by Atlantis 14 Replies latest jw friends
My understanding of the Org's position is that Adaptation takes place within Species only.
Such adaptations are Evolution by Natural Selection.
But they do not admit that Species Evolve into new Species, despite the Mountain of Evidence. They also maintain that the Naochian Flood story is true, and that all the adaptations we see have happened since then ! This would mean the adaptations happening about 16,000 times faster than Science shows us they actually did !
What a Silly Cult !
Sorry I completely missed this thread yesterday. Looks like it has been answered but will have a look later.
All good responses, just to clarify my initial answer, i commented only on the specific example addressed, humans growing to perfection as it relates to evolution. It is not evolution in any sense, its a mere repairing of the human body.
The other examples provided are all good and show some of the inconsistencies of those who believe in pure creationism.
what phizzy says is correct regarding the wt position. they take the stance that adaptation happens within species and that there is room for some variation within “kinds”. Consider dogs and all the changes and variation through selective breeding. They would point out they are still dogs in the end. Its their way of acknowledging the obvious (selective breeding effects offspring over time) without giving into full on evolution and potentially offending their desert god.
If a persons body and mind change gradually to a higher form than what existed previously, then this is evolution according to my understanding. Do I have the correct understanding? Is the Watchtower teaching a form of evolution?
Only if we allow them to equivocate about the meaning of the word evolution.
Scientists don't think it terms of 'higher' forms of life. Archaea that live in hydrothermal vents under the ocean are amazingly 'designed' to exploit that environment. They are not 'lower' life forms, just different.
Evolution only cares that an organism is good enough to survive long enough to pass on genes to the next generation. There is no such thing as 'perfection'. What would a 'perfect' human be like? We have so many sub-optimal features in our anatomy and in our genome that can't be fixed without going back to square one. Natural selection has no goal or objective to create a 'perfect' anything. Many life-forms have remained unchanged for billions of years.
The other key point about evolution is that it explains how millions of types of living things arose from a common ancestor. It is about the history of life on earth. The Watchtower reject this truth and so it isn't reasonable to claim that they accept evolution of life.
Sorry I missed the thread and took a while to get back to you.
Something else I should have mentioned - probably the most important point - is that individuals don't evolve.
Evolution explains the change in a gene pool over time. In other words, if there was a sufficiently strong selection pressure so that some humans left more offspring than others, the population would change but the original ancestors would not.
The individual JW who survived 'the big A' would be identical in a thousand years time.
