The wise man J. F. Rutherford wrote about the "Cause of the Flood" in his 1927 book Creation (pp. 88-9, 92-4). Here he informed us of "Jehovah's" view of the scientific "annular Flood theory" of one Isaac Newton Vail, which the Watchtower Society had been promoting for decades:
Annular means that which has the form of a ring, or ring-shaped. The earth's annular system has reference to the successive rings surrounding the earth, composed of water and mineral substances in solution, which were thrown off from the heated earth and held in place by centrifugal energy. Wise scientists have said that nothing can stay in the air unless it is lighter than the air. But this theory has been completely exploded by the use of the airplane or airship. How is it possible for an airship, weighing several tons and carrying freight and a number of passengers, to remain in the air for a long space of time, and fly at the rate of 100 miles or more an hour? The answer is, Because of the great velocity with which it moves. Stop the engines, and stop the moving of the plane, and it falls like a dead weight. It was the energy moving the canopy through space that kept it in place until God's due time for it to come down. . .There was no sunshine, nor were there any wind currents, upon the earth prior to the flood. Therefore the water from the seas could not be taken up and formed into the clouds. Without a question of a doubt, then, the "windows of heaven" refer to the opening of the flood-gates above the earth, by the breaking of that ring or canopy that enveloped the earth. The aqueous ring would move with the greatest velocity in the region of the equator. As it neared the poles the velocity would grow less, and there the fall would begin to take place. On the same theory that an airship falls when the motion forward ceases, just so when the movement of the aqueous ring slowed down at the poles it would fall. The breaking of the canopy in the region of the equator would admit the aqueous vapors which, when precipitated in the region of earth's atmosphere, would hurry on to the poles, both north and south, and there begin to fall. . .
The very outermost part of this aqueous canopy was far removed from the sun and of course was farther removed from the earth than any other part of the canopy; hence it would receive no warmth from the earth and very little from the sun; consequently it would be extremely cold and was doubtless frozen. That part of the canopy nearest the earth would not be frozen. The Scriptures seem to plainly teach that the outer part of that canopy was frozen, because it is written: "Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it? The waters are hid as with a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen."—Job 38:29, 30. The face of the deep, of course, would be toward the Pleaides, which are claimed to be the habitation of Jehovah.
In view of Rutherford's pseudo-scientific gobble-de-gook, it's pretty clear that the following studied opinion is true:
A long acquaintance with the literature of the Witnesses leads one to the conclusion that they live in the intellectual ‘twilight zone.’ That is, most of their members, even their leaders, are not well educated and not very intelligent. Whenever their literature strays onto the fields of philosophy, academic theology, science or any severe mental discipline their ideas at best mirror popular misconceptions, at worst they are completely nonsensical. [Alan Rogerson, Millions Now Living Will Never Die: A Study of Jehovah’s Witnesses, p. 116, Constable, London, 1969.]
I just love that phrase, "whenever their literature strays," because that is exactly what is going on.
AlanF