AlanF

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Posts by AlanF

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  26

  The Myth Of Evolution

  by whereami in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  this should stir things up!

  haven't finished reading it.

  thought some of you would get a kick out of it.

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  AlanF

  Alright, heathen, prove to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that you exist.

  AlanF
• 
  26

  The Myth Of Evolution

  by whereami in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  this should stir things up!

  haven't finished reading it.

  thought some of you would get a kick out of it.

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  AlanF

  heathen wrote:

  : No they did not prove that those ape like fossils have anything to do with human beings . That's my point . Animals can adapt and diversify , no problem with that but as far as solid proof that man evolved from ape , there is none.

  That all depends on what you mean by "prove". In an absolute sense, you cannot prove that you exist, and I cannot prove anything at all. But in a practical, reasonable sense, proof of a great deal exists. In that sense there is a good deal more physical evidence for evolution than for the existence of the biblical God.

  So it is with the evolution of man from apelike ancestors. Every few years another fossil is found that fits with this theory. Nothing has been found that refutes it.

  Here's one example: Can you fit the physical characteristics and time of existence of Homo ergaster (google "homo erectus boy" for a starting point) into a non-evolutionary scenario? No. Try it and see. But it fits well with the notion that man evolved from this form, or something very like it, into modern man from about 2 million years ago to the present. The evolution of earlier hominds is a good deal fuzzier but that should be no surprise since the fossils are a good deal older.

  AlanF
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  26

  The Myth Of Evolution

  by whereami in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  this should stir things up!

  haven't finished reading it.

  thought some of you would get a kick out of it.

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  AlanF

  Heathen wrote:

  : myth means-- legendary narrative that presents part of the beliefs of a people or explains a practice or natural phenomena. I think he's covered under that definition.

  Nonsense. Evolution by natural selection is science, period.

  : Science has found plenty of evidence of alot of strange phenomena that they in turn created a theory (unproven hypothesis) about the fossils they discovered.

  Yes, indeed. The theory of gravitation is an unproven hypothesis.

  : I cut him some slack on that , but clearly he is a fundy and comes off sounding stupid when he says the earth is only 6 thousand years old .

  You got that right.

  AlanF
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  26

  The Myth Of Evolution

  by whereami in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  this should stir things up!

  haven't finished reading it.

  thought some of you would get a kick out of it.

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  AlanF

  whereami said of Kent Hovind:

  : Is this guy for real or is he completly off his rocker?

  Both. Hovind, as do most YECs, presents a caricature of science, and proceeds to knock down this straw man. Do some looking around for critical reviews of Hovind's claims, and you'll see what I mean.

  To illustrate what kind of nutjob Hovind is, one report said ( http://www.religionnewsblog.com/15261/kent-hovind-evangelist-arrested-on-federal-charges ):

  Kent Hovind, who often calls himself “Dr. Dino,” has been sparring with the IRS for at least 17 years on his claims that he is employed by God, receives no income, has no expenses and owns no property.

  Hovind was arrested in 2006 on tax-evasion and related charges, and "is currently serving a ten-year term in Federal Correctional Institution, Edgefield in Edgefield, South Carolina for 58 tax offenses, obstructing federal agents and related charges." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Hovind )

  In the same way that Hovind has been convicted in court of criminal dishonesty with respect to taxes and so forth, even a brief analysis of his criticisms of evolution will convict him of gross scholastic dishonesty. How he does these things in the name of God is beyond me, but I'm afraid is symptomatic of the Fundamentalist mindset.

  AlanF
• 
  26

  The Myth Of Evolution

  by whereami in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  this should stir things up!

  haven't finished reading it.

  thought some of you would get a kick out of it.

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  AlanF

  The linked article is typical of the worst genre of criticisms of evolution. It sounds much like the author is a newly minted young-earth creationist who has dumbly absorbed many of the myths of YECism. The author makes the usual stereotypcial misrepresentations and mistakes, and often dumbly repeats young-earth creationist errors that were debunked decades ago. Here are some examples:

  Writing about the improbability of the eye evolving, the author misrepresents Darwin:

  10) Eyes are far more complex than anything man can create . . . Chuck Darwin, the founder of the religion of evolution, didn't even believe eyes could have evolved:
  
  "To suppose that the eye... could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree." -Charles Darwin, in 'The Origin of Species,' 1859, p. 217

  To show how these YECs often borrow misrepresentations from each, the above quotation is nearly identical to the same misrepresentation made by the Watchtower Society in its 1985 Creation book:

  Darwin acknowledged this as a problem. For example, he wrote: "To suppose that the eye ... could have been formed by [evolution], seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.

  These misrepresentative quotations of Darwin have been circulating in YEC literature for decades.

  Both the linked author and the author of the Creation book misrepresented Darwin, because what he actually said was that, while it might be difficult to comprehend how the eye could have evolved, his theory could still account for it. A full quotation proves this (Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859, p. 133):

  To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory.

  The author claims that transitional forms do not exist, and makes some related but completely bogus statements:

  Evolutionists also say that people, plants, and animals evolve into completely different things over time. If that’s true, we should find an abundance of evidence, transitional species all over the place, and someone in the history of science must have observed this happening. After all, with all the trillions of creatures that exist on this planet, at least one of them should be evolving right now!
  
  Interestingly enough, that is a dead end as well. All the fish we find are fish, all the birds we find are birds, all the bats we find are bats, all the people we find are people, and single-celled organisms never reproduce into anything except single-celled organisms. There’s no transitional species to be found, and evolution (in the sense of organisms increasing in complexity) is not happening anywhere. In reality, if evolution were true, everything that is or was alive should just be another transitional species, including humans. There would be no point in classifying species, because they all would just be changing into something else continuously. But we find none of that.

  The simple fact is that a great many transitional forms have been found. A list of some can be found at the talkorigins website, in the "Transitional Fossils FAQ" and other writeups:

  http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/part1a.html
  http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/part1b.html
  http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/part2a.html
  http://www.talkorigins.org/features/whales/
  http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html
  http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/
  http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/d2700.html

  The ancient birdlike creature Archaeopteryx is a fine example of a transitional form, i.e., a form that shares features of what are or have often been viewed as two major but distinct groups -- in this case dinosaurs and birds. While Archaeopteryx is classified as a bird because it has arms long enough to be wings, along with distinct flight feathers, a good many theropod dinosaur fossils exist from about the same time period that are extremely similar to Archaeopteryx except for arm length, and a good many birds exist from a couple of tens of millions of years later that become more and more like modern birds the more recent they are. And of course, in the past fifteen years a good many theropod dinosaur fossils have been found that show feathers or feather-like structures on these animals. Here is some information about this interesting creature:

  http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx/info.html
  http://corior.blogspot.com/2006/02/part-5-gulf-between-reptiles-and-birds.html
  http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx/challenge.html
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeopteryx

  Until a recent discovery, the feet of Archaeopteryx were very poorly known because of poor fossil preservation. But the discovery of the most recent specimen, now on display at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in Thermopolis, Wyoming, shows that it had a hyperextendible second toe similar to the killing toe on the famous Velociraptor:

  http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/12/1201_051201_archaeopteryx.html

  This, and other structures in this newest specimen, show beyond doubt that Archaeopteryx, and therefore birds in general, are physically related to the theropod dinosaurs. A display of a variety of small theropods alongside ancient birds and Archaeopteryx proves that they're so similar that it takes an expert to distinguish one from another. One early Archaeopteryx specimen was misidentified as a small dinosaur and languished in a museum drawer for the better part of a century.

  The linked author says that, "with all the trillions of creatures that exist on this planet, at least one of them should be evolving right now!" This is a ridiculous statement on its face, since individual creatures do not evolve -- populations evolve over time.

  The author says that, "if evolution were true, everything that is or was alive should just be another transitional species, including humans." Well that's exactly right, in evolutionary terms, since the evolution of populations is a continuous process with no distinct beginning or end point (except in the case of extinction). The existence of ring species is a good example of how this works in the modern world ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species ) and shows how stupid it is to claim that transitional species do not exist.

  The author states:

  6) Transitional species required for the theory of evolution to be true are called “missing links,” instead of “links,” because they do not exist.

  In view of the abundant evidence referred to above, showing that a great many transitional forms most certainly do exist, the author is outright lying.

  The author states:

  7) It is impossible for a cold blooded animal to give birth to a warm blooded animal; and yet this is believed by evolutionists in the fish to mammal and lizard to bird theories.

  This is a ridiculous and transparent strawman argument. No evolutionist claims that cold blooded animals give birth to warm blooded animals, but that this transition -- as yet unknown in detail because the required soft structures are not normally preserved in the fossil record -- occurred gradually. Yet intermediate states exist even today. Some fish like the great white shark and bluefin tuna are partially warm blooded, maintaining their body core temperatures 5-10 degrees C above ambient. There is abundant evidence that many, if not all, later dinosaurs were warm blooded ( http://www.amonline.net.au/palaeontology/faqs/dinosaur.htm ). There is even evidence that dinosaurs had respiratory systems much like those of modern birds, as opposed to systems like reptiles and mammals ( http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/dino_lungs/ ), which is further evidence of the warm bloodedness of dinosaurs and the relation of birds to them.

  In general, the author tries to argue that evolution is just a matter of faith and belief, rather than evidence. This ridiculous claim is yet another standard one from YECs, and is false on its face in view of the massive amount of scientific evidence published for 150 years on the subject.

  The author is hypocritical as well, since it is obvious that he would strenuously object to saying of his Christian faith: "because it is based on unprovable belief, yet again, it becomes again faith-based, and coincidentally is fundamentally flawed." Yet he uses this argument to argue against the efficacy of Carbon-14 dating methods.

  I could go on, but as I said, the entire article is nothing more than recycled and thoroughly debunked YEC claims, so I won't.

  AlanF
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  20

  Someone doesn't like Alan F. & Carl O.

  by whereami in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  check out these two post that were made:.

  jw1983 - rolf furuli .

  a slightly revised edition of "assyrian, babylonian, egyptian, and persian .

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  AlanF

  under_believer wrote:

  : Can you honestly read the simple, direct, free, liberating account of Jesus and his ways and teachings, and then look at these almost neutronically dense monoliths of prose about eclipses, lunar calendars, regnal successions, cuneiform tablets, biblical typology, and god help us mathematics, and think that this is really what Jesus had in mind for his followers to be thinking about or teaching or depending on for faith and belief?

  Well of course! Does not the faithful slave tell us that Christians need a "faithful and discreet slave" to intervene between them, and God and Christ? And to teach them "the deep things of God"?

  AlanF
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  37

  AlanF Interview with Creation Book author Harry Peloyan 1997

  by besty in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  this has possibly been posted before (i hadn't seen it) - i found it a fascinating read - well done alanf for fronting it up..... it can also be found online at http://www.reexamine.org/wtobserver/apps/pbcs.dll/article86c8.html?aid=/20040309/history/204007.

  interview with a watchtower society author on wednesday, 27 august 1997, i met with harry peloyan for about 1 1/2 hours in the lobby of the 25 columbia heights bethel office in brooklyn, new york.

  my purpose was to discuss problems with the creation book with him, since he is its main author.

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  AlanF

  timetochange wrote:

  ::Did Harry Peloyan ever do this?

  : You are quick to condemn a man who sought to change things for the better, albeit in his own way.

  You're letting your personal feelings for this man cloud your judgment. I've stated several times why I condemn Peloyan: he was arrogantly and pridefully dishonest in handling his responsibility of writing and publishing widely dispersed Watchtower literature, he knowingly deceived millions, he was not a man of integrity, and he was unrepentant. You cannot disagree with this; you obviously knew the man. Peloyan's good work in the area of trying to reform the Society's mishandling of child molestation cases, as described by Barbara Anderson, in no way negates this. A philanthropist who molests a child will rightly be condemned for his criminal action despite his philanthropy, do you not agree?

  Let me ask you this: since you knew Peloyan, why do you think he was unrepentant about publishing so much dishonest information in the 1985 Creation book and similar works?

  : Apparently, your way is the only way.

  Apparently, ascribing emotions to me that I do not have is your way of excusing Peloyan. I'm not saying anything other than that Peloyan ought to have displayed integrity by doing whatever he could to retract the gross misrepresentations in the Creation book and in other publications, after having them pointed out by many readers. I'm not saying that he should have gone public with this. I'm saying that Peloyan should have forthrightly acknowledged the errors to anyone who wrote in and complained. I'm saying that Peloyan should have displayed humility rather than extreme arrogance when the Society's and his lapses were shown to him. I'm saying that Peloyan should have put his money where his mouth was and acted as a Christian rather than a prideful religious official. After all, wasn't it Jesus who said that much would be expected of those who allowed themselves to be put in positions of great responsibility? You seem to want to allow for these Watchtower leaders exactly the same diametrically opposed things that they demand for themselves -- great respect for them personally in their self-appointed positions of spiritual leaders, yet complete lack of accountability. I don't buy it.

  : If a man does not publicly declare his opposition to a system he has devoted his life to but rather attempts to iniate positive change within that system he, in your view, is condemned.

  Wrong. See above.

  : Ray attempted to do that very thing and he, to an extent, succeeded until the machine ate him and Ed Dunlap up. Yet, that insidious thing, belief in a system, impelled him, it impelled Ray to continue on as a Witness though he was expelled from Bethel and Ed had been disfellowshipped. If you had come across him at that very time and in your present state of mind you likely would have condemned Ray as well.

  Not unless I had ferreted out the facts about his attitude. But once again, actions speak louder than words. Ray demonstrated repentance in a big and useful way. Did Peloyan ever do that?

  I am aware of other Watchtower officials who used their power to reach out beyond Bethel and do much good to reverse the bad effects of the Society's, and even perhaps their own previous unchristian behavior. Did Peloyan ever do anything like that? Not bloody likely.

  You seem to think that pointing out that I, like everyone else, has foibles somehow excuses Peloyan for his gross deliquency. I don't buy it.

  AlanF
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  13

  another 607 thread

  by BlackSwan of Memphis in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  aren't you excited?.

  i was looking through the net for some more info on ptolemy and astronomical records etc etc.

  and found this site:.

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  AlanF

  BlackSwan wrote:

  : What I am looking for to go with it, is either a great book OR online source that is nonjw/exjw that goes into some detail about chronology. Something to use as a good reference.

  Ok. The most comprehensive I know of is the latest edition of The Gentile Times Reconsidered by Carl Olof Jonsson (in print and available from a variety of sources). Another is the various editions of Edwin Thiele's The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (1983, 1965 and ~1951). Both contain references to the scholarly literature.

  The online source you found is something I cobbled together from a variety of sources, including Jonsson and Thiele, beginning around 1992, so I suggest that you get hold of those books..

  AlanF
• 
  116

  The simplest explanation of 607 BCE

  by Doug Mason in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  if you are looking for the simplest picture that shows how the wts calculates that jerusalem was destroyed in 607 bce, and if you want to understand basic problems with their method, this might be what you want.. http://au.geocities.com/doug_mason1940/wts_false_reasoning_for_607_bce.pdf.

  (make sure that your pdf reader displays the whole page.).

  doug.

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  AlanF

  Scholar pretendus wrote:

  : No the application of Ezekiel's '390 years' is not based on Jewish tradition at all but is in agreement with that tradition,

  Wrong as usual. The first time that application was used in the modern WTS way was in the 1944 book The Kingdom Is At Hand, in a chart beginning on page 172. However, no explanation was given for anything about Ezekiel 4 -- the dates were simply printed in the chart with no explanation. Russell and his contemporaries specifically rejected that interpretation, but it had been around for many hundreds of years, and these were based themselves on Jewish tradition. So it's obvious that Fred Franz used these traditions in formulating his revision of Russell's chronology.

  The first specific justification for applying the 390 years according to Jewish tradition appeared, so far as I'm aware, in the 1969 Aid book under the subject "Chronology". In the Aid book, the only justification given was reference to Jewish tradition and commentators, ranging from the Seder Olam (an anonymous exposition dated to somewhere between about 160 and 250 CE) to various 19th century Jewish commentators. Of course, the problem with relying on Jewish commentators on chronology is that their date system differs from secular dating by nearly two hundred years for the Neo-Babylonian period. Furthermore, strictly applying the basis for all these commentaries (the Seder Olam) to Ezekiel 4 results in a time between the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the fall of the Southern Kingdom of Judah of roughly 50 years, which again differs drastically from secular and Watchtower chronology. So the Society's use of these Jewish traditions is both dishonest and wrong-headed. It amounts to arbitrarily picking and choosing supporting references based only on whether they agree with a pre-determined claim.

  : The interpretation of that prophecy has always been explained in WT literature solely within a biblical context.

  Whether it was or not is unimportant, because Watchtower interpretations of prophecy are invariably nothing more than the current fancies of current Watchtower leaders, as its literature proves with respect to how Ezekiel 4 is applied to its chronology.

  : Thiele's presentation of the Divided Monarchy is not uniformly agreed within scholarship

  So what? The Watchtower's "presentation of the Divided Monarchy is not uniformly agreed within scholarship." The point is what arguments hold the most weight.

  : and I have presented the facts of the matter some years ago on this forum by means of comparing different chronologies by leading chronologists including Thiele which present different conclusions.

  Nonsense. Your "comparing different chronologies" has never amounted to anything more substantive than making a few general claims based on Watchtower literature and claiming divine inspiration for spiritually inebriated Watchtower "scholars". You cannot point to any of your posts that go into the specific comparisons you claim.

  : For example, these scholars cannot agree as to which year the Monarchy ceased whether it was 586 BCE or 587 BCE.

  So what? Lumping Watchtower writers together with them, according to your logic, means that no one knows the actual date -- 586 or 587 or 606 or 607. So your "logic", as usual, is self-serving and wrong. Second, the only reason for confusion is that the Bible itself dates events regarding the fall of Jerusalem both to the 18th and 19th years of Nebuchadnezzar. Many scholars have not agreed on how to understand the relevant Bible passages, but again, the most modern scholarship has definitely cleared that up, even though the results have not spread thoroughly around the scholarly community. The appropriate references have been posted on this forum at various times.

  : Apostates of course have no chronology for the period of the Divided monarchy so perhaps you shoul d 'put up' or 'shut up'.

  There is no such thing as "Apostates" such that every person labeled as such by morons such as yourself has to do any such putting up. I myself accept most of Thiele's work for the period before 587 BCE, although the poster Jeffro claims to have produced a workable one. Furthermore, as Thiele points out, there are certain problems in the Bible chronology that are simply insoluble within Watchtower chronology. This is proved by the complete lack of discussion of these by Watchtower writers, even though we know very well that these men have been very familiar with Thiele's work.

  Finally, it should be obvious that a complete chronology of the Jewish kings prior to the Neo-Babylonian period is entirely irrelevant to the question of the validity of secular dating of this period. In fact, in most chronologies, including the Watchtower's, it is the events in Judah in the several decades prior to Jerusalem's fall -- the Neo-Babylonian period -- that are the basis for the preceding period. But you've been told many times before that this is so, and so your bringing up this red herring is yet another instance of thorough scholastic dishonesty.

  : Thiele deals with certain problems

  Problems that Watchtower writers generally ignore.

  : but others he cannot solve

  Which ones? You make sweeping claims like this but never back them up with references. Thiele claims to have solved all the problems, so I hazard a guess that you're simply lying and hoping no one will notice.

  : because he uses a 'regnal-based' methodologyand hence he falls into a 'pit of confusion'.

  Why do you think the regnal dates are in the Bible, you moron? Just to confuse readers with facts? Thiele uses these dates and figures to do a thorough cross check between the chronologies of the kings of Israel and Judah -- something that Watchtower writers often gloss over or "solve" with special pleading or by ignoring them.

  : Wisely, the 'celebrated WT cholars have chosen a different methodology- an event- based methodology which eliminates all of such perceived problems. Smart aren't they!

  Dishonest pseudo-scholars is what they are, because they gloss over whatever problems they find in their own chronology when possible, and simply ignore problems when they can't come up with "plausible" gobble-de-goop explanations. Explanations of the sort that Fred Franz used to change the 606 date to 607 BCE in 1943/44.

  : Yes, you would like the references to the Dead Sea Scrolls and I am able to prov ide this but this surely shows that you do not do enoughg research on matters before you criticize WT scholars. You should know these things if you are that smart and cocky. Has scholar once again, has to hold your hand and guide you and teach you?

  Obviously, your bluster is designed to hide the fact that you have no facts to back up your lies.

  : You miss the point, I refer to the Dead Sea Scrolls in reference to support the traditional Jewish and current biblical interpretation that Ezekiel's'390 years' applies to the period of the Divided Monarchy.

  You again write a blatant lie. You specifically stated that "the Dead Sea Scrolls nicley confirm this exegesis produced by the 'celebrated ones'." You said nothing about supporting Jewish tradition or any "current biblical interpretation" along these lines. And once again, you cannot produce any such interpretation, although I can present commentaries from the 19th and 20th centuries that reject that interpretation and give good reasons for doing so.

  So here we have, yet again, scholar pretendus making grandiose claims of support for Watchtower chronology, but being unable to set forth any actual references. I have no doubt this is because he knows that it's extremely likely, based on past experience, that every time he actually presents source references it turns out that the references don't actually support his claims, or even directly contradict them. Such is the lot of the Watchtower apologist.

  AlanF
• 
  13

  another 607 thread

  by BlackSwan of Memphis in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  aren't you excited?.

  i was looking through the net for some more info on ptolemy and astronomical records etc etc.

  and found this site:.

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  AlanF

  BlackSwan, what kind of information on Ptolemy and Berossus are you looking for? Just wondering.

  AlanF