Posts by Pole

5

Maniputlating the media - from www.ajwrb.org. Worth reading.

by Pole in

sorry if i am preaching to the choir, but has everyone read this document on the http://www.ajwrb.org site?

i showed it to my mom (half-active jw) yesterday and she was shocked by the amount of spin and manipulation the wts resort to.

i guess it's worth reading by newbies whatever their current "stand on blood" may be.. pole.

Pole

life,

I'm glad you liked it. Another great thing about the site is that it's been translated into 11 languages (you just click the link at the bottom). Their message really reaches a lot of non-English speaking people in this way.

Cheers,

Pole

25

Parousia- Is it just me? Has anyone else noticed this?

by upside/down in

the entire premise of the debate of christ's "presence" as discussed in matt24:3 to me makes no sense.

here's why: we have to assume by the question asked by the apostles, that they understood the whole "presence" concept, which they didn't.

they were merely asking him when "the end" would come, i'm not even sure if they know what "the end" really meant.

Pole

Narkissos,

All the WT hogwash is built on Greek vocabulary, morphology and etymology (the latter being essential to their interpretation of parousia as "presence"). Still Jesus and his disciples were not supposed to speak Greek...

Leolaia,

I have noticed a tendency in the WTS' use of Greek grammar and lexicography to generally prefer the etymological or earliest-attested meaning and to insist (without any clear rationale given) that this meaning is the one relevant to the biblical text.

Oh yes, there is some rationale. And it's not always the earliest attested meaning. They basically look at the etymology whenever they can get away with a ridiculous interpretation that suits their needs.

The case of parousia is an interesting one because this verb embraces several different event structures, the basic stative sense (of being "present") and the common sense involving a change of state (of "becoming present," that is, coming and arriving). The WTS insists again on the etymological meaning even though the verb was easily capable of both meanings.

Here is one example:

***Rbi8 p. 1576 5B Christ?s Presence (Parousia) ***

The Greek noun pa·rou·si´a literally means a ?being alongside,? the expression being drawn from the preposition pa·ra´ (alongside) and ou·si´a (a ?being?).

The Polish verb "przybyć" literally means "to be" (być) "alongside" (przy). When you put the two morphemes together, however, they mean "come", or "arrive" and never to "be alongside". However, this is exactly the kind of fallacy that WTS try to commit when manipulating with the meaning of pa-rou-si'a.

The historical meaning of individual morphemes may have nothing to do with the semantic intentions of the contemporary user of a word that is made up of those morphemes.

Watchtower linguistics.

Pole

149

Watchtower Observer site goes down

by Norm in

jw
friends

hey folks,.

an era in the ex-jw history is over.

kent steinhaug's site http://watchtower.observer.org is being shut down.. it was the first of it's kind, and to this day probably still the largest anti wt site on the net.

Pole

How much would a web-development firm charge for moving the contents of the site to another (free) platform (like php/mysql, etc)?

Pole

26

"Replacement doctrines" - things which JWs lie about to the interested ones

by Pole in

depending on the denomination of their interlocutor the witnesses often claim that their religion is free of a whole bunch of non-sensical doctrines which are so common in other religions.

oftentimes, however, it proves that they have something that i'll call "replacement doctines" - beliefs which which are difficult to figure out for the 'interested ones', but which in the long run prove to be just as bad as the stuff they disclaimed or worse.

example: in a catholic country like poland, jws often boast about the fact that they don't have the confession routine, where a person has his/her sins forgiven by a priest who acts as a representative of god.

Pole

paduan,

Is that a serious question?

That was meant to be the brainteaser part of my post. The anwer is obvious for an ex-jw. But the average JW newbie buys into those lies for years to come.

Pole

197

The Holocaust - do we need to know?

by eyeslice in

jw
friends

this week in uk, there starts a new 6 week series to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of auschwitz.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/listings/programme.shtml?day=tuesday&service_id=4224&filename=20050111/20050111_2100_4224_37699_50.

personally, i do not like cinema films about the holocaust and, therefore, have never watched things like shindler's list or the pianist.

Pole

The Holocaust - do we need to know?

I guess only visiting the Auschwitz museum really helps to realize what all of those figures stand for.

Here's the address of the official website in English.

http://www.auschwitz-muzeum.oswiecim.pl/html/eng/start/index.php

Armenia: Prime Minister Andranik Margaryan

Austria: President Heinz Fischer

Azerbaijan: Speaker of Parliament Murtuz Alasgarov

Belgium: King Albert II; Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt

Bosnia-Hertzegovina: Speaker of Presidium Borislav Parvanov

Bulgaria: President Georgi Parvanov

Croatia: President Stjepan Mesić, Prime Minister Ivo Sanader

Czech Republic: President Vaclav Klaus

Estonia: President Arnold Rüütel

Denmark: Prince Joahim

Finland: Speaker of Parliament Paavo Lipponen

France: President Jacques Chirac

Spain: Speaker of Upper Chamber of Parliament Javier Rojo

Greece: President Kostis Stephanopoulos

Ireland: President Mary McAleese

Israel: President Moshe Katsav

Lithuania: Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas

Luxembourg: Grand Duke Henri

Latvia: President Vaira Vike - Freiberga

Netherlands: Queen Beatrix; Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende

Germany: President Horst Kőhler

Norway: Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, Prince Haakon

Russian Federation: President Wladimir Putin

Romania: President Traian Basescu

Serbia and Montenegro: President Svetozar Marović

Slovakia: President Ivan Ga?parovič

Slovenia: President Janez Drnov?ek

Switzerland President Samuel Schmid

Sweden: Princess Victoria

Speaker of Parliament: Bjorn von Sydow

Ukraine: President - elect Wiktor Juszczenko

European Union: President of the European Commission Manuel Barroso; President of the European Parliament Joseph Borell

Vatican: Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger

Hungary: President Ferenc Mădl

United Kingdom Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex

No American-Jewish lobby delegates? How's that, Realist?

BTW, Prince Edward is representing the UK? Is that common practice?

Pole

50

Has God Ever Planned and Caused Cannibalism?

by gumby in

and i will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat one the flesh of his friend in the seige and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lifes, shall straiten them.

nah.....god wouldn't do that.....would he?

gumby.

Pole

But you are right when you say that you're mad at a guy that doesn't even exist. How is that possible? It's highly illogical. If He doesn't exist how could He have done ANYTHING? Which is it either He exists- and your mad? Or He doesn't exist and you can relax, knowing there will never be any unpleasant encounter between the two of you. If He's fictitious, who made up the lie, and shouldn't you rather be homicidal toward THEM. Please help me understand that you have these homicidal feelings toward this non-existant "God", yet hate Him for supposedly being just as homicidal (as you understand it) toward some men?

U/D,

Just in case you haven't noticed it yet, Gumby was using uhm uhm a literary device here. An oxy-moron. :-). He hates a guy who doesn't exist. Hahaha. He called him a bastard. So what? He's called half of the members of this board 'bastards' even though he might actually believe they do exist and few if any have taken offence. He wrote about the bible God, because he's the one (in the Western culture) that we have some recorded 'revelations' about. Maybe I'm wrong, but there's little point in teaching Gumby lessons about some other God.

Peace!

Pole

of the 'embarrassed to be a little green man's apologist' class

26

"Replacement doctrines" - things which JWs lie about to the interested ones

by Pole in

depending on the denomination of their interlocutor the witnesses often claim that their religion is free of a whole bunch of non-sensical doctrines which are so common in other religions.

oftentimes, however, it proves that they have something that i'll call "replacement doctines" - beliefs which which are difficult to figure out for the 'interested ones', but which in the long run prove to be just as bad as the stuff they disclaimed or worse.

example: in a catholic country like poland, jws often boast about the fact that they don't have the confession routine, where a person has his/her sins forgiven by a priest who acts as a representative of god.

Pole

Bebu and Justin,

Exactly. When you think of it it turns out as a JW I used to "present my beliefs in a favourable light" (=lie). This applies to almost every fundamental belief the JWs have. It's so tru of all totalitarian systems. Remember Orwell's Animal Farm?

1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.

2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.

3. No animal shall wear clothes.

4. No animal shall sleep in a bed.

5. No animal shall drink alcohol.

6. No animal shall kill any other animal.

7. All animals are equal.

Yeah, right.

Pole

26

"Replacement doctrines" - things which JWs lie about to the interested ones

by Pole in

depending on the denomination of their interlocutor the witnesses often claim that their religion is free of a whole bunch of non-sensical doctrines which are so common in other religions.

oftentimes, however, it proves that they have something that i'll call "replacement doctines" - beliefs which which are difficult to figure out for the 'interested ones', but which in the long run prove to be just as bad as the stuff they disclaimed or worse.

example: in a catholic country like poland, jws often boast about the fact that they don't have the confession routine, where a person has his/her sins forgiven by a priest who acts as a representative of god.

Pole

LOL @ U/D.

Pole

64

I don't understand this

by embeth2525 in

hi, iv'e never been able to understand the reasoning behind why god did this, genesis 11:1-8 why would god be threatened by people wanting to build a city.

perhaps someone can answer this for me.

beth

Pole

U/D,

All I said is that we don't find "primitive" simplistic ancient languages, rather fully developed all encompassing vocabularies that are able to convey the full range of thought and emotion. This of course tends to support the idea that a "God" made man originally with the ability for verbally expressing himself both literally and on paper (or pottry or cave wall, whatever)

OK, now it's clear. I thought you were saying some ancient languages surpassed modern ones, bacause of this part of your post:

Highly complex languages that many linguists say surpassed modern language in it's ability to convey thought and feeling much more precisely, for one.

PeacefulPete,

I'm not a linguist by any stretch but that makes no sense. Human languages are evolving systems of communication. Relationships can be traced thru linguistic connections. Some very simplistic languages do bestow extremely limited means of transmitting complex thought.

I am afraid you're wrong. Could you give me one example of a simplistic human language which is used as a native language (apart from pidgins and some creols which are not naturally acquired in the sense native languages are)? That no "primitive" human languages have ever been observed is one of linguistic universals taught in the first class of any course in linguistics.

This usually is not required in the simple environment and lack of education of the language's users.

You see, language is highly repetitive in its form. You can use one literal meaning to make a dozen metaphors. This doesn't make the grammar of a language a single bit complex. To the contrary, many languages (like English) have lost a lot of their original morphology as they have gained more metaphorical meanings.

Earliest written language was little more than simple symbols representing concepts like, man, fire, gods, etc.

This doesn't tell us anything about human language. The fact that a person cannot write or that a person uses symbols has nothing to do with the ability to use a highly complex language.

Ceturies later the symbols became a concept in itself, representing a sound that could be used to form an endless variety of spoken words.

Again the history of writing has very little to do with the biological origins of language. If anything, it tells us that over the last couple of thousands of years the grammars of recorded languages have become much less complex than they used to. This doesn't mean that the languages we speak today are inferior of bastardized, but it doesn't mean they're more complex either.

Animal language, with syntax and notion of narrative exists in at least some of the higher species.

Now, that's interesting. I'd love to know the references, so if you have any, please let me know.

Cheers,

Pole

64

I don't understand this

by embeth2525 in

hi, iv'e never been able to understand the reasoning behind why god did this, genesis 11:1-8 why would god be threatened by people wanting to build a city.

perhaps someone can answer this for me.

beth

Pole

USD,

CF- Highly complex languages that many linguists say surpassed modern language in it's ability to convey thought and feeling much more precisely, for one.

I'm not sure how exactly this can be proved. The only evidence that comes to my mind is connected to the phonological, morphological and syntactic complexity of ancient languages. It's true that almost universally languages have dropped cases, inflections and even phonemes more often than they "introduced" new ones. Whether this means that ancient languages were more precise than modern ones is highly questionable, however. Polish has seven cases for nouns, whereas English has (at best) only two. Does that make Polish "surpass" English in any respect?

Many aspects of the grammars of "exotic" languages of Native Americans are much more complex than the lingo of German philosophers. Does that make Native American thinkers better than German ones?

Leolaia,

There is no linguistic evidence of a single original language, much less one that existed as recent as the third millenium BC....

That's true. Diachronic comparative etymology (tracing back the origin words from different language to the same proto-language) only makes sense within a number of unrelated major language families, some of which you mention.

Another thing is that this is how some Flood apologists explain the fact that there are only a few historically separate language families. They say God made them up from scratch at Babel and from then on they developed naturally into the many different historically related languages we know today.

This of course doesn't make any sense if you seriously consider the timescale given in the Bible though and the rest of the Genesis stories. Anyway I did enjoy this hypothesis as a JW.

Pole