Wow Doof, that is super cool ! Totally Jealous.
These guys were true explorers, Darwins "Journey of The Beagle" is an exciting read and isn't fiction!
One of the things I felt guilty about on researching, was the attitude I had to such men. I almost had a mocking disrespectful nature towards them, it was bred in WT literature and I had adaopted it by osmosis. Darwin did decades of experiments, meticulously designed and written down. The theory was born from experiments and data, not ideaology. I read his work and had a sense of a kind conscientious man in turmoil because his science was proving his faith wrong. He said he had the guilt of a man who had taken a life, yet he had done nothing wrong. I remember feeling the same way at the time as I had left the JW's.
NB/ The mocking sense I had of such men has been bred in WT literature for a century, long after Darwin had died, The Golden Age was writing very immature and unchristian, judgemental and unkind comments about a deceased man they had never met....
"A small boy who was playing near Mr. Darwin, who asked his mother "Why is Mr. Darwin so like a monkey in looks?"...(the article suggested)... in view of Darwin's hairy face and appearance " that possibly when he looked into a mirror, what he saw suggested his line of research"
"It is queer how some people insist on having monkey progenitors. Perhaps the monkey-like tendency to foolishness and apeish mannerisms has something to do with it."
"Many of the blind devotees of Science, bent upon ignoring the power, and, if possible, the very existence of the divine Creator, attempt to account for all things by so-called laws of nature."
"It is plain to see that the aim of the Darwinian theory is to discredit the Bible account of creation and to thrust Jehovah out of this earth which He has created"
All the while, this is what WT was writing, there own science, I kid you not.
Watchtower Science
"we might entertain reasonable hopes of grafting puppies and pears, alligators and apricots . . . but this can never be done; for the laws governing cells are fixed, and so comprehensive as to include even the germs, which are minute animal organisms, and differentiate them from bacteria, which are microscopic plants."
and...
"why the Darwinian theory cannot be true" monkey's are peaceable, hardly ever get sick, don't drink wine, smoke, chew tobacco, or live as humans."
and emphasising their lack of understanding of evolution...
"Whoever believes that Adam was developed from a monkey is in violent conflict with the faith"
"let evolutionists tell us why animals do not evolve into creatures with three eyes, or ten for that matter; and why their stomachs do not get larger and larger, since their tendency is to eat more and more . . . the eye was an eye from the beginning . . . the eye did not move around into some other part of the body, but stayed in the head from time immemorial. Some animals would like to have an eye in their rear, for defense's sake; but they do not develop one there. The Bible informs us that man cannot add anything to his stature; neither can animals
A paper ( Jerry Bergman, Ph.D) on Watchtower and Evolution teachings noted another Watchtower Scientific Theory:
Conversely, some of the Watchtower's articles also relied heavily upon irresponsible pseudoscience books and articles such as the theory that the human races were caused by "glandular differences" that taught if the adrenal gland is too active, hair grows on the body which is black and course. A normal adrenal gland is less active and produces normal hair which is thin and silky (Coulter 1929: 611). The Watchtower accepts the glandular idea but criticizes the articles' conclusion that the races exist due to evolution, arguing instead that "the scriptures prove, however, that the change instituted in the glands was not an evolutionary change, but a severe, radical change" caused by God (Coulter 1929: 611). These specific God caused changes which brought this about, the Watchtower argues, was the change of the mild climate of the Edenic world to the severe climate of the post edenic world and also the climate changes which occurred after the deluge, and, last, changes that occurred due to humans eating of meat for the first time after the deluge (Coulter 1929: 612)
