dorayakii, when you link an image, it has to be to some web-based source, not your C drive.
Here are scans of pages 112 and 113 from the Creation monstrosity:
All of the Society's points amount to straw men, because all of the things they claim are "Facts as Found in the Real World" are either outright false, or misrepresentations designed to support their premise. Here are the points:
Point 1: "(1) Life comes only from previous life; (2) no way to form complex genetic code by chance."
Point 2: "Fossils show: (1) sudden appearance of complex life in great variety; (2) each new kind separate from previous kinds; no linking forms."
Point 3: "No new kinds gradually appearing, although many varieties; no incompletely formed bones or organs."
Point 4: "Small mutations harmful, large ones lethal; never result in anything new."
Point 5: "Civilization appears with man; any cave dwellers were contemporary with civilization."
Point 6: "Language contemporaneous with man; ancient ones often more complex than modern."
Point 7: "Oldest written records date back only about 5,000 years."
The Society had supposedly set forth "evidence" in the previous chapters to support these conclusions, but virtually all of that evidence has been shown to be misrepresentations of the original sources, or to come from unattributed young-earth creationist sources who make bald claims with little or no support, or to be simply false, or not even to exist. For example, see my long essay "The WTS View of Creation and Evolution" here: http://www.geocities.com/osarsif/ce01.htm
I'll comment briefly on each of the above "Points".
Point 1: "(1) Life comes only from previous life;"
False. First, the Watchtower Society claims that God didn't come from previous life. Second, experiments performed in the 19th century that showed that spontaneous generation doesn't happen on an everyday basis have no bearing on the evolution of life from nonliving matter. Conditions in the early earth were quite different from today, there was an extremely long period of time (at least 600 million years) for life to form, and we simply don't have the scientific knowledge to say for certain whether it's possible for life to have arisen on its own or not.
"(2) no way to form complex genetic code by chance."
False. No one knows if it's possible or not, either on a theoretical or practical basis.
Point 2: "Fossils show: (1) sudden appearance of complex life in great variety;"
False. Often this is true, but not always. For example, after the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, mammals of all sorts gradually appear in the fossil record. Whales, for example, gradually appear and take on more and more of a modern character as time progresses.
"(2) each new kind separate from previous kinds;"
The theory of punctuated equilibrium explains why this is only an artifact of the incompleteness of the fossil record: isolated populations of plants or animals can evolve relatively rapidly into new forms, and if they happen to become unisolated at a future time, they're likely to spread rapidly into the much larger environment, making it much more likely that some specimens will become fossilized. This can easily give the appearance, given the incompleteness of the fossil record, of a sudden appearance of a new species. This has been observed to happen in various places. For instance, in Lake Victoria in Africa, which has been isolated for roughly 800,000 years, a small number of founder species of cichlid fish have evolved into hundreds of new species, often with specialized life styles. These are demonstrably new species because they don't interbreed, have quite different life styles, and look quite different from one another. The original generalized species can still be found in the streams feeding the lake.
"no linking forms."
Nonsense. This old chestnut relies on a simple rhetorical claim that, no matter how closely two apparently different species in the fossil record resemble one another, and appear in the fossil record in a time sequence, there's no way to prove that they're linked. So it's just a bit of rhetoric. The fact is that hundreds of linking forms have been described in paleontological literature. See my above-linked essay for some examples. See the talk.origins website for a lot more.
Point 3: "No new kinds gradually appearing, although many varieties;"
Again this is a matter of rhetorical definition, as shown by the actual arguments set forth earlier in the book. Again see my essay for some examples of gradual evolution of new kinds, or the talk.origins website.
"no incompletely formed bones or organs."
By definition, all bones and organs are complete in normal creatures, because there's no way to say that some bone or organ is incomplete. Nevertheless, nature itself proves this claim false. From time to time there appear what are called atavisms or throwbacks. For example, old time whalers used to occasionally pull out a whale that had hind legs in various stages of development. Some legs were sketchy, but others were complete with all the usual bones, muscles, tendons and skin. These couldn't exist unless the whale's genetic code contained the blueprint for legs, which for whatever reason was partially expressed in that particular specimen. Chicken embryos can be induced hormonally to develop teeth, which proves that genes for teeth are in their genetic makeup. Occasionally a horse is born with extra toes -- just like the ancient ancestral forms.
Point 4: "Small mutations harmful, large ones lethal;"
Not necessarily. After hundreds of generations of fruit flies in some labs, a few mutations have proved to be not harmful. In any case, nature is a far bigger laboratory, and shows that mutations certainly do result in new species. For example, in Hawaii, fruit flies have evolved over several million years into more than 800 new species. They're often quite different physically, and incapable of interbreeding. A type of fruit fly that in Europe infests the hawthorn tree has evolved since its introduction in the Americas in the 1600s to infest the apple tree, and the two species today exist side by side (cf. http://neruda.cap.ed.ac.uk/teaching/JigginsBridle2004.pdf)
"never result in anything new."
The gradual evolution of the mammalian jaw between about 300 and 200 million years ago disproves this. Certain early reptiles gradually evolved into new forms that, amazingly, had bones existing side by side that were similar to both reptiles and today's mammals. This is extremely clear in the fossil record. Again, see my essay for a detailed explanation, or the talk.origins website.
Point 5: "Civilization appears with man;"
False. Man, in one or another form, has been around for at least two million years, if you allow that the species now called Homo erectus and Homo ergaster are "men". No matter, archaic Homo sapiens in various forms is found in the fossil record going back hundreds of thousands of years. Neanderthals, which the Watchtower Society classes as "men", are found as far back as about 400,000 years. And new discoveries show that modern Homo sapiens has been around for some 200,000 years. More recently, Cromagnons painted the many caves in Europe between about 35,000 and 15,000 years ago. The Egyptian calendar demonstrably goes back to about 4800 B.C. In view of all this, the Society's claim is again shown to be a purely rhetorical device that relies on merely defining away the evidence they don't like.
"any cave dwellers were contemporary with civilization."
Nonsense. The Creation book mentioned not one thing about cave dwellers up to this point. And the fact that European cave paintings are up to 35,000 years old disproves the claim.
Point 6: "Language contemporaneous with man; ancient ones often more complex than modern."
dorayakii has dealt with this false claim.
Point 7: "Oldest written records date back only about 5,000 years."
The oldest written records -- true. But the oldest general evidence for civilization goes back much further. For example, the so-called Ice Man discovered about 15 years ago thawing out of an Alpine glacier is dated to about 5,000 years ago -- some 600 years older than the Society's date for Noah's Flood in 2370 B.C. The guy was obviously well equipped and had all the trappings of a long-running civilization, which shows that the culture of which the the Ice Man was a part was at least many hundreds of years older than that. Therefore, this civilization was at least 1000 years older than the Society's claimed date for Noah's Flood. Furthermore, a great many discoveries in the Middle East, especially dateable pottery, show a continuous evolution of culture from at least 8,000 years ago. Such non-written records are conclusive proof that the Society's statements about written records are yet another purely rhetorical device designed to deceive the unwary.
AlanF
