Hello all,
This one is a bit similar to my previous thread about Armagheddon.
I plan to send this email to a JW (Elder) close family member and would like to get it screened by the JWN hivemind before hand for corrections and suggestions.
The background to this is that in Dec 2010 I asked two JW family members to find out for me if the 7,000 creative day doctrine was still the orgs official position, and if it was dropped why. I provided references to how since the 1980's the org only refers to the creative days as being 'thousands' of years long which is consistent with 7,000 years and no official retraction or new light on the matter was made.
Last week I emailed them to see if they had looked into it and, going by the response, I think they probably just sat on it.
I emailed and asked them that if I wrote a letter to the organisation, would they send it on my behalf, as a letter sent by an Elder would more likely to get a response. So, here's my reply:
I have read the info you left me re 7,000 years and personality I do not have a problem understanding the Bible, although I would have at one time. The answer is the day referred to in the Genesis account can represent millenniums, it is a simple as that. I hope that answers it for you.
Do the creative days in Genesis refer to ‘milleniums’ specifically or just an indeterminable length of time? If the former, what scriptural support is there for this interpretation, if the latter then why does the Watchtower constantly refer to the creative days as being merely ‘thousands’ of years in length and never millions or billions of years in length?
I agree that the creative days in Genesis were probably not intended to mean literal 24-hour days. My question is regarding how the Watchtower interprets the creative ‘days’ in Genesis. The watchtower’s position on this matter appears to have changed but it’s not completely clear when or why this change occurred. Is the explicit 7,000 teaching only omitted these days or has it officially been dropped? That is what I am unable to find out.
It’s a sincere question and I’m not trying to trip you up. It really has very little significance. It’s to do with my research into the 1985 Blue creation book. I haven’t actually written anything on it for a few months now because I’ve been too busy. I do intend to go back to it at some point and this is one of the questions I could never get to the bottom of. Just what is the Watchtower’s official understanding on the matter? ‘millenniums’ is an extremely vague answer.
I think I may have actually found part of my answer. A short while ago I looked up the talk outline for the ‘Does your hope rest in science or the bible’ public talk because you had mention it to me a couple of times. This talk actually touches, indirectly, on the length of the creative week:
“The earth has been in existence for approximately 4,600 million years [4.6 billion years]. If we assume that each 100 million years is the equivalent to 1 human year then we are able to grasp what man has done to his environment”
[The talk then includes this table (I assume this is used as a visual aid in the actual talk)]
Real time Time From now Event
4.6 to 3.9 billion years 46yr -39yr Not much is known
3.9 to 400 billion years 39yr – 4yr Just a very small amount is know
400 to 100 million years 4yr – 1yr The earth began to flower
52 million to 28 million yrs 52wks – 28wks Dinosaurs roaming
2,000 years 10min Jesus came onto this planet
200 years 1min Industrial revolution occured
(Does your hope rest on science or the Bible)
I inserted the ‘real time’ column on the left by calculating 1 year x 100 million years.
The third row of the table states that 400-100 million years ago 'the earth began to flower' and 50-28 million years ago the 'dinosaurs....roamed'. According to this timeline presented in the table, life has existed for hundreds of millions of years and so the creative days in Genesis must have been much longer than 7,000 years. This talk outline seems to answer my question whether the 7,000 year teaching was dropped.. The watchtower, here, explicitly teaches that the creative days must have been millions of years long. I am still left wondering the reasons why it was dropped.
Also, it has to point out that ‘Millenniums’ is not an appropriate unit of measure to describe periods of time many millions of years long. It is like describing an elderly person’s life as many seconds long, although technically correct it is misleading because it suggests the person lived for only a few seconds and not many years. It is only that we are aware of the context (we know an elderly person must have lived for many years), that alerts us to the inappropriateness of describing their life in terms of ‘seconds’. Does such context exist in the mind of the average Jehovah ’s Witness regarding the timescale involved in geological ages?
Curiously, the timeline in the talk outline does not correspond with known geological timelines. The descriptions for 4.6 billion to 3.9 billion and 3.9 billion to 400 million ages are confusing. What is the difference between ‘not much is known’ and a ‘very small amount is known’. Do these descriptions not say more or less the same thing?
The Watchtower, here, is tacitly acknowledging that some facts are known about our planet billions of years ago but it does not mention what these facts are. So, what do we know about the Earth billions of years ago? If one accepts that rocks can be reliably dated to be billions of years old (which the Watchtower presumably does because it accepts the scientific conclusion that the earth is 4.6 billion years old which based on the radiometric dating of rocks and the geologic column), then one must accept that the fossilized life-forms found in those ancient rocks must have lived billions of years ago. Rocks containing fossilized prokaryotes (simple single cellular life-forms) have been found and dated to be 3.9 billion years old. This means life on earth is at least 3.9 billion years old and so the creative week in Genesis must have started over 3.9 billion years ago. Considering this context is it really accurate to describe billions of years of creation as ‘millenniums’? Could this mislead someone not aware of geological time-scales?
Around 2 billion years ago complex cellular life (eukaryotes) emerge in the fossil record however the table claims that not until 400-100million years ago the 'earth began to flower'. It is unclear what exactly this ‘flowering’ is referring to – flowering land plants perhaps? Land plants emerge in the fossil record around 400 million years ago however complex life-forms such as simple animals, arthropods (ancestors of insects and crustaceans), fish and proto-amphibians all appear in the fossil record long before this. Is ‘flower’ literally referring to flowering plants or is it a more metaphorical description of when life in general began to flower? It is unclear.
One wonders why the Watchtower talk outline omits these known details about the primitive earth. Is it because the fossil record does not support the order of creation in Genesis?
It is totally inconsistent to accept the age of the earth and the radiometric dating of rocks but then deny the age of fossils found in those same rocks and the order that they appear in the fossil record. Both conclusions are based on the same lines of evidence. To accept the age of the earth but reject the order found in the fossil record is contradictory and selective.
Omission and obfuscation are not the only problems with this table. The table also claims that Dinosaurs roamed 52-28 million years ago. This is incorrect, dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago and emerge in the fossil record around 300 million years ago.
The Bible is silent on the matter of geological ages and science disagrees with the dates used in the table. This begs the question – where do the dates used in this table come from? I was unable to find any references with my copy of the talk outline – are references included with the copy you have?
I think this is no more significant than poor research and quality control with the Watchtower writing department. No great conspiracy. However, it is ambiguities and mistakes such as these which make me question the 2011 year book article ‘Trace all things with accuracy’. This is why I intend to write a letter to the Watchtower organization on the matter.
Would you be willing to send this letter to the Watchtower on my behalf? I think it might more likely get a response if it came from you.
I can’t make the talk on 10 April that’s my wedding day but I am not against the idea on principle. What talk/subject is due to be delivered 10 th April? I can get most of the talk outlines online.
Comments appreciated. Still waiting on a response from my other email