yes, thanks Alan, we can always rely on you for the complete picture.
I thought that actually I was onto something new, that I had found there was no rain but rivers in Gen 2. But maybe I'm over-sensationalising that point, when in fact the whole account is flawed.
The Rainbow Myth
by Ranchette 31 Replies latest jw friends
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Ballistics Ghost
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AlanF
Howdy Ranchette, Patio34, and others!
The Society's basic notion about a "vapor canopy" and such is taken directly from the teachings of Evangelical young-earth creationists. In 1961 the book The Genesis Flood (by Henry Morris and John Whitcomb) made a splash with YECs and started the modern Young-Earth Creationist movement. The Society adopted most of these peoples' ideas about creation and the Flood, except where they conflicted with a few details. For example, instead of teaching literal 24-hour creative days they kept teaching Russell's tradition of 7000-year creative days. By about 1965 the Society was teaching what was nearly indistinguishable from YECism in most details, except that they gave no credit to Morris and Whitcomb for obvious reasons.
Anyway, one of the mainstays of YECism today is the notion of a "vapor canopy". During the last 20 years several YECs who have some training in science actually tried to physically model such a canopy and found that their traditional ideas were physically impossible. A Watchtower-style canopy that held enough water to flood the earth more than a few inches would create massive hothouse conditions and cook everything. A layer of gas composed of pure water vapor is also unstable, since the slightest disturbance would cause a miraculously created layer to mix with the rest of the atmosphere in short order. So YECs today teach that the "canopy" was only a minor component of Noah's Flood. Since their ideas are changing, it's not clear what their overall stance is today. The Watchtower has not gotten the message, though, and in its usual fashion simply does not comment. That way they can't be challenged on anything. More importantly, JW kids today are not being taught the old notions, and so they accept what they're being taught in school about the age of the earth, geology, the existence of life for several billion years, and so on. So today's JW kids don't have to think about the more ridiculous aspects of JW teaching.
I think that in the long run, as the JWs go more mainstream, they'll quietly abandon many of the old notions and they'll become nothing more than quaint bits of history in the minds of the newer generation. If the Society can get the JW community to think that 1975 was just a little blip created by a few overly enthusiastic rank & file JWs 30 years ago, how much easier will it be to forget about minor issues like creation and the Flood?
AlanF