Posts by AlanF

7

HELP with this Illuminati stuff!!!

by tdogg in

my brother is really in to this right now and i need some insight, here is the letter... only verifyable responses please, so rex need not reply.. here are some facts on the jw's .

i have done extensive research and confirmed all of this.

it really fits in to what i have always suspected.

AlanF

If your brother listens to that whackjob Fritz Springmeier, he deserves what he gets.

AlanF

122

Very good apologetics for honest seekers

by Shining One in

are you tired of the arrogant assertions of the elite ex-jw clique here?

here is some powerful ammunition to "demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of god"!

http://www.carm.org/evidence.htm .

Rex, jgnat is a fine example of what a Christian should be, as are many of my other friends. You are a lousy example, and in fact, it's people like you who turn a great many people off to Christianity. But Fundies are far too stupid and arrogant to understand this. They're far too wrapped up in the stupidity of self-righteousness to understand the finer points of Christianity, and like the JWs, who are also Fundies, are experts in straining out the gnat and swallowing the camel.

AlanF

30

How I am dealing with "The Bible says you have to go to all the meetings!!"

by Check_Your_Premises in

here is the basic approach i am going to use.

my wife is a newly dunked dub, and my kids have been hearing the propaganda for about 3 years now.

i figured out it was a cult about 6 months ago.

AlanF

CYP:

I agree with other posters that you're not going to get very far with this. Not because your arguments aren't good -- they are! But because the indoctrination of the cult causes extreme braindeadness in the cult followers.

So to really get anywhere with your family, you need a completely different approach. It's liable to be a long road, just as it took several years for the indoctrination to fully take hold. Where you go down this road depends on your overall outlook on religion. Are you a Christian or not? Etc. etc. etc.

I think that the best approach to deal with JW indoctrination is to gradually raise questions that you know they'll have a hard time answering, in particular, questions that suggest or prove that WTS writers have lied about some subject. Once an honest cultist comes to see that there are serious problems of honesty with his religious teachers, that affects everything he believes. I'm sure you already know the resources available to you via this board that can help you.

AlanF

122

Very good apologetics for honest seekers

by Shining One in

are you tired of the arrogant assertions of the elite ex-jw clique here?

here is some powerful ammunition to "demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of god"!

http://www.carm.org/evidence.htm .

AlanF

myelaine wrote:

: MY definition of sin...any action or thought that MY conscience convicts ME of being... God dishonoring.

Ok, that's your personal definition. But a lot of Christians will agree that it's at best incomplete, since according to the Bible, a person can commit a sin without being aware of it. Also, if a person has a wrong idea about some action, her conscience might convict her improperly. For example, the JWs wrongly teach that blood transfusions are against God's law, and JWs who violate their improperly trained consciences will unnecessarily convict themselves of sin.

In order to have an intelligent discussion of sin, we're obligated to use a complete definition, not just a personal one. In line with this, I asked you to incorporate any and all definitions from the Bible, since that book supposedly defines sin for all Christians. So how about giving it a shot?

AlanF

104

Hot News-New GB members

by truthsetsonefree in

jw
friends

hey ya'll, t was announced this morning at the breakfast table that there are two new members of the governing body.

they were formerly "helpers" or "given ones.

" anthony morris raised a family and then went into the traveling work.

AlanF

The dishonest writer of the infamous 1/1/89 WT article, and the misleading ones on blood, was Gene Smalley. He's one of the GB helpers now. A reward, I suppose, for his willingness to lie for his employer.

AlanF

4

NWT Lies From The 5 Apostates On The Governing Body

by Honesty in

num 1:52 (hcsb).

num 2:3-6 (hcsb).

num 2:10-11 (hcsb).

AlanF

Interesting information I hadn't seen before. However, from what I can see in various references, it's not entirely clear just what the original Hebrew meant. You should more thoroughly check out the material that I only have time to briefly mention here, before you come to any solid conclusions.

The Septuagint (Brenton's translation) tends to use "hosts" or "forces" for lgd and not anything like "banner" or "standard". The Latin Vulgate seems to use "castra" (camp) along with other words I can't decipher (I only have Cassell's Latin Dictionary which is putrid). The Catholic Douay Version and New American Bible seem to follow the Vulgate and use terms like "divisional camp". While BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon) has no definitions like "banner" or "standard", the modern The Hebrew & Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Koehler and Baumgartner; Volume One; p. 213; Brill; 2001) lists "banners, standards" as the usage in Numbers 1:52 and 2:2, while it lists "division of a tribe" as the usage in Numbers 10:14, 18, 22, 25. This reference also lists a related form of lgd as meaning "arranged in divisions: sbst. troop with banners (?), 'row of flags' ".

Of course, most Bible translations handle the word similarly to "HCSB" (whatever that is), and I'm sure that those translators have good reasons for doing so.

AlanF

100

Trouble for Richie?

by RichieRich in

jw
friends

so today, after the meeting, one of the elders from my jc walks up to me and my mother and asks if we had time to talk.

thankfully, i had to get to work, and mom wasn't feeling great.

we said today wasn't good.. so basiccally he said that he and another brother want to meet with us on wednsday night, after the tms, to "see how things are going".. so here's quandry:.

AlanF

A great thing to do is use their own methods to screw them up. Just make up some excuse not to meet with both of them, then tell one of them that you'll meet with him. That way, nothing you say can be used against you in a JC.

Another thing that might work real well: refuse to meet with them at all, then later in the evening, about the time you think one of the elders is about to go to bed, call him up and say you changed your mind and would like to talk to him. Press him about what he wanted. He'll be hard put to avoid telling you something useful. Press him about whether he and the other elder really wanted to talk to you about some JC matter. Put the screws to him and make him squirm!

AlanF

122

Very good apologetics for honest seekers

by Shining One in

are you tired of the arrogant assertions of the elite ex-jw clique here?

here is some powerful ammunition to "demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of god"!

http://www.carm.org/evidence.htm .

AlanF

myelaine, please define "sin". Use whatever resources you need, but do incorporate any and all definitions from the Bible.

AlanF

36

What's the most cash that you ever had in your hands?

by JH in

.

i'll add this to my 2005 corolla and i'll get my new 2006 corolla on thursday... .

AlanF

When I worked as a bank teller at a big New York bank some 30 years ago, it was usual to put four of us in a room to count up to about $350,000 at a time. You can easily get your hands around $100,000 in wrapped $100 bills.

AlanF

122

Very good apologetics for honest seekers

by Shining One in

are you tired of the arrogant assertions of the elite ex-jw clique here?

here is some powerful ammunition to "demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of god"!

http://www.carm.org/evidence.htm .

AlanF

Shining One had written to Terry:

::: It's too bad you can't deal with an one issue at a time but instead attempt to smear and paint your muck with generalizations.

I replied:

:: HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Point being: Rex is so laughably hypocritical that he doesn't realize that his statement to Terry is far more applicable to himself than to anyone else who regularly posts to this board, with the possible exception of scholar pretendus.

Completely missing the point, and demonstrating the usual Fundy sharpness of mind, Shinging One wrote:

: My how the 'high and mighty' have fallen.

To which I again reply:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Shining One wrote:

: 1) God rules by divine providence.

Divine providence = God's will and predictive ability.

Thus, your statement is a meaningless tautology.

: 2) Man knew the rules.

Correction: according to the Genesis account, Adam and Eve "knew the rules". "Man" in the sense of "all mankind who now suffers for the 'sin' of two people" did not yet exist. This myth of "original sin and redemption", therefore, simply reflects the simple-minded and outmoded notion of justice of ancient middle-eastern nomadic tribes -- tribes whose idea of justice included the payment of money to a murdered man's family to atone for the murder. Most people have moved beyond that.

: 3) Man broke the rules.

Ditto.

: 4) Man chose to rebel, separating himself from God.

Nonsense. According to your myth, I am suffering for what my ancestor did some 6,000 years ago. Once again: that's "justice" only in the eyes of the ancient nomads who invented the Adam & Eve myth.

: 5) God covered man's sin.

What the Lord taketh away, the Lord giveth back. When the Lord sees fit.

: 6) God provided a savior for man.

The trinitarian notion is that the Godhead had the Jesus part of him turn into a God-man and die as a man. But in the long run, this Jesus/God-man didn't die, since he still lives on as the Jesus/God-man part of the Godhead. So really, the Godhead sacrified nothing at all in the long run, except perhaps a bit of pride. Oh, and perhaps he suffered a bit of pain. But having created pain, perhaps that's poetic justice. Unless, of course, he's a masochist. Or perhaps he deadened the pain for himself.

: 7) He died for man to be reconciled: He took the hit.

Some hit. The Godhead didn't die. The Father part of God didn't die. The Holy Spirit part didn't die. The man part of the Jesus/God-man part died, in a sense, only for a short time. So no real price was paid.

Besides, as part of the Godhead, the Jesus/God-man part had no choice but to go along with the other parts, since they're all of the same mind and always act consistently with one another. So not even a sacrifice of will occurred. No sacrifices at all -- although many Christians jump through hoops trying to say different.

Note the point that mkr32208 made about this.

: 8) YOU have a choice.

Sure, and the choice of intelligent people is to reject these ancient myths.

myelaine said:

:: I don't understand the point of your story.

: My point is that if the fisherman was just in giving the young man a lifejacket and telling him to use it, how can he become unjust by showing mercy as well. Is he even less just? I don't think so. He is still just and now showing undeserved mercy. You see...the young man didn't take his warning about the lifejacket + just lost his boat + now he is compelled to save his life.

: Nothing that happened to the young man altered the old fishermans being just.

Ok, I see your point. I think that you and I made the same point, with respect to Terry's comment, with respect to a point of logic. However, I think you're comparing the old man to God, and there simply is no comparison, as Terry and pistoff directly pointed out and as mkr32208 alluded to. Indeed, if you're not comparing the old man to God in your analogy, then I see no point to it with respect to a discussion of God's justice.

Your responses to Terry just don't deal with this. You told him that, "but the Bible says GOD is separate from SIN, that is the point! and SIN represents mans viewpoint toward GOD." But as the JWs explained rather well, simply from the Hebrew and Greek definitions of the words the OT and NT use for "sin", "sin" is a "missing of the mark". A missing of the mark from whose viewpoint? Obviously, from God's, not mankind's, because if it were from mankind's viewpoint, there would be a million different viewpoints of "sin". And that is not the way the Bible describes this notion of "sin". As Terry explained, "sin" is nothing more than a person's doing something that God decides he doesn't like.

kid-A makes some excellent points along this line.

Terry wrote:

:: A point of logic: Giving something good to the undeserving has nothing to do with justice, but everything to do with mercy. Otherwise you'd have to declare God unjust.

: God IS unjust and that was my point.

: Mercy, in this instance, is cynical.

: Who does man need mercy FROM? Why, God!

I completely agree with your points. But my point was about the logic of how we arrive at them, which in other posts you've explained quite well.

AlanF