Overlapping "Kinds"...Coming soon to a Watchtower near you?

by juandefiero 14 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  juandefiero

  Putting on my Carnac hat here.

  Let's say the evidence for evolution becomes so overwhelming that the Society eventually has to accept it due to much turmoil in the congregations.

  How do they do so without saying they've been wrong?
  

  Why, redefine a word, of course! Just like they did with "Generation," they can redefine the word "Kind."
  

  The Society uses this word "Kind" to refer to the different types of animals on the earth.
  

  The Biblical “kinds” seem to constitute divisions of life-forms wherein each division allows for cross-fertility within its limits. If so, then the boundary between “kinds” is to be drawn at the point where fertilization ceases to occur.

  
  So, here's how they could go about redefining it.
  They come up with the doctrine of **OVERLAPPING** kinds!
  

  "Oh see, that whale and hippo may have come from a common ancestor, but that's because they are overlapping 'kinds.' That doesn't prove creation didn't happen!"
  "You still haven't shown one 'kind' changing to another...they're overlapping, so they're the same."

  Overlap is the new Magic Bullet.
  

  "See, when jehovah created the first single cell organism billions of years ago, he caused it to divide into different kinds. After all, doesn't his name mean 'he causes to become?'"
  
  "After that point, those kinds went through adaptation based on their environments...and that's why we have various species today. An ape and a human are the same 'kind.' You'll never see a human turn into a shark! Shark's aren't the same 'kind.'"
  
  "It's really very simple! Here let me show you. Pretend the root of this tree is the first single cell organism created by Jehovah. Then, Jehovah caused it to branch off into different "kinds." Those kinds continued to branch, and though they created more branches, they never created more "kinds" because they came from that same branch. **Don't you see? The bible is scientific!**"
• 

  LoveUniHateExams

  Nice speculation, juandefiero, but I don't think the WT will do this.

  The Watchtower Society, putting the 'mental' in fundamentalism.
• 

  OneEyedJoe

  I can't see the evidence from evolution getting that much stronger, really. It's already to the point where you can't ignore it if you review it with an open mind and an ounce of intellectual honesty. They're doing just fine by ignoring the evidence and picking little pieces here and there that they can appear to poke holes in via a misquote or something.

  Besides, there's plenty of creationists out there actively trying to fight evolution, they're more likely to just use the best arguments/misquotes/fallacious reasoning that they find from there and steal it vs coming up with their own thing.
• 

  Finkelstein

  Nice theory but the WTS heads have always been pressed to dumb down the information to the most pliable and usable level. God doesn't like educated intelligent people and the WTS has been promoting keeping people poorly educated for a their own self supporting means.
  

  The WTS leaders are not well educated men themselves, they thrive on ignorance and manipulating and exploiting people's emotions rather than encouraging expansive broad based knowledge outside of their own structured theology.
  
• 

  Phizzy

  The Org has accepted Evolution by Natural Selection if you read their literature carefully, because they admit that for all the Fauna we see today this must have occurred.

  The only problems are that they will not admit new Species have arisen, and they say that the Natural Selection we see, took place sixteen thousand times faster than Science shows that it did. ( since the time of the Flood, they claim).

  Of course this is fortuitous, as with minor adjustments, if it becomes forced upon them , they can change their stance by a little.

  I don't see this happening very soon, which is great I think, because any JW reading something like Jerry Coyne's "Why Evolution is True" will realise that the JW Org are full of s**t.
• 

  Finkelstein

  By the WTS own teachings then dinosaurs were roaming around in biblical times ???
  
• 

  Phizzy

  Dunno if they ever said that Fink, I rather think they inferred that the Dino's died out before the Flood ? In what they wrote at least.

  But in the old 1960's green Bible on the inside front cover there was a Dino walking about in Africa if I remember, so maybe they thought so ?

  Bloody hell, they are so mid 19th Century as to knowledge.
• 

  Finkelstein

  But in the old 1960's green Bible on the inside front cover there was a Dino walking about in Africa if I remember

  Yes i remember that Dino , I drew a top hat and cane on that little guy,

  If remember correctly all animals were non meat eating herbivores, then when Adam and Eve were tossed out of the Garden of Eden, the world came to ruin and most animals became viscous eating carnivores .

  See its simple to understand !
  
• 

  cofty

  The evidence that humans evolved from non-human ancestors over millions of years is just as strong as the evidence for the evolution of all other species.

  Therefore there was no Adam, no perfection and no fall. Therefore their version of the Ransom falls apart.

  They will never do it.
• 

  OUTLAW

  ............................

  ........................................OVERLAPPING
  

  

  ......................................