Watchtower teachings on the length of human existence. (page 4)

tinker

I used the old orange Paradise Book for my 6th grade science book report... got an F

konceptual99

@jam - hate to say it but no chance. Adam and Eve were perfect. They were created. They were disobedient thus setting in place the bruising of the seed in the heel.

If you say Adam was the first witness then where did imperfection, sin and death come from? It must have been there already. How could there not have been a need for the ransom before hand?

You simply cannot maintain the witness doctrine and accept anything other than the Biblical story of man's history.

It's a fecking house of cards.

Even when I was still in and totally believed the 6,000-year thing, I was still really bugged by the inconsistent way the Society accepted scientific dates. They basically followed secular dates up to about 4000 BC, at which point they just ignore anything that happened before then, or assumed the dates were just wrong, rather than claiming that the dates for 4000-2000 BC must also wrong and should be moved down chronologically. I tried to come with my own harmonization myself when I was a kid, and I thought "early man" and the Pleistocene era corresponded to the first half of the antediluvian era (squeezing many thousands of years into a few hundred years, because well "the dates are too long"), and then the Neolithic and Chalcolithic eras (the latter started by Tubal-cain) spanned the latter portion (compressing more secular history into a shorter period), up to the time of the Flood which occurred just before the Early Bronze Age (around the time of the Flood layers in Shuruppak and Ur). Then the Bronze Age followed after the Flood, first with the Early Dynastic period for Sumer, and then after Sargon became king of Akkad and built the Tower of Babel, then everyone really quickly spread over the earth, and so the Egyptian Old Kingdom began just a few decades later around 2230 BC, and then I would have to do further squeezing to get Egyptian history compressed enough so that the Hyksos period would align with Joseph's career in Egypt. I put a lot of effort into that harmonization/calibration scheme between "bible chronology" and secular history. So it irked me that the Society would say, oh yeah, writing goes back to the fourth millennium BC because of these finds in Mesopotamia (proving that Adam or Noah or whomever could have written records), or Ötzi lived 5,500 years ago even though he must have died after the Flood (since it was a warm climate back then, yo), or that lead was used by Egyptians as early as 3000 BC, or the earliest law dates to 2500 BCE, etc. I think there was even an Awake! in recent years that just flat out stated that the Giza pyramids were built in 2500 BCE.

steve2

They are smart enough to realize that, once you question the 6,000 years doctrine, you end up potentially questioning everything.

A religion that is based on a talking snake puts a truck load of "faith" in ludicrous old stories. Question one of those stories and the whole damn lot of them are in question, including spilling blood as a sacrificial scapegoat offering.

Ostrich syndrome is absolutely essential for religious survival. The Watchtower ain't alone in clinging righteously to ancient ignorance.

james_woods

There is more tied up for the JWs than just the nice round 6,000 year number.

First, it is closely tied in to the end-times ideas of Freddy Franz. Even though most closely linked to the 1975 failure, they seem unwilling to let go of it because it would be admitting a totally baseless (false) Freddy prophecy.

More importantly - it would also be an open admission that the ages of the patriarchs in the Old Testament are not literal. This would open the floodgates on other issues that might not be literal: Flood, Garden of Eden, Tower of Babel, etc...

jam

Konceptual99: You see it very clearly and the problem

with Adam being the first JW, but the average JW they

will be preaching that Adam was the first JW. The borg

could run that pass them with no problem. You must remerber

most JW,s have lost the ability to think.

free @ last

Thank you Lost Gen. Excellent link. Hadn't seen it before.

Thank you all other posters for you contributions. This is really disappointing though. I thought they might have gone into some detail some where debunking the 'myth' of human existence before 4026 BCE. How weak, can't believe I bought into this for so many decades.

thecrushed

I'd like to lock every JW in a room and make them read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel and watch the smoke come out of their ears as the cognitive dissonance cooks their brain.

Vidiot

konceptual99 - "As far as I can see it is easier to have collateral damage in the form of people like me who cannot accept everything on face value anymore."

Very perceptive.

You'll fit in well, here.

Watchtower teachings on the length of human existence.