by PelicanBeach 27 Replies latest watchtower bible
Nice work Adamah. But I am afraid you are too good for these guys.
Pelican's detailed response of "Whatever" says much.
Some Bible thumpers are incapable of engaging on anything else other than minutiae of some esoteric meaning of some Greek word that Paul may, or may not, have uttered to a congregation in Upper Asia Minor.
Tiktaalik,
I wrote “whatever” because Adamah’s postings on this thread are in monaural mode, one track thinking. He posts anti-Bible comments on a thread which is meant to show JW lurkers that their Watchtower leadership is scripturally deficient. That is the purpose of this thread ; to correct or reveal their deficiency. But Adamah goes on with his anti-Bible rhetoric anyway and hands this thread right into the lap of the GB who are constantly telling their members not to take what is written on forums like this seriously because in the end all here are apostates and anti-Bible and anti-God. He takes a thread meant to open a little crack and drives it into a blind alley instead.
Yes, there are Bible thumpers who are one track minds and can’t think of anything else but there are also atheism thumpers who are one track minds and who will take a thread meant to open a door into oblivion for the sake of their favorite one track. Oh well, that’s life.
Whatever.-pelican post number 69
haha!! pricless ROFL. Love Kate xx
I agree Adamh is one of the best fundies on this site for God bashing. Adam, love you to bits though. Kate xx
Tiktaalik said- Pelican's detailed response of "Whatever" says much.
I took it as an admission of Pelican's willingness to believe literally anything, just as long as there's a history of others who've believed in it in times past. He's willing to believe in whatever?
Fact is, the ones who really SHOULD care about what they believe are the individuals themselves, since only fools don't really care about what they accept as truths (i.e. their beliefs), but many instead take the 'machts nicht' ("whatever") approach and are willing to believe in anything, AKA gullible.
Pelican said- I wrote “whatever” because Adamah’s postings on this thread are in monaural mode, one track thinking. He posts anti-Bible comments on a thread which is meant to show JW lurkers that their Watchtower leadership is scripturally deficient. That is the purpose of this thread ; to correct or reveal their deficiency. But Adamah goes on with his anti-Bible rhetoric anyway and hands this thread right into the lap of the GB who are constantly telling their members not to take what is written on forums like this seriously because in the end all here are apostates and anti-Bible and anti-God. He takes a thread meant to open a little crack and drives it into a blind alley instead.
Yeah, your response was a non-response, AKA waffling, ducking a question. Wanna try again?
The problem is you want to separate the JWs apart from the Holy Bible, when the situation is actually much like Jesus ironically stated when referring to a house that's built on a foundation of sand. There is no salvaging a house built on sand, so it needs to come down. Hence JWs are only one manifestation of the Abrahamic-based beliefs (Judaism, Islam, Xianity), since ALL are rooted in the Torah/Tanakh, an ancient work written by uninspired and fallible men.
Pelican said- Yes, there are Bible thumpers who are one track minds and can’t think of anything else but there are also atheism thumpers who are one track minds and who will take a thread meant to open a door into oblivion for the sake of their favorite one track. Oh well, that’s life.
Who brought atheism into the discussion, except YOU? Not me....
Your failure to respond to the question I raised is noted by many, so if you (or Kate, since she piped in) want to explain and resolve the Bible's obvious contradictions on this topic that I raised in prior post, feel free to do so. Many here can relate to the sometimes-encountered situation of a question raised by a householder that you cannot answer, so you promise to research the answer and get back to them with a response. So do you promise to get back to them, or do you simply write them off as 'not interested', knowing that looking into the answer might challenge YOUR faith?
I suspect you will do the latter (and won't even try to answer), instead preferring to ramble on about some other issue, thus derailing your own thread.
Simple question: do you (Pelican) give a rat's ass about the TRUTH (AKA reality, the actual history of what happened in the past)? Or do you prefer to cling to comfortable fantasies? I'm going out on a limb here, but I suspect you don't actually care about truth, since you prefer not to deal with the uncomfortable possibility that you've 'jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire', and are simply trying to rebuild on another plot of land that's also quick-sand.
Adam
Don't you just hate it, Pelican, when someone smarter than you uses you own arguements against you?
Adamah uses the bible's own internal contradictions to expose your twisted circular reasoning and the only defense you can mount is "Whatever"?
Dude, you lose.
Hi Adam.
Thanx for your response. I really enjoy reading what you wrote as I am always happy to listen what others can say about my points of view as well as what are their point of view. I don’t want to go into boring polemics “I am right – you wrong “ as this is not the point. So I will allow myself just a few more words to comment your respond.
I have to admit you hooked up on my little deception about reading the Bible. I assuming you are an expert in Bible knowledge, but I am not sure if your arguments are based on the Bible foundation as an authority? Or on common sense? And logic? or Science? Why? Because for me Bible is not a authority – say I do not consider it a letter from God exactly, therefor I can not discuss, in the Jw style,- but Bible Says….. or Jesus says… and so on… So to be clear I can not ignore Bible in aspect of a sociological, practical book of conduct, and respond to a human spiritual needs… Let me ask you do you think humans can exist without spiritual needs, having that unfortunate brainy part developed called Cortex? Now having said this, I can compare Bible to nothing more than Greek Myths, written by brainy humans at that time.. However as they say every myth has been inspired partially by some real stories. Therefore apart from the fairy tales in the Bibles, there are many sociological analisys of human nature, in response to our spiritual needs in everyday life or everyday life itself. So having said that I say that I can say that Bible’s God and Christ, it is a personification of Israelites, the nation needs etc. Therefore Jehowah from The Bible is Israelites personification – he is only truly God, he is with us, he kills our enemy etc.. Same as for Muslims Allah. Therefore for me such approach is illogical, and unacceptable.
So having said that:
Sorry for long reply. Promise no more..
Marek said- I have to admit you hooked up on my little deception about reading the Bible. I assuming you are an expert in Bible knowledge, but I am not sure if your arguments are based on the Bible foundation as an authority? Or on common sense? And logic? or Science? Why? Because for me Bible is not a authority – say I do not consider it a letter from God exactly, therefor I can not discuss, in the Jw style,- but Bible Says….. or Jesus says… and so on… So to be clear I can not ignore Bible in aspect of a sociological, practical book of conduct, and respond to a human spiritual needs…
I'm an atheist who was raised as a child as a believer, so I analyze the Bible from the angle of historical textual literary criticism, realizing it's a work written by men over a vast period of time in their ancient cultures. The Tanakh is no more or less interesting that reading say, other ancient documents that reflect the beliefs of ancient men.
Nevertheless, the Bible should be internally-consistent with itself, and of course any continuity errors or shifts in theology contained within reflect only the shifting attitudes and beliefs of those men who wrote it.
Marek said- Let me ask you do you think humans can exist without spiritual needs, having that unfortunate brainy part developed called Cortex?
First you'd have to define what you believe "spirits" are, since there's not anything remote to such a concept discovered by modern science that plays any role in humans. Aside from other ancient concepts of souls and spirits (Hebrew word, nephesh), it's only a bunch of ancient superstitions which have only the "appeal to traditional beliefs" to fuel them, but no basis in tangible evidence.
Marek said- Now having said this, I can compare Bible to nothing more than Greek Myths, written by brainy humans at that time.. However as they say every myth has been inspired partially by some real stories. Therefore apart from the fairy tales in the Bibles, there are many sociological analisys of human nature, in response to our spiritual needs in everyday life or everyday life itself. So having said that I say that I can say that Bible’s God and Christ, it is a personification of Israelites, the nation needs etc. Therefore Jehowah from The Bible is Israelites personification – he is only truly God, he is with us, he kills our enemy etc.. Same as for Muslims Allah. Therefore for me such approach is illogical, and unacceptable.
The problem of course is that rather than looking at the Bible as a collection of ancient myths that MIGHT contain some grains of truths (eg Aesop's Fables, which ALSO represent attempts to pass wisdom down to others), many people actually don't limit their beliefs, but instead take it as being very relevant to their lives such that many are even willing to die in the name of Jehovah.
I have no problem if people understood the limits of the Bible as only ONE of many such books written by ancient men, who had no special insight into the human condition, since the Bible wasn't inspired by a God, but mere men with questionable motives (namely, to control them, and obey their orders)....
Marek said- So having said that:
Yeah, you're asking the right questions, since omnipotent beings don't need to DEMAND anyone to worship them, offer sacrifices to them, etc. If God were what He is claimed to be in the Bible AND He weren't afraid of offering a smattering of tangible evidence of his existence (much less how great He claims to be), I'd be willing to believe and worship him. But not before that happens; I saw Wizard of Oz as a kid, and know the whole "ignore the man behind the curtain" scam. I've also studied too much biology to understand the Bible is an ancient historical document, and presents the Worldview of ancient men who lacked an insight into how their World actually operated.
I dunno if you read the article on my blog that I linked to above, but let's set aside the ACT of Adam and Eve's eating the fruit for a moment (since the action of eating was violation of the Divine command given in Genesis).
Would you say Adam and Eve's ability to desire eating the fruit indicates a "perfect" design on God's part?
Remember, too, that Jesus later said that merely being desirious of commiting an act was a sin, in and of itself, saying that looking at a women with lust in one's heart was the same as committing the act of adultery. So the capability to hold desire is a sin, and not indicative of a "perfect" design, since Eve's capability for desire violated the spirit of the only law given to humans at that point.
Per the traditional Jewish interpretation of the account of Adam and Eve, Jews don't believe that the first human pair actually were "perfect"; that's a later Xian eisegetical interpretation into the account, which was needed to justify the concept of "perfect" Jesus who atoned for "perfect" Adam's sin, thus saving mankind. Instead, Jews see the first pair as simply flawed and imperfect humans who are prone to following their desires.
In fact, study the Jewish reading of the account, and you'll see the Jews adopt a concept of 'yetzers' of the heart, the belief that all humans have an inclination for evil and good acts, and must learn to control those impulses, since God made man with these tendencies. The story actually makes sense in that light, since then Eve's desire is not inconsistent with their claimed trait of "perfection" before the Fall....
HOWEVER, that kind of thinking is obviously inconsistent with Xian theology, and that's the kind of mess that results when one group decides to co-opt the Holy Book of another group that came before (with Xianity as an offshoot of earlier Judaism). That's what leads to the paradox of Adam and Eve.
Don't forget the World population is growing, as well, and there's other issues such as access to care in many remote parts of the World, etc. But the reality is that if you're not posting from Botswana, or a region of the World where medicine is limited by fundamentalist authoritarians or deniers (those who drag their feet off the merry-go-round, mostly due to their insistence on conditions getting worse so as to justify God stepping in to fix things), conditions are improving, whether you're discussing quality of life, access to safe food/water, etc.
You're committing a basic logical error here, since evolution is not a completely random process, but actually involves natural selection: THAT'S the non-random process by which the environment controls what organisms survive.
Read a good basic text on the processes of evolution, since you owe it to yourself to understand what you'd otherwise dismiss out of your own personal ignorance of the subject of biology, since you've only been fed lies by those with a partisian interest in keeping you in the dark of your own ignorance.
A good starter on the subject is "evolution vs creation", written by Dr. Eugenie C Scott, Nat'l Director of the National Center for Science Education (here's the first chapter, avail as a free download):
http://ncse.com/files/pub/creationism/Evo%20vs.%20Creationism--2nd%20edition--Chapter%201.pdf
If you want to read the book for free, check a copy out at your local library: most should have a copy available for check-out, and she gets into the basics of Evolution in Chapter Two.
The local library should also have books by Dawkins, Coynes, etc. but you've got to crawl before you can run, and no one explains the basics any better than Eugenie Scott.
Adam
