Posts by Terry

7

MAYBE GOD DID MAKE "Adam and Steve" after all!

by Terry in

here is the box containing what we think we know:.

let’s think outside the box.

god is invisible but he made man in his “image.” what does an invisible image look like?.

Terry

AD HOC arguments by fundamentalists crack me up

10

ARE JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES SUSPICIOUS, CYNICAL and WRONG? IF SO, WHY?

by Terry in

the intellect gives us our powers of conception, judgment, and free choice in the way which has separated humanity from the rest of the animal kingdom.

it really works and this is proved by the fact we are out of the food chain dominating all other species.. however, be warned!

human intellect is not a perfectly functioning machine.

Terry

"I have finally found somewhere with others like me, who genuinely enjoy helping others."

Then it is a strange dissonance to discover Jehovah's Witnesses refuse to do any of the following:
Meals on Wheels, battered women's shelters, build hospitals, establish orphanages, build schools or universities, offer scholarships, create charities for non-JW's.

Yet, the other denominations which Witnesses call "false" and "Satanic" do all those things and more.

Which speaks louder: actions or words?

7

MAYBE GOD DID MAKE "Adam and Steve" after all!

by Terry in

here is the box containing what we think we know:.

let’s think outside the box.

god is invisible but he made man in his “image.” what does an invisible image look like?.

Terry

HERE IS THE BOX containing what we think we know:

Thinking outside the box.PNG

LET’S THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX

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GOD IS INVISIBLE but he made man in his “Image.” What does an invisible image look like?
Man was made from (depending on translation) dust, clay, or mud. Logically, the 1st human was mud in the invisible image of God.
All humans have 46 chromosomes but sex is determined by only 2 of them X and Y.
Males have one X and one Y. Females have 2 X’s.
Eve was constructed from Adam’s DNA (using his rib)
Eve had to be a clone of Adam. If God duplicated Adam’s X chromosome to make 2 X’s Even would be Female, but still related in every way to Adam. Why?
She would share the other 44 chromosomes with him. This would make her a Fraternal Twin.

ADAM married his sister!

OR

ADAM married his clone.

But wait!

Where in the Bible do we find the “wedding ceremony” of Adam and Eve?

Eve is called his “wife” but in what sense could a brother and sister marry and not produce idiots for children?

FUNDAMENTALISTS say: “God made Adam and Eve--not Adam and STEVE.”

However, we know that any sample of DNA from a person is specific to that person and does not change. That fact is helping to solve crimes, establish paternity and are getting people released from death row. Since the source material came from a dude, Adam, then the sample would be an exact genetic match for Adam.

Gulp!

That means that God did make Adam and STEVE!

66

THE LINGERING SHADOW OF '75

by Terry in

none of you are old enough to have been there, i suspect.

i had been in prison two years as a jw conscientious objector when the exciting news about 1975 spread like wildfire.i was paroled from prison in 1969 and immediately began pioneering.

the pressures began mounting throughout the organization.

Terry

1975 was 41 years ago.

I think Adam has had plenty of time alone.

When will Eve come along?

With identical DNA, (it is Adam's own rib) his wife will be a clone, directly related to him in every way. Their children will undoubtedly be a Cryptozoologist's dream come true.

10

ARE JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES SUSPICIOUS, CYNICAL and WRONG? IF SO, WHY?

by Terry in

the intellect gives us our powers of conception, judgment, and free choice in the way which has separated humanity from the rest of the animal kingdom.

it really works and this is proved by the fact we are out of the food chain dominating all other species.. however, be warned!

human intellect is not a perfectly functioning machine.

Terry

There's no such thing as hijacking on my threads. They are for whatever useful purpose they can serve. Discussion topics are ice breakers, in my view. So, feel free to jump in any time.

10

ARE JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES SUSPICIOUS, CYNICAL and WRONG? IF SO, WHY?

by Terry in

the intellect gives us our powers of conception, judgment, and free choice in the way which has separated humanity from the rest of the animal kingdom.

it really works and this is proved by the fact we are out of the food chain dominating all other species.. however, be warned!

human intellect is not a perfectly functioning machine.

Terry

I have never been lied to by who I am studying with and have always been told to go and make my own mind up.
____________________

Not to put too fine a point on it: Lying is saying the opposite of what you believe to be true.

Your JW study is not aware they are communicating non-factual information.

Let's move on to the relevant matters for consideration.

1. Statistically, you have a 1 in 40,000 chance of finding the "True" religious denomination in Christianity alone. (That's approximately how many different "true" interpretations have given rise to all those denominations.)

2. Where is your skepticism over the inescapable fact that every Christian is looking at the very same data (Bible) and coming to separate conclusions? Red Flag! Can this be a signal to your intellect that something just possibly might be wrong with the data itself? If you say, "No" you'll have to explain why. There is an ancient book compiled by a Greek fellow named Euclid back in the 4th-century B.C.E. The Encylopedia says: "His Elements is one of the most influential works in the history of mathematics, serving as the main textbook for teaching mathematics (especially geometry) from the time of its publication until the late 19th or early 20th century."

Here is the difference between this manmade book and the Bible. (Pay attention) Every person from every society on Earth arrived at exactly the same conclusions about Euclid's theorems and axioms without contradictory opinions arising in 20 centuries. Do you see why the Bible is problematic and Euclid's Elements are not?

3. Being treated well is no indicator of fact. It is a social courtesy. Choose any group of weird beliefs and you'll find kind people who are friendly. Here is the TEST of that kindness and friendly treatment. IF YOU become a JW and discover their doctrine is corrupt and you speak out about it--you will NOT be able to withstand the negative treatment of shunning without an emotional scar. Your "friends" will instantly push a little button inside of their head and you'll be viewed as a filthy apostate unworthy of prayers and you'll deserve to die at Armageddon. Does that sound healthy or sane?

4. Being open-minded sounds nice, but do you have the same policy about your car door or the front door to you home? Isn't having a lock a healthy skepticism of the existence of bad intentions in some people who might take advantage of those open doors?

5. Take a close look at the Venus Fly Trap. It is filled with sweet nectar which is appetizing and non-threatening to the fly until he is all the way in and the ill-fated victim is slowly dissolved inside.

Jehovah's Witnesses are required to be 100 percent LOYAL to their leader's interpretations (frequent mind-changers) no matter how radical. You will have no individuality, human rights or freedom of speech or access to your personal conscience once you are inside.

The history of this religion is a highway littered with wreckage and broken promises.

______________________

Why do you assume you are able to detect the existence of CULT behavior when you have absolutely no experience of having been inside one?

Cults are distinguished by the CONTROL they exert over your life, your language, your friends

your reading material, you private life and every thought you will ever think.

If thousands and thousands of pedophiles protected with a veil of secrecy doesn't convince you of the covert

secrecy and dishonesty of Jehovah's Witnesses, maybe you need to ask yourself why that doesn't seem to

matter to you.

You have a choice today because you are not a member. Once you are inside, you will have NO CHOICE except

the one of complete obedience and subservience.
I spent two years in prison convinced I was serving God. I was wrong. I was serving the whims of men.

10

ARE JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES SUSPICIOUS, CYNICAL and WRONG? IF SO, WHY?

by Terry in

the intellect gives us our powers of conception, judgment, and free choice in the way which has separated humanity from the rest of the animal kingdom.

it really works and this is proved by the fact we are out of the food chain dominating all other species.. however, be warned!

human intellect is not a perfectly functioning machine.

Terry

The intellect gives us our powers of conception, judgment, and free choice in the way which has separated humanity from the rest of the animal kingdom. It really works and this is proved by the fact we are out of the food chain dominating all other species.

However, be warned! Human intellect is not a perfectly functioning machine. It will not function properly if it processes raw data corrupted in any way or incomplete. As any computer engineer will tell you: Garbage in = garbage out.

Honesty is seeing things as they really are--then dealing with them realistically

INTELLECT REQUIRES HONESTY or the human animal goes astray into suspicion, cynicism, false conclusions and a brooding herdlike dependence.
_________________________

INTELLECTUAL HONESTY says: "I am willing to be wrong if the facts go against even my most cherished beliefs."

Ask yourself this question: ARE YOU WILLING TO BE WRONG?

Without a willingness to be wrong (who can always be right?) no room for personal growth is possible.

You can't climb from the bottom of ignorance to the top of wisdom without a vast stairway of many levels requiring many steps. To move up, you must abandon the lower steps to reach the highest ones.

MAN'S GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT IS PROGRESS THROUGH SELF-EXAMINATION

HOW DO WE AVOID BEING INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST?

1. LISTEN TO PEOPLE with whom you disagree. Really listen. Why? Because you were once a Jehovah's Witness and had all the answers and all the Truth--but you were dead wrong. You tuned out what others said when they objected to your certainty WHAT IF YOU HAD DONE YOUR OPPOSITION RESEARCH with an OPEN MIND? Still-in JW's refuse to hear what their opposers say automatically contemptuous and suspicious. We cannot afford to be deaf, blind and stupid the second time. You have nothing to lose but your smug complacency by listening to your opponents.

2. TEST YOUR SOURCES. When we were Jehovah's Witnesses we thought the Bible (and ultimately, Jehovah) was our source of knowledge, truth, and wisdom WE WERE WRONG! We had become blind to the startling fact it was all coming from FALSE PROPHETS pretending to channel Truth from heaven. Had we listened to CRITICAL ANALYSIS by actual Bible Scholars (instead of letting the GB do it for us) we'd quickly have become alert to problems with authenticity in the scriptures themselves. A red flag would be the wake-up call.

3. BECOME A RATIONAL, NON-CYNICAL SKEPTIC. When we were Jehovah's Witnesses, we sneered at all human society except for the New World society. Why? JW's are taught to be untrusting, suspicious, dark-minded and smug. However, a rational thinker looks for data, facts, and solutions from any source as long as it's testable and peer-reviewed without bias.

4. STUDY CONTROVERSIAL SUBJECTS by reading opposites sides of the debate. When we were Jehovah's Witnesses our reading and viewing material was censored. The label of "worldly" poisoned research. Independent thinking was forbidden. This left us vulnerable to emotional manipulation. The quotations published in JW reading materials were filtered, clipped and rendered corruptly so contrary viewpoints by neutral authorities would not reach us with potency. When we study any topic, we need to know what opponents EACH set forward, to examine the data set, and become aware of the weakness on BOTH sides.

5. SELF-AWARENESS of your limits. Face the fact you are flawed, subjective, ill-informed, unskilled and over-confident while at the same time thinking you are objective, intelligent, and smarter than most others. THAT'S HUMAN NATURE. Get over yourself! As Jehovah's Witnesses, we considered ourselves as sharp, quick-minded experts on absolute truth. We were dead wrong! But old habits die hard. Cultivate humility and seek to become aware of just how dumb being a JW has made you! Without humility no persona can learn. Your opinion is important to YOU but everybody else thinks you're an idiot. They are probably partially right some of the time :)

6. LEAVE ROOM FOR DOUBT. Have you ever met a JW Elder who left any room for doubt that what he was saying was the be-all and end-all of knowledge? Weren't you that way at one time?Next time you offer an opinion try ending your sentence with room for doubt. "Your mileage may vary, of course" is a phrase I try to cultivate. You remind yourself you aren't a damned expert. It invites others to sharpen your remarks with additional and perhaps more accurate commentary. If you are so cocksure--you shut out your only chance to receive correction for smarter people. Doubt your facts and you'll seldom end up wrong. If you are skilled at debate it is an especially easy trap to fall into sounding like you are an encyclopedia of wisdom when actually you're only a deft counterpuncher.

7. EXCHANGE HOPE for FAITH and you'll avoid ignorance and heartbreak. What Hope offers is a positive and confident mental attitude which reassures an outcome while simultaneously leaving room for the possibility things won't turn out. On the other hand, Faith destroys objectivity and forces delusional dependence on wishful thinking which can destroy you when it falls apart. As Jehovah's Witnesses, we discovered this in 1975. Read the following quotation and try not to gasp at the insanity of what is being offered to millions of Jehovah's Witnesses looking forward to 1975.

8. AVOID PERSONAL ATTACKS and rely on facts. The Jehovah's Witness first line of defense against their enemies is to label them "mentally diseased", wicked, Satanic, worldly and Apostate. Instead of rationally listing objections and methodically offering counter-proofs as refutations, the Governing Body exposes themselves to be weak, dishonest and tyrannical. If you are on the side of genuine truth, you should be able to defeat wrong statements with sources factually accurate. You know an opponent is out of ammunition as soon as they revert to name-calling. The number one signal of a dishonest debate is the attempt to shut down all two-way discourse by a pejorative label. Look for the word "ridiculous" because it can often reveal an empty rebuttal.

9. LOGIC is essentially a test of NON-CONTRADICTION. As Jehovah's Witnesses, our view of Truth was crippled by constantly changing absolutes. If something is true, it doesn't need changing from one certainty to its own opposite certainty. This is why Science is provisional and constantly seeks tests of falsifiable principle. In the last few years, the religious denomination of Jehovah's Witnesses had been erased and redrafted WITHOUT ANY MEMBERS NOTICING. Why? Their rational mind is like a house with the burglar alarm wire cut by burglars. They are intellectually defused, blind to the many contradictions with previous core 'truth.'

________________

Having no clear view of alternatives, Jehovah's Witnesses are blinded. On top of that, having a smug self-assured attitude has made them closed off to the possibility of being self-deceived. Finally, by refusing to open themselves up to the possibility of being wrong, they refuse to self-examine for intellectual dishonesty. This has rendered the members of this religion very depressed, nervous, fearful and blocked from their native potential to lead healthy and happy lives.

No progress is possible for JW's until they become humble enough to be wrong when the facts go against them.

66

THE LINGERING SHADOW OF '75

by Terry in

none of you are old enough to have been there, i suspect.

i had been in prison two years as a jw conscientious objector when the exciting news about 1975 spread like wildfire.i was paroled from prison in 1969 and immediately began pioneering.

the pressures began mounting throughout the organization.

Terry

Naoscillator17 minutes ago

Terry, I know somebody who knew Lonnie Payne

___________________

I bet I know that somebody as well!

21

THE SHADOW OF 75 still hangs over us all . . .

by Terry in

few of your are old enough to have been there, i suspect.

i had been in prison two years as a jw conscientious objector when the exciting news about 1975 spread like wildfire.. .

i was paroled from prison in 1969 and immediately began pioneering.

Terry

I often wondered about those who were imprisoned as a conscientious objector .Did you have family who were J.W.`s and supported you ? Or were your family not J.W.`s and wondered about your decision .?

How did you cope with your imprisonment for 2 years ? Obviously you were still a firm believer , after coming out you went and pioneered .

_______________________

None of my family were JW's, nor were they churchgoers. They thought I was insane. They were right :)

My Mom and Stepdad drove once a week from Ft.Worth to Seagoville to the Federal Facility for visits. Of course, I spent that time witnessing to both of them!

At one point in prison, there were about 40 of us (J-Dubs) in for the same thing. We had formed 2 congregations and had 5 meetings a week.
I began studying with a small group in a private study with a brilliant Brother named Tollie Padget. We went through all the old publications in depth and began learning the "deeper things."

I would sneak into the Catholic rectory when the rest went to eat at the Mess Hall. Why? There was a grand piano in there. I had always wanted to learn how to play. So, instead of eating, I taught myself piano.
Every inmate is assigned a work detail for the purpose of keeping the Federal facility as self-sustaining as possible. I was assigned to the Construction crew which was not aptly named. We broke down old walls and smashed the bricks into tiny bits, we excavated roads, flipped hundreds of bags of cement; grunt work is what it was.

(Note: That isn't my face on the cover. That was the first drawing I ever did when I was High School.
I chose that drawing because my ability as an artist is what really led me to break away and seek a career in California instead my janitor job in Fort Worth earning minimum wage.)

It took me a helluva long time, but I finally wrote the whole story in my book. You can find it on Amazon.

"I WEPT BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON (A Prisoner of Conscience in a Time of War)

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http://www.amazon.com/Wept-Rivers-Babylon-Prisoner-Conscience/dp/1492902063/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457199368&sr=8-1&keywords=I+wept+by+the+rivers+of+babylon

98

OKAY, GAME OVER! The number one reason the New Testament amounts to bunk

by Terry in

for me, the dead giveaway is this.

jesus wrote nothing.. stop and think about that.. if jesus were the authentic messiah, his ministry would not simply be local.. his instructions, his mission, the details of his teachings would be too precious to risk leaving it in the hands of "men unlettered (illiterate) and ordinary (blue-collar yokels).".

jesus, were he the one and only hope of mankind, would be absolutely certain to write down with great simplicity and specificity the exact owner's manual necessary to rescue mankind.. never happened!.

Terry

The Book of Revelation was made scripture three centuries after the death of Christ.
"Traditionally attributed to St. John, most Biblical scholars now recognize its literary style and its theology has little in common with John's gospel or his epistles and was likely written after his death. Martin Luther found the vindictive God of Revelations incompatible with the gospels and relegated it to the appendix of his German translation of the New Testament instead of the body of scripture. All the Protestant reformers except Calvin regarded apocalyptic millennialism to be heresy."

The above is merely a sticky note to remind you how truly Ad Hoc our beloved New Testament really is. Consequently, pouring your entire life and every waking thought into an unexamined belief in your own particular interpretation of the Bible is practically suicidal. At the very least, it is a wasting of your time. Time= Life.