Posts by New Worldly Translation

36

What do you think the biggest danger to the end of mankind or earth is?

by free2beme in

jw
friends

i love watching shows on the history channel, discovery channel and so on.

they had this program on the other day, on the ten biggest threats to mankind and the planet earth.

surprisingly, none of the items on the list were god destroying mankind or the earth, so that must be further evidence that the witnesses were wrong, go to college now and retire.

New Worldly Translation

I'm glad nobody said man made black holes cos that's junk science. Black holes could hypothetically be created in the Large Hadron Collider due for launch in 07 but they'd be so short lived due to hawking radiation they would pose no threat at all.

An interesting hypothesis put forward by Richard Muller and others is Nemesis. The majority of stars in the galaxy are twin stars so statistically the sun should have a twin in orbit, probably a red or brown dwarf beyond the oort cloud. It's orbit would bring it close to the inner solar system at regular intervals and it's gravitational pull would drag comets, asteroids etc with it which would bombard the planets and help explain the intervals of severe impacts followed by calm and the regular occurrences of extinction on earth.
Some satellites due to launch in the next couple of years should prove or disprove the theory.

22

Do you think Saddam really believed in God?

by Confession in

apparently he repeated the phrase, "god is great," before being executed.

he also wrote this in his final words to the united states.. could a man such as he really believe in god?

what do you think?.

New Worldly Translation

Sorry, but God's character doesn't relish in killing the innocent, literally destroying people's lives and oppressing people.

I suggest you re-read the old testament.

In regards to Saddam I think the term secular has to be taken in context. Saddam didn't run Iraq as a theocracy and the government was non-fundamentalist but although secular compared to the region it was still Islamic in tone. Most commentators described Saddam as a religious muslim though less than orthodox, although he often became more openly devout when it suited him politically.
I have little doubt that his more openly Islamic views since 2003 were a calculated move. His statements on the way to the gallows were done to ingratiate himself to the religious uprisers and portray himself as a muslim martyr.

15

unexplained biblical wierdness...

by LtCmd.Lore in

a recent post about moses got me thinking about all the wierd things in the bible that are just stated, but never explained.

sure different religions make up excuses for these things, but for some reason god and/or the bible writers, didn't find it neccesary to explain it.. here's one of my favorites, it's the one with the talking donkey: .

22 and the anger of god began to blaze because he was going; and jehovahs angel proceeded to station himself in the road to resist him.

New Worldly Translation

I think the story of Noah takes the biscuit as the most provable nonsense in the bible. The only way apologetics for the story explain it is by having god use his powers to gather the animals, stop the animals eating and pooping, keep alive fresh water and salt water fish, transport the animals across the continents after the water subsides and group those that live in symbiotic relationships, alter the geological structure of the earth etc etc etc
The question therefore is why would god send a global flood when there were 100 easier ways to accomplish his task.

The story of god halting the sun and moon in the sky for Joshua to finish his murderous rampage is a ludicrous story too. The moon seems somewhat superfluous to requirements but I suppose because the ancients thought everything revolved around the earth, stopping the heavens necessarily meant the sun and moon stopped together.

The story of Lot and his daughters getting him horny in his sleep and getting jiggy is funny. Actually the adventures of Lot are pretty risqué, there's incest, sodomites, raping of virgins, murder.

I'm sure someone will have posted a link to this before but it's a pretty cool site for weird stuff in the bible

http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com

101

Saddam executed

by frozen one in

jw
friends

now what'll happen?.

.

New Worldly Translation

I don't think Saddam's execution will make much difference to the situation. While lots of Iraqi's will be glad he's dead this demonstration of justice will do nothing to bolster their opinion of the Iraqi government as they have no real power, only what's given to them.

20

What is the deal with Moses? A rant on absurdity in the Bible.

by Morocco in

jw
friends

the other day i was reading about moses and i came to the very popular part of the golden calf.

but now, with a little maturity and freedom from the clutches of witness thought i can see some terrible problems with the bible.

in the beginning of exodus 32 god is talking to moses and sees that the israelites have made a calf out of gold and they are using it as their god.

New Worldly Translation

Plus, it was Satan who instigated David into doing it.

What you have to understand is that the modern concept of Satan as the devil or a fallen angel is nowhere mentioned in the OT. That view of Satan didn't materialise until the NT.
In the OT Satan can only use his power to the extent to which Jahveh allows him to or instigates him to.
The seeming discrepancy between Samuel 24, where god tells David to take the census, and Chronicles 21, where satan tells him to do it can then be understood.

20

What is the deal with Moses? A rant on absurdity in the Bible.

by Morocco in

jw
friends

the other day i was reading about moses and i came to the very popular part of the golden calf.

but now, with a little maturity and freedom from the clutches of witness thought i can see some terrible problems with the bible.

in the beginning of exodus 32 god is talking to moses and sees that the israelites have made a calf out of gold and they are using it as their god.

New Worldly Translation

Someone else also mentioned that the people were wrongly punished because they hadn't been given the tablet with the commandments so they didn't know it was wrong to make a false god. But Ex. 20:3 says: You must not have any other gods against my face. True. The people hadn't received the tablets yet but they had been already told the Ten Commandments. They knew not to do that yet they did.

You're quite incorrect. If you read chapter 20 and the previous chapter you'll see that it's a seperate commentary of the same incident of Moses receiving the commandments. The Israelites had only been out of Egypt a few months when this incident allegedly occurred and had no idea about the standards of their new god. Chapter 32 is kind of funny actually because it has Moses up and down the mountain like an olympic athlete.

I'm afraid you're one of those sort of people who read the bible in a pick 'n' mix fashion and don't actually study it in a scholarly way. When I first started to really study the bible I took every page of the bible out of the binding, cut out every seperate commentary or incident, put everything in chronological order and grouped seperate chapters describing the same story together. If you've got too much time on your hands like I had you could try it. It gives a totally new view on the scriptures.

As regards Aaron and the Levites being spared during the golden calf incident it was to be expected. Through the whole history of the Israelites during the Exodus and some time after it was a priest run civilization. You could say the priestly families had a pretty good racket going as they held the coffers, were the best fed, dressed and protected and all because they had a mystical special relationship with the almighty that the ordinary people couldn't attain to. Only they could assuage god's anger, impart his commandments or execute his wrath and so the people were held in their thrall.

20

What is the deal with Moses? A rant on absurdity in the Bible.

by Morocco in

jw
friends

the other day i was reading about moses and i came to the very popular part of the golden calf.

but now, with a little maturity and freedom from the clutches of witness thought i can see some terrible problems with the bible.

in the beginning of exodus 32 god is talking to moses and sees that the israelites have made a calf out of gold and they are using it as their god.

New Worldly Translation

Another absurdity of the golden calf story is that the people were punished for doing something they didn't know was forbidden. The israelites had been in Egypt without knowledge of the hebrew god and had no idea what his requirements were. Moses hadn't even come down the mountain with the commandments yet and they couldn't even see their wrongdoing in retrospect cos he smashed them.

The census taking by David is a strange one too. There are two conflicting scriptures about who actually told David to take the census in the first place. In Samuel it says god told him to take it and in Chronicles it says satan.

89

Post your favorite saying

by Scully in

i was just pondering how the wts has, for over a century, been able to convince people to do what is contrary to their best interests with fear tactics that armageddon is coming soon, and i came up with what is going to be my pet phrase for a while:.

"only religion has the power to compel people to embrace sheer stupidity in the name of faith.

" ~ scully, december 28, 2006. i googled it, and didn't see that anyone else has claimed it, so until someone else finds an attribution for it, i'm claiming it as my own.

New Worldly Translation

My grandad had some idiosyncratic sayings that I never knew where they came from

"There's more out than in" - Inference being that there's more mental people walking the streets than there are locked up

"Get back in the cheese" - Get off your high horse and do some graft

"Keep your sausages skinned or keep your onions peeled" - Keep an eye out for dropped change on the ground

He's got a head like a fifty pence piece!" - While watching football and a player misses heading an open goal. 50p's are heptagon shaped.

"If you put his brain in a matchbox it would rattle" - nuff said

"You can't put it where it never was" - Some people are just plain stupid

25

Confused about the JW dating system

by Wendy_Warden in

okay, so a girl friend of mine whos a jw was trying to explain their dating thing.

.

New Worldly Translation

As well as the sensible reasons from highlander it's also a clever spin on an old Woody Allen joke
Oh? Please Explain!

It was a joke that Allen had in his standup routine about Jewish girls not believing in sex after marriage.

The comments about JW's having badly matched marriages is so true. I saw so many oddly matched couples who tied the knot just because they were desperate for the sexual experience.

25

Confused about the JW dating system

by Wendy_Warden in

okay, so a girl friend of mine whos a jw was trying to explain their dating thing.

.

New Worldly Translation

There is NO sex before marriage...............and some times very little after.
Very little after? I don't understand, why would there be little afterward? Is it because of their policing of the bedroom?

As well as the sensible reasons from highlander it's also a clever spin on an old Woody Allen joke