Does the WTS acknowledge evolution?

by gringojj 16 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  gringojj

  In my search for dumb awake article I ran accross this reference:
  
  The Puma
  Everywhere and Nowhere
  By Awake! correspondent in Brazil
  
  
  
  THE sky over South America's rain forest was turning that hard-to-describe color it gets right before the tropical night erases the color. Then, suddenly and silently, there the puma was! It had warily stepped into the forest clearing and stopped in its tracks.
  
  For a moment the big cat stood motionless, except for the tip of its tail, which kept moving like a low-speed windshield wiper. Then, when it noticed that it was being watched, the puma leapt across the clearing and dashed into the forest. That afternoon some years ago, I could see why racy sports shoes, fast automobiles, and even fighter jets have borne its name. Clearly, the puma, or cougar, America's second-largest cat, is designed for speed.*
  
  Bundle of Muscles
  Because of its plain, tawny color, the puma may remind you of a lioness. The facial part of its head, though, is not as rectangular as that of its African cousin. Rather, the puma's head is round and small and is topped by equally round and small ears.

  How can you believe in intelligent design, but also believe that the puma is a cousin of the african lion? They are 2 distinct species. There DNA cannot be mixed. So if they were both designed as 2 different species, then how are they any more cousins than a puma and a fruit fly? The term cousins would say to me that they had shared a common ancestor. Any thoughts?
  
• 

  Legolas

  Does the WTS acknowledge evolution?

  NO
• 

  gringojj

  So legolas how do they explain thier reference to cousins?
• 

  stillajwexelder

  NO - not even overtly - in passing - it will not even acknowldege progress that is constantly being made in the field. Sadly it took the Cathloic Church centuries to acknowledge Galileo. Sooner or later though the advances in science are such that certian things can not be denied - the earth is a sphere and it revolves around the sun. Scientific and incontrovertable fact - Evolution will one day be the same.
• 

  gringojj

  Then how is a different species a cousin?
• 

  tetrapod.sapien

  How can you believe in intelligent design, but also believe that the puma is a cousin of the african lion? They are 2 distinct species. There DNA cannot be mixed. So if they were both designed as 2 different species, then how are they any more cousins than a puma and a fruit fly? The term cousins would say to me that they had shared a common ancestor. Any thoughts?

  hey gringo,

  i am enjoying this journey into dumb Asleep articles you have been digging out.

  of course, the WTS categorically rejects evolution, AND intelligent design, i should add. it's because their doctrine is so tightly wound around a literal interpretation of genesis, that they cannot help but remain old earth creationists. whereas ID says that evolution did happen, but that based on the so-called "irreducible complexity" variable in the argument, stipulate that some things just MUST have been designed, like the human eye. this of course is a fancy breeding of the Argument from Design and the Argument from Incredulity. which both the WTS uses, but in their own way.

  anyways if the society changed to ID, it would have some real ramifications on their doctrine. they would have to admit that adam and eve were not the only two humans around at the time, and that humans had been around for much longer and already had developed farming technology. this would mean that adam and eve were not perfect, and that would call into question the whole doctrine of original sin, fall from perfection, genome crippling, death, prophecy and salvation.

  the real reader & writer-credulous thing about DNA and this awake article, is that the readers and writers credulously apply their own brand of mental discontinuity to the problem. because they know that all living organisms are but executions of genetic code in embryonic development. that bit of knowledge does not step on gods toes, if you don't think about it's implications. and of course, they don't think in terms of what that implies. it implies that we come from computer programs that run algorithms, and not from engineered blue prints, hence diversity and the fact that you are not a clone of your dad. this means that jehovah is inherently lazy, like all programmers. think about the puma and lion for example. what sort of god other than a lazy one, copies the majority of the lion genome over to the puma genome, with slight variation for his own fancy? why not just lions everywhere? he's already being lazy. they fill the same ecological niche. and this is what the writers and the readers of asleep fail to think about. same with chimps and humans, Pan and Homo.

  TS
• 

  tetrapod.sapien

  Then how is a different species a cousin?

  ha ha, so true gringo. only morphologically, to them. they don't want to know about the shared DNA between the two species. but actually, just as another note: the puma is a new world organism, and the lion is an old world organism. science has show that they both evolved convergently (independantly) to fill the same ecological niche after the dinosaurs went extinct. so the puma probably shares more of a DNA heritage, junk and all, with other morphologically unrelated species in south america, than it does with the african lion. and same with the african lion. actually, convergent evolution is one of the strongest arguments for evolution. this is the wikipedia article on it. there are lots of great examples of convergence in evolution and zoogeography. ants & termites. marsupial ant eaters & placental ant eaters. the great cats. old world monkeys & new world monkeys. old world placentals, and australian monotremes. TS
• 

  Legolas

  So legolas how do they explain thier reference to cousins?

  If you mean animals, I remember the lady that studied with me saying something like artists can tell who painted a picture by the way they painted it,strokes, colors etc....The same was with God, He veried the animals, but made some of them simlar. Something like that anyway is what she said.
• 

  gringojj

  Tetrapod wouldnt that mean that according to the WTS thinking, we are indeed cousins of the chimpanzee?
• 

  seattleniceguy

  Actually, Witnesses may be surprised to learn this, but the Society does endorse evolution out of one small side of their mouth. Insight, Volume 1, page 327 says:

  Could the Ark Have Held All the Animals?
  It is true that encyclopedias refer to over a million species of animals. But Noah was instructed to preserve only representatives of every "kind" of land animal and flying creature. Some investgators have said that just 43 "kinds" of mammals, 74 "kinds" of birds, and 10 "kinds" of reptiles could have produced the great variety of species of these creatures that are known today. The ark had about 40,000 cu m (1,400,000 cu ft) of usable space -- ample for the passenger list.

  It is true that the small number of creatures they list could produce the millions of species we have today -- but only if evoultion is not only a real force, but one that acts at hyper speed.

  SNG