Juke v. Edwards

This morning my cousin sent me a link to a message that he and his wife had listened to (read/listen here). The basis of this message was the following:

“In Al Sander’s book Crisis in Morality! he compares descendants of an atheist, Max Jukes, to the offspring of a well-known preacher of that same era, Jonathan Edwards:

 

Max Jukes...married an ungodly girl and among their descendants were 310 who died as paupers, 150 as criminals, 7 as murders, 100 as drunkards and more than half of the women were prostitutes.

 

Jonathan Edwards...lived at the same time and married a godly girl [Sarah Pierpont]. An investigation was made of 1,394 known descendants of theirs. Of these descendants, 13 became college presidents, 65 college professors, 3 United States senators, 30 judges, 100 lawyers, 60 physicians, 75 army and navy officers, 100 preachers and missionaries, 60 authors of prominence, one a vice-president of the United States, 80 became public officials...and 295 college graduates, among whom were governors of states and ministers to foreign countries.”

It was sent to me because Sarah Pierpont is a relative of both my cousin and myself. But as I read this, I had a number of issues with it that I’d like to relate below:

 

Issue 1 – mistakes noted by others

There are a number of articles on this topic. One can be read here. These include such items as:

·         The last name of the individual is “Juke”, not “Jukes”. But even “Juke” was a pseudonym chosen to hide the identity of the individual. (In the below I will continue to use “Juke” or “Max” just for continuity.) Thus, it becomes clear that people are just copying mistakes and not checking on the actual source material.

·         The reporting never said that Max was an atheist. While he had his faults, nothing of a religious nature was ever reported about Max or his wife.

·         The original study included 540 blood descendants plus 169 who had married into the family. There was an estimate that the total number of individuals could be 1200 when including those who could not be traced. But many subsequent reports name an exact figure of 1026 which seems to be made up.

·         While the 7 murderers is correct, there were only 2 in the 540 blood relatives and the other 5 had married into the family.

·         The number of “prostitutes” is very misleading. The researcher used “prostitute” to mean women who were paid for sex and “harlot” for women who were merely “impudent” but not paid. About half of the female in the blood descendants were “harlots”, but only 128 of the 709 (18%) were prostitutes. Word choices have consequences.

There are other things from the study that are similar presented in a misleading fashion or just plain fabricated in later reports.

 

Issue 2 – Continued misquotes

In addition to the article that began my investigation, here is another one – not in a Christian publication that is looking at atheism v. Christianity, but in a Muslim publication that is looking at leaving a legacy. Note the numbers in this publication:

Jonathan Edwards’ legacy includes: 1 U.S. Vice-President, 1 Dean of a law school, 1 dean of a medical school, 3 U.S. Senators, 3 governors, 3 mayors, 13 college presidents, 30 judges, 60 doctors, 65 professors, 75 Military officers, 80 public office holders, 100 lawyers, 100 clergymen, and 285 college graduates.

Jukes’ descendants included: 7 murderers, 60 thieves, 190 prostitutes, 150 other convicts, 310 paupers, and 440 who were physically wrecked by addiction to alcohol. Of the 1,200 descendants that were studied, 300 died prematurely.

The information on Edwards is pretty similar except for the number of college graduates being 285 in one article and 295 in the other. But the numbers for “Jukes” counts 100 drunkards in one article and 440 in the other. This second article also says that there were 1200 descendants who were “studied”, but we know that was just an estimate of the family size and only 709 were actually investigated.

Finally, let me quote from yet another Christian publication The Voice in the Wilderness.

Jonathan Edwards, one of the greatest minds that God has given America, lived in the state of New York. He was a Christian and believed in Christian training. He married a girl of like character. From this union men have studied 729 descendants. Of this number came 300 preachers, 65 college professors, 13 university presidents, 60 authors of good books, 3 United States congressmen, and one vice president of the United States; and barring one grandson who married a questionable character, the family has not cost the state a single dollar.

Max Jukes lived in the same state. He did not believe in Christian training. He married a girl of like character. From this union men have studied 1,026 descendants. Three hundred of them died prematurely. One hundred were sent to the penitentiary for an average of 13 years each. One hundred ninety were public prostitutes. There were 100 drunkards. The family cost the state $1,200,000. They made no helpful contribution to society.

The difference in these two fathers, two families, and two fates was caused by Christian home training and heart conversion. What choices will you make? What direction will you set for your family? Life is not a bed of roses. However, you may choose to go with God or you may choose to go alone. Trust the Lord and He will go with you. Yes, the storms of life will come and the critics will have their opinions, but the Lord will never leave or forsake you.

Here you can see the typical misstatement of facts, such as attributing Jonathan Edwards as living in New York (he lived at various time in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey, but not New York). We also see invented figures of 729 of Edwards’ descendants and 1026 of “Jukes”. But we also see a conclusion that all of these differences were caused by “Christian home training and heart conversion.” (More on this below in issue #4.)

 

Issue 3 – Using Estimates as Facts

In the above quotes, do you notice that except for counts that are less than 20, every other figure is a multiple of 5 and that most are a multiple of 10? This is a clear indication that these are estimated figures. In the case of Max Juke, we know that the 709 individuals the researcher located has been “rounded up” to 1200. Thus, each of the other figures is being rounded by the same fraction. But it appears to have been the case for Jonathan Edwards as well. I doubt that they found exactly 100 lawyers, 60 doctors, etc. And if these numbers are somewhat fabricated just like they are in the case of Juke, then how are we to trust the results? I don’t want to redo the research, but all the results being round figures is a clear indication that there is some estimation going on!

 

Issue 4 – Using studies for other than their intended purpose

Both the Christian and Muslim publications are using these two cases as examples – in the former as support for religion (specifically for Christianity) and in the latter for leaving a legacy. But the studies behind Juke and Edwards were not for this purpose. As summarized here, Dugdale was debating the relative contribution of environment and heredity (nurture or nature) and concluded that the family’s poor environment was largely to blame for their behavior, stating that “environment tends to produce habits which may become hereditary.”

Dugdale’s results were published in 1877. It was not until 1900 that Winfield printed his book which compared the Juke family with Jonathan Edwards and his family. The Edwards family was specifically chosen because of the contrast between it and the results from the study in 1877.

But the Dugdale study had never been intended to be used for comparison purposes, rather it was looking for the factors involved so the State of New York could invest in things that would reduce the prison population and save money in total. As noted, even Dugdale concluded that the primary cause was the environment, not heredity! But these more recent Christian/Muslim publications are focusing on heredity!

 

Issue 5 – Only looking for specific results, and finding them

In order to demonstrate this, I’d like to create a fictitious family to examine. So bear with me in the following depiction.

Malcolm Jones and Maria Smith had met in college. They had gotten married and had three sons. Maria was a faithful churchgoer, but Malcolm never seemed to find the time as he was very focused on the company he had founded. When he was home, he enjoyed alcohol to help him escape the problems at work. But during the week he worked hard, putting in 12+ hour days and frequently travelling.

The oldest son, James, went to college (his parents’ alma mater of course) and, like his father, was a hard worker. But, wanting to have success earlier in life than his father, he pushed both himself and his employees overly hard. One day, when he had cancelled the planned vacation of all his senior managers in order to meet yet another deadline, one of them snapped, brought the gun he carried in his car into the office, and shot James – ending his life prematurely.

The second son, Joshua, also went to the same college as his brother and had also started his own company. But he wanted to have the same standard of living as he had grown up with and so had begun taking cash out of the company – first small amounts, then increasingly larger amounts. Because he had started the company with cash from other investors and had taken the company public, when the extent of his embezzlement became known, he was arrested, fired, and began a long prison sentence because of his actions.

Jeremy, the youngest son, was several years younger than his older brothers. But he had also been accepted into the same school. Like his father, he had begun drinking heavily – not realizing that his father only drank at home on the weekends. During his second year of college, following an evening of heavy partying, he made the bad decision to drive home anyway. Going too fast, he rounded a corner and drove off the road into a group of Girl Scouts walking on the sidewalk – killing three of them and injuring three others. He was arrested not only for DWI, but for involuntary manslaughter, and was sentenced to life in prison.

Meanwhile, Maria had enough of Malcolm ignoring her because of his business focus and drinking. When Jeremy went off to college and there were no longer any children at home, she divorced Malcolm and took on her maiden name.

With that scenario, let’s redo the finding in the Christian publication with which this blog began and look at the “difference” between the Christian Maria and the atheist Malcolm. What might we say about these two individuals?

Maria was a strong Christian who went to church multiple times per week. All of her three sons had gone to a prestigious college and two of them had started successful businesses.

Malcolm was an atheist who had not darkened the door of a church since his wedding day. He also drank heavily. One of his sons was killed because he had angered others and the other two sons were serving long prison sentences.

If you only report the good things about the good person’s family and the bad things about the bad person’s family, the above is what you get. But in this case, this is the same family! If I reverse the first and last portion of the prior two paragraphs, then I could argue the point that children of atheists have successful careers and children of churchgoers end up in jail! You can’t cherry pick which facts to report on each side!

Were all members of the Juke family bad? Of course not! They may have been poor, but there were many who were not murderers, thieves, or prostitutes. Similarly, were there any scoundrels or less than desirable members among Jonathan Edwards descendants? Of course!

 

Issue 6 – Using only one example on each extreme

All these various reports and publications only give figures from these two families. Even if all the figures were quoted exactly and not estimated, it is only two example families. What about all the other family units? You can’t “cherry pick” your cases and then claim that any results are indicative of all families and that your conclusions apply to everyone! How many families are there like the Juke and Edwards families? If we were to choose 20 families that were representative of the spectrum of the attribute we wish studied (say Christian v. atheist or educated v. non-educated or rich v. poor) then perhaps we would be able to draw some conclusions.

But to pick one family from the hill country of New York who have little education and little exposure to things outside of their community and one family from the educated elite in a city and then draw conclusions that attribute all the differences to just a single attribute (such as the “Christian home training” in the one above quotation) is only going to give you results that are at best questionable.

 

Conclusion

Yes, these examples get your attention because they seem so extreme – and they are truly extreme. But don’t try to use them to try to prove a point that suits your purposes. And do make sure that you don’t continue to pass on some of the flawed figures just because you read them in some other publication – be sure to find out where the figures came from and whether they are being reported accurately. Otherwise, you may influence some people to better their lives, or perhaps just get people to nod their heads in agreement as they say, “I’m like the good guy in your story.” But you can also plan on getting the kind of critical feedback such I have given here for just this one.