# **How the org can change

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Posted by AF [AF] on October 24, 1999 at 09:54:32 {f8eW6hUOe21EwaxRomAMdaOt1gg/Zk}:

In Reply to: *How the org can change posted by Observer on October 24, 1999 at 08:05:46:

The Society will be hard put to publish anything scholarly at all. The only place they even come close to scholarly writing is with respect to the trinity, and even here they take extreme liberties with their source references. In most everything else their arguments and source references would be laughed away, even if they could get them published in referreed scholarly journals.

Another problem is inertia. The Society's writers have gotten used to thinking of themselves as semi-inspired, and therefore above the normal rules of scholarly writing. They don't feel that they have to discuss alternative points of view and argue why these might be wrong. They simply present a one-sided view as if this came from God himself. Changing this mindset will be next to impossible.

The problems in WTS writing are nicely illustrated by the new Creator book. The book essentially presents a repackaged form of the arguments put out during the last 15 years by far more competent authors in the "intelligent design" school of creation thought, authors like Behe, Denton, Johnson and Ross. Unfortunately the book presents very little documentation in the form of complete references. Very often the book says something like, "Michael Behe said so and so." Most JWs and most readers of the Creator book will have no idea who Behe is, but anyone who trusts the WTS will assume that Behe has solid credentials as a scientists. Furthermore, the lack of source references makes it extremely difficult to find out where an author wrote something. This practice amounts to deliberate obfuscation by WTS writers, and is a result of their having gotten badly burned with the few books they've written that do contain complete source references.

So it's really an entire mindset that has to change.

AF

Follow Ups:

- ***How the org can change proplog2 21:37:49 10/24/99 (0)
- ***How the org can change WorldlyWitness 14:26:02 10/24/99 (0)
- ***How the org can change Observer 11:34:44 10/24/99 (0)

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