable molecule was formed by accident"-- a molecule
    that had the ability to reproduce itself.  Though admitting
    that such an accident was exceedingly improbable, he
    maintains that it must nevertheless have happened.  Similar
    molecules clustered together, and then, again by an
    exceedingly improbable accident, they wrapped a protective
    barrier or other protein molecules around themselves as a
    membrane.  Thus, it is claimed, the first living cell
    generated itself.

    At this point a reader may begin to understand Dawkins'
    comment in the preface to his book: "This book should be
    read almost as though it were science fiction." [_Life-- How
    did it get here?  By evolution or by creation?_ p. 39,
    paragraphs 4-5]

That preface reads:

    This book should be read as though it were science fiction.
    It is designed to appeal to the imagination.  But it is not
    science fiction: it is science.  Cliche or not, "stranger
    than fiction" expresses exactly how I feel about the truth.
    We are survival machines-- robot vehicles blindly programmed
    to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.  This is a
    truth which still fills me with astonishment. [Dawkins, _The
    Selfish Gene_, p.ix]

And of course Dawkins doesn't just "maintain that [the
appearance of the remarkable molecule] must have happened."
The JW book refers to the very page this discussion is on:

    This may seem a very unlikely sort of accident to happen.
    So it was.  It was exceedingly improbable.  In the lifetime
    of a man, things which are that improbable can be treated for
    practical purposes as impossible.  That is why you will never
    win a big prize on the football pools.  But in our human
    estimates of what is probable and what is not, we are not
    used to dealing in hundreds of millions of years.  If you 
    filled in pools coupons every week for a hundred million
    years you would very likely win several jackpots. [Dawkins,
    p. 16]

I found it dishonest in the extreme to quote out of context in
this way.  It's a very transparent attempt to manipulate their
readers into thinking that Dawkins "knows" he's being
unrealistic & has no good arguments to make in favor of his
position.  The JWs, though they read Dawkins' argument, make
no attempt to refute it.  Instead, through selective quoting,
they pretend it doesn't exist.  On page 44 of their book
(paragraphs 18 & 19 of the same chapter), they make the tired
old improbability argument.

---
cj@eno.corp.sgi.com	C J Silverio/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720
"She knew not how to reconcile two such very different accounts of the 
same thing; for she had not been brought up [...] to know to how many 
idle assertions and impudent falsehoods the excess of vanity will 
lead." --Jane Austen