by goddidit 7 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
What is the JW's explanation for how all the animals got to Australia after the flood?
They bang on about carbon dating being flawed, using the usual creationist mis-information and lies but are they even aware of all the other dating methods and the fact that multiple independent methods are used and results only taken as true when they agree?
As far as I know, they have not tried to address how the animals got to Australia or anywhere.
As far as I know, they don't delve into the various dating methods. But I could be wrong on that. They would ridicule any method if they saw fit to do so.
They have an answer in an Awake! It relys on the reader not knowing much about plate tectonics.
If you don't have the WTCD I'll post it for you.
I may be paraphrasing a bit, but the society's explanation of unique Australian wildlife is that as soon as the ark landed, the Kangaroo, duck-billed platypus and koala bear (and friends) immediately ran and stood on the bit of land that was to become australia, and didn't move from there while it floated down to the south.
Or, and I'm not sure I've seen this in print but this is how it was explained to me, kangaroos and koalas were everywhere but they died out everywhere else, apart from Australia.
godditit: you wont get a real attempt at an explanation to either points. With regard to the first - what OTWO said and also various hints that animals have 'instincs' about what to do like homing pigeons (at least i am quite sure i read that one in an awake).
The second - actually if you searh on dating methods on the CD you will get quite a lot. Nothing substantive - its all 'here is method X. it has a large margin of error. godditit!'. Most of the articles are quite old to.
QFR WT 15 Jan 1962
How can we account for animals in isolated lands when the Flood is said to have covered all the earth and the only land animals that survived were those in the ark?—P. G., England.
The presence of certain forms of animal life on Australia and New Zealand, for example, is no valid argument against the Bible account that all life on earth was wiped out in the Flood, except that of Noah and those with him in the ark. How might these animals have migrated from Mount Ararat, where the ark landed, to other continents and to islands? By means of land ridges. Oceanographic studies reported on by Dr. René Malaise and published in the Swedish geographical magazine, Ymer, tell of findings that indicate that there was once a “Mid-Atlantic Ridge,” crossing that ocean above the surface. (New York Times, September 23, 1956) It is possible that there were also other ridges, and animals could have migrated by means of these before such ridges sank below the surface of the ocean.
Nor is that the only possible explanation. Other oceanographic studies have turned up evidence that once there existed a huge South Pacific continent that took in Australia and many of the South Sea isles. If such was the case, then, of course, the animals had no difficulty in migrating to those lands.
as soon as the ark landed, the Kangaroo, duck-billed platypus and koala bear (and friends) immediately ran and stood on the bit of land that was to become australia, and didn't move from there while it floated down to the sout
This sounds like the start of a joke :)....
This is what Dr. Rene Malaise though about the idea of 'land ridges';
In 1957, Dr. Rene Malaise of the Riks Museum in Stockholm announced that a colleague, Dr. R. W. Kolbe, had found proof of the geologically recent subsidence of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Dr. Kolbe of the Swedish Museum of Natural History had been commissioned to investigate diatoms found in deep-sea cores obtained during the 1947-1948 Swedish Deep-Sea Expedition. Although the expedition included a globe-encircling study, only those cores taken from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge yielded the following: multitudinous shells of fresh-water diatoms (small lake animals) and fossilized remains of terrestrial plants (Kolbe, 1957). Let me repeat that. Land plants and fresh-water animals were found fossilized on the Atlantic Ocean bottom along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. (See also Kolbe, 1958)
Dr. Malaise theorized that parts of the Ridge must have existed as large islands up to the end of the last Ice Age or later: i.e., as recently as 10,000-12,000 years ago. He also theorized that these landmasses must have had fresh-water lakes in order to account for the existence of fresh-water animals (Malaise, 1956).* Commenting on Malaise' theory, Kolbe writes: ". . . it provides a natural explanation of the layer consisting exclusively of fresh-water diatoms, which is otherwise difficult to comprehend" (Kolbe, 1957).
I haven't read the NYT article, but it is available if you want to spend $3.95. I have a funny feeling that it would demonstrate that the WT is not a great fan of honesty in journalism.
Cheers
Chris
