Posts by Jeffro

77

How would you define RELIGION, and why?

by Fernando in

"judge" rutherford defined or classified all religion as "a snare and a racket" in his books "religion" and "enemies".. after rutherford's death in 1942, his protege, watchtower vice president, and aclu darling, hayden c. covington, in the early 1950's, for reasons of legal expedience and supremacist aspirations, suddenly converted the watchtower into a religion.. this was done alongside one of the most audacious, spurious and longstanding swindles of the us legal system.

this involved twisting philippians 1:7 and misrepresenting the watchtower's true nature, objectives and activities.. .

this meant that it became necessary for the watchtower to suddenly reclassify and redefine religion (w51 1/15 p. 43 new legal booklet well named; w51 8/15 p. 511 questions from readers; yb75 p. 161 part 2 "for gladys bolton...").. two new watchtower classifications were suddenly created: "true religion" and "false religion".. now "true religion" meant "true beliefs" whilst "belief" in ever changing watchtower doctrine was equated with the one "faith" of scripture.. all this while the watchtower increasingly and maliciously truncated, obfuscated and hid the liberating full "good news" (or unabridged gospel) of scripture, which it lyingly claimed (in court) that it was actually "defending and legally establishing".. how would you have defined religion before learning ttatt?.

Jeffro

Sea Breeze:

I am persuaded that people really do know God, they just don't like him even though he made great effort in trying to make friends.

So? You’re welcome to believe whatever you like, but you don’t get to decide other people’s beliefs just because an old book makes an unverifiable claim. Good grief.

And it was followed by more straw manning of evolution. For example:

How did a microbe change itself into every living thing on earth

It didn’t. And no one says it did. You’re spouting embarrassingly poor creationist arguments.

77

How would you define RELIGION, and why?

by Fernando in

"judge" rutherford defined or classified all religion as "a snare and a racket" in his books "religion" and "enemies".. after rutherford's death in 1942, his protege, watchtower vice president, and aclu darling, hayden c. covington, in the early 1950's, for reasons of legal expedience and supremacist aspirations, suddenly converted the watchtower into a religion.. this was done alongside one of the most audacious, spurious and longstanding swindles of the us legal system.

this involved twisting philippians 1:7 and misrepresenting the watchtower's true nature, objectives and activities.. .

this meant that it became necessary for the watchtower to suddenly reclassify and redefine religion (w51 1/15 p. 43 new legal booklet well named; w51 8/15 p. 511 questions from readers; yb75 p. 161 part 2 "for gladys bolton...").. two new watchtower classifications were suddenly created: "true religion" and "false religion".. now "true religion" meant "true beliefs" whilst "belief" in ever changing watchtower doctrine was equated with the one "faith" of scripture.. all this while the watchtower increasingly and maliciously truncated, obfuscated and hid the liberating full "good news" (or unabridged gospel) of scripture, which it lyingly claimed (in court) that it was actually "defending and legally establishing".. how would you have defined religion before learning ttatt?.

Jeffro

See Breeze:

Belief in unsubstantiated miracles.
Unlike Christianity where there is ample evidence for the death burial and self resurrection of Jesus

🤦‍♂️ No. And what followed was even worse.

Each step straw manned, indicating you either don’t understand, or deliberately misrepresent expert views. Add to that the theistic need for made up ‘answers’ in favour of admitting they just don’t know something. 🙄

60

The Evolution of Judas Iscariot

by Leolaia in

the story of judas iscariot in the gospels provides the reader with a fascinating picture of how the plot and details of the narratives were gleaned from the ot and embellished in different ways.

the evangelists and the tradents that preceded them looked to the ot (and other affiliated literature) for information on what happened to jesus, employing a haggadaic method of biblical interpretation similar to how rabbis and authors of pseudepigraphs in the second temple era expanded the brief stories of the patriarchs in genesis with reams of new detail and legendary episodes -- through the means of exegesis aimed to penetrate beyond a plain reading of the text to "fill in the blanks" of what must have happened.

the authors of the gospels also scoured through the ot to discover what was supposed to happen to jesus and wrote their stories accordingly.

Jeffro

I don’t think PS was referring to the esteemed Leolaia, who last commented on this thread 15 years ago (and whose absence is a significant loss to this forum). If he was referring to Leolaia’s posts, it certainly isn’t rational, due to Leolaia’s consistently excellent work, and absence. If PS is ‘tired of dealing with armchair exJW scholars’ (and wants to make up things about their motivations or subject knowledge) he’s entirely welcome to leave the forum.

PS has in different threads claimed to be Catholic, Jewish, and non-religious depending on how his views are expected to be received. But his recent remarks included a snide and unwarranted assertion that others supposedly ‘just want the Bible to be wrong’. Therefore whilst he obviously has a high degree of subject knowledge, his recent comments also betray significant personal bias.

60

The Evolution of Judas Iscariot

by Leolaia in

the story of judas iscariot in the gospels provides the reader with a fascinating picture of how the plot and details of the narratives were gleaned from the ot and embellished in different ways.

the evangelists and the tradents that preceded them looked to the ot (and other affiliated literature) for information on what happened to jesus, employing a haggadaic method of biblical interpretation similar to how rabbis and authors of pseudepigraphs in the second temple era expanded the brief stories of the patriarchs in genesis with reams of new detail and legendary episodes -- through the means of exegesis aimed to penetrate beyond a plain reading of the text to "fill in the blanks" of what must have happened.

the authors of the gospels also scoured through the ot to discover what was supposed to happen to jesus and wrote their stories accordingly.

Jeffro

PioneerSchmioneer:

Why hide a "made up fact" you worked so hard to make up? You would want people to see what you worked so hard to make up, wouldn't you?

One possible reason is well illustrated by the question itself… to make it seem more credible. It’s similar to the tedious ‘criterion of embarrassment’… as a separate example, despite the fact that Genesis was compiled in the neo-Babylonian period based on earlier Israelite and Babylonian folklore, there is the argument that ‘Moses must have been real because he included his own shortcomings’ (and also his own death in Deuteronomy but that can be glossed over easily enough). 🙄 It is essentially a parlour trick. Similarly, whilst it is possible that Judas Iscariot existed, the character seems more like a trope (the relevant events at the ‘last supper’ being particularly contrived), and apologists have to do backflips to reconcile the contradictory death stories.

60

The Evolution of Judas Iscariot

by Leolaia in

the story of judas iscariot in the gospels provides the reader with a fascinating picture of how the plot and details of the narratives were gleaned from the ot and embellished in different ways.

the evangelists and the tradents that preceded them looked to the ot (and other affiliated literature) for information on what happened to jesus, employing a haggadaic method of biblical interpretation similar to how rabbis and authors of pseudepigraphs in the second temple era expanded the brief stories of the patriarchs in genesis with reams of new detail and legendary episodes -- through the means of exegesis aimed to penetrate beyond a plain reading of the text to "fill in the blanks" of what must have happened.

the authors of the gospels also scoured through the ot to discover what was supposed to happen to jesus and wrote their stories accordingly.

Jeffro

To paraphrase PioneerSchmioneer in a previous thread, ‘you are wrong because you broke the rules’. Appeal to authority, especially one’s own authority, with no direct bearing on the content discussed is fallacious and particularly arrogant, and common among particular styles of academia where such people lose sight of a legitimate interest in truth in favour of self-importance and tradition. And he threw in some ad hominem on top for ‘good measure’, including straw manning motivations and poisoning the well. Pathetic.

It is entirely unimpressive to say a particular interpretation is wrong (or likely wrong) because it isn’t consistent with some other self-important (and often biased) interpretation. It is much more helpful to assess interpretations based on content, historical context, comparison with other sources to which the authors had access, and the probable motivations of the authors.

12

Update on Russian ban

by raymond frantz in

https://www.jwupdates.com/post/four-jehovah-s-witnesses-sentenced-to-seven-years-each-in-russia.

the following is an update in relation to the russian ban on jehovah's witnesses as it appeared on reuters on the 30th january .

jan 30 (reuters) - a russian court has sentenced four jehovah's witnesses to seven years each in prison after finding them guilty of coordinating extremist activities, according to a spokesman for the religious group.. .

Jeffro

Obrien:

This seems a religion vs religion situation, the Orthodox Church feeling threatened.

It is more about not wanting American sects in Russia. Though they probably also wouldn’t like groups that say Russia is a ’beast’ from Daniel and Revelation.

But bans just feed into JWs’ persecution complex.

48

2024 when will Witnesses admit they are wrong???

by Witness 007 in

1914 generation is long gone.

1975 was a joke 40 years ago.

i know of many witnesses still hanging on for armagedon but when will they give up?

Jeffro

Rattigan350:

How are you calling 1914 wrong without replacing it with something that can be right?

Fallacy: argument from ignorance, non sequitur. There isn’t anything ‘right’ to replace it with because the entire premise is faulty. Aside from that, it isn’t necessary to know an exact answer for something to know that a particular answer is wrong. For example, if I say the square root of 7636546745875348734744763673674 is 3, it isn’t necessary to know the correct answer to know that it isn’t 3.

10

"Beast" Memories

by NotFormer in

i've been crapping on the wt a lot lately, which sometimes seems a bit unfair to me, especially since i was never in, therefore i don't really have a dog in the fight.

to provide a bit of balance, i'll reminisce about the rampant prophecy speculation going on in mainstream christianity (i refuse to use the wt's pejorative term: "christendom", especially since by definition, they're part of that classification 🙄) in the 70s and 80s.

to be fair, the churches themselves had been around long enough to realise that end times interpretations are like arseholes, everybody has one.

Jeffro

jhine:

Someone didn't think that through .

They knew exactly what they were doing.😈 😆

78

How can Babylon the Great be the WORLD of false religion?

by BoogerMan in

(revelation 17:5) “babylon the great, the mother of the prostitutes (plural!

) and of the disgusting things of the earth.”.

btg is spotlighted as being the principal "disgusting thing" which affects christians & christianity, with other lesser "prostitutes" in the background... (revelation 18:4) “get out of her, my people, (christians) if you do not want to share with her in her sins, and if you do not want to receive part of her plagues.".

Jeffro

Sea Breeze:

(Preterism is false teaching)

Preterism is indeed false, because it (at least in its most common form) interprets parts of Daniel as being in the first century, rather than no later than 2nd century BCE.

Early Christian expectations of Jesus returning within a generation of his death were never fulfilled rather than ‘everything happening in 70AD’.

10

"Beast" Memories

by NotFormer in

i've been crapping on the wt a lot lately, which sometimes seems a bit unfair to me, especially since i was never in, therefore i don't really have a dog in the fight.

to provide a bit of balance, i'll reminisce about the rampant prophecy speculation going on in mainstream christianity (i refuse to use the wt's pejorative term: "christendom", especially since by definition, they're part of that classification 🙄) in the 70s and 80s.

to be fair, the churches themselves had been around long enough to realise that end times interpretations are like arseholes, everybody has one.

Jeffro

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.