Posts by slimboyfat

the chinese news agency published these images (and a few more today) they are among the clearest i've seen of these reclusive animals.. the explanatory caption notes: .

photo taken on oct. 22, 2017 shows a snow leopard at three-river-source national park in northwest china's qinghai province.

china is home to between 2,000 and 2,500 snow leopards, which roam across the provincial level regions of xinjiang, tibet, qinghai, gansu, sichuan, yunnan and inner mongolia.

slimboyfat

I saw them in the highland wildlife park. Beautiful animals. I like all kinds of cats. They've got lynx too and Scottish wildcats.

http://www.highlandwildlifepark.org.uk/animals-attractions/animals/snow-leopard/

83

Leaked 2018 Elders Training Video RE: Elders Reviewing Pionieers

by pale.emperor in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhq5viughny&feature=youtu.be.

quite frankly im disturbed at the lack of love and compassion.

especially for the first sister they talk about!.

What a stupid video. Is this really a good use of anyone's time and effort? What's the glory in being called a "pioneer" anyway? Surely one of the emptiest titles ever devised. I guess it means a lot to sisters, who can't attain any other sort of title in the organisation.

Isn't it a bit odd that one of the elders is treating the other two elders like his students. "Will you read this paragraph and see the direction?" Like he knows all the answers already and needs to lead the other two in the right direction. What if none of them read the instructions carefully?

Then they agreed they didn't want to upset the old sister by suggesting that she stop pioneering. But "out of respect for the letter" they must offer her this option. But they need to talk to the CO first.

Oh man, what a waste of time. It's excruciating. It seems that some elders think this sort of direction is so loving and wise. But aren't there better things they can do with their time than sit around evaluating hours, regulations, allowances, excuses and titles? It's so empty it's depressing.

Just thinking about the time and effort involved in all this nonsense: making the rules in the first place, making the video to illustrate the rules, gathering the elders to watch the video, elders discussing and applying the rules in their congregations, informing the pioneers of their decisions, pioneers begging not to be deleted, elders thinking again, elders consulting Circuit Overseeers, pioneers getting depressed and talking to others about being deleted, elders discussing bad atitudes toward their decisions and directions. And on and on and on: endless empty nonsense. Get a life.

340

Calling Cofty and others regarding evolution

by dubstepped in

jw
friends

so i have started down the path of trying to understand evolution, and to get the linear lies that the jws planted in my head out of it.

i bought an audiobook called "evolution: what the fossils say and why it matters" by donald prothero.

i heard it recommended on an atheist podcast that i listened to.

slimboyfat

It doesn't seem as if Christadelphians believe all animals were vegetarian before the fall from what I gather.

110

References to YHWH in ancient documents

by Doug Mason in

page 15 of awake!

2017 provides an image that shows hebrew writing with the statement: “the personal name of god written in ancient hebrew characters appears abundantly in early manuscripts of the bible”.. alongside that image, the awake!

provides a listing to show “the rendering of ‘god’s name’ in various languages”.. the facts do not support either assertion that the watchtower society makes:.

slimboyfat

Emanuel Tov is indeed an excellent scholar to read. In particular I liked reading his introduction to the text/textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible. He came out supporting Iao as original in the LXX in an essay in this book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bible-Book-Transmission-Greek-Text/dp/0712347275/

I think Frank Shaw's thesis (less expansive than his later book) is available online somewhere, but I can't find it right now!

13

Jolene Chu and James Pelechia?

by Gorbatchov in

jw
friends

20 years ago there was some change at the jw bastion.

some windows were opened when the internet became availble.

jolene chu and james pelechia did historical research for watchtower and published about it.

slimboyfat

Carolyn Wah too.

Yeah Wroebel wrote some really interesting stuff on his website and took it down again. I wish I had saved it!

Did you know Pellechia wrote a history of JWs in Ohio? A google search will bring it up.

And JWs have recently collaborated with outside scholars on a multi volume history of JWs in Europe edited by Gerhard Besier.

340

Calling Cofty and others regarding evolution

by dubstepped in

jw
friends

so i have started down the path of trying to understand evolution, and to get the linear lies that the jws planted in my head out of it.

i bought an audiobook called "evolution: what the fossils say and why it matters" by donald prothero.

i heard it recommended on an atheist podcast that i listened to.

slimboyfat

No it’s this one. It’s got good pictures too.

http://www.thechristadelphian.com/cals_evolution_or_design.htm

Still can’t find it. I need to organise my books.

The critique doesn’t mention the black mamba, which actually I find morbidly fascinating.

340

Calling Cofty and others regarding evolution

by dubstepped in

jw
friends

so i have started down the path of trying to understand evolution, and to get the linear lies that the jws planted in my head out of it.

i bought an audiobook called "evolution: what the fossils say and why it matters" by donald prothero.

i heard it recommended on an atheist podcast that i listened to.

slimboyfat

I think this page has the same or similar content to the booklet I can't find, although my booklet was specifically about evolution.

http://www.thechristadelphian.com/is_there_a_god_online.htm

Let’s take a different line of argument. Consider for a moment the Black Mamba. This is an African snake which obtains its food by injecting a deadly, paralysing poison through hollow, curved fangs into the bloodstream of its victim. Once it has ceased to struggle, the snake engulfs the whole body into its flexible throat. Setting aside how the snake came by its highly complex toxin, we need to consider how it developed the hollow fangs down which the poison flows from a gland high in its skull into the flesh of its prey. If evolution is true, we have to assume that originally the teeth were solid, but became hollow over a long period, say millions of years. How exactly does a solid tooth become hollow? I asked an atheist recently how he explained this. ‘Oh!’ he said, ‘at some point a snake was hatched that had a small depression in one side of its tooth. In later generations this became a groove, and eventually the groove closed over to make a tube.’ This might sound plausible, until you consider the basic tenet of evolutionary theory that changes that are of no immediate service to the individual are eliminated. A hollow somewhere on the tooth would add nothing to its usefulness. Only if in the same snake there were several hollows in a line would there be a slight added efficiency. And those hollows would need to be in a line pointing downhill. A line running round the circumference of the tooth would be useless. The probability of an individual snake experiencing a whole series of such drastic mutations to the structure of its tooth simultaneously would seem vanishingly small. And then it only ends up with a groove. How did the groove close over to make a tube? Until that time most of the venom would be wasted, since it would not penetrate the flesh. Even then, the snake would still only possess one fang with a tube. But it has two fangs, each of which needs to be hollow.
What we are saying is that when you get down to the detail of what is needed for evolution to work, it becomes much simpler to assume that a God out there designed a working snake complete with poison and fangs, which He then set down as a predator in the great pyramid of life. We could multiply this example with a thousand others: the tear drain in the human eye — a minute tube that runs through the thickness of the eyelid; the migration of the New Zealand cuckoo across open ocean to the tiny islands of Vanuatu; the clotting of blood — essential for us to survive the smallest cut and yet remaining liquid while passing through the capillaries of our arteries — the whole of nature has mechanisms and structures that cry out ‘design’! Such brilliant inventions do not, in our experience, arise out of random events such as chance mutations in our reproductive cells.

340

Calling Cofty and others regarding evolution

by dubstepped in

jw
friends

so i have started down the path of trying to understand evolution, and to get the linear lies that the jws planted in my head out of it.

i bought an audiobook called "evolution: what the fossils say and why it matters" by donald prothero.

i heard it recommended on an atheist podcast that i listened to.

slimboyfat

I'll need to find it, I don't know where I put it. But from memory it says that the black mamba has two sets of fangs because they break easily when used against struggling prey. So when the first set breaks the second set can be used. It argues that there would be no use for two sets of fangs that are incomplete, or some intermediary stage, therefore they must always have existed fully formed.