As has previously been said, with the exception of satire, quoting out of context is twisting the intent of the original author. This is intellectual dishonesty at its most blatant.
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Quoting out of context - ever justified?
by cognisonance 30 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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cognisonance
Marvin,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! You've given me much to think about.
To quote a particular finding of a given authority who otherwise disagrees with your ultimate conclusions is not quoting out of context... In a logical argument a given premise can lead to alternate conclusions based on other premises used in a different argument. Hence a particular finding of a given authority can support that authority’s conclusion and your divergent conclusion if that finding (premise) is combined with different premises in a sound argument... When alternate conflicting conclusion are achievable then the analysis shifts to close examination of each premise in each argument to determine its veracity. Sometimes alternate conclusions cannot be eliminated as possibilities. In this case analysis shifts to the probabilities of each premise used in each argument to see if one conclusion is more likely than another.
I can see diagnostic medicine being one example. Patient has symptoms x, y, and z. Those findings (premises) seem to indicate that the patient could have diseases a, b, or c (conclusions). Further tests bring more findings (additional premises) and other arguments are formed as to what is happening, with more conclusions being obtained, while others are ruled out. Then we go to which disease (conclusion) is more likely. Kind of like an episode of House. Is this what you mean?
When it comes to the Eldrege quote example, I can see how they might be trying to do this, perhaps. I think we have multiple initial premises going on with the Watchtower argument.
Initial Premises:
- Macroevolution is defined by refering to Darwin's view that big changes happen over vast periods of time via extermely slight modifications
- Macroevolution rests on three main asumptions: (a) mutations, (b) natural section, (c) fossil record documenting it
- Fossil record documentation should show gradual accumulation of change in species
Eldredge quote to introduce another premise:
- The fossil record does not show over vast periods of time that exteremely slight modifications create big changes (attempt to invalidate inital primises [1], [2c], and [3].
Conclusion:
WTBS now concludes that the initial premises' veracity are now in question and conclude that macroevolution is a myth.
So my question then is, did they quote out of context here, or are they simply trying to, as you put it, "quote a particular finding of a given authority who otherwise disagrees with your ultimate conclusions is not quoting out of context?"
When Watchtower writers quote particular findings by outside authorities and then use those findings as premise in an argument of Watchtower’s construction the question of honest portrayal boils down to two things. 1) Is the finding presented as the outside author asserts it and 2) is Watchtower’s argument otherwise sound (meaning other premises are valid and the argument form is logical).
When looking at the above breakdown, my answer (which I could be wrong as I didn't study logic in high school or college) to those two questions you mention are as follows:
- Is the finding presented as the outside author asserts it?Technically, yes. It states what he said without changing the meaning. The WBTS does qualify what he said refers to "long periods of time" there would be "little or no change," and stated he believes in evolution. This should imply that the author thinks something evolutionary must then happen in short periods of time (but that likely won't be obvious unless the reader reads between the lines or has some education about evolution). Additionally, his quote also says, "most species" (which is not the same as all). Thus, is this enough for honest portrayal? I'd be more comfortable answering this an enthusiastic yes if they would have been more explict in presenting his views, something like the following (with new words highlighted):
- "Niles Eldredge, a staunch evolutionist that claims a lot of evolutionary change takes place in relatively short periods of time (hundreds or thousands of years), states that the fossil record shows, not that there is a gradual accumulation of change, but that for long periods of time, 'little or no evolutionary change accumulates in most species.' Rather than concluding evolutionary changes take place in short periods of time, we suggest that the fossil record's long periods of stability indicates that macroevolution doesn't happen at all."
- Is Watchtower's argument otherwise sound (meaning other premises are valid and the argument form is logical)? It's clear from inital premise [3], that the concept of macroevolution is synomous (or at least indelibly linked) with gradualism from the Watchtower's perspective. As such, I would say the intial premises [1] and [3] are not valid from the beginning because it is not in line with the evidence that exists today (i.e. gradualism seems to be documented in the fossil record, as also seems to be the case for punctuated equilibrium as well, and even with gradualism, circumstances that create fossils are rare and we shouldn't expect that every step of the way in trasitions is preserved). Thus the intial premises are misrepresented and insufficiant to come to a conclusion.
http://marvinshilmer.blogspot.com
I read your blog on Transfusing, Eating — Misrepresentation. Would you say this was quoting out of context or dishonet portrayal with invalid premises? Both? Is there a difference between the two?
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cognisonance
Hmm... giving this some more thought. I noticed this recent thread: Your thoughts on our "favourite" religion's description of cultic propaganda? where people quoted the watchtower for ironic statements about propaganda and made me think, would it be considered "quoting out of context" if I took an article from the Watchtower and quoted from it to support a position/conclusion that I hold, one with which they couldn't agree? Consider the following example I just made up:
Why cults can be dangerous is they can cause a person to become deceived to believe something that isn't true, be left ignorant about sufficent evidence that challanges the beleif, and condition them to refuse to listen to such evidence if presented. Many cults seek to control the information their memebers have access to and discourage, or even punish, members from doing independent research, questioning the groups beliefs, or listening to those critical of the group, especially former members. The belief in question may itself be emotionally appealing or comforting. People may be unaware that they are even being deceived and controlled. For example, even Jehovah's Witnesses, whom many ex-members feel use such thought reform techniques to decieve members to hold to certain beliefs, ironically recognize the problem with being deceived. Of course, the group denies that this applies to them as they don't feel they are a cult (what group ever agrees with the assertion of being a cult), and that this only applies to all other religions because those organizatons are being controlled by what they view is the ultimate deceiver Satan. Nonetheless, JWs acknowledge:
"A person who is not aware that he or she is being kept in a state of 'ignorance, bewilderment, or helplessness' by deliberate misinformation is in serious danger. The really sad fact is that very often the person who is deceived or deluded tends to hold on to his belief in spite of strong evidence proving otherwise. Perhaps he gets so emotionally attached to his belief that he simply shuts his eyes and closes his ears to any evidence that might challenge it." (Anonymous. 9/1/2010. Guard Against Being Deceived. Watchtower, pages 10-13)
So doing this I certainly have a situation where I would be quoting them to support my position, one which they can't agree with (Just like Eldredge couldn't agree with the Watchtower's conclusion about macroevolution not being documented in the fossil record). Yet, I have been fully honest about the quotation and the context of it (even more explict than they have been with the Eldredge quote). Two of my premises as well as two of theirs are the same - that deception can happen with a person being unaware and they may hold to such a belief becuase it is also emotionally appealing (liken this to the Eldredge quote's premise that the fossil record doesn't show gradualism for many species, note however, that the Watchtower's premise here is subtely different, which wherein lies the problem I think). When pertaining to the conclusion of why being deceived is dangerous. The "danger" of being decieved in the JWs view is being under control of Satan, where an outsider's "danger" would be the use of thought reform techniques (liken this to the Eldrege quote's conclusion that macro-evolutionary change happens in short periods of time vs. the Watchtower's conclusion that macro-evolutionary change doesn't happen at all).
I see similarities here. I could see how a JW (or netural party even) might object to the quote by saying: "JWs are talking about deliberate misinformation, they try their best to be honest and would not deliberately misinform." I could also see how they might want to object "You are making a straw-man argument from the quote, it's context was talking about Satan misleading people via religion, and you are talking about cults misleading people, that isn't the same thing."
Thinking about Marvin's post makes me have mixed thoughts. Is this made up example "quoting out of context"? Or is it simply using the irony of their viewpoint to support how people can be deceived and not be aware? It seems to me that there is some "grey area" with using quotations. Some may be blatantly misrepresentative or subtly misleading. Some may be from author's in full argeement with one's conclusion. Other authorities quoted may not agree with one's conclusion, but nonethless have their quotes honestly portrayed and used in a sound argument (or not) to come to a different conclusion (either more likely or less likely to be true). I've already said why I think the Eldredge quote is not being used in a sound argument (due to problems with original permises, and perhaps not enough honest portrayal of Eldredge's findings). But this deception example, is the argument (primises valid, conclusion plausable/probable) a sound one?
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cognisonance
By the way, the book that defended "quoting out of context", was the infamous creationism book:
The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications by Henry M. Morris, John C. Whitcomb (1970, 6th printing)
That book talked about the water vapor canopy theory, attacks Carbon 14 dating, says human footprints were found alongside dinosaurs, and of course states that the flood layed down all the fossil bearing strata geologically speaking, oh, and that the earth is young, not 4.5 billion years old.
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Phizzy
Having taken the time to read those brochures about origins and creation, I have come to the conclusion that the WT writers are dishonest in the extreme in their blatant out of context quotes, they have read the original, not just the sound bite they reproduce, they know what they are doing.
Just one example, on page 24 0f the Origin brochure they quote Henry Gee as though he casts doubt on the fossil record by qoting his words thus "The intervals of time that seperate the fossils are so huge that we cannot say anything definite about their connection through ancestry or descent."
When you look at the original quote you see that Dr Gee is not writing about the whole fossil record, but is referring to two Giant Civits that lived a millon years apart !
This is blatant and deliberate mis-quoting of the worst kind, it is dis-honest in the extreme, and most of the quotes in the brochures are of the same kind.
The other thing they do is the "call to authority" technique of false argument, without telling us who these authorities are ! early in the brochure they assert that "many scientists are unwilling to discuss the origin of life " ( quote from memory, may not be verbatim) they do not tell us who these "scientists" are ,and more importantly why they are not keen to pontificate, but I would guess such scientists are experts in other fields, not Evolution or Abiogenesis, hence they are unlikely to want their views published, they leave that to experts in the various fields.
I fail to see how you can ascribe any doubt as to the dishonesty of the WT writers.
To any JW's reading this I ask: If they have the "truth" why do they have to lie so much ?
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sizemik
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.
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Disillusioned JW
Regarding Phizzy's comment about the WT brochure's quote of the book by Henry Gee, while the context in the book does say that the fossil found by Gee might be of a giant civet (though it also says that Gee thinks it might be ancestor of Gee) and that if so, "it would be the oldest known record of this species by a million years", the example of the possible civet fossil is used by Gee to illustrate the idea that because fossils don't come with a pedigree then there is no way to know if a specific fossil is an actual linear ancestor (direct ancestor) of the fossil of another individual or even of a specific species (and that is a major theme of Gee's book). As such, I think the WT's handling of the specific quote was not a misquote. Gee's book is also about the idea that family trees of specific species descending from other specific species presume far too much, and that cladistic diagrams should be used instead. The quote is from the first chapter of Gee's book, and that entire chapter of Gee's book is posted online at https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/g/gee-time.html (that page also has a link to a review of the book). Here is a large context of the quote. [The boldfacing is mine.]
"Before I told everyone else about my own find, straddled on that ridge overlooking an expanse of space and, figuratively, an expanse of time, I wondered fleetingly if it might have been part of a hominid — perhaps half a tooth, like the one Gabriel found. In my mind I was already holding the fragment between finger and thumb, turning it over in the light. The question immediately presented itself: could this fossil have belonged to a creature that was my direct ancestor?
It is possible, of course, that the fossil really did belong to my lineal ancestor. Everybody has an ancestry, after all. Given what the Leakeys and others have found in East Africa, there is good reason to suspect that hominids lived in the Rift before they lived anywhere else in the world, so all modern humans must derive their ancestry, ultimately, from this spot, or somewhere near it. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that we should all be able to trace our ancestries, in a general way, to creatures that lived in the Rift between roughly 5 and 3 million years ago. So much is true, but it is impossible to know, for certain, that the fossil I hold in my hand is my lineal ancestor. Even if it really was my ancestor, I could never know this unless every generation between the fossil and me had preserved some record of its existence and its pedigree. The fossil itself is not accompanied by a helpful label. The truth is that my own particular ancestry — or yours — may never be recovered from the fossil record.
The obstacle to this certain knowledge about lineal ancestry lies in the extreme sparseness of the fossil record. As noted above, if my mystery skull belonged to an extinct giant civet, Pseudocivetta ingens, it would be the oldest known record of this species by a million years. This means that no fossils have been found that record the existence of this species for that entire time; and yet the giant civets must have been there all along. Depending on how old giant civets had to be before they could breed (something else we can never establish, because giant civets no longer exist so that we can watch their behaviour), perhaps a hundred thousand generations lived and died between the fossil found by me at site LO5 and the next oldest specimen. In addition, we cannot know if the fossil found at LO5 was the lineal ancestor of the specimens found at Olduvai Gorge or Koobi Fora. It might have been, but we can never know this for certain. The intervals of time that separate the fossils are so huge that we cannot say anything definite about their possible connection through ancestry and descent.
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A fossil can be thought of as an event in Deep Time. Compared with the immensity of time in which it is found, a fossil is a point in time of zero extent: a fossil either exists or it doesn't. By itself, a fossil is a punctuation mark, an interjection, an exclamation, even, but it is not a word, or even a sentence, let alone a whole story. Fossils are the tableaux that are illuminated by the occasional shafts of light that punctuate the corridor of Deep Time. You cannot connect one fossil with any other to form a narrative.
So there I was, confronted with a fossil that might have been half a tooth of a hominid, a scrap of flotsam from the ocean of time. Let us give a name — Yorick -- to its deceased owner. Yorick might have been my lineal ancestor; but we can never establish this for certain.
The events of Deep Time — fossils — are so sparse, because an animal, once dead, only rarely becomes a fossil. A million years passed between one fossil of Pseudocivetta ingens and the next. The process of fossilization and discovery is a concatenation of chance built upon chance. It's amazing that anything ever becomes a fossil at all.
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The fact is that we know so little of the past. We depend on the minute fraction of the life that Earth has produced that has left any record. We have hardly begun to count the species with which we share this planet, yet for every species now living, perhaps a thousand, or a million, or a thousand million (we will never know for certain) have appeared and become extinct.
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Because we see evolution in terms of a linear chain of ancestry and descent, we tend to ignore the possibility that some of these ancestors might have been side branches instead — collateral cousins, rather than direct ancestors. The conventional, linear view easily becomes a story in which the features of humanity are acquired in a sequence that can be discerned retrospectively — first an upright stance, then a bigger brain, then the invention of toolmaking, and so on, with ourselves as the inevitable consequence.
New fossil discoveries are fitted into this preexisting story. We call these new discoveries 'missing links', as if the chain of ancestry and descent were a real object for our contemplation, and not what it really is: a completely human invention created after the fact, shaped to accord with human prejudices. In reality, the physical record of human evolution is more modest. Each fossil represents an isolated point, with no knowable connection to any other given fossil, and all float around in an overwhelming sea of gaps.
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In cladistics, presumptions about particular courses of ancestry and descent are abandoned as unprovable or unknowable. Yet cladistics does more than state that we are all cousins. It is a formal way of investigating the order in which organisms are cousins, by examining the possible alternatives. Cladograms are statements of collateral relationship of greater or lesser extent. Given that, they sidestep the question of whether Yorick is my ancestor, or if any fossil is the ancestor of any other, because the answer to these questions can never be known. In other words, cladistics acknowledges the discontinuities of Deep Time and, by acknowledging them, transcends them. "
As a result I found Gee's book useful for my research about evolution, but it is also depressing to me. It depresses me because it makes the strong case that we can never never know for sure if a specific extinct species (represented by specific fossils or by only one fossil) is the actual ancestor (linear ancestor/direct ancestor) of another specific species. Consider hominid evolution for example.
The more hominid fossils that are found the more hominid species are known to have existed, and these have many similarities with each other. As result it becomes increasing difficult to be confident of which species descended from a specific other species It even become hard to define which species to assign a particular fossil to. Hominid evolution is now thought of being much more like a bush (or a thicket) with numerous intertwined branches and twigs, than a tree. For example, the KNM-ER 1470 fossil was first assigned to Homo habilis, but many years later in science books it tended to be more commonly assigned to Homo rudolfensis, then later sometimes to Australopithecus rudolfensis instead, and now sometimes to Kenyanthropus rudolfensis instead.
For many years (especially until the fossil named "Lucy" was found") evolutionist anthropologists made family trees saying that our species descended from Australopithecus africanus, but years later the family trees in science books usually showed our species as not descending from Australopithecus africanus, though descending from Australopithecus afarensis (and sometimes also Homo habliis). [When Australopithecus africanus is shown these days in family trees, it typically is shown as leading to a dead end.] Many recent evolutionist biology books and evolutionist anthropology books don't even include family trees of hominids, instead they simply show a chart which indicates the time periods various hominid species existed and sometimes cladograms are also presented to indicate the relationships between the various hominid species.
For decades Homo erectus was presented as an ancestor of Homo sapiens, but now sometimes it is depicted as not being an ancestor of Homo sapiens. Instead of being shown as our ancestor some scientists assign some fossils to the species Homo ergaster - fossils that previously were assigned to Homo erectus (and that still are assigned to Homo erectus by other scientists). As a result, diagrams of family trees made by those scientists (the ones who split the species Homo erectus into Homo ergaster and Homo erectus) show our species, Homo sapiens, as having descended from Homo ergaster but not also from Homo erectus.
Thinking has also changed regarding the classification of Homo floresiensis. Initially it was thought to have descended (as a dwarf species) from Homo erectus, but now it is known to be more primitive than what researchers had thought. See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rethinking-the-hobbits-of-indonesia-2012-12-07/ and https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2005/10/12/1480331.htm for more information about that new viewpoint.
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Disillusioned JW
As a read many science books and science articles (especially about evolution) written from the 1950s to the present, I notice that many scientific ideas have become greatly modified over time, and in many cases even discarded. As a result I am not sure if the WT thinks they are being deceiving when they exclude from their quotes content by scientists which attempt to provide an explanation for perceived problems of biological evolution and of abiogenesis. Maybe in the minds of the writers of WT literature, the purported scientific explanations of apparent problems in evolution are erroneous (or very likely erroneous) and thus not necessary to include in quotes.
Even if the WT writers do think they are being deceiving (but without making an outright false quote and thus without making an outright intentional lie), they might be true believers in their religious sect/cult and in what they call creation science. Further, they might also feel justified in their handling of the quotes, thinking it is a part of theocratic warfare. Nonetheless, I think their handling of quotes is in many cases a mishandling of quotes and that it hides the truth from the readers of the WT literature - and that upsets me. It also greatly disturbs me that they often use very faulty logic in support of their teachings.
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Disillusioned JW
In my prior post where I said "As a read ..." I should have said "As I read ...".
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mynameislame
I'd be surprised if the JWs lie wasn't where they got the quote, not the quote itself.
I assume they just quote someone else's faulty research into the matter.
In other words Reverend Liesalot misquoted Carl Sagan. The JWs quoted the good reverend without giving them credit.