Posts by Farkel

53

What is "Right?"

by Farkel in

jw
friends

i responded to your comments on another post, but i feel this issue is just too important and deserves its own thread.. -----------------------------------------------------.

: even the most righteous believer of god would tend to quote abraham: is the judge of all the earth not going to do what is right?

(gen 18:25).

: Er, Daddy-O? What say you? If memory 'serves' me right, it was Abraham who 'opened the bidding', yes? I don't even think my Father had dealt a 'game', but when Abraham did, He condescended to 'play', yes?

I think you meant "consented." If Abraham would have condescended to God, God would have killed him just like he killed everyone else showed him condescention.

: Could He not have simply said, "Look, Abe, you don't know what you're talking about... there's less than 10 righteous folks in those cities together..."? But instead, it looks like He said, "Okay, Abe... tell you what, you find me 50... okay, 40... okay, 30... okay, okay 20... ALRIGHT TEN... righteous men... in those cities and I'll step off."

: Well, even with two ANGELS... there STILL weren't ten, Daddy-O.

It's impossible to tell for sure, Auguest. God killed all the eyewitnesses, including Lot's wife. He let survive a "righteous" man who also happened to screw his own two daughters and get them pregnant.

I don't know why you keep trying to justify all this crap. Salt lick, anyone?

Farkel

19

Is it right to get people out of the org?

by sleepy in

jw
friends

i gather that most on this forum would agree that jehovah's witneeses do not have the truth they cliam to have.. but to what degree do we inform friends and relatives who are still belivers of this.. for many (assuming they come to the same conclution) it would come as a relief , but for others could it do more harm than good?.

for instance an elder in my hall recently died from cancer which he had suffered from for about a year.. what kept him going and happy through pain and suffering was the belief that he was in the true religion favored by god and would recieve a resurection.. imagine the heart break he would had suffered if people had convinced him that the society was a sham.. imagine others say like my parents who are in their 50's and have no pension who look forward to the future paradise.. would it be right for me to covince them that thier dreams for for future are all flawed.. i am still in my 20's and i'm not the type to get depreesed and all that, but i have to admit to being gutted when the truth dawned on me that all my hopeds and beliefs were likely wrong.. but can we be certain to such an absolute degree that all that witnesses belive is false?.

do we really have the right to preach with coviction to others that they are wrong, just like we preached when we belived?.

Farkel

Boozerunner,

Good observations!

Sleepy,

: Imagine the heart break he would had suffered if people had convinced him that the society was a sham.

Imagine the heartbreak millions suffered when the society told them in 1995 after 60 years of lying about it that "this generation" is gonna a last a hell of a long time.

To encourage by silence the perpetration of the lie is to promote the lie.

Does Jehovah want people to wink at lies? Does Christ?

Farkel

6

For those who still care

by Rex B13 in

jw
friends

this is a post to my old friend, farkel, whom i have often argued with over the last three years.

it may apply to those who know me from before, when i defended the watchtower....for about three months.. don't feel sorry for me, old friend.. i am seeing the evidence of our lord in my daily walk with him.

i have seen cancer healed with no explanation from doctors as to how.

Farkel

Rex, (I guess I shouldn't call you dub-dub anymore, huh? )

I'm sure you know I have no problem with people of faith. The only time I had a problem with that was when I was dub. Their ("worldly" people) faith was demonic. MY faith was pure and wonderful. I've long since given up thinking like that.

I'm happy for you and your faith. As long as people express their faith and don't try to shove it in my face without my permission, I'm just fine. I shoved my faith in other's faces faithfully for too many years. Now I know how THEY felt when I did that.

I've known many people who've become involved in charismatic type Christianity and for many of them it works. Others eventually see that it isn't right for them. I'm no expert on physiology, but I've I've read that tremendous emotional experiences/epiphanies have been responsible for curing "incurable" diseases. Whether that is God's doing or not, I do not know. I'm only glad that such things do happen.

I know AlanF pretty darn well and I also know that HE cares for you as much as I do. He wouldn't spend the incredible amount of time he spends rebutting your arguments if he wasn't interested in you and your beliefs. He only responds to your claims of having "truth." If you made claims of merely having "belief" you'd never hear from him. Or me. He never instigates the first move. Never. He and I use similar styles of "shock treatment" in our arguments to stimulate thinking, but it is only after: either the argument is so lame that it necessitates such a tactic in our opinion or only after the arguer has first begun hurling names. Alan and I are both very sensitve to poorly-constructed arguments and red-herrings. We are smart enough to recognize that we lived too many years of our lives believing stuff we intuitively knew was garbage.

I would hope that you and Alan could get back on track and deal with the issues. Alan is well-known for treating people well if they do their best to present a decent argument. This is true even if the argument is specious. But like myself, he doesn't react so nicely when someone else draws first blood and that first blood gets personal. Another thing about Alan: he doesn't hold grudges. Why? Because he never has grudges to begin with, that's why. I hope you don't, either.

Peace and a long and happy life to you, my brother. May your new-found faith give you much joy and many rewards. We all have many choices in our path for happiness and happiness is a much better goal than spending our lives pleasing some men who think they know what's best for us when we aren't happy.

Farkel

41

Read God's Word the Holy Bible Daily

by Nicodemus in

jw
friends

for decades now, those words have appeared atop one of the watchtower societys buildings in new york city.. that exhortation may never have been more needed by jehovahs people themselves than it is today.

recent posts have asked good questions regarding what can or will sustain individual jehovahs witnesses who do truly love god, but who may be disheartened by various things they have seen in the organization.. it is clear to me that many witnesses spend far more time reading the societys publications than gods word itself.

one reason sometimes given is that the preparation and research has already been done for you, thus making it easier.

Farkel

Marvin,

: If Lot had been the type to have sex with his daughters then why did the two girls take measures to dupe him? As a thinking person, according to the text, who duped who, in your opinion?

Who was responsible for how much Lot drank? Be honest. If you argue that it was his daughters, then you would have to show that they somehow physically forced it down him against his will.

If you agree that Lot was responsible, then it was HIS responsibility for letting himself get in a position to compromise his righteousness. Therefore, he is at LEAST equally culpable and wasn't so "righteous" after all.

Farkel

41

Read God's Word the Holy Bible Daily

by Nicodemus in

jw
friends

for decades now, those words have appeared atop one of the watchtower societys buildings in new york city.. that exhortation may never have been more needed by jehovahs people themselves than it is today.

recent posts have asked good questions regarding what can or will sustain individual jehovahs witnesses who do truly love god, but who may be disheartened by various things they have seen in the organization.. it is clear to me that many witnesses spend far more time reading the societys publications than gods word itself.

one reason sometimes given is that the preparation and research has already been done for you, thus making it easier.

Farkel

Marvin,

: To me the incident speaks badly of the two girls’ morals and says little of Lot’s. Lot’s daughters dishonestly conspired to commit incest and did knowingly commit incest. Lot drank too much. You apparently believe Lot too was guilty of knowingly committing incest. If so, how do you get this from the reference?

How many people does it take to "commit incest?" One? Or more than one?

Secondly, if Lot was so drunk that he didn't know that he was having sex, not once but TWICE with his very own daughters unless he was some superhuman, it is doubtful that he could have functioned in sex well enough to get his daughters pregnant.

If, after he sobered up the FIRST time, why did he let himself fall into that same state the SECOND time? Surely there would have been enough evidence on his body to let him know what he had done, even if he hadn't remembered doing it.

If he was such a "righteous" man, any reasonable person would conclude he would have learned his lesson. He didn't learn his lesson. He turned right around and did the same thing again.

I guess elders facing criminal proceedings for raping children can now resort to the "Lot" defense: "I was drunk and therefore it was all HER fault."

One of the GB members who was aware that a prominent dub in the Org. had been caught molesting a (little) girl stated that it was such a shame that a fine man like that should get into trouble because that little girl chose to sit on his lap in the "wrong" way.

Dubs just love to blame the victims, and in the case of Lot the Bible praises the incestuous rapist as "righteous."

In all fairness to Lot though, I can have some compassion. Having sex with a "pillar of salt" cannot be all that fun. I haven't actually tried it, but I can guess it cannot be all that fun.

Farkel

53

What is "Right?"

by Farkel in

jw
friends

i responded to your comments on another post, but i feel this issue is just too important and deserves its own thread.. -----------------------------------------------------.

: even the most righteous believer of god would tend to quote abraham: is the judge of all the earth not going to do what is right?

(gen 18:25).

Farkel

AGuest,

: Abraham was asking whether my Father was going to commit an unjust act, the answer to which was no, of course not, and in fact, had there been but ten righteous men in that city, NONE would have been dealt with, for the sake of those ten.

Getting down to ten took a lot of negotiating on Abraham's part. God opened with fifty, and after two hours of serious games of Blackjack, Abraham got him down to ten. God may be good at a lot of things, but I guess he wasn't very good at Blackjack.

God killed 'em all anyway, so what the good Abraham tried to get God to do was for squat. Anyone want a chunk of salt?

But of course, God is going to resurrect them, not resurrect them, resurrect them, not resurrect them, resurrect them, not resurrect them....er, check your latest Watchtower for the newest light on who's gonna be resurrected and who isn't. It's sure to give you the truth on the matter.

Farkel

53

What is "Right?"

by Farkel in

jw
friends

i responded to your comments on another post, but i feel this issue is just too important and deserves its own thread.. -----------------------------------------------------.

: even the most righteous believer of god would tend to quote abraham: is the judge of all the earth not going to do what is right?

(gen 18:25).

Farkel

lauralisa,

: I respect you immensely and enjoy your posts!

That was very kind of you to mention. Thank you.

: My take on this account was much different: it seemed to be a encouraging example of how God would take into consideration the hurt, confused, and scared feelings of a mere human and accommodate them, whether they were "right" or "wrong".

The issue was that God wanted to kill the entire city and that would include righteous ones if any existed. In verse 21 "Jehovah" says he is "quite determined" to go down there and check things out. Doesn't this strike you as a little strange that the Creator of the Universe has to "go down" somewhere to check something out? It strikes me as strange. Why didn't he know in the first place? Why did he have to call out to find Adam in the Garden of Eden, too? Was he losing his eyesight?

Abraham stated to Jehovah that it was "unthinkable" that he should kill the righteous with the wicked, and in verse 26 Jehovah once again indicated that he didn't know if there were any righteous people in Sodom or not. First, he had to find fifty righteous people, though. So I guess he had to engage in some serious "Field Service(tm)" in order to find out what he wanted to find out. Doesn't this also strike you as strange that the Creator of the entire COSMOS wasn't SURE there were any righteous people in Sodom?

: (I guess with the "catch-all" resurrection hope thing, I was able to reconcile confusion over the doing away with entire cities of innocents. They would all come back and have ice cream any time they wanted in paradise conditions.)

Yes, I sympathize with that. I felt exactly the same way for decades, and now feel shame I could have been so cold and callous in my dub life.

: I'm looking forward to the responses to your post and wish you well.

I think jst2laws made some valid comments. At least he's willing to accept a more balanced point-of-view than those who take that story as literal and undebatable. To view it literally one would have to accept God as a wishy-washy, incompetent dork who kills first and asks questions later.

Farkel

53

What is "Right?"

by Farkel in

jw
friends

i responded to your comments on another post, but i feel this issue is just too important and deserves its own thread.. -----------------------------------------------------.

: even the most righteous believer of god would tend to quote abraham: is the judge of all the earth not going to do what is right?

(gen 18:25).

Farkel

Jst2laws,

: To defend God’s fairness here against your wit..

LOL! Well, at least I never use wit as a substitute for facts!

To understand that story as allegory or parable puts it in an entirely different light, of course. However as you well know, I'm interested in JW issues and JWs believe that story to be absolute fact. Therefore, I argued from that point of view.

If more people would take stories like that and the story of Eden as just stories with some message instead of as absolute truth, we'd had a lot more balance in Christianity. And a lot less slaughter. For those who've shed the fear of a God who will slaughter them if they disbelieve much of the Bible as historical fact, the Bible is a great read. But only in "moderation!"

Farkel

175

Do you want the real truth or not?

by Jason in

jw
friends

on this website there seems to be so many lies and so little actual truth.

is this supposed to be a place to get answers or confuse the hell out of truth seekers?

well, for you seekers out there, if you find the truth on this site it'll be a major fluke.

Farkel

Jason,

You are so much fun to play with! Thank you for playing with me!

You said:

: About the giant critter poop. Since you didn't notice the few times I mentioned slanted floors this cannot be a possibility.

This of course, infers that all of the three decks were above the water level. The Bible never said that. Are you claiming that? If so, how do you actually know? If any of those three decks were below the water-line then your whole argument is trash.

Even if those decks were "slanted" AND they were below the water-line you haven't addressed the poop-scooping problems that I mentioned. All you've suggested is that the poop will slide to some place. It still has to be scooped up and tossed over into the water.

Have you done any calculations on the amount of poop that your average Ark would have on any given day and multiplied that amount of poop by the year that the Ark was floating about? Have you factored in the fact that there were 8 humans on that Ark who had to shovel that poop and how that simple act alone could be possible, given the pooper animals who pooped on that Ark? Thought not.

: And the only explanation for getting rid of all the pee pee, as you pointed out so cleverly, would be to pull the plug at the bottom of the ark. There was also a high tech reverse flow system built in so no water could get in.

In other words, you have no credible answer!

: Oh! Good news. Discovery channel has a special on tomorrow night with evidence to support your theory that whales eat grass.

YOU made that suggestion first. I just took it to its most absurd level. You claimed you were being sarcastic, yet you took a little umbrage that I did the same thing and are now spoofing me. I spoofed you first. You asked for it.

Farkel

17

Toilets are Unbiblical

by JanH in

it's about time to put an end to the unbiblical and perverted practice of making water closets and other forms of toilets.

this ungodly practice is clearly prohibited in god's word the bible:.

deuteronomy 23: 12-14 "designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself.

Farkel

Jan,

I just flushed, therefore I'm doomed. I hate being doomed for just flushing, but I could never figure out God, anyway.

Farkel