Posts by Jeffro

299

Who told the first lie?

by nicolaou in

this is a continuation of the discussion which sprang from an unrelated topic.. so according to genesis, who told the first lie?

god told eve that if she ate from the tree of knowledge she would die that very same day.

in response to that statement the devil told her she would not die.. eve ate from the tree and did not die.

Setting aside the Christian retrofitting of the Enkidu and Shamhat… sorry… Adam and Eve story, it was God who told the first lie. After Adam and Eve eat the magical fruit of one tree, God has to take action to prevent them eating from a different magical tree. It is directly stated in the story that it is the fruit of the other magical tree that imparts eternal life, not refraining from eating the fruit of the first tree. (All of the quibbling about what day ‘really’ means is just a distraction.)

But the Christian mangling of the story is so tangled in knots that they can’t unravel what parts are supposed to be literal and what is metaphor. Kind of pathetic really. It’s not a very complicated story.

46

August WT: DF'ing renamed "Removed." AKA: GB re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic

by WingCommander in

jw
friends

so: the mystery has been clarified as to more "new light" / clarifications of decades old doctrine and procedure.

august watchtower has finally been leaked.

disfellowshipping?

Jeffro

NotFormer:

The change in 2005 was probably to deflect a possible rise in defamation suits against elders and possibly the GB as heading up the whole defamatory machine.

Saying someone ‘has been disfellowshipped’ isn’t more defamatory than saying ‘no longer one of jehovah’s witnesses’, and both are food for the rumour mill. The change was more likely to obfuscate whether a person was disfellowshipped, decided to disassociate, or was told they had ‘disassociated by their actions’. If anything, it may be more defamatory if someone leaves because they know it’s not ‘the truth’ but people decide the person is a pedophile or something instead.

9

Lithuania Rejecting Elevated Religious Recognition of WTS?

by blondie in

jw
friends

here is an article about wts/jws regarding religious recognition in lithuania.

it says it may not be granted at the level the wts applied for partly based on rejecting unarmed alternative service rather than being "drafted.

" can you read it and tell me you come to the same conclusion?

Jeffro

Bitter Winter is not a reliable source. Cult apologetics for pay.

22

August issue is now up on JW.com

by ozziepost in

just a heads up that the english version with the changed cover is now up on jw.com.. i haven’t yet read it but if any you have the time i’m looking forward to people’s insights.. in the meantime i must find a red 🍷.

cheers,.

ozzie (of the ‘is he still here?’ class ).

Jeffro

Drearyweather:

But isn't that what Paul says: "keep this one marked and stop associating with him". There is no question of deciding whether to associate or not.

Yes, Paul is a dictatory jerk about It. But at least he doesn’t pretend (for legal reasons) that it’s a ‘personal decision’.

299

Who told the first lie?

by nicolaou in

this is a continuation of the discussion which sprang from an unrelated topic.. so according to genesis, who told the first lie?

god told eve that if she ate from the tree of knowledge she would die that very same day.

in response to that statement the devil told her she would not die.. eve ate from the tree and did not die.

Jeffro

slimboyfat:

The Bible itself says Satan was the original serpent and the first liar.

Fallacious argument from authority, fallacy of composition.

The Christian Bible says that. But it’s just because a later work retrofits a character from an earlier work without regard to the actual development or original purpose of the source material, not because any of it is actually true.

The Hebrew Bible doesn’t say the snake is Satan at all though.

So if you don’t care whether something is actually true, then yes ‘Satan is the first liar’ according to Christianity (duh). But it’s only true to the extent that it is an entirely mundane and pointless unfounded assertion.

299

Who told the first lie?

by nicolaou in

this is a continuation of the discussion which sprang from an unrelated topic.. so according to genesis, who told the first lie?

god told eve that if she ate from the tree of knowledge she would die that very same day.

in response to that statement the devil told her she would not die.. eve ate from the tree and did not die.

Jeffro

sloppyjoe2:

Do you have any article links where they talk about it? I currently can't find much at all about it.

Not at the moment. It’s tedious searching on mobile. If I feel like it tomorrow I might post something. Or you could find it yourself.

299

Who told the first lie?

by nicolaou in

this is a continuation of the discussion which sprang from an unrelated topic.. so according to genesis, who told the first lie?

god told eve that if she ate from the tree of knowledge she would die that very same day.

in response to that statement the devil told her she would not die.. eve ate from the tree and did not die.

Jeffro

sloppyjoe2:

after Armaggeddon, no one would die of old age or sickness

Sort of, but it’s a bit more complicated than that (because it’s nonsense). They do kind of say that being murdered by God would be the only reason anyone would die after Armageddon. But because of their made up distinction between ‘immortality’ and ‘everlasting life’, the official position is that people on earth would still need to eat and breathe etc to stay alive, meaning they could otherwise still die. So they just don’t really talk about it.

299

Who told the first lie?

by nicolaou in

this is a continuation of the discussion which sprang from an unrelated topic.. so according to genesis, who told the first lie?

god told eve that if she ate from the tree of knowledge she would die that very same day.

in response to that statement the devil told her she would not die.. eve ate from the tree and did not die.

Jeffro

sloppyjoe2:

Don't JWs believe that for the entire millennial reign, humans will be growing back to perfection?

Yes (though the Bible doesn’t say that). See also What does the Bible really teach about the 1,000 years?

But you said JWs believe that people won’t die anymore after Armageddon, which is not what they believe.

299

Who told the first lie?

by nicolaou in

this is a continuation of the discussion which sprang from an unrelated topic.. so according to genesis, who told the first lie?

god told eve that if she ate from the tree of knowledge she would die that very same day.

in response to that statement the devil told her she would not die.. eve ate from the tree and did not die.

Jeffro

slopplyjoe2:

Speaking of the tree of life. It reappears in Revelation 22. Since the Bible indicates this is the way Adam and Eve would live forever, I conclude that that is the way God in Revelation 21 makes “death no more.”

It isn’t so much a ‘reappearance’ as unimpressive plagiarism of the story in Genesis and rehashed imagery from Ezekiel.

JWs believe that people won’t die after Armageddon.

No, they say that people won’t die (unless they do*) after a final spate of killing by God after a ‘final test’ after the 1,000 years, though the Bible refers to a final attack by enemy nations rather than a ‘final test’. And they get everything else wrong about (what the Bible says about) the 1,000 years too.

*The Watch Tower Society allows for God to “annihilate” anyone who ‘sins’ after the ‘final test’ (The Watchtower, 15 August 2006, p. 31), but suggests it would be “very unlikely”.

299

Who told the first lie?

by nicolaou in

this is a continuation of the discussion which sprang from an unrelated topic.. so according to genesis, who told the first lie?

god told eve that if she ate from the tree of knowledge she would die that very same day.

in response to that statement the devil told her she would not die.. eve ate from the tree and did not die.

Jeffro

slimboyfat:

According to the Bible the devil is “the father of lies”. It’s fair enough reading Genesis in different ways (many, including Christadelphains, see no devil there at all) but in terms of the Christian Bible’s own interpretation of itself, it is clear the devil was the first liar.

Sure, if we pretend the Bible is actually this homogeneous consistent thing rather than the reality that it is stories built on stories built on stories.

The snake in Genesis is derived from the snake in the Epic of Gilgamesh. There was no 'Satan the Devil' at the time Genesis was written (during the Neo-Babylonian period, but also definitely not if one wants to pretend it was written even earlier). Satan (as an individual rather than a generic concept) was borrowed from later Persian beliefs.

It hardly matters that Christians later decided that their stories represent the Bible 'interpreting itself'.