Posts by Terry

19

The best surgery for men, Hernia surgery.

by James Mixon in

jw
friends

i had one two weeks ago, i'm fine.

but how nice it was not to lift anything over.

10 pounds.

Terry

I feel your pain! Nothing is more uncomfortable than feeling your intestines slipping down into your testicles!

This should cheer you up:

When I was a teen, I developed a bilateral inguinal hernia (both sides) from my job as a bricklayer's assistant.
I elected to try and repair it with sit-ups on an incline board and weights behind my neck.
Everybody told me I was crazy--but--I did not want surgery.

After 6 mos. of daily situps (three times a day!) I had managed somehow or other to strengthen my lower abdomen enough I no longer had the detectable slippage!

Here is the ironic part. My doctor had diagnosed me as needing surgery about the time I was fighting with the Draft Board and the Selective Service. By the time the Army doctor examined me, I no longer had detectable hernias!
If I had NOT done all those exercises, I probably would have failed my Armed Forces medical exam and wouldn't have had to go to prison! But I passed the exam, and the rest is--unfortunately--history!

To this day, I've not experienced any problems again. I do continue to do situps. . . just in case!

18

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

by Terry in

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.. _____.

Terry

A microcosm of the contention is illustrated by the apostles arguing over who would sit at Jesus' right hand in heaven.

Those apostles didn't seem too bright or intellectually redoubtable.

4

Free DEBATE in Dallas between Bart Ehrman and Dr. Justin Bass Friday 9-18

by Terry in

https://www.facebook.com/events/1666142046937367/.

from ehrman's blog:.

for anyone in the dallas area: on friday (two days!

Terry

Bart has posted debate materials (video) on his blog with the proviso it not be shared publicly. Perhaps somebody who attends and uses a cellphone might upload to YouTube.

I'd love to go, but without a car the trip is too problematic on a bicycle :)

4

Free DEBATE in Dallas between Bart Ehrman and Dr. Justin Bass Friday 9-18

by Terry in

https://www.facebook.com/events/1666142046937367/.

from ehrman's blog:.

for anyone in the dallas area: on friday (two days!

Terry

https://www.facebook.com/events/1666142046937367/

From Ehrman's blog:

For anyone in the Dallas area: On Friday (two days! Sept. 18) I will be having a public debate with Justin Bass, a Christian apologist and pastor with a PhD from Dallas Theological, on the question “Did the Historical Jesus Claim To Be Divine?” Dr. Bass thinks the answer is YES. I think the answer is NO. It should be an interesting back and forth. If you want to hear the arguments, come and see it. Free admission. And my arguments will be worth every dime you pay to hear them. (It will be at Collin College at 6:30 pm)

85

"And what happened next was simply unbelievable!"

by Terry in

jw
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!".

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

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.. _____.

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

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.

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

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.. _____.

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

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.. _____.

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."

21

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

by purrpurr in

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!).

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.