by Open mind 40 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Here are the rules for "winning" in such a confrontation:
1. Whomever controls the question controls all.
2. Never ask a question you do not know the answer to.
3. Never loose control of the question.
4 If you break rule 3, stop, and make an arrangement to start again another time.
That is it. If you follow the above rules you always "win."
It is ALL about the POWER OF THE QUESTION>>>>>>
V
I agree with Vernon here. Thats very insightful. It just that, why bother going though a thousnd questions with the bible, when you can cut it short by asking key questions, on the valdity or even the necessity of of going there in the first place. I call it getting past first base, and thats impossible with me.
I'd rather have a debate about which beer is the best.
After "debating" we'll see who has won. (the one that still stands)
Come on over and we'll have a great debate.
lol.
Andy.
ps. As for "bible" debates nah, no fun.
JW apologists don't come here looking for a debate anyway. They come here
to push their own watchtower agenda, and it really doesn't matter how strong
an argument the ex jws on here offer,they never concede anything, but just go
on copying and pasting the same old arguments post after post, and then either
claim victory when the rest of us get sick of the pointless arguments, or run
away from the thread themselves.
Ego-flexing isn't debate.
Talent for debate would be making a point pithily.
For years I thought about this. You cannot argue theology with any denomination. Each group has proprietary views and a genius for its presentation.
It all rests upon one tiny foundation, which if eliminated, brings down the house.
It all stands or falls on Primacy of Scripture.
Think of a pyramid turned upside down. The entire structure would be balanced upon one tiny impossibility. That point is Scripture.
Christianity topples because of the shambles which is scripture. There is no "there" there.
This is where it begins and ends: the Bible is a hundred things and none of them inspired.
The escape from the maze must begin with a close scrutiny of how the bible came to be cobbled together and by whom and for what purposes.
Demonstrating the errancy, the mythology, the non-historicity, the redaction fraud, the tampering and the accretions destroys any pretentions that Jehovah's Witnesses are built upon the will or word of a living god.
Without the phoney foundation of "accurate knowledge" (knowledge of what?) and special understanding; the Watchtower Society is just one more howling madness in a wilderness of delusions.
Start and end with your focus on the Bible and the holographic TRUTH dissolves like salt on a slug.
If you were to Debate lets say the Resurrection, was it bodily or Spiritual, or a Debate on the deity of the eternal Christ versus Christ as first creation of God. If you know the topic well and cover all scriptures that cover and all the scriptures they twist and/or isolate in a box from the rest of the context you will do well. You must even know the Hebrew and Greek language in the passages and know the full meaning of the writer because you must show the twisting and errors.
Example: James White versus Gregg Stafford (JW)
This debate is on CD at www.aomin.org
I'd rather have a debate about which beer is the best.
After "debating" we'll see who has won. (the one that still stands)
Come on over and we'll have a great debate.
lol.
Andy.
ps. As for "bible" debates nah, no fun.
Bring it on!
LOL!
Cheers!
Terry is correct.
There is little point debating a fundamentalist of any persuation over matters of doctrine, as these have cunningly evolved over the years to be able to fit any circumstance. This sort of faith allows a person to remain gleefully ignorant with an unphased smile on their faces.
For example, the deity or non-deity of Christ has been debated for hundreds of years with fierce defenders in both camps with no clearly reliable view. It is a doctrine that will be debated for many years to come without any reliable outcome.
However, there are issues with the innerancy of scripture that can easily be debated and that have little defence. The Genesis account for example. Ask a JW, or any Christian fundamentalist for that matter, to study the matter of denochronology against a backdrop of Biblical chronology and they are in instant, deep trouble. Or perhaps get them to explain the ethical rationalization behind a universal hunter-predator instinct in "creation", as God seems to have designed every living creature to kill and eat others in some way or another in order to survive.
Of course this presupposes that your audience has at least a little intellectual honesty as even these issues can be imaginatively dealt with by those who wish to defy fact in order to cling to their fiction. You know the sort of thing, Satan put all the fossils where they are and added tree rings to confuse the faithful and the reason that though Romans meticulously maintained records of even trivial events in Israel, they did not report the massacre of children under Herod was because they ran out of typewriter ribbon.
HS
Amen, Terry and hillary_step
That is exactly why the Society doesn't want its members to do real Bible study. If they do, some will begin to see all the discrepancies in the Bible. ( I like the way you phrased it Terry..."cobbled together" )
The Watchtower ( and other fundies ) have always said that the ancient manuscripts are so consistent that this has to be Gods word. Not true! There are literally hundreds of thousands of variations in the extant manuscripts.
Take away the foundation point and the house (or inverted pyramid) falls.
However, to answer the original question, I personally wouldn't do real well in a one-on-one debate. I just don't think fast on my feet. My brain freezes up. My wife,on the other hand, can be wrong (and know she's wrong) and still debate the point fabulously. So yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with the point some made earlier. The person who "wins" the debate isn't necessarily always right.
Personally, I wouldn't debate a JW online. There are many others who have done the research and can converse easily with such opponents.
However, while giving kudos to AlanF, Hillary-Step, and many others, I think Farkel is the best debater. Not only are his arguments logical and sound, he manages to be scathingly funny at the same time. Here's to you, Farkel.
