by Billy the Ex-Bethelite 51 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Thus, is it not reasonable to conclude that the animals released from Noah's ark would have instinctively set out in search of the kind of environment that suited their needs?
Surely they would be busier instinctively seeking each other out to EAT first. "Ahh" said the lions lets find the savanna after we've feasted on the gazelles"
no doubt one between Asia and Australia. The string of islands and shallow seas stretching from Malaya and embracing Indonesia and New Guinea could have comprised a wide land bridge where the crossing to Australia was made.
Why don't we don't find any marsupials on the islands that remain on this "bridge"?
For continents to drift apart and form oceans takes hundreds of millions of years.
And yet, didn't Ciro Alucino (sp?) state recently that the continents separated during the flood and that in the new system there would again be one land mass?
Billy....The book in question is Planet Earth Glacier. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1982. Not exactly a textbook.
I don't have a copy and it is not in Google Books, but you can bid on a cheap copy on eBay.
Edited to add: I see that the same text appears in an earlier book, Wonders of Nature by Herbert W. Franke and Claus Jurgen Frank (Macmillan, 1980), and there is a Snippet view of this book on Google. I can't get the full text, but this is part of the omitted passage: "And it is certain that the seas and plains of today will, millions of years from now, succeed in their turn to a new generation of lofty peaks. Volcanic forces ... (this part I cannot get from Google Books) ... upheavals of the crust, and... (from here the text resumes in the WT quote)"
Thanks Leo, looks like you have enough context from those books that they aren't advocating a literal flood followed by mountains and ocean abysses appearing 4000 years ago. More like they're looking way back to the ice ages. Funny how the Watchtower fantasy machine works. Cherry-pick a quote and staple a self-serving wrong conclusion to it.
No doubt the land bridges the Awake! farticle was talking about would have been millions of years ago, too. They should have just said that Noah used his ark as an anti-gravitational space ship to drop off koalas and kangaroos in Australia, giant pandas in China, American Gators in America, Chinese Gators in China, unicorns in Atlantis, etc.
IIRC Australia hasn't been accessible by land from what is today Turkey since the Jurassic period (135 million years ago). They would have had to have gone through what is today Greece, then south down through Africa to South Africa and then through what is today Antarctica to get to what is today Australia. Here is a map of the continents in the Triassic, when the marsupials (which didn't exist yet -- oops!) could still reach Australia by land:
Of course, the "mountains of Ararat" didn't exist yet because those mountains were formed through later plate movements. Then in the Jurassic, Pangaea was separated enough such that an early form of the Atlantic Ocean began to break apart Laurasia and separate Laurentia (what would become North America) from what would become Eurasia:
(Modern Australia is towards the bottom here, right of center)
Nor were the land bridges during the Pleistocene adequate enough to allow access from Asia; there was still a sizeable strait between Indonesia and New Guinea-Australia.
They should have just said that Noah used his ark as an anti-gravitational space ship to drop off koalas and kangaroos in Australia, giant pandas in China, American Gators in America, Chinese Gators in China, unicorns in Atlantis, etc.
Hey, don't steal my idea of the GOPHER 3000!
"Of course, we also know that Enoch was taken up in a flying saucer and went to the Europa shipyards underneath the surface of Jupiter's moon, where he was trained in the art of extraterrestial aquatic shipbuilding. Then he was returned to earth to help Noah in his 600th year of life to build the submersible GOPHER 3000 ark which includes hyperspace multidimensionality functions, which will give ample room to fit every single species on the planet, and the ark performed quite admirably during the Flood thanks to alien technology. Then the ark came to rest at Mount Ararat, not due to water level, but because the GOPHER 3000 was built equipped with trinary booster thrusters that allowed the ark to achieve aeronautic manuverability. Then, after Noah and his family exited the ark, Enoch piloted the GOPHER 3000 on a 200-year mission to repopulate the earth by flying it to locations all over the earth to deposit the various life forms, which were also tinkered with genetically during the year-long Flood to build up enough genetic variation to mask the fact that life has existed on this planet for only 6,000 years (to fool those dumb athiests in the distant future)."
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/106297/1/Did-UFOs-play-a-part-in-Jesus-Baptism#1844564
"Yes, indeed, the GOPHER 3000 was antimatter powered.
'A river went out from Eden to water the garden. From there it divided and became the source of four rivers. The name of the first is Pishon, which encircles the entire land of the Havilah, where there is gold. Gold from that land is pure; bdellium, onyx, and dilithium crystals are also there' (Genesis 2:10-11; Starfleet Standard Version)."
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/experiences/153513/1/Noah-and-the-high-altitude
"Of course the giants built the ark. Who else was tall enough for the high ceilings needed for the giraffes? And the cubits were not according to the size of human span but that of a giant; that is why the ark was large enough to fit all the animals, it was actually a submersible spaceship (the GOPHER 3000) utilizing the Anunanki technology of the giants' parents. And each room on the ark came equipped with a holodeck to simulate each animal's natural environment.
Why didn't the giants hitch a ride? Noah was a racist. Plain and simple. He didn't like "their type". But the giants were stupid. Had they organized and formed a proper union, Noah wouldn't have had a choice in the matter."
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/173301/1/Did-Noah-build-a-protoype-of-the-ark
"The Anunanki installed a methane-oxygen separation system on the GOPHER 3000 and the methane was then routed to the engines for propulsion....As mentioned earlier, the GOPHER 3000 was a submersible spaceship built by the Anunanki. It flew from Mount Araret and then deposited each animal species to every corner of the earth. I mean, if Saint Nick can do it, surely Noah can."
"Q. Is it true Noah used flood lights on the Ark? A. The GOPHER 3000 was a submersible, so it did need lights to pierce through the deep...I wasn't referring to Gopher, btw, but the transdimensional ark that Noah built with timelord technology (brought to Earth from Gallifrey by the evil Nephilim and their timelord parents)."
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/153749/1/Boring-Noahs-back-again
Leo,
Wow, that's some great stuff. I'm hanging onto that for future reference. Thanks for taking the time to share these valuable trooths!
Just one more question...
Is "scholar JW" aware of this? Or is he just a 607BCE one-trick pony?
GOPHER 3000! I'm hanging onto that for future reference, too!
"I mean, if Saint Nick can do it, surely Noah can."
JW's in the 60's believed the entire earth was a uniform, temperate climate prior to the flood. So the extremes of climate that would have emerged once the alleged water canopy was gone would have been new and different ---not particularly "suitable" in the sense the author uses the term. The idea that certain animals and plants actually are adapted to live in a spectrum of climates ranging from the hot and arid to the arctic is not one that a 60's JW could make without a certain degree of contradiction.
Another problem from a JW perspective is that the flood would have wiped out both flora and fauna. As VM44 has already pointed out, specific dietary requirements directly tied to the distribution of flora is a more basic problem that must be answered first.
Even if we ignore that, what would make the climate in Australia more suitable than say, the climate in the middle east's fertile crescent, or the climate in the Sonoran desert, or the climate in South Africa? Nothing. All four areas have virtually identical climates at comparable elevations. Yet the unique distribution of marsupial mammals occurs in Australia alone.
The author also takes a swipe at evolution. Yet zoography is one of the stronger arguments of modern evolutionary thought. Those marsupial mammals fill the same ecological niches in Australia that placental mammals fill on other continents. Was Australia more "suitable" to the flying phalanger than it would have been to the flying squirrel? Was it more "suitable" to the Thylacine than it would have been to the wolf? Was it more "suitable" to the Tasmanian Devil than it would have been to the Wolverine? The author either fails to grasp or else ignores the problem here.
