How did we ge here by evolution or creation?

by snare&racket 11 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  snare&racket

  I am hoping to start an interesting and substantial chat on the topic of evolution and creation.

  I have read up on the subject for some years now. I have no doubt whatsoever that.... we were knowingly lied to. But before I show my cards I am sincerely interested in what you all believe. Did the words of the Watchotwer book corporation stick like mud on a wall, or did you re-examine the evidence? Maybe you believein God and evolution? I hope to one day write books on the topic, I am fascinated by this discussion. Just because I have left the "We will clean your brain and make it sparkly" club, doesnt mean I dont want the big answers to the big questions. How we got here has to be the biggest clue available to us right now..

  So if you are willing to share, I am looking forward to hearing from you.

  Snare x
• 

  stillajwexelder

  The WT publications in the last few years have all seemed more reasonable on the subject with actual references. They knock YECs etc and also atheists. The trend is for a lot more illustrations in the publications. I am still a believer in God - but I can see many scientific principles at work and can not ignore mountains of fossil evidence which grows year by year.
• 

  shamus100

  Oh, you know....
• 

  Scully

  I saw very clear evidence that the WTS had committed some serious breaches of academic integrity by twisting quotations from scholarly works to suit its agenda.

  Alan F compiled an entire list of such offences related to the Creation book, and I felt that it was my responsibility to (a) completely dismiss anything the WTS ever taught in that regard, and (b) learn about evolution from the people who have studied it and compiled the evidence upon which their science is based.
• 

  tec

  God, and... whatever the current science is, with full knoweldge that current science changes as time and evidence presents itself. Whatever science will discover is only our own journey and discovery into the means God used in creation.

  Peace,

  Tammy
• 

  tec

  Oh, I never got baptized. Only studied. My study (two years) never once touched on creation/evolution.
• 

  shamus100

  I completely agree with one poster on this thread. Who is that poster?

  This, and more, on JWN Tonight.
• 

  snare&racket

  Knowing how much bias a religion has, did you or do you ever check the refernces ? I now really wish I had :)

  Do you ever check the facts for yourself?

  Do you ever look to see if the quote is from the one religious scientist that is saying the opposite to all of his hundreds of thousands of colleagues?

  The new brochures released by the society are quite the disturbing read. The person that 'meddled' with those quotes would have done so knowing hey were altering their meaning. Very sinister.

  As for science, it does indeed change, the light does get...erm.... brighter. However the facts never change, the evidence never changes.. just its intepretation. The evidence we have for how living things lived and died on the earth for millions of years is factual, you can literally hold it in your hand. The theory behind the evidence is science's best intepretation. My point on science would be that we know one thing for sure. The bible's explination for the history of living things is not at all accurate or in any way correlating to the evidence we can hold in our hands, the facts, the physical remains you can look at and touch for yourself
• 

  NewChapter

  I believe in evolution. I've been deep in a couple of anthropology classes this semester, so I've been pretty game for the subject. I found that the WTS has misrepresented the facts, the science and even the process. Their arguments are emotional and not cohesive. The base of it seems to be, "It's too complex therefore there MUST be a designer". And in that way they are no different than creationists, even though they claim to not be of the same ilk.

  Because they say it's not possible without design, then their theory is the only other option. That's not how things work. Disprove it if you can, but it can't be an either-or situation. I have also researched some quotes and find that they have disohonestly represented them out of context. They've even used quotes to state the OPPOSITE of what the original person was saying. And then they don't give references, so one didn't used to be able to find the sources.

  Well we have google now! Simply paste their quotes in the search box, and you will likely find a source---or a source that leads to the source. They should be ashamed, but they don't know shame.

  NC
• 

  Anony Mous

  Every single argument the WT uses comes straight from Behe's and Denton's books and by extension the logic used by Paley in the early 1800's. Those people are a laughing stock in the scientific community especially after the Dover trials. Just look at one of the recent Awake's about it - the ONLY argument they bring is the complexity of DNA, a paper Behe wrote in the early 90s which has been thoroughly debunked. The blue book about it is not even being offered in service and there is simply no replacement for it because EVERY single argument can be rebutted by a freshman biology student.

  Yes, I was an active, full blazin', climbing the society's ladder Witness when at my job we started doing research into the origins of concepts (how/when/why did we for example develop extensive mathematical and language skills) and the organization of our learning in the evolutionary ladder and that's one of the little things that got me involved in thinking about the validity of the arguments made at the KH.

  When you see monkey's doing math in their head with your own eyes, not trained multiplication or addition tables but full-on conceptualized math where you train them the basics of addition with objects and they are able to figure out larger numbers, false statements and substraction without using objects, you've got to start thinking - why would a God that's made us so special give them the same abilities.

  Then you can move on to say "God started it" but then you're well beyond the Genesis account and you have officially declared Jesus for the fraud that he wasn't, you can no longer claim to be Christian.

  As far as my beliefs go: I don't "believe" or have any "faith" in evolution, I accept evolution as a theory in the proper sense of the word - an imperfect fact. It's not because some parts of Darwin's original theory have been replaced that the concept is no longer valid, it's not because Einstein's theory of gravity was replacing Newton's theory that Newton's concepts became invalid.