Mammals & Jehovah's Witnesses

by God_Delusion 12 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  God_Delusion

  I remember being told by a few elders that we (humans) are indeed mammals. But how can Jehovah's Witness believe that humans are mammals, after all, it's the evolution theory (definition of the word "theory" in this context; "The branch of a science or art consisting of its explanatory statements, accepted principles, and methods of analysis, as opposed to practice") that explained that humans were mammals.

  So then, my question is this; how can the WBTS (and any other creationist movements that believe that we are mammals) follow the tract of evolution up to a point, but then disregard the rest of it?

  Regards
  RAB
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  TD

  Taxonomy is largely regarded today as a system reflective of evolutionary relationship, but that has not always been the case. It was an established science long before Darwin and even afterwards, some of Darwin's bitterest critics were "Old school" taxonomsts like Georges Cuvier.

  They saw it as a system reflective of only morphological similarity. For example, a leopard is obviously closer in form to a tiger than it is to a bear. One can accept that fact and still believe that every "Kind" (Whatever that means) was a unique act of creation.
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  OnTheWayOut

  No scientific jargon needed to understand this. Science divides animal life into types such as mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, insects, and reptiles.

  Mammal: Any of various warm-blooded vertebrate animals of the class Mammalia, including humans, characterized by a covering of hair on the skin and, in the female, milk-producing mammary glands for nourishing the young.
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  Nathan Natas

  Where do Pleidian Reptiloids fit in, I wonder.
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  TheClarinetist

  Like TD says, taxonomy groups animals/plants/fungi/protists/bacteria/archeobacteria (yay! i payed attention in bioligy) according to characterists. Taking your logic a step further, JWs wouldn't be able to call an aligator a reptile, or a sparrow a bird.

  (Of course, these days, a sparrow is a reptile, which is enough to drive me crazy, but whatever. LoL)
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  God_Delusion

  "(yay! i payed attention in bioligy)"

  ......but not English I see
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  TheOldHippie

  What I find interesting, is that WT and GA often write that species A is related to species B or that A and B belong to the same branch or group etc. If animal species are related or belong to the same typus or branch, then the road ain't long to evolution. How can you be related without having a common ancestor? And how can you be related to someone if both of you were created specifically or separate?
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  OnTheWayOut

  WTS does not agree that animals are "related." They say that Jehovah created each according to it's kind. The closest they come to "related" is that they speculate that Noah only needed animal groups in the ark. But they still say he needed each according to it's kind- not generic mammals but a pair of each, only we are supposed to conclude that two dogs on the ark produced all the dog types and two finches on the ark produced all the finch types, yet their variety is not any kind of evolution because they are still dogs and finches today.

  They allow the group types, including humans being mammals. That is to understand the world and it's teachings better. To differential themselves from Science, WTS says that Jehovah created something that worked, so he used similar design in other creatures: two eyes above a nose and a mouth with two ears to the outsides worked pretty good for one animal, more complex animals nurturing their young for longer periods of time to allow for development worked for one animal, so copy it for the next animal.
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  TD

  What I find interesting, is that WT and GA often write that species A is related to species B or that A and B belong to the same branch or group

  I know what you mean. In line with what OTWO said, the Insight book under the heading, "Ark" states:

  "It has been estimated by some that the hundreds of thousands of species of animals today could be reduced to a comparatively few family kinds; the horse kind and the cow kind, to mention but two. The breeding boundaries according to kind established by Jehovah were not and could not be crossed. With this in mind some investigators have said that, had there been as few as 43 kinds of mammals, 74 of birds, and 10 of reptiles in the ark, they could have produced the variety of species known today."

  Since Noah couldn't possibly have collected samples of every animal species (There are over 25 species of Jaguar just to take one example) it's claimed that the Biblical term, "kind" must refer to a higher taxonomic group than species, like genus or maybe even family. That would mean vastly fewer animals would have needed to be collected.

  But this amounts to a frank admission that large groups of species did in fact descend from a common anscestor and therefore are gentically related. To borrow the terminology from the Insight book, the "Cat kind" would include the Ocelot, Leopard, Mountain Lion, Jaguar, Margay, Serval, Jaguarundi, Carcal, Bobcat, Lynx, Lion, Tiger, and Cheetah just to name a few. And if you include the smaller cats as well, there are many more members of the Cat family even than that.

  Like you observed, you're not very far at all from evolution at this point.

  Another problem with this idea is that the Bible uses the term, "Kind" very much in the context of reproduction. But with large and diverse animal families, the individual species are not all fertile together. Fertility gradually tapers off as individual species become more and more disimilar. Genetic incompatibility begins to manifest itself in sterility of the offspring and progresses to the point where sperm and egg will not combine to form a viable zygote.

  Most "Dog" species have 78 chromosomes. But the Maned Wolf only has 76, the Grey Fox only has 66, the Fennec Fox 64, the Bengal Fox 60, the Racoon dog 56, the Kit Fox 50 and the Red Fox 34. If we speculate that all members of the Dog family descended from a common ancestor than this family has diverged into new "Kinds" even by the Biblical usage of the term.
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  VoidEater

  Some mammals were created more equal than others...

  Once you accept mysticism, you can create any special case you want.