Posts by OneEyedJoe

38

Most Poorly Written JW Book

by JW_Rogue in

so i was thinking the other day that the wt corp has produced thousands of books over the years.

although the writers have changed the style is almost always the same.

however, some books are just worse than others.

OneEyedJoe

My picks, just based on the ones that I remember, not including things from before my time:

Award for most ridiculous doctrine and prophecy interpretation: Revalation book

Award for most poorly researched/intentionally misleading: Creation book (I now call it the evolution book because I firmly believe that anyone who reads it and the sources they use and thinks critically on the information will have no choice but to accept evolution)

Award for most likely to have been written by an illiterate teenager: Whatever the latest release is. Their quality of writing has been declining steadily over the years, so I have no doubt that they have and will continue to top themselves each year.

10

JW.org inaccessible

by Watchtower-Free in

.

OneEyedJoe

Why?

Last year it was even worse - it wasn't accessible on the 29th either. They're doing better this year but something tells me that next year it'll be the same as the last 3 years.

11

Are you related to me?

by Coded Logic in

the chances that anyone on this forum is my biological brother or sister, purely from a statistical point of view, is rather low.

but how many generations back would we have to go to have a fair chance that one of my ancestors married one of your ancestors (or procreated anyway)?.

i was born in 1985. less than 20 years before my birth my two parents were being conceived by a combined 4 parents of their own.. and if we go back even further, to 40 years before my birth, then i'll find an additional 8 ancestors.. around the 60 year mark i have another 16 ancestors.

OneEyedJoe

While it's correct to say that we're all related, your math ought to account for the fact that no one's family tree is completely free from looping back around on itself when you go back that far. If it where then going back far enough would yield more ancestors than the human population of the time.

Edit: I just looked at the article you linked and that was one of the first points made....my bad.

65

How do I handle this situation?

by BarelyThere in

jw
friends

hey everyone.

i'm sorry that this isn't a very thought provoking post but i could really use some advice on how to handle this.

there isn't anyone else in my life i can ask right now because, being dfed, all of my friends are "worldly" and don't know how witnesses function.

OneEyedJoe

I was never an elder so I could be wrong, but something tells me that the typical BOE might not look so kindly upon you reporting this "exemplary" MS. You, are DFed (and are not to be mourned and are to be viewed as having been killed by Jehovah, according to a recent WT study) and you're a lowly weaker vessel. Making a choice between you and one of their own isn't going to be difficult for them. Once they decide that your information isn't worth acting on they'll then have to sort out a punishment for you for bringing it to them in the first place. It might not be a conscious decision to punish you for it, but given the paranoid nature of the cult I wouldn't be surprised if they "circle the wagons" and make sure you don't get reinstated because you now are seen as having a tendency to try to "cause divisions" or slander men in authority. You've absolutely got the deck stacked against you here.

Whether you move to a different congregation or not, I have no idea. Maybe someone who's an elder can give you some advice there as to whether there's any time penalty for getting reinstated in another congregation. If not, you'd probably have a better chance of getting reinstated if you can win over elders that don't know you and are starting fresh and get them to recommend you for reinstatement vs trying to win over elders that already have a bad opinion of you.

64

Would a loving creator give humans the gift of free will?

by Heisenberg in

they say ignorance is bliss... well, i wish that god did not give adam free will.

i am ok to not have free will if it means i will live forever in perfect paradisiac conditions.it has been explained that free will is a gift from god.

they say 'who would want to live life like a robot?

OneEyedJoe

There's a fair amount of evidence that we don't actually have free will. Our brains are complex, chaotic system in which small changes can drastically alter outcomes, which makes us somewhat unpredictable and gives us the appearance of free will. So my question would be: Would a loving god withhold free will, then tell us we have free will and punish us for our mistakes in spite of not having free will to avoid them?

6

How and Why?

by The Rebel in

jw
friends

a recent thread i read about bethel " sending an old man packing" has bought to my attention it's one of many threads that show the most " loving" organisation in the world is cold and without love.. how can an organisation that is so unloving, have so many kind hearted people as members?.

this is the sincere question that i have not found an answer to.. the rebel..

OneEyedJoe

Because kind-hearted, honest people imagine others to be similarly kind-hearted and honest. So when an organization claims to be the most loving in the world and the "truth" they can't fathom that people could be so corrupt and dishonest and unloving as the cult truly is. So they remain trapped. And still more kind-hearted honest people see the ones that are trapped and think "surely these kind-hearted honest people wouldn't allow themselves to be associated with a unloving lying cult" and they become trapped too.

31

Evolution is a Fact #5 - Vitamin C

by cofty in

part 1 - protein functional redundancypart 2 - dna functional redundancypart 3 - ervspart 4 - smelly genes.

in part 4 we saw that roughly half of the 800 genes in the human genome that code for olfactory receptors are broken remnants of our evolutionary history.

they were vital to our distant ancestors but in humans, as in our primate cousins they have been allowed to fall into disuse as our eyes became more important to our survival than our nose.

OneEyedJoe

Ease off, clambake. This is all really basic stuff regarding evolution that Cofty is taking time out of his day to organize and post in a thoughtful way for those that are interested. He makes no claim to be furthering evolutionary research and he makes no claim to have special qualifications aside from having done his own research on the matter.

Has any of what you are spewing been peer reviewed?

Yes, all of what he's been posting has been, because it's all very well understood and accepted fact in the field of evolutionary biology.

23

Favourite Comedy Quotes

by LoveUniHateExams in

i wanted to post a serious, profound quote in stillin's thread but my mind went blank and i'm pretty crap with serious quotes anyway, so i put a jokey quote from the red dwarf computer holly: .

it's better to have loved and lost than to have listened to an album by olivia newton-john.. when a bemused lister asks why, holly replies "because anything's better than listening to an album by olivia newton-john!".

this got me thinking, what are everyone's favourite comedy quotes?.

OneEyedJoe

Mitch Hedberg is responsible for a great many of my favorite comedic quotes/one-liners:

This shirt is "dry-clean only"...which means it's dirty.
I don't have a girlfriend. But I do know a woman who'd be mad at me for saying that.

And one of his that I always think of in relation to JWs, particularly the cart witnessing:

When someone hands you a flyer, it's like they're saying here you throw this away.

There's also a lot of good Mark Twain quotes out there, I think my favorite is:

The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.

8

Please help with Rama Singh's letter

by I am a Bible Student in

hello could someone please help me with the actual letter that rama singh wrote asking wt to retract and apologise for misquoting him in the january 2015 awake?

i am giving it to the elders in my former congregation as part of my farewell letter.

OneEyedJoe

Related threads, in order of my estimation of their usefulness to the OP are below. Looks like you're right, Steve - they told Dr. Singh that they'd pulled the quote but certainly did not print a retraction and probably did not apologize. At least there's no mention of an apology.

http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/228710001/jw-org-does-partial-u-turn-over-awake-magazine-rama-singh-misquote?page=1&size=20

http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/84500002/biology-professor-speaks-out-about-watchtower-misquoting-him

http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/286780/awake-january-2015-how-did-life-begin-more-misquotes

8

Please help with Rama Singh's letter

by I am a Bible Student in

hello could someone please help me with the actual letter that rama singh wrote asking wt to retract and apologise for misquoting him in the january 2015 awake?

i am giving it to the elders in my former congregation as part of my farewell letter.

OneEyedJoe

It doesn't appear to be up on the original link anymore, but maybe this will help:

http://taze.co/2015/01/17/rama-singh-awake/

http://www.inquisitr.com/1766536/biology-professor-creationist-magazine/

Also, here's an article he wrote about it. I don't think this is exactly the same as what he wrote in the open letter, but it makes many of the same points:

http://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/5474687-religion-science-driven-by-reason/