What the hell is the WTS saying about evolution now? (page 3)

Alwayshere

Santisimo, Would you please give the date of the watchtower and the exact wording what they said? Thank you.

As I recall, the Watchtower has always maintained that the words: "In the beginning God created the earth..." could allow for millions or even billions of years. But when the earth was starting to be prepared for man in the creative "days" the Watchtower suggested that the "days" of creation were probably 7,000 years in length based on the last Sabbath of 6000 years plus the 1000 years of the millenium. It reasoned that each "day" was of equal length. But given the questionable record of the Watchtower's prophetic "times", reasonable doubt of its calculations of these times is in order.

Klaus Vollmer

there is still something running that makes the think tanks of the WTS gain big questions:

the ice shields on the pole caps are very thick and very old.

For example the ice on the north pole is about 120000 years old, on the south pole about 800000 years.

Scientist had made drillings and they captured the cores of the drilling and analysed them. So they had witness to the beginning of the melting of lead by the romans, they could veryfy when mankind started melting iron and so on.

and where is the evicence that Noahs flood was global and also the pole where overflown?

that is not testified by the ice cores.

so we see: the flood wa a regional flood, not a global flood. the cataclism surely was global but not the watering.

about that matter the think tanks in the tower have no ideas. they sweep it under the rug.

cest la vie avec l'histoire del humanite, avec l'histoire de la terre.

jstalin

I couldn't agree more! As a devout Last Thursdayist (Peace be upon last Thrusday) I believe the earth and the entire universe were all created last Thursday!
Anyone who says otherwise is foul and dirty and pukeing forth blasphemy of the highest order!

Dammit! You beat me to it :)

OnTheWayOut

I'm guessing that they still have issues with carbon dating, and hold that homo sapien sapien has only been around for 6,000 years and a real worldwide flood occured about 4,000 years ago

This is the stuff that gets me thinking, "WHY DID I EVER BELIEVE THEM?" Add in the age of dinosaurs and other life "according to science" and read about how JW's squirm out of any real answers (Noah must have taken "kinds" of lizards and reptiles in the ark, but not dinosaurs) and you know the 49,000 years is whacko.

It's been covered before. They know it's whacko, so they have dropped the 7,000-years-to-a-creative-day thing, replacing it with "thousands of years" so that older JW's who learned the 7,000 year thing will assume it has not changed, but younger ones who went to school learning more recent science will assume it could be SEVERAL thousands of years.

moshe

The WT Society has no credibility on any topic. They have no scholastic integrity to go along with their lack of scientific knowledge.

under_believer

The one new thing I saw in that magazine was that they're now actually using the phrase "Intelligent Design." Kinda late to the party, but interesting to see them hitch their cart to that particular politically-charged horse.

Terry

The Watchtower joins a long list of literalist churches in Christendom who have what I call the "squirm" factor.

They squirm when facts swarm around their assertions and disprove them. The Watchtower doesn't deal with facts per se. The Watchtower has always relied on a projected intellectual superiority which is no longer possible because of the information superhighway: the Internet.

In the days of C.T.Russell a clever man with a pleasant and forceful writing style could amass seemingly cogent arguments to prove a point religiously. Russell was the king of the buffet style; a little from here and a little from there until the plate was filled with persuasive goodies.

His crowning achievement was pretending the Great Pyramid was a "witness in Stone" that marked Armageddon's coming.

Judge Rutherford had his own stylistic bludgeon. He was a crackpot who ranted and railed against established authority and used the Bible sardonically to set his religion "apart" from everyone else's in a contrarian style. You might say he assembled factoids in a highly selective manner to prove a point.

But, the champion of the lot of them was Fred Franz. This whizkid could pull dates and archetypes out of his own ailimentary canal like a magician does a rabbit out of a hat. Nobody went through more gyrations to bend the facts to support his End Times theories.

You see, the REBUTTAL was missing. Nobody could mount a rebuttal to match the publications cranked out from Brooklyn. So called Evil Slaves could be marginalized. Whistle blowers could be stymied by ostracizing them. Disaffected vocal dissent could be disfellowshipped. Argument could be banned. A deaf ear was easy to turn to the other point of view easily.

With the advent of the Internet documents could be scanned; old magazines could be shown, quotes could be assembled and proved. The backlash had been building and building until a flood of rebuttal beganing washing over the Watchtower in a tidal wave of reproof, remonstrance and finger pointing particularity.

Most of it centered on the feckless personal history of Russell and Rutherford. But, some of it could make a real stinging difference focusing on End Times flip flops and policy changes that demonstrated waffling and second guesses and lying.

Having weathered the gigantic assemblage of actual FACTS, the Watchtower dug in and stonewalled in a tyranny of demands for "loyalty" to the organization. If they could not stop the rebuttal they could shut the doors of the Kingdom Hall and force the flock to become deaf to any voice other than the Brooklyn shepherds.

But, people can't escape every juicy tidbit that demonstrates Watchtower duplicity, ignorance and wilfull misrepresentation. No, they are forced to sand the rough edges off of prickly issues like blood, pedophilia and evolution.

The usual methodology is to bullshit. Presenting the argument to be discussed the Watchtower actually conceals the essentials of the debate in a mountain of misdirection and strawman blather. Then, they respond to their own misrepresented foundation arguments ignoring the real discussion and hiding the facts.

Rank and file members aren't that stupid anymore. They know something is awry and aren't as comfortable as they once were. But, due to the power of cognitive dissonance they are twice as determined to go blind and deaf at will.

The pacifer effect is in full force. They suck their Watchtower thumb and close their eyes and cry.

You'll find a gentle erosion over time of absolutely everything the Jehovah's Witnesses ever stood for.

The same thing happened to the Mormon church. They are a different religion today than they were in the the 19th century. But, everybody pretends nothing of the sort ever happened!

The JW's and the Mormons apparently love the smell of their own feces.

Santisimo

Isn't it possible that God created the universe TO LOOK OLD?

Think about it, when God created Adam he was a full grown adult - not an infant.

Is it hard to believe that God could create a universe fully formed?

And about the dinosaurs. Just because there are bones in the ground it doesn't mean they EVER WALKED THE EARTH. Isn't it possible that God put them their in order to preserve or freedom of choice? After all, if God made it too obvious that he created everything we wouldn't have much of a choice in the matter now would we?

vomit

Santisimo I dont know if you are being scarcastic or not. But if god did all that, he would be deserving of worship anyway, because of all the crap people argue what he did or didnt do caused the loss of many lives though religious wars.

I thought it was supposed to be the devil that lead man astray.

What the hell is the WTS saying about evolution now?