Terry

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Posts by Terry

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  85

  "And what happened next was simply unbelievable!"

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i always sit in the same spot, just outside starbucks in a vestibule area with a table in the air-conditioned space.

  i say "always," but not today.. somebody with two laptops and a table filled with business ledgers was in "my" favorite spot!.

  so, i took a tiny wooden table inside the coffee shop on a long padded bench next to 3 other identical tables.. as the clickbait banner ads like to say: "and what happened next was simply unbelievable!".

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  Terry

  Much thanks
• 
  18

  WATCHTOWER'S basic premise is false (i.e. copy the earliest form of Christianity and you get it 'right')

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  watchtower's so-called 'scholars' (excuse me while i throw up) have a basic premise they have always worked under.

  namely, the earliest form of christianity was the purest and least corrupt.

  by trying to pattern jw's after this earliest form of "purity of christian doctrine" the so-called truth is supposed to emerge.. well--apparently this is a false premise, according to bart ehrman.. _____.

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  Terry

  Christianity, with its 40,000 denominations, is more than skilled at compartmentalizing disparate elements of reality into walled-off ghettos of hermetic contamination.

  The true believer tiptoes around in Hazmat gear, gingerly avoiding facts which falsify the f premises they choose to regard as beyond proof.

  This is not merely a Christian phenomenon, it is a human psychological survival mechanism allowing us to create an alternate world worth living in in case the cruel real one indicates we aren't going to survive.
• 
  22

  Inspiration, inscripturation

  by Doug Mason in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  the apostle paul stated at 2 timothy 3:16: all scripture is inspired of god.

  the phrase inspired of god translates the compound greek word theopneustos, meaning, literally, god-breathed or breathed by god.

  this is the only occurrence of this greek term in the scriptures.

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  Terry

  I could be wrong, but in my lifetime (68 years) I've seen a secularization of just about all the mainstream churches which has allowed them to squirm inside the strait-jacket of Biblical inspiration.

  In a Modern, technological, Scientific age, only the Amish and orthodox Jews and Muslims appear to be mentally chained to a rigid other-world of ancient reliance on texts divorced from practical day-to-day life.

  True, Fundamentalist evangelicals give lip-service to inerrancy--but you'll notice they live very much a modern life with all the trappings--quite a contrast to the Amish, et al.

  By the same token, there is a trend in evangelical churches to radicalize themselves into becoming "Preppers" awaiting the final blow from heaven. Mormons and JW's are headed off into a mental 'field of lost shoes.'
  
  A phrase which actually turns my stomach these days is, "The Bible says. . ."

  So much baggage is attached to this untenable fantasy of textual transcendence, (none of which can be demonstrated) that it instantly identifies the speaker as delusional.

  Doug Mason has aptly demonstrated the intention of the Watchtower organization to have it BOTH ways. By establishing Bible text as an inspired effort entirely frustrated by copyists and restored by latter-day FDS trance-channeling, they hit both target audiences: the strict inerrancy-addicts and the GB loyalists.

  Like it or not, Christians have to face (if not directly) an asserted inspired text ruined by copyists with strong tendencies toward "explication" creating bogus and corrupt versions of orally transmitted opinions.
• 
  18

  WATCHTOWER'S basic premise is false (i.e. copy the earliest form of Christianity and you get it 'right')

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  watchtower's so-called 'scholars' (excuse me while i throw up) have a basic premise they have always worked under.

  namely, the earliest form of christianity was the purest and least corrupt.

  by trying to pattern jw's after this earliest form of "purity of christian doctrine" the so-called truth is supposed to emerge.. well--apparently this is a false premise, according to bart ehrman.. _____.

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• 

  Terry

  The Watchtower gangsters also threaten your life if dare step outside their narrow framework. Armageddon is a bludgeon and disfellowship is a shun gun.
• 
  18

  WATCHTOWER'S basic premise is false (i.e. copy the earliest form of Christianity and you get it 'right')

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  watchtower's so-called 'scholars' (excuse me while i throw up) have a basic premise they have always worked under.

  namely, the earliest form of christianity was the purest and least corrupt.

  by trying to pattern jw's after this earliest form of "purity of christian doctrine" the so-called truth is supposed to emerge.. well--apparently this is a false premise, according to bart ehrman.. _____.

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  Terry

  Bart continues in today's Blog post:

  " Most textual critics back when I started (and probably still today) considered the variants found in our manuscript (that is, the changes from the original, at least so far as we can judge) to be simply chaff to be discarded on the way to finding the kernel of wheat in the pile. What mattered was the original reading (the wheat). Everything else was simply an alteration of the text, a corruption (the chaff.

  I came to think that this simply did not have to be the case. The alterations were interesting in and of themselves. They should be studied not simply to help us know what the authors originally wrote, but also to see how (and why) scribes changed the text the way they did.

  That may not seem inherently interesting at first (in fact, it did not usually seem interesting for many centuries), but it was, and is, interesting to me. Here is one reason why: we have very little primary source material for what Christians were thinking and believing in the second and third centuries. All of our sources that do survive from the period were written by the very best educated, most highly placed, elite Christians. We are really handicapped in knowing anything beyond what these sources tell us about Christian beliefs and practices.

  What if we uncovered another set of sources not written by such highly educated elites? Sources that could reveal information about Christianity during the period. That would be *terrific* for our understanding of Christianity in the period.

  And I came to realize that this is precisely what we have in the manuscripts of the New Testament. The people who copied them were of course more highly educated than most people. But they weren’t the very upper-crust of the literary elite. If we could detect their interests, concerns, problems, practices, and beliefs, it would enable us to learn more about a period of great interest, the time between the NT writings and the conversion of Constantine, and then the empire, in the fourth century. That could be really interesting. Or so I thought. And continue to think."
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  21

  Sheep who mate in front of stripey trees will produce stripey offspring

  by purrpurr in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  genesis 30:37 leaving aside the whole "joseph cheats laham out of his flock" issue.

  one passage of scripture that i've missed until now is 30:37 where it says how joseph got all the sheep to be stripey etc ( btw have you ever seen a stripey sheep?

  cos i certainly haven't!).

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  Terry

  Rule of thumb: the Bible means what it says and says what it means----UNLESS . .

  we later discover what it says is glaringly preposterous. At that point, the Bible means what we interpret it must have meant by deconstructing the statements into mere words.

  Sort of like Jesus returning and every eye shall see him.

  JW's managed to make him completely invisible!

  ________________

  The Bible is woefully ignorant of any underlying scientific principles. The history of the world is ignorant of science until the 17th century.

  The bounden duty of the religious zealot is to straddle the bottomless chasm between the words of scripture and contradictions implicit in contemporary understanding of basic science.
• 
  85

  "And what happened next was simply unbelievable!"

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i always sit in the same spot, just outside starbucks in a vestibule area with a table in the air-conditioned space.

  i say "always," but not today.. somebody with two laptops and a table filled with business ledgers was in "my" favorite spot!.

  so, i took a tiny wooden table inside the coffee shop on a long padded bench next to 3 other identical tables.. as the clickbait banner ads like to say: "and what happened next was simply unbelievable!".

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Terry

  I have been watching daily to catch these guys when they return. So far, I've not seen either of them or the Mormons.

  Of course, I am not sure how to continue the conversation. I should have something prepared, but I do find it more freeing if I just go with the flow of conversation, alert to opportunity.

  I'm quite curious if these guys ever mentioned it again to each other or somebody else. I'm curious if they did any research. Sadly, I imagine they simply let it go and never thought about it again!
• 
  126

  If THIS MAN were a Jehovah's Witness 2 million babies would be dead

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  james harrison has magical blood.. specifically, his blood contains an extremely rare enzyme that can be used to treat babies dying of rhesus disease.

  if you've never heard of that disease and figure it's not a big deal, well, wait for the numbers.. harrison, being a generous type, has donated his rare, life-saving blood roughly 1,000 times over 56 years.

  this has saved the lives of--seriously, you're not going to believe this--over two million babies around the world.. .

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  Terry

  I like to keep a copy of the newspaper article handy because of what it represents: one small intervention is a ripple effect on a vast life and death scale.

  It's good to view the Society's blood policy in terms of CONSEQUENCES rather than martyr-hero dialogue.

  Stop and think about it, a parent only risks their own judgement by Jehovah if they permit a child to receive blood. An innocent child would not be old enough to make a life and death moral choice. Consequently, what can we say about a parent unwilling to lay down their OWN life (open themselves to Jah's retribution) on behalf of their beloved child?
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  18

  WATCHTOWER'S basic premise is false (i.e. copy the earliest form of Christianity and you get it 'right')

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  watchtower's so-called 'scholars' (excuse me while i throw up) have a basic premise they have always worked under.

  namely, the earliest form of christianity was the purest and least corrupt.

  by trying to pattern jw's after this earliest form of "purity of christian doctrine" the so-called truth is supposed to emerge.. well--apparently this is a false premise, according to bart ehrman.. _____.

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• 

  Terry

  Assuming certain things for the sake of argument. . .

  Whatever Jesus taught or preached was strictly an oral message.

  What people heard was either understood or misunderstood; confused and garbled.

  At each point, somebody shaped an opinion based on expectations, tastes, ideology, and preconceived ideas.

  The viral transmission of Jesus' essential communication was ever and always one on one, one to one, AS FILTERED through the understanding (misunderstanding) of the teller and the hearer.

  Repeat this degradation process thousands of times until somebody writes it down and BOOM! We're off to the races.

  At this point, we are on square one.
• 
  18

  WATCHTOWER'S basic premise is false (i.e. copy the earliest form of Christianity and you get it 'right')

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  watchtower's so-called 'scholars' (excuse me while i throw up) have a basic premise they have always worked under.

  namely, the earliest form of christianity was the purest and least corrupt.

  by trying to pattern jw's after this earliest form of "purity of christian doctrine" the so-called truth is supposed to emerge.. well--apparently this is a false premise, according to bart ehrman.. _____.

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  Terry

  CalebInFloroda6 hours ago

  It does seem illogical and contrary to basic JW thinking to claim that the earliest form of Christianity is the most pure or correct--especially since JWs teach that the truth of Christianity cannot be fully understood until the Last Days.

  _______________________

  J-Dubs imitate Systematic Theology and the work of others, largely by filtering and rejiggering.

  Their efforts have proved to be illusory and self-destructing over and over. Consequently, in this age of the WWW, the only strategy left at their disposal is

  the historic ruse and a grand magisterium of revealed 'truth.'

  What the Prophetess Ellen White did for Adventism is now what the GB is for the witlesses.