Hey Fishinfever,
Unfortunately for you, the book from which you are quoting (LIFE: How Did It Get Here) is merely a collection of unadulterated lies.
I’ve been meticulously researching the references in the text by the Watchtower Society (W.S) that you faithfully quoted above (Life: How Did It Get Here). The problem you have is that the W.S. authors (They don’t give their names.) did not, themselves, faithfully quote these authors (like Jastrow, Stanley, and Hitching). Further, many of the quotes are brazenly taken out of context. Further, some of the claims made by the W.S. in their text are brazen lies. I have the text and the original articles referenced right here on my desk as I type this. I am currently itemizing the references in Chapter 4 so I can go look them up.
Notably, many of the comments ascribed to the various authors are only introductory in nature and appear in initial chapters wherein the cited authors, such as Jastrow and Hitching, were simply laying the landscape within which they would then pursue the answers that were the subject of the writings. They faithfully explained the pros and cons to their readers. Then, they set about presenting the evidence thus far collected. Many of the quotes that appear in the W.S. text, and which you cite, are from these introductory commentaries, but are presented by the W.S. as though they were the cited author’s conclusions. If you want to know what Hitching, Stanley, Jastrow, Dawkins, and others truly thought, you’ll need to read the referenced material.
Here is Jastrow’s conclusion from his work “The Enchanted Loom” (Cited by the W.S. and source of the quote you wrote above), page 101, “As with all historical evidence, the proof of man’s animal origins is circumstantial, but its cumulative impact is overwhelming. The fact of evolution is not in doubt.” Query: Why didn’t the W.S. include this quote in its own text, LIFE?
This is what Hitching said on p. 12 of the same text you cited, The Neck of the Giraffe, “Despite the many believers in Divine creation who dispute this [evolution] (including about half the adult population of the United States, according to some opinion polls), the probability that evolution has occurred approaches certainty in scientific terms.” Query: Why didn’t the W.S. include this quote in its own text, LIFE?
As an example of the brazen lies told by the W.S., go to page 20 of the LIFE text. There you will find the following quote beneath a graphic depiction of three extinct species, the Eohippus (common name North American Horse), Archaeopteryx, and Lungfish.
“Some of the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record … have had to be
discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information.” — David Raup,
Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History.
The actual quote, however, from Raup’s original article reads as follows:
“The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer
examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time. By this I mean
that some of the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the
evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a
result of more detailed information – what appeared to be a nice simple progression
when relatively few data were available now appears to be much more complex and
much less gradualistic.”
Nowhere in Raup’s article does he suggest that evolution was no longer a viable theory. He was outlining the distinctions between two competing evolutionary theories: The Darwinian model of gradualism, and a newer theory whereby there are spikes in evolutionary advances, called Punctuated Equilibrium. Nowhere in Raup’s article did he state that there were no longer any known examples of transitional species.
The graphic depictions that appear above the misquote in the LIFE text, however, all have large X’s through them, indicating that they all are no longer considered transitional species. Problem is, Raup never mentioned Archaeopteryx or Lungfish in the cited, five-page, article. Why not? Because, to this day, those two species are still considered examples of transitional species. How do we know that the W.S. knew this when they published LIFE and decided to mislead their readers? Because in one of the very next references they cite, that by Steven Stanley, The New Evolutionary Timetable, there is a graphic depiction of Archaeopterxy, p. 76, being identified as an example of a transitional species between reptile and birds. The Stanley citation referenced by the W.S. is on p. 77 of Stanley’s book. Are we to understand that the anonymous writers at the W.S. didn’t notice that picture on the opposing page right next to the quote they were mining? Important note here: Raup’s article was written in 1979; whereas Stanley’s book was published in 1981.
I have found dozens of misquotes, which are frankly just lies, in the LIFE text. Query: If what the W.S. has to say is true, what are they hiding with these misquotes and lies? Why are they brazenly lying to their readers?
I suggest you do as I have done and take these people at the W.S. to task by diligently researching each and every citation they have included in their LIFE text. I am only up to Chapter 4 in that text and I have convincing evidence that the reason the authors of that text do not identify themselves is because they knew they were publishing lies. Good Luck.
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