Yesterday I discovered a number of Watchtower publications listed on Amazon.com, and started writing some reviews to counter the biased pro-JW reviewers.

Here is the text of my first review, of the book Life - How did it get here? By Evolution or Creation:

A complete misrepresentation of the sciences of the natural world and the theory of evolution. Full of fallacies, errors, strawman arguments, misquotes, misleading language, and appeals to ignorance. The anonymous authors did little to no real research on the subject of evolution, and the arguments presented in this book show that they have zero understanding of the concept. Scientists are repeatedly misquoted and their words taken out of context. Facts are twisted on every page to conform to their distorted view of the scientific method and the vast amounts of evidence from observational reality.

For example, page after page the Watchtower authors proclaim that the only alternative to Creation is “random chance”. They point to a seemingly complex life form, say for example, a Redwood Tree, and ask if such a beautiful thing could possibly have come about by “chance”. This is a very misleading statement, since evolution and natural selection is not chance — in fact, it is the exact opposite of chance. It is this sort of misinformation that depends on the ignorance of the reader regarding the basics of evolution, and further confuses and misleads them by staging invalid arguments that completely misrepresent real science.

Another example is how they use the famous Piltdown Man hoax as proof of a scientific conspiracy regarding human ancestors. But it was scientists who exposed this hoax way back in the 1950’s!

The Watchtower now has to conveniently ignore and hide from the fact that scientists have since successfully retrieved Neanderthal DNA from a frozen specimen, and are currently mapping the Neanderthal genome. This is just the tip of the iceberg. The amount of physical, testable evidence disputing the Watchtower’s claims is staggering. But since Jehovah’s Witnesses are discouraged from reading secular scientific works, they are kept in the dark regarding the true history of our natural world.

Some of the material is even directly taken from a previous book (The Neck of the Giraffe), often without citation, and written by a quack paranormal TV writer and self-proclaimed Psychic ‘Dowser’ (J Francis Hitching), who has no scientific credentials whatsoever.

Although published in 1985, and understandably quite dated, this book is still the primary go-to source of information on evolution for the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Watchtower often publishes additional information regarding Evolution in their other magazines and books. Sadly, their arguments and methods used to combat evolution have not improved to this day, and they continue to mislead their followers regarding basic scientific fact.

To start on the road to a better understanding of evolution and natural selection, read titles such as The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design; The Origin Of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition; The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution; The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution; and Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters.

Other reviews were posted for the Proclaimer’s book, as well as What Does the Bible Really Teach? I would encourage other ex-JW’s to participate in Amazon’s ratings and social features to help raise public consciousness regarding Watchtower publications.