slimboyfat

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Posts by slimboyfat

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  17

  Dr. James Penton - goin' up yonder dirt nap

  by Nathan Natas in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i saw a post on reddit by "big_routine1112" announcing that james penton died.. well, there's always the resurrec... oh, nevermind.. as always, the person expressing the most profound grief and dismay wins!.

  "he was my friend" .

  "there will never be another of his ilk".

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  slimboyfat

  Nathan Natas

  I note you haven’t given an example of plagiarism from Penton’s book. I’ve got Penton’s book and White/Wills’ book here. If there is any plagiarism it would be very easy to check. Can you give us the page numbers?
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  33

  Historian and former JW Jim Penton dies

  by slimboyfat in

  1. social
  2. current

  i don’t know a lot about james penton but i think he deserves a better thread than the one currently on offer.

  james penton, who died recently, grew up in a jw family in canada and served as an elder.

  unusually for a jw, he studied liberal arts at university and became a history professor.

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  slimboyfat

  Yes, I’ve read it, or most of it - it’s a long book with some dry patches.

  The research and writing is by Rud Person. James Penton contributed a foreword and complimented Rud Person on his research and the end product.

  I’m not entirely sure what to make of the book. It has a lot of interesting information, for sure, and its central thesis that Rutherford took control of Watchtower illegitimately, a familiar claim among former JWs, is supported in some detail with reference to contemporary documents. The whole matter seems complicated and the discussion is dense. I think it would require more concentration and follow-up on the references than I was able to give to it for a conscientious reader to determine whether the case is convincing. The book has interesting features including mini biographies of some of the key figures and appendices that provide interesting additional material including an interview with old Bethelite recalling his time at headquarters during Rutherford’s presidency.
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  171

  Alteration of Revelation 3:14 in the 4th century to support the emerging Trinity doctrine

  by slimboyfat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  in an earlier thread another poster asserted that there is no evidence that revelation 3:14 played a part in the 4th controversy that led to the trinity doctrine.

  this was claimed as evidence that the description of jesus as “the beginning of the creation of god” in the verse was not understood to mean that jesus was god’s first creation.

  the scholarly greek–english lexicon of the new testament & other early christian literature 3e (2001) by bauer, arndt, gingrich, and danker, in its latest edition states that “first creation” is indeed the probable meaning of the greek phrase.

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  slimboyfat

  What I find most telling is that early Christian writers were perfectly happy to apply the phrase “the Lord created me” from Prov 8.22 in Greek to Jesus. Only in the 4th century did this become a problem in light of the emerging Trinity doctrine, and only then were various strategies developed for avoiding the implication that Jesus was created. These strategies generally took three forms: 1) the verse was only talking about Jesus’s humanity (Athanasius’s favoured explanation, but it is almost never exhibited nowadays), 2) the Hebrew word doesn’t mean “created”, and 3) the passage is only a personification of Wisdom and should not be understood as applying to Jesus. Again, none of these arguments were made before the 4th century. Earlier Christians accepted the phrase “the Lord created me” at face value as it was in harmony with who they understood Jesus to be.
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  7

  GB's latest prophecy is already wrong!!!

  by nowwhat? in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  at the annual meeting they said god will put it into the nations hearts to give their power to the united nations.

  now that trump and the republicans have won, the united states will never give up their sovereignty to the u.n. !

  trump has total disdain for the un, who and wef!

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  slimboyfat

  When I was in high school we were taught the Marshall plan was all about reconstructing Europe after the war and was an altruistic gesture by the United States. When I got to university and studied modern European history we were presented with the thesis that the Marshall plan’s main goal was to secure a foreign market for American consumer goods and to establish United States hegemony in Europe and globally.

  When Germany and other European states began to look to Russia for its oil and gas in recent decades they were warned off by the United States. Nevertheless they carried on against the wishes of the United States until more drastic measures were required and somebody blew up the gas pipeline from Russia to Europe.
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  20

  JW WOMAN VOLUNTEER CRUSHED BY A WALL AT A KINGDOM HALL PROJECT

  by raymond frantz in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  https://youtu.be/1skm8riz7qc?si=ww3ej9orl_91db4w.

  the construction of a new jehovah’s witnesses kingdom hall in cybinka, poland, has once again shed light on the watchtower organization’s relentless drive to expand its real estate empire on the backs of unpaid, vulnerable volunteers.

  every day, around 40 jehovah’s witnesses show up at the construction site, some traveling long distances, not for pay or proper protection, but to fulfill a sense of “spiritual duty” instilled by the organization.

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  slimboyfat

  The volunteer, who suffered injuries and was hospitalized, reportedly expressed a desire to return to the site—a sentiment born not from personal motivation, but from a culture of indoctrination and guilt.

  How do you know? I’m tired of snide comments like this. They add nothing to the analysis whatever.
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  164

  How did JWs arrive at a clearer understanding of what the Bible teaches than other Christian denominations?

  by slimboyfat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  for jws who believe that jehovah had a hand in reviving the truth in the nineteenth century this is enough explanation for how jws managed to achieve a closer approximation to early christian beliefs and practices than other groups.

  but is there an explanation for this phenomenon that doesn’t rely on supernatural intervention?

  new testament scholar james dunn explains the difficulty of interpreting the biblical texts in this way:.

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  slimboyfat

  The 19th century was a time of pseudoscience,medical quackery and blatant, un-regulated false advertising.

  A bit like the 21st century then, only less so. 😁
  
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  17

  Dr. James Penton - goin' up yonder dirt nap

  by Nathan Natas in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i saw a post on reddit by "big_routine1112" announcing that james penton died.. well, there's always the resurrec... oh, nevermind.. as always, the person expressing the most profound grief and dismay wins!.

  "he was my friend" .

  "there will never be another of his ilk".

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  slimboyfat

  You can’t plagiarise an idea. Farkel started a thread about Rutherford having mistresses and Penton mentioned Rutherford’s possible infidelities very briefly in his book on the Third Reich. Penton’s source for this was apparently Larc, who was also the source for Farkel. Maybe Farkel thought he should get some credit for writing an entertaining thread that brought up some things that many didn’t know but that some already did know. That’s a pretty tenuous basis for claiming plagiarism. In fact, tenuous is not the word. It simply isn’t plagiarism because you can plagiarise an idea, and in this case it isn’t even clear that Penton didn’t get his information from someone else, possibly the same source as Farkel. Farkel was a very entertaining and intelligent character. He was also quite eccentric and a bit of an egomaniac, if we are being real.

  Farkel seemed to think that because Larc told him a story about his aunt and Rutherford and Farkel wrote a thread about it, therefore Larc had no right to tell Penton about it and Penton had no right to reference it in his book. That’s pretty nutty, right?
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  7

  GB's latest prophecy is already wrong!!!

  by nowwhat? in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  at the annual meeting they said god will put it into the nations hearts to give their power to the united nations.

  now that trump and the republicans have won, the united states will never give up their sovereignty to the u.n. !

  trump has total disdain for the un, who and wef!

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  slimboyfat

  What Trump says and what he does doesn’t always match. He talked about leaving NATO but actually succeeded in forcing the others members to pay more. Was that the plan all along? Maybe that’s crediting him with too much strategic nous, but maybe not.

  Besides, he’s only there for four years, which is like what, a couple of minutes to Jehovah, no?

  I’m more worried about what he’ll do with Iran, because Netanyahu clearly thinks he can get America under Trump into a war with Iran. Netanyahu was also eerily confident Trump would win when many others didn’t expect it. Did he have an inside track through intelligence?

  Plus Trump raised expectations so high that he could make a deal to end the Ukraine war, what if it goes wrong and Trump feels he needs to “stand up” to Putin to save face.

  Predicting the future is a fools game now more than ever.
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  2908

  It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars (continued)

  by Simon in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  uh oh, looks like the mega thread gave up the ghost, so while i investigate / fix it just continue the discussion here .... it's been a long 9 years lloyd evans / john cedars.

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  slimboyfat

  Wow I watched the video (and remembered to give a dislike) - that was a laugh. LE thinks I need reassuring that Trump winning wasn’t my fault personally. Wow, thanks for that, I think.

  I wonder if on some level LE recognises Trump as a fellow narcissist and identifies with him.

  Somebody gave a good Frank Zappa quote in the comments, but I wonder if they recognise it applies just as much to the Democrats as the other side:
  

  "Government is the entertainment division of the Military Industrial Complex." Frank Zappa
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  17

  Dr. James Penton - goin' up yonder dirt nap

  by Nathan Natas in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i saw a post on reddit by "big_routine1112" announcing that james penton died.. well, there's always the resurrec... oh, nevermind.. as always, the person expressing the most profound grief and dismay wins!.

  "he was my friend" .

  "there will never be another of his ilk".

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  2. 
  3. 
• 

  slimboyfat

  Plagiarism is not a matter of opinion and is pretty easy to confirm or refute. What part of “Apocalypse Delayed” is supposed to plagiarise what part of “A People for his Name”? Let’s have a look and see either way. If I recall correctly, “Apocalypse Delayed” does cite and reference “A People for his Name” a number of times, as well as offer a positive review of the book in the annotated bibliography. We’d be looking for significant wording or structural dependence outside direct quotes. It’s perhaps unfair that Penton’s book became much more popular than White’s book, considering how good White’s book was, but that’s not plagiarism. And if your major complaint against Penton is that he remained a Christian, then I have to point out that White’s book also appears to evaluate JWs through the lens lf someone who still has faith in the Bible, perhaps even more so than Penton’s book in fact. Maybe White changed his views in later years, but in the book itself he apparently took it within his remit to evaluate the scriptural arguments of JWs.