"As for father's rights.... what rights?"
Exactly. If Joe Premature wants to keep the child, let him carry it. Maybe he should learn to pull out next time.
MuadDib
JoinedPosts by MuadDib
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91
Which massacres did Jehovah sanction?
by Spectrum inthe ones i'm familiar with are from the repercussion of the rape and murder of the levites concubine.
judges 19-21 .
about 100,000 died in battle then all the towns of benjamin were put to the sword as were the people that didn't join in against the benjamites.
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91
Which massacres did Jehovah sanction?
by Spectrum inthe ones i'm familiar with are from the repercussion of the rape and murder of the levites concubine.
judges 19-21 .
about 100,000 died in battle then all the towns of benjamin were put to the sword as were the people that didn't join in against the benjamites.
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MuadDib
Oh, and also: Herodotus' account of the Persian invasion records 1 700 000 men and 1 330 triremes under Xerxes' command. Modern historians do indeed consider that these armies are totally unsustainable and the stories are cooked over to make the Greeks look like superheroes. So these sorts of things do happen.
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91
Which massacres did Jehovah sanction?
by Spectrum inthe ones i'm familiar with are from the repercussion of the rape and murder of the levites concubine.
judges 19-21 .
about 100,000 died in battle then all the towns of benjamin were put to the sword as were the people that didn't join in against the benjamites.
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MuadDib
Good points, Spectrum. The army of Xerxes I may have approached 200 000 men, but this only serves to prove my own argument: in order to obtain this force he had to spend lots of money on gathering troops from all across his empire, in territorial terms the largest polity the world had yet seen, and very wealthy thanks to his recent reconquest of Egypt. Sennacherib could not have hoped to draw a similar number from a vastly smaller and poorer area. In addition, the Persian army had the distinct advantage of being supplied by the enormous Persian fleet that sailed along the coastline in company with them, ancient water transport being much more effective than land transport (as is the case today). Sennacherib would not have had such an opportunity.
The First Crusade also serves to illustrate my argument. By the time the Crusaders arrived at Constantinople they were broke and hungry and had to be reprovisioned by the Byzantines, without whose aid they would never have attained their objective. Who filled this role for Sennacherib? The Crusaders' march through the Holy Land to Jerusalem took two years and many of them died along the way from hunger, thirst, and disease - not even close to 100 000 of them were left by the time they obtained their objective, which is why they immediately had to be reinforced and resupplied by other expeditions exploiting the mercantile fleets of the Italian maritime cities - Venice, Genoa, Amalfi, and Pisa - which, of course, is another helpful advantage unavailable to the ancient Assyrians.
Of course outside chances can and do happen, and people are capable of powerfully ingenious feats of military engineering and logistics when they put their minds to it - but context is always vital to any analogous discussion of history.
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91
Which massacres did Jehovah sanction?
by Spectrum inthe ones i'm familiar with are from the repercussion of the rape and murder of the levites concubine.
judges 19-21 .
about 100,000 died in battle then all the towns of benjamin were put to the sword as were the people that didn't join in against the benjamites.
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MuadDib
It doesn't really matter which massacres Jehovah sanctioned because, as has been hinted at in this thread, none of them ever happened. The single example of the Assyrian army is proof enough. To begin with, the Assyrians were likely unable to muster 185 000 troops for a single campaign because such a number probably amounted to an enormous proportion of the adult male population of their empire. The ancient Middle East was so economically backward and politically fragmented that societies had to be relatively small almost by default, and this meant that large armies were simply nonexistent. Even the most sophisticated, wealthy, and populous polity of the era - Egypt - could only field an army of 20 000 men at any given time; to do more would have meant a much too drastic disruption of the normal economic and political activities that sustained these ancient societies. The loss of all these men would have meant not just the end of the Assyrian Empire but the end of Assyrian civilization - but we know that both continued for generations after Sennacherib.
Furthermore, even if the men had been available, keeping them all supplied, fed, and disease-free in the arid, primitive conditions of the Iron Age Levant would have been practically impossible. Forces of that size weren't able to mount sustained offensive operations until the early modern period, thanks to advances in medecine, logistics, and technology centuries in the making, and even then they faced enormous difficulties in keeping themselves organized, fit, and supplied enough to actually fight. Where would 185 000 troops have found enough food to feed themselves in a region characterized by subsistence agriculture in dry conditions? Even if they could have found enough in the area around Jerusalem, how would they have transported it in once they'd stripped their immediate environs bare, given the absolutely primitive conditions of land transport at the time? It doesn't make any sense.
And then there's the matter of body disposal. How did the citizens of Jerusalem deal with 185 000 corpses piled up around their city? Dealing with the problem - and it would have to be dealt with quickly before the bodies began to putrify and spread disease - would have required a monumental cleanup job made all the more difficult by the primitive technology available to them at the time. Even today dealing with the masses of victims produced by severe natural disasters or international conflicts is extraordinarily difficult and requires the diversion of many resources away from other essential activities. Where did Jerusalem get all the surplus labour? Another point: standard ancient practice was to heap up battle casualties in a giant mound and burn them, in order to prevent the contamination of water supplies and farmland and halt the spread of disease from the corpses. 185 000 corpses isn't just enough for one colossal mound - it's enough for eight or nine. Presumably these would have to have been in the immediate environs of Jerusalem. So where are they? The burial mounds of many ancient battle victims have been excavated and still constitute readily visible landmarks in many parts of the ancient world. One would think that there would have to be some evidence of these massive casualties since archaeologists have excavated so many other, much smaller mass battle graves. Yet we have none.
These are just a couple of the problems that modern science can easily find with the purported "history" of the Bible. Wax eloquent all you want about the moral quality of a God who condones the massacres of innocents; to me, it's more important to establish whether these stories are truthful to any extent at all. Short answer: they aren't.
As for abortion, I kind of like to look at the issue in reverse. If a state can prevent a woman from getting an abortion, what's to stop it from forcing her to have one? Seemingly if the state is to have greater control over her own body than she herself does, it could decide who gets to give birth when. Of course, we would never dream of allowing any level of government to force a woman to abort her child. So where do lawmakers and self-righteous pro-lifers get off forcing women to bear children they don't want?
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23
WTS News Release: New book campaign
by doinmypart innotice the wts' claims: .
"navigating the pages of the most widely distributed book on the planet" .
"based on years of research and experience accumulated in the signature work of jehovahs witnesses" .
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MuadDib
"In the 1950s, while the Watchtower Society was finally getting around to admitting vaccination was not a "devilish practice," as they had maintained for at least 18 years previous, Francis Crick was describing the structure of DNA for the first time."
Wow. There's some perspective for you! I never thought of it that way. Reminds me of the Catholic Church issuing their official apology to Galileo in 1992, following several centuries of corroboration of his findings.
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The Atheist's Book of Bible Stories - new - Bible Science
by RunningMan inwell, i'm back with a couple of new chapters.
i have been putting this one off for a long time.
so, please feel free to post any biblical science errors that you know of.
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MuadDib
corproal is right - you can always find maximalist scholars who will disagree with any of the thousands of problems that can be pointed out regarding the supposed factual inerrancy of the Bible. Of course, whether they're credible to any degree is another matter altogether. And they're not. Still, it would be fun to watch somebody try to argue that the earth really did stop rotating so Joshua could win that battle.
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anyone have/had this problem?
by lonelysam inim nearly 19, im right in the middle of leaving the borg, and i dont really know how to say this, (this is gunna sound stupid) but.. i havnt had a girlfriend for over 3 years, am still a virgin, and feel as if im never going to find the right girl for me, because i still beleive in sex after mariage.
not to mention i dont know where i stand on the whole bible thing.
now i know 19 is very young to be looking for a sort of 'serious' relationship, but im starting to feel a bit lonely, anyone have simalar problems after you left?
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MuadDib
Oh yes. I've never had a girlfriend either. Over the years I've refined my flirting skills to the point where I'm now reasonably adept at holding girls' attention and getting them interested in me, but having been brought up with such a powerfully skewed interpretation of the opposite sex I never learned how to make my move, as they say. Many times I've kind of sensed a conversation build up to that point, where I know if I say or do something in particular I might be able to get a girl interested enough to come home with me, but inevitably I'm just not sure how to do it and then it passes, and I'm alone again. It sucks. But I'm gradually feeling my way along, getting better at it, and I feel it's probably only a matter of time before I finally manage to take down a lady or two.
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Did UFO's play a part in Jesus Baptism?
by Franz inthe bible strongly suggests that the baptism of christ was a historical ufo event.
this hypothesis can be drawn from such references as "the book of luke" chapter 3 verses 21-22, matthew, chapter 3:13 and in john, chapter 1 of the holy bible.
it was after that, where christ was then taken to a place that the holy bible describes as "the wilderness.
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MuadDib
All true. In fact, the legend of alien technology was preserved in non-canonical Masoretic and Essene scripts rediscovered by the Knights Templar during the Crusades. They brought these back to Europe where the Freemasons paired the knowledge with medieval Arab alchemy to reforge the long-lost transdimensional communication link with the alien Greys. The collaboration between the two - funded in part by the Rothschilds using a cache of gold discovered under the Pyramids by following a map revealed in the shadows of Stonehenge during a partial solar eclipse in 1666 - now aims to resurrect the lost island civilization of Atlantis, the location of an interplanetary death-ray battery destroyed by the reptilian Green race during the pan-galactic wars that ravaged our world when humanity was young.
Either that or Jesus had a relevatory religious experience during an ascetic medititative retreat from his society - just like Moses, Buddha, and Muhammad. Coincidence? Probably not.
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College Anyone?
by NYCkid injust wondering who is going to college now and/or who attended college after leaving the jws.
what is/was your major and how do/did you find the experience?
do you find it difficult to choose a major?
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MuadDib
I just started my fourth year of university as a History major, which wasn't difficult at all for me to choose since I've always enjoyed reading history. I never got any scholarships (though I might receive one in the fall) but I've never had to take a loan either: I've been working at least four days a week, and sometimes full-time, since I turned sixteen, so I've paid for everything myself. But that might have to stop now that I'm moved out of my parents' house and devoting so much of my income to rent and bills.
I love university. I love the intellectual stimulation and the creative challenge of a liberal arts education. I love learning about all kinds of different things in addition to history - I've taken classes in logic, political science, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, religious studies, English, film, and geology, all of which encouraged me to think in new and exciting ways. And I love the social aspect of it too - hanging out with other young people who also like learning and discovery is awesome.
I'm really thankful that my parents (who got their degrees before they started studying with the JWs) placed a high value on education and always let me know that they expected me to attend university, whatever the WT literature said about the evils of higher education. The thought of slaving away at some miserable cleaning job for pennies to support myself at pioneering is total anathema. With any luck I'll do well enough at my Honours thesis to get into a good grad studies program and get started on a career path doing what I really love.
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King Davids Palace Found in East Jerusalem?
by skyman inhttp://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?page=article&id=1932
click on link see for yourself
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MuadDib
Given the nature of your source, I see very little reason to get excited. I seem to recall a lot of fuss being kicked up over that ossuary that supposedly belonged to Jesus' brother, only to be quietly dropped when it was revealed that the artifact had been cleverly forged. Even if this is the palace that King David lived in, such a find would hardly constitute a significant rebuttal to the very real problems with the "history" described in the Bible.