that was the question the District Overseer asked a group of pioneers in
the pioneer meeting.
"Can a bumblebee Fly"? Of course most of the audience thought for a minute then all nodded "yes". Then
he said that actually they can't-not according
to scientist. Everything about the bumblebee-it's shape, body weight
compared to it's ultra light wings, indicates that it should not be able
to fly at all.
So, why does the bumblebee fly?
The Creator makes it fly...
Then he asked: "Can you pioneer"? The answer is of course not: not
according to the pressures and trials of this system. So how is it that
we're able to
pioneer: The Creator causes us to pioneer...
The point is there is NOTHING we can do on our own.
With everything we can only accomplish things with the Creators help...
He talked about Peter walking on water .We know it wasn't an act of faith.
He only was able to walk on water because of Jesus. Then when he saw the
storm coming he fell through the water and almost drowned. He said
sometimes we think too hard. We're so busy in Jehovah's service doing
things no one thought we could do-not even ourselves. In essence we're
walking on water because of Jehovah.
Then we start thinking: "WAIT A MINUTE! What am I doing? I'm pioneering!
I'm working! I got stuff to do around the house! I've got kids! Oh no!
This is all of a sudden getting really hard the more I think about it! Oh,
I'm getting ssssoooooo tired! I'm not supposed to be doing this! This is
too much! Oh my goodness!
I'm..........falling through the water......
It was a good point, that sometimes we discourage ourselves by thinking
too much, worrying too much, looking at the storm, and taking our eyes off
of the one who makes the bees fly...
Let's bash this up in two steps. 1) The dumb ass illustration used by the D.O. is a urban folklore 2) Talk about misapplication. The creator causes us to pioneer? What a load of crock! It's not even scriptural! If so, why in the world are they lowering the hours?
http://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/~ben/zetie1.htm
One favourite subject that people raise is the old line about scientists having proved that the bumble-bee cannot fly. It's a much loved piece of urban folklore.
| But how did the myth about bees not being able to fly start? When does the story date back to? J McMasters states that the story was prevalent in the German technical universities in the 1930s, starting with the students of the aerodynamicist Ludwig Prandtl at G6ttingen. The story goes that a noted Swiss aerodynamicist, whom McMasters does not name, was talking to a biologist at dinner. The biologist asked about the flight of bees and the Swiss gentleman did a "back-of-the-napkin" calculation of the kind I described earlier, assuming a rigid, smooth wing and so on. Of course, he found that there was insufficient lift and went off to find out the correct answer. |
| In the meantime, the biologist put the word around that bees could got fly, presumably to show that nature was greater than engineering, and the media picked up the story. The truth, then as now, wasn't newsworthy, so a correction was never publicized. The people I meet, therefore, continue to tell me that science is a load of crock because it once proved that bumblebees cannot fly. And they will not hear otherwise, especially not from a scientist. |