I am not a monkey!

This is one of my wife’s biggest arguments.  She will often tell me that she isn’t a decendant of a monkey, but I can be if I want to.

The Watchtower Society has printed a number of articles in their Watchtower pamphlet, as well as a book on Creation vs Evolution.  A summary of their beliefs are here.  A couple of excerpts:

Would you be happy to go through life with no purpose other than to eat, sleep, and reproduce? The thought repels even dedicated evolutionists. “Modern man, this enlightened skeptic and agnostic,” writes evolutionist T. Dobzhansky, “cannot refrain from at least secretly wondering about the old questions: Does my life have some meaning and purpose over and above keeping myself alive and continuing the chain of living? Does the universe in which I live have some meaning?”

And then they go on to quote some scientists:

Evolutionist Michael C. Corballis observes that “there is a striking discontinuity between humans and the other primates . . . ‘Our brain is three times as large as we would expect for a primate of our build.‘” And neurologist Richard M. Restak explains: “The [human] brain is the only organ in the known universe that seeks to understand itself.”

And that’s just a brief summation, but you get the idea.

This is a very common debate tactic when going arguing against Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I am sure many other Christian religions.  The “Many scientists have doubts about evolution,” “The gap between apes and man,” etc.  Talk origins does an excellent job of breaking down each of these arguments and many others, and I am paraphrasing from there.

The main argument is that as high as 5% (some articles claim higher) of scientists do not believe in evolution.  That number is already pretty low, yet goes down to a whopping 0.15% when you only poll scientists in the relevant earth and life sciences.  And this is in the US, where there is a higher percentage of creationists.

On the gap theory, it took MILLIONS OF YEARS for men to fully evolve from apes.  Creationists have been arguing the absence of fossils for decades, yet each year more and more fossils are found, with a gradual increase in brain size leading up to humans.

So a brief answer to my wife and other creationists:  No, you are not a monkey.  You are however a couple of chromosomes away from being one.  And that’s ok, it doesn’t make us apes.  It makes us the evolutionary descendants of apes.

To me, the Theory of Evolution came easily and at a young age.  I couldn’t understand why there was even a big debate about it.  The evidence is pretty cut and dry.  Yet, here we are 25 years after I knew evolution is what happened, and there are very big debates about it on TV, the internet, and in our daily lives.  Intelligent people try and use a book written by men more than 2000 years ago trying to understand the meaning of life and force it to fit their need of a God and afterlife.  For a reality check on this see this old post by pharyngula, one of the best I have read.

Lastly, think about this.  The airplane was invented just over 100 years ago by the Wright brothers.  60+ years after that we managed to get to the moon.  Another 40 years later we have crawlers on Mars and probes leaving our solar system.  Where will be in another 100 years?  How about 2000 years?  It’s not going to happen in my lifetime but eventually we will have enough knowledge to finally rid ourselves of the tales written long ago.

And the people wandering the earth then will be saying “I didn’t evolve from a human!”

Behind Enemy Lines

I have been on the road the past few days so no new posts lately, but here is what has been going on. 

My wife and her family went to the Southwest Jehovah’s Witness convention this past week.  Normally they go to Arizona, but this year they went to New Mexico.  Since my company has offices there that I needed to go to anyway, I travelled with them this year, although obviously I didn’t go to the convention itself.

From talking to my wife about this one and previous conventions, it reminds me of my previous work where I was in sales where I was a rep, trainer, manager, and owner over a period of 15 years.  From what I understand they do their baptisms at the conventions but also discuss the members commitment to the Society.  Mostly by adhering to the JW rules and continuing to get new members.  Sounds like a lot of motivational speaking to me.

The hotel we stayed at probably consisted of 80% Jehovah’s Witnesses for the days we were there.  One thing I noticed:  A large percentage of Jehovah’s Witnesses are not like my wife’s family.  I am sure they are similar in their basic beliefs about their religion, but my wife’s family, especially her mother and older sister and her husband, are, for a lack of a better word, die hard Witnesses.  They frown upon anything ”worldly.”  They home school their kids and have no intention of sending them to college.   They do not participate in any holidays.  Their kids are fully indoctrined and often criticize my kids (their cousins) about them doing bad things (i.e. birthdays, 4th of July).  In talking with some of the other Witnesses, while a few are fully immersed like my in-laws, I get the impression many are very similar to the majority of members of the other Christian religions:  Get through life during the week and worship on Sunday.

My main point is what many people already know.  Had my mother in law been visited by a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints, she would have been as devout with them as she is with The Truth and I would have a blog about being married to a Mormon right now.  Had she come across a proselytizing Pentacostal I would be discussing the idiocy of speaking in tongues rather than the issues of blood transfusions.  I think people want to believe and will become part of any belief system that is around them.  I have seen some argue that the desire for such beliefs is the reason there must be a supreme being, but that is another topic for another day. 

To once again give my wife credit.  She has raised our children with her spiritual beliefs, yet she allows me to expose them to the real world–and this is very much against what her family and congregation would recommend.  She not only encourages them to get good grades, she is actually indoctrinating them that they WILL go to college and get degrees.  My kids have friends that come over regularly that are not Witnesses.  While at times I want to be more aggressive in not allowing my children to get as involved with the Witnesses as they are, they are being fully exposed to both sides and will be able to make educated decisions, rather than just follow along because everyone they know has the same beliefs.

So, while the situation isn’t what I would consider ideal, at least my kids will see both sides and get evidence from me about what the real Truth is.

A Blood Problem

I have been working on this topic for a couple of weeks, but a post by The Spanish Inquisitor about Indoctrination jump started me to finish this post.

One of the biggest arguments my wife and I have ever had was about blood transfusions.  As previously mentioned, my wife had gotten out of The Truth when we were first together.  By the time she was pregnant with our second child she was once again involved in her religion.  I was still new to JW’s and what they believed, and one day she made a passing statement that if anything happened in delivery that she couldn’t have a blood transfusion.  This was the first time I had heard this and it was baffling to me.  She brought home some literature for me to read about it, and it is still as baffling to me today as it was then.

The Bible verses they claim support this belief are Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 17:12-14, Acts 15:20 & 29, and Acts 21:25.

Now, I am not the expert of the Bible that some on a number of blogs I read are.  I am not a reformed Christian that read the Bible for a number of years before realizing I didn’t believe it.  I read it when I was younger and decided I didn’t believe in it, and rarely picked it up after that, until I met my wife. 

First and foremost, I don’t believe the Bible so no matter how many verses she would show me I would disagree.  But to me, even if I was a Christian, it seems obvious to me that the verses are talking about different things occuring in a much older and different world. 

Gen 9:4 “But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat“–seems to say that you cannot eat meat with blood, or basically eat raw meat.

Lev 17:12-14 “You shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh“–where they get this to mean blood transfusions I have no idea, and while it says flesh, which by itself in our terms today would seem to mean human, the verse before is talking of beast and fowl, which clearly implies (to me anyway) when you hunt you must cook the meat. 

Acts 15: 20 & 29; 21:25 ”Abstain from blood“–This is very vague.  But two thousand years ago, blood transfusions were not even thought of.  Taken into that context with the verses from the OT, it seems to be a reinforcement to not consume animal blood.

From these verses the main point that gets across to me is the consumption of blood.  If you go to the Watchtower website they have an absurd article discussing the history of blood transfusions.  They probably had a lot of support during the 80’s and 90’s with many news stories of tainted blood with AIDS and hepatitis.  And, without belittling the people effected by these tragedies, many lives are saved by blood transfusions every day.  The Watchtower Society was also against organ transplants for a number of years, claiming it bordered on cannibalism.  Yet, in 1980 they quietly revoked that decision and now even praise it.  Some JW’s are coming out against the blood transfusion decision and are trying to get them to change their ways.  If you are a JW and you question these issues I highly recommend this site.

This brings me back to the main focus of this post.  At the time, I could not convince my wife in a worse case scenario to get a blood transfusion.  This was a little worrisome.  Even though realistically blood transfusions are rare, one of the more common instances where they are performed is on mothers during a baby’s delivery.  Fortunately, we found a doctor who was willing to go a bloodless route if necessary, and it was unneeded anyway.  But now there is the next argument.  What happens if one of our children ever need a transfusion?  Once again, statistically they will probably not need one as a youth, if ever.  But as a parent, you always have it in the back of your mind.  What if?  And the last thing you want is a husband and wife having a throw down argument in the middle of a hospital.  After some research I found that until the age of 12, most states will get a court order if needed in such situations to allow hospitals to get blood transfusions.  But even before I layed that out, my wife conceded if the situation were to ever happen, she would allow the transfusions until they were baptised in the Truth, and then it would be up to them.  Another small victory for me.  And because of the non-chalance of this writing, it may seem as if this was an easy win, but this was a large fight with a lot of screaming.  By my wife of course, I am a mellow easy going dude 

However this still brings up some issues I may have in the future with my wife and children.  The Indoctrination post mentioned above got me thinking about it.  Am I doing my children a disservice by not being more proactive in their early religious development?  While my wife has conceded some points, my children are still being raised as JW’s even if they have an atheist dad.  I haven’t previously had a large problems with it.  My wife and her family are very good moral people, and I think The Truth does help them with that to some extent.  I always thought I could kind of show my children my beliefs as they got older and could understand more.  Yet, the longer this goes the harder that gets.