by Watchtower-Free 30 Replies latest watchtower scandals
http://www.jwnationwide.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/g_E_2015011.pdf
William you ask a good question. It is more accurate to say that the organization's writer(s) did not misquote Dr Singh but rather partially - and selectively - quoted him out of context, creating the mistaken impression that he was supporting their view ( when even a cursory read of his paper would show he was not).
TheOldHippie, "JWs are not creationists."
Huh? Jehovah's Witnesses are creationists.
The latest email on the EvolDir mailing list:
Jehovah's Witnesses Respond
Dear EvolDir,
In response to my letter (EvolDir, January 17, 2015) about the
misquotation of my work on evolution by Jehovah's Witnesses (JWs) in their
magazine Awake!, making me appear as if I support creationist view of
the origin of life, Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania,
the corporation that runs the magazine, has written to inform me that
they have removed the quote from the magazine as it appears on their
website and that the quote will not appear in copies of the magazine
that might be printed in the future.
After my letter appeared on EvolDir I received a large number of
enquiries from ex-Jehovah's Witnesses alerting me about the misquotation.
Ex-JWs have made use of my letter on their websites and internet talk
shows to rebut JWs' stand on creation vs. evolution.
Rama Singh
Good. Their letter indicates they have taken his instruction seriously and offers a concrete undertaking that it will not reappear in any of their future publications. This does not address past scholastic sloppiness and/or dishonesty. But it is a promising indication that they no longer ignore correspondence pointing out their erroneous use of other sources.
They have complied with the substance of his request by removing the quote from the e-copy and stating it will not appear in copies of the magazine that might be printed in the future.
BTW, as I stated above, it is more accurate to refer to it as an out-of-context, selective quote rather than a misquote per se. In law, the distinction matters. It is usually considered more contentious to alter the wording or phrasing of a statement attributed by another as in direct quotations than to take a statement out of context.
Excellent thread. As shown in this article, the Rama singh quote was not the only one that was misleading..
" It turned out that non-English-language versions of the magazine included the professor’s full name: Gerard Hertel. And while Hertel’s quotation was accurate, the magazine left out a relevant bit of information that was discovered elsewhere:
Hertel writes that he “now spends his time teaching the Bible as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses“
In other words, he’s one of them. Not exactly an unbiased source.
This is what religious propaganda looks like.
