Posts by Pole

145

New here

by Delta20 in

jw
friends

my name is jaron, 19 years old, i'm from the netherlands, and in about a month i am going to start joining the jw's meetings and i'm kind of looking forward to become a jw.

i can of course tell ya'll my entire spiritual story, but that would take an entire bookwork.

in a nuttshell: my father is an ex-jw, my half-sis (from an earlier marriage from my dads) is one of those "special pioneers", and i am jewish (my mom is jewish).

Pole

Hi Delta,

If you read the top article you see that JW can now safely use the hemoglobin substetute for actual blood. What is wrong with doing that? If you can have either a blood transfusion or a sibstitute, and you know its wrong taking blood itself, then why not take the substitute?

Actually you're wrong. It's not the substitue. It's real hemoglobin.

There's nothing wrong with that. The problem is this doctrine has nothing to do with what the Bible says on the issue. As the doctrine changes people die. That's what's wrong. Jehovah's witnesses lie when they say they make personal decisions about blood. Most of them don't even understand their current position.

It's a bit more tricky - like many other issues in the WTS religion which are so patchy and contrived that a newbie needs a few months to figure out what's wrong - if he/she ever manages to. Meanwhile you get a "bible study" and baptism.

You just need some more time to research the site, dude. Take your time. It's worth it. Actually - you've noticed one of the good sides of this site - it's written in the best interest of the witnesses.

Just one question for now. How can you prove the current WTS stand on blood is bible based? If donating blood is a breach of what the Bible says, then why can the JWs benefit from it, by accepting fractions of real blood?

Pole

145

New here

by Delta20 in

jw
friends

my name is jaron, 19 years old, i'm from the netherlands, and in about a month i am going to start joining the jw's meetings and i'm kind of looking forward to become a jw.

i can of course tell ya'll my entire spiritual story, but that would take an entire bookwork.

in a nuttshell: my father is an ex-jw, my half-sis (from an earlier marriage from my dads) is one of those "special pioneers", and i am jewish (my mom is jewish).

Pole

Delta,

Take a good look at this site:

http://www.ajwrb.org/

Pole

67

Pivitol Date Stuff

by IP_SEC in

i dont "get" the whole 1914 thing.

the 'prophetic rule'?

day fer a year?

Pole

Furuli tries to bend the Hebrew language to his bidding, even inventing new verb forms and language constructs to further his agenda.

Actually, that seems to be his main research area.

2003 info from the cover of his book:

"Rolf Furuli is a lecturer in Semitic languages at the University of Oslo". He is working on a doctoral thesis which suggests a new understanding of the verbal system of Classical Hebrew. He has for many years worked with translation theory and hs published two books on Bible translation."

So the guy didn't even have a PhD in 2003 but he's working on one in which he suggests "a new understanding of the verbal system of Classical Hebrew". could that have something to do with his agenda? (Well, let's see if I can get mine first - but the guy must be around 50 judging by his photo, so I hope I'll do better than that).

I'm not really interested in Bible chronology and its metaphysical implications as I think it can be refuted at a very fundamental level, but I was once assigned to a project of translating his book "Persian Chronology and the Length of the Babylonian Exile of the Jews" (Volume I) . It was just before I lost interest in the "Truth" so I only translated half a chapter.

Furuli sent a few copies to another brother who supervised the project. I think they even finally got it translated after I left their team.

Anyway, if anyone is really interested, I can ship it to you as I don't need it anymore. For free . It contains a number of grammatical and stylistic errors and I hope his Hebrew is better than his English, but after all it is in English and you may want to have it.

Anyone? PM me.

Pole

4

WTS supports evolution

by Pole in

no mistake here.. funkyderek wrote on another thread: for the genesis account to be literally true would require a mutation rate 25 - 40 times that which is observed.

ironically, to be a creationist, one would have to believe in a much faster rate of evolution than any biologist would believe.

that reminds me of a thread from a few months ago where the issue of flood was brought up.. i remember i was really surprised to read that the wts suggests such a hypothesis of post-flood speedy evolution, whose rate far exceeded that of any evolution theory suggested so far.

Pole

No mistake here.

funkyderek wrote on another thread:

For the Genesis account to be literally true would require a mutation rate 25 - 40 times that which is observed. Ironically, to be a creationist, one would have to believe in a much faster rate of evolution than any biologist would believe.

That reminds me of a thread from a few months ago where the issue of flood was brought up.

I remember I was really surprised to read that the WTS suggests such a hypothesis of post-flood speedy evolution, whose rate far exceeded that of any evolution theory suggested so far. Yes, folks, the WTS supports hyper-speed evolution:

*** it-1 pp. 164-165 Ark ***The ?kinds? of animals selected had reference to the clear-cut and unalterable boundaries or limits set by the Creator, within which boundaries creatures are capable of breeding ?according to their kinds.? It has been estimated by some that the hundreds of thousands of species of animals today could be reduced to a comparatively few family ?kinds??the horse kind and the cow kind, to mention but two. The breeding boundaries according to ?kind? established by Jehovah were not and could not be crossed. With this in mind some investigators have said that, had there been as few as 43 ?kinds? of mammals, 74 ?kinds? of birds, and 10 ?kinds? of reptiles in the ark, they could have produced the variety of species known today. Others have been more liberal in estimating that 72 ?kinds? of quadrupeds and less than 200 bird ?kinds? were all that were required. That the great variety of animal life known today could have come from inbreeding within so few ?kinds? following the Flood is proved by the endless variety of humankind?short, tall, fat, thin, with countless variations in the color of hair, eyes, and skin?all of whom sprang from the one family of Noah.

Their notion of "kinds" is one of the dumbest concept I've seen in print (species? families? and what do those "kinds" have to do with human races?).

Anyway they suggest that only 200 "kinds" of birds, 10 "kinds" of reptiles, and 43 "kinds" of mammals were necessary to evolve into the modern thousands of separate species. And it only took a few thousand years.

If a JW can believe this, why can't they believe in much slower evolution?

Pole

17

JWD "clusters" - name one ;-)

by Pole in

this is fluff stuff.

you must have noticed posters on many threads tend to come in clusters.

whenever one of the members of the "cluster" starts a thread, another few are very likely to post on his/her thread.

Pole

The Fractals - frankiespeaking and new light.

Pole

17

JWD "clusters" - name one ;-)

by Pole in

this is fluff stuff.

you must have noticed posters on many threads tend to come in clusters.

whenever one of the members of the "cluster" starts a thread, another few are very likely to post on his/her thread.

Pole

LOL @ jgnat and mtbatoon.

And the Oral Sex cluster. They can turn any thread around to the topic of choice.

Now, who else is in this one? Or maybe I shouldn't ask them to come out, lest they turn this thread into an oral sex debate?

Pole

10

The Progress of Civilization - or How is the Modern World Getting Better?

by Pole in

do you believe our world is better than it used to be a few hundred/thousands years ago?

do we wage fewer wars?

do people feel safer?

Pole

stillajwexelder

I'm going to sound like a marxist activist, but here are a few points where the answers don't seem so obvious on a global scale:

Do people feel safer? Yes in general depending in which part of the earth we live

I guess we can't tell for sure. But I generally believe the media fulfill the modern need for constant fear. It's irrational, but it works.Think of the actual percentage of people who die in terrorist attacks compared with car accidents. But if you ask the average person if they fear car accidents more than terrost attacks, the likely immediate answer is that they fear terrorist attacks. Owe it up to the mass-media culture.

Do we have more freedom through more leasure time (or do we work less)? YES no question at all

Only at the face of it.Does more potentially free time actually mean less work? Think of how your boss would have reached you after work 60 years ago if you had no mobile and no email account?

Are we healthier? ABSOLUTELY

Yest in the wealthier part of the world.

Are we better educated? Yes in general most of the poulation on average is

I can't argue with this in general. Good education is a survival requirement.

The tricky thing about all those achievements lies in their distribution.

jgnat,

good points, but:

Treat soldiers as trainable, expensive-to-maintain employees rather than cheap cannon fodder.

If you like historical analogies, think of ancient Roman soldiers and citizens. They were privileged in a similar way many modern soldiers are. The Barbarians were considered simply cannon fodder just like 3d world citizens nowadays often are.

Pole

24

IS the GB and other Higher UP Squirreling away money from the IRS?

by frankiespeakin in

jw
friends

.

well what do you think will the all go to prision??

?

Pole

Or they would interpret it as the second/third fulfillment of the 1918 cleansing.

Pole

10

The Progress of Civilization - or How is the Modern World Getting Better?

by Pole in

do you believe our world is better than it used to be a few hundred/thousands years ago?

do we wage fewer wars?

do people feel safer?

Pole

This is a continuation of a discussion from another thread:

frankiespeaking:

It is our instinctive nature at present that causes the problems. I think there will be a big change in awareness just like the one that caused us to move farther than the apes in understanding our world. I think that perhaps 30,000+ years ago we had a more trancendant state of awareness but lost it as the ego snuck up on us.

Some say when man started makeing labels and naming everything that we lost our connection with the trancendant self and began to feel separate from everything outside our skin. This artificial separation must have increased our pain and suffering. But we find that many in the mystical practice were saying thousands of years ago that transformation of our mode of being was occuring back then and some see evidence of it excellerating in the present. It may happen in a macro evolution spurt which would be just in time if you ask me at the rate we are going in wiping out species every day.

So you do think the two types of evolution (cultural/biological) affect each other? I'm just not so sure about the speed of this interference you seem to be suggesting. I mean even in the 20th century, there were head-hunter tribes (I'm not sure if there still are). Did that have anything to do with biological evolution?

I don't think so. Much of the Western culture, at least in its popular format is a sophisticated way of covering up the same old instincts we have always been driven by.

Pole

10

The Progress of Civilization - or How is the Modern World Getting Better?

by Pole in

do you believe our world is better than it used to be a few hundred/thousands years ago?

do we wage fewer wars?

do people feel safer?

Pole

Do you believe our world is better than it used to be a few hundred/thousands years ago?

Do we wage fewer wars?
Do people feel safer?
Do we have more freedom through more leasure time (or do we work less)?
Are we healthier?
Are we better educated?
Is our culture more sophisticated than it used to be, or is it only "differently-sophisticated"?
What are the greatest failures?
What are the greatest achievements?
What about the distribution of those achievements?

These are all questions about the state of affairs on a global scale.

Ok, I've asked some monumental questions. I hope this thread is not going to be a monumental failure ;-).

Pole