by Mr. Falcon 116 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
ProdigalSon, don't you believe in miracles?
No Mr. Falcon, I don't. There's an explanation for everything. Belief in miracles is a tool that religions use to keep the masses asleep.
Jesus said people would one day do things greater than he did. Jehovah confused the languages at Babel because they were well on their way to being gods..... and we know how Biblegod feels about competition....
i got one of rutherford's books around here somewhere containing a picture about a few rings around earth, electrode rings if i remember correctly... i don't remember what the story was about, but i might just look it up when i find the time.
This is from his book Creation. You can see the diagrams and read the text here:
http://www.strictlygenteel.co.uk/creation/creation2.html
An excerpt:
This illustration shows a full-face view of the earth and its annular system. Here A is the earth, B the earth's atmosphere, C the heavy carbons and their accompanying mineral sublimations, D the lighter carbons and hydro-carbons, E glacial snows and their accompaniments, F outer vapors, principally aqueous and likely in a frozen state. From this outermost ring came the polar snows that chilled the Eden earth, and afterwards caused the deluge.
The waters remaining on high, after the interior waters or first ocean fell to the earth, fell in a succession of stupendous cataclysms, separated by unknown periods of time. The first ocean was necessarily impregnated with mineral and metallic salts, or filled with mineral and metallic particles, to a far greater extent than any other section or division of waters or exterior vapors, for the simple reason that in the system the heaviest vapors would settle lowest or nearest the earth as it cooled down.
All such changes required a great length of time, and a progressive motion of declining matter from the equator, polar-wise; also the bands and belts of the earth's annular system necessarily presented the same general aspect that Jupiter's and Saturn's do today.
A succession of concentric rings necessarily requires a vast lapse of time between the declension of one ring of vapors into the outskirts of the atmosphere, and the fall of the next succeeding one; so that each fall, or each ring, after it reached the attenuated atmosphere continued to revolve as a belt about the earth with an ever-decreasing velocity as it spread toward the poles and over-canopied the earth.
The smoke or unconsumed carbon that arose from the burning world commingled with the upper vapors, darkened them, and formed inevitably dark bands or belts among bright vaporous ones, as we now see on some other planets.
After a ring of vapors had fallen into the air, it is likely that it may have over-canopied the globe and finally descended to the earth, leaving the atmosphere clear, before another ring reached the atmosphere in its persistent decline.
The apparent retardation of the moon is but a gradual recession of our satellite, caused by diminished attraction as the annular system declined; and the necessary check put upon the revolving rings necessarily caused them to sink and finally fall to the earth, if no other cause of their fall existed; and further, this retardation proves the former existence of an annular system about the earth.
George
Great thread. Yes, its mind boggling that the March 2011 WT has a reference to the water canopy. So that old canard is alive and well in JWland. What's really odd is that the Genesis account indicates that moon and stars were visible by Day 4, bright enough to serve as "luminaries" according to the NWT. So how could starlight penetrate a water canopy that held enough water to flood the earth? When it's getting ready to rain today, the cloud cover is pretty dense and you don't even see the sun, much less stars. So it makes no sense whatsoever.
Oh, wait--the Flood story is a redaction of earlier Ugaritic and Babylonian myths! Its the imposition of a rationalistic framework onto what is clearly myth that makes no sense!
Well, "all things are possible with God"......and apparently, illogical.
Oct 11, 2007 ... One of the most common theories among young earth creationists is that the original earth possessed a water canopy consisting of vapor (most ...
www.godandscience.org/youngearth/canopy.html
Isaac Vail (1840–1912), a Quaker schoolteacher, in his 1912 work The Earth's Annular System, extrapolated from the nebular hypothesis what he called the annular system of earth history, with the earth being originally surrounded by rings resembling those of Saturn, or canopies of water vapor. These were hypothesised to have, one by one, collapsed on the earth, resulting in a "succession of stupendous cataclysms, separated by unknown periods of time" burying fossils. The Genesis flood was thought to have been caused by "the last remnant" of this vapor. Although this final flood was geologically significant, it was hypothesized to account for far less of the fossil record than George McCready Price attributed to it. [60]
This hypothesis gained a following among Jehovah's Witnesses [60] and from Seventh-day Adventist physicist Robert W. Woods, [61] before being given prominent and repeated mention in The Genesis Flood in 1961. [62]
Though the vapor canopy theory has fallen into disfavour among most creationists, recent defences of the theory have been attempted by Dillow [63] and Vardiman. [64]
The most recent mention of the water canopy appears on page 26 of the March 15, 2011 issue of The Watchtower.
NOOOOOOOO! Dang it! When I was researching this issue a while back I typed "water canopy" into the WT Library CD (probably the 2008-9 edition) and I recall the last article that mentioned it was from the early 80s. I thought, "well at least they aren't actively teaching it anymore." I should have known better.
NOOOOOOOO! Dang it! When I was researching this issue a while back I typed "water canopy" into the WT Library CD (probably the 2008-9 edition) and I recall the last article that mentioned it was from the early 80s. I thought, "well at least they aren't actively teaching it anymore." I should have known better.
Perfect situation for one of these:
2 peter 3:1-7
really suprised nobody mentioned it in the midst of this conversation.
somehow peter knew about this... probably from jesus.
just throwing it out there.
i believe in the firmament.
we will have to wait to find out who is right because there is only scriptures to go by right now.....
OK . . . I'm being lazy and just going from memory (35 years ago) . . . but I remember from Earth Science 101 that old river valley's exist on the sea floor that were formed when the ocean floor was actually land . . . about 130 million years ago . . . river valley's that carried huge volumes of water to the sea . . . river valley's formed by RAIN. The "inhabited earth" is subject to a miriad of cycles . . . some very long . . . apart from a few major events of a celestial nature. There is no evidence of a water canopy or earth-wide flood. From very early on in the earths life . . . it has always RAINED . . . here's an example
Another good example is off the east coast of New Zealand's South Island . . . you can view it on google maps / google earth
Luvonyall - MS
I know what you mean Mr. Falcon. I to only had a JW education. It was my wife the college educated one who brought to my attention that the air pressure would be to great for life on earth if there was a water canopy. When she told me that it was one of those small moments in my life that my brain actually have some intelligents going through it. Totally ADD
