In the main, Jehovah’s Witnesses have no problem with “micro-evolution,” the stuff of bird beak variations that Darwin found on the islands. Where they object to it, it is because of correctly anticipating the truckloads of dogma that atheists will drive through the door it cracks open.
One can always argue with “macro-evolution” but there hardly seems a point. Plenty of religious people will say: ‘Yes, God created life and he did it by means of evolution.’ Better to focus on ‘abiogenesis,’ the origin of life. Did it happen on its own? Or did it require the “spark” of God? Standing up to macro is probably worth doing, but nothing gets the job done like standing up to spontaneous abiogenesis. This is what the most recent Watchtower publications do, such as ‘The Origin of Life: Five Questions Worth Asking.’ The last book to seriously take on macro was 40 years ago: ‘Life—How Did it Get Here? By Evolution or by Creation?’
I wrote a book recently entitled: ‘A Workman’s Theodicy: Why Bad Things Happen.’ (searchable on Amazon) An appendix section examines the progress that scientists specializing in origin of life have made. As much as I would like to say, ‘just buy the book,’ most of that material is available free, in less polished form, here.
It fits in the Workman’s Theodicy book because a successful quest to show life came about on its own makes any theodicy, even the theodicy that works, little more than a work of fiction.
I put three appendixes into the work, all items that are relevant to the theme but don’t easily fit into the main narrative. One is the origin-of-life investigations. Then, there is an item on slavery and those who say the Bible condones it. Lastly, there is coverage of a recent book by Benjamin Labatut entitled ‘When We Cease to Understand the World.’ That piece of historical fiction curiously intertwines themes of advance mathematics, quantum physics, world war, and madness. Somehow it seemed to have a place, especially for its contention that the madness took on serious form around the time of the First World War, something that especially resonates with Witnesses. It also fits for its suggestion that when humans pour of full strength all they have to offer (mathematics, quantum physics) it does not negate the ‘man is dominating man to his injury’ verse of Ecclesiastes 8:9 but merely accelerates the chaos. That too fits into the Witnesses’ narrative that God’s universal sovereignty is the prime issue before all creation today.
****** The bookstore
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