I got 2 animals that kill the whole idea...
Platypuss
Penguin
Awake! Watching the World: Noah's gonna need a bigger boat...
by unshackled 15 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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JonathanH
The problem with saying that noah only took "kinds" onto the ark is that there is no actual definition of what a kind is. That's not just a witness problem, biblical literalists in general have not been able to come up with a consistent definition of "kind". At what point does it cease to be variation within a kind and become evolution? Is it at the level of Family, or Order? Couldn't be genus (way to many genera), and once you start getting to things like class on the taxonomic scale it simply becomes meaningless. Noah brough two mammals on the ark and then variation produced every mammal in 4000 years? No that certainly doesn't work.
And furthermore what defines a kind genetically? What is the dog part of the dog gene that is unchangeable and defines it as the "dog kind"? If you wrote out the dog's genetic code could you circle the sections that make it a dog? That ever piece of genetic code outside of those are changeable by mutation and selection, but nothing in the circled areas can change or it's no longer a dog but something else? If you could, what would those genetic parts transcribe to physically that are so characteristic of a dog that it would cease to be a dog if it didn't have those traits? Furthermore what is the mechanism that prevents those genes from ever changing, whilst everything else is subject to mutation and selection?
There are no answers to those questions because the notions of special creation and noah's ark are absurd. That's just a tiny sampling of what is wrong with it biologically. I don't even mention the problems of massive genetic bottlenecks which would be detectable in all life (but are detectable in certain animals such as cheetah's that did recently undergo a genetic bottleneck), or the ecological problems of wiping out every ecosystem and then it being perfectly rebuilt by letting everything off the boat on Mt Ararat, or the lack of evidence that Mt Ararat has a vastly higher than average biological diversity that you would expect from it being the locus of all life on earth. The fairy tale makes no sense at all and has no relation to reality.
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Shepherd Book
FYI: kind = species.
Reasoning from the Scriptures, page 87: “All interfertile varieties of any animal are just one Genesis ‘kind.’”
And, yes, by acknowledging the number of species present on earth today, the WTower Society is suggesting a form of evolution so fast it boggles the mind.
See discussion of that here:www.watchtowerletters.com/Explanation_Q12.html
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JonathanH
Actually Book, they kind of backpedaled on that stance in their more recent "special magazines" on evolution. It's either "Was Life Created" or "What Is the Origin Of Life", I can't remember which one. But they state that the bible doesn't specifiy what a "kind" is, but we can be assured that whatever a kind is, that's what god created.
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unshackled
I got 2 animals that kill the whole idea...Platypuss, Penguin
Hey frigginconfused....maybe I'm a little slow this morning, but to clarify, what "idea" in particular and how so? Maybe you could elaborate. Thanks.
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eruption
Great Thread, it follows on from one posted here earlier, when I was convinced about the Ark,Not anymore I hasten to add. But this is a great place to come and have open debate, and to progress your understanding.
TWO great points, Firstly, we are still discovering new species NOW, in 2011, NO way could Noah have raced around the globe, picking up polar bears,penguins and polar animals, then gone to Aus to get Kangaroos, then gone to Madagascer,to pick up all the creatures native to that Island, The 300,000 different types of beetles, and provided the ideal habitat, and foodstuffs, for hundreds of thousands of creatures, on a Wooden boat, made with hand tools, that were available 4500 years ago.
If the JW version of only having ONE beetle on board the boat, that then turns itself into 300,000 different types of beetle, spread all over the globe all with different fucntions in there respective ECO SYSTEMS, In 4000 years, EVEN evolution, that they repudiate, cannot come up with an evolutionary model that moves that quickly. GREAT STUFF