Jwfacts, Why Do You Equate Miracles With Magic? (page 26)

mrsjones5

Well it's called numerology and it seems to be rampant in the bible.

breakfast of champions

^^^^^^^but remember: when Jehovah uses numerology, it's not divination.

still thinking

I'm surprised Sparlock has not commented on this thread.......I thought he would have showed up by now.

Well, let's not forget that Moses was supposedly trained in the mysteries and secrets of the Egyptian Pharoahs, which was only open to members of the royal family. (Sigmund Freud wrote his last book based on circumstantial evidence in his work, "Was Moses an Egyptian?")

And remember that Jesus was visited at birth by the three magi, who were depicted quite favorably in the NT account ('magi' is the root word from which "magic" is derived, from Persia's Zoroasterian religion). So why were the magis guided by the star of Bethelem to visit baby Jesus to bestow gifts? Did they also bestow magical blessings to account for his later healing, performing magic miracles, etc?

kurtbethel

One thing a JW has never explained to me, is if magic and spiritism is so bad and evil then why is it the governing body practices spiritism communicating with the dead and channeling invisible spirit beings? They even boast about being the only ones who are able to do this, and publish it in the Watchtower!

watchtower jehovah's witnesses practice seance magic and communicate with the dead

cedars

Recovery

I guess if I don't devote every minute of every hour reading Ray Franz 1200 page testimony I have just decided to not do any research.

I'm glad I didn't burn the midnight oil trying to sort your head out last night if that's the sort of argumentation you resort to, i.e. falling back on hyperbole.

Your above comment smacks of total ignorance. If you were really interested in finding out the facts, it wouldn't matter how many pages of "testimony" you would need to go through, or how much time it would take. It certainly wouldn't take "every minute of every hour".

What a wack job. I'm glad I didn't waste my time. And to think for a brief while I thought you might be genuine.

Cedars

sizemik

Sorry if it's trite . . . but this thread's been a real hoot.

You say this thread was to expose a rhetorical fallacy. Yet you have just made one of the classic ones - the slippery slope argument. . . . jwfacts

recovery is actually very well versed in logical fallacies.

He learned it all by reading your website . . . ROFLMFAO.

Witness My Fury

@jwfacts ,...David = Daniel (being allowed to learn magic) in your post above correct? EDIT: yes typo you meant Daniel LOL

mP

mrsjones:

i didnt want to say numerology for the simple fact that jws fail to comprehend this meaning. Its a bit like definition of "kill" and "murder" but in reverse where most people use both interchangably when they are not synonyms. Its amazing how many words have such a simple meaning but when one can spot hypocracy when the same word is applied to Jehovah or jesus somehow theres always an IF, or BUT.

WinstonSmith

Hi Recovery,

Just wondering if you can please clarify something for me?

In your post #153 you said:

"One of the easiest ways to find out the meaning of a particular word is to look up a thesarus and find a long list of synonyms that have similar meaning to it. Let's do this again with the word "magic"

Magic: "alchemy, allurement,astrology, augury, bewitchment,black art, conjuring, conjury, devilry,diabolism,divination,enchantment, exorcism,fascination, foreboding, fortune-telling, hocuspocus, horoscopy, illusion,incantation, legerdemain, magnetism, necromancy, occultism, of impossible feats by tricks abracadabra,power,prediction, presage, prestidigitation, prophecy, rune, sleight of hand, soothsaying, sorcery, sortilege, spell, superstition,taboo, thaumaturgy,trickery, voodoo, voodooism, witchcraft, wizardry, Satanism, demon worship,

Do the synonyms honestly convey a similar list of synonyms you'd expect when you type in the word "miracle"? If no, why not? If it does not, then the two terms are distinctive and not interchangeable."

I love crosswords, and I like to use a thesaurus to help me find the answers. The one I use is the Merriam-Webster and the online version is great. I did what you did above, and typed 'magic' into it. The result is here:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/magic

In both of the results, 'miracle' is not listed as a synonym, but in the related words, 'miraculous' is listed. 'Miraculous' is defined in the same work as meaning 'of the nature of a miracle' (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/miraculous).

There does seem to be a close link between the words 'miracle' and 'magic'.

In fact in the link above to the definition of 'miraculous' if you scroll down to the heading 'Related to Miraculous', in the list of synonymns, the first one listed is 'magical'.

Can you please help me to understand how 'miracle' and 'magic' are "distinctive and not interchangeable" with each other when the reference work noted above links the two? I'm trying to get my head around this.

Cheers mate :-)

WS

Jwfacts, Why Do You Equate Miracles With Magic?