The JWs explained "god-fearing" as similar to the fear or apprehension a person would feel at the thought of disappointing someone whose opinion meant a lot to them. I think that's a deliberately-softened version of the term, and I get the feeling that it originally meant "god-fearing" as in "I'm scared shitless of god." The OT version of god certainly gave people reason to be terrified of him as opposed to just anxious about letting him down.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
