the last time i went on the field service was around the very early 90's.
i have a genuine question for any jw that are active in the door to door work still.. i lived for finding the person that wanted to debate things, i would always be the one to call on the local atheist, vicar, etc etc.
and would hammer home all that was had learnt and research myself with the wts literature of course.
I guess that says a lot about me, I never got a study from anyone via the doors and was a RP for 4 years!..lol
Good point about it being just a sales call, never thought about it that way.
I was just really disappointed by the 2 that called on me, it was the same arguement and illusiontration that were used 15 years ago, I thought they might have uped the approuch considering the change in the availablity of the informtion to the householder.
steve
the last time i went on the field service was around the very early 90's.
i have a genuine question for any jw that are active in the door to door work still.. i lived for finding the person that wanted to debate things, i would always be the one to call on the local atheist, vicar, etc etc.
and would hammer home all that was had learnt and research myself with the wts literature of course.
Timbob,
So you find people are more informed about the WTS now?.
See the reason i brought this up is I was visited by 2 Witnesses about 10 months ago, with the magazine which had evolution discussed in it, with Dr. Behe interview, and they brought up the same argument about a house needing a builder, when I countered it, they had no response. Now 15 years ago i use to use the exact same illustration and didn't meet much opposition, so hence my question as to weather the Internet and availability of information is making things harder on the doors now.
But it seem that it is the same as ever, majority as no-interest, some mags and a little discussion. So i am guessing the blood issue is still the biggest issue if people have a problem with the JW's then?
steve
julia sweeney's new tape letting go of god is one of the best monologs i have heard in quite a while.. it is hard to find but you can view a seventeen min.
sample on youtube.
i final found it on audible.com and for 11.95 no tax you can down load a copy to your computer and burn one copy to cd.
This is such a good story. The mormon section was priceless.
Very funny listen.
steve
the last time i went on the field service was around the very early 90's.
i have a genuine question for any jw that are active in the door to door work still.. i lived for finding the person that wanted to debate things, i would always be the one to call on the local atheist, vicar, etc etc.
and would hammer home all that was had learnt and research myself with the wts literature of course.
The last time I went on the field service was around the very early 90's. I have a genuine question for any JW that are active in the door to door work still.
I lived for finding the person that wanted to debate things, I would always be the one to call on the local atheist, vicar, etc etc. and would hammer home all that was had learnt and research myself with the WTS literature of course. Now this was before the Internet really took of, and the availability of information and ideas seem so much more wide spread now.
I remember using such lines as 'A house couldn't build itself' and ' Well you can't see air, but you know its there' and these argument never found any responses to them. Whereas now both these argument can be destroyed ( i realised this before I was even an atheist).
SO how are the doors nowadays, do you find, people more informed about such things, or is it still 'I''m not interest' or 'i have my own religion', has the Internet in your opinion made things harder on the door, or have you seen no difference.
Genuine question
Steve
this is a collection of all the books of the bible, with all the absurdities and contradicitons verse by verse..... including the christian response to it.....fyi.
www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/index.htm.
This is a pretty good resource. My only problem with the site is it tends to over try sometimes, if that makes sense.
But for finding a scripture on a particular subject its is great for. It was also very useful for the book of Mormon as well.
May I also humbly offer... http://biblebrowser.com/genesis/1-1.htm
this is a great resource for translations back from the original hebrew... I used this very site to show that Isiah did NOT say the earth was a globe ( as described in the evol book) in fact was reinforcing the idea of a flat circle (common with that day beliefs) and shows whole the word for globe or sphere is used in the bible for other item but not for the earth, .
steve
here's an interesting article from shermer to ponder.
any thoughts?
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleid=423c1809-e7f2-99df-384721c9252b924a&chanid=sa013&modsrc=most_popular.
when someone wants to escape his Belief System, he will listen to anything he can use against his own doubts... but when he is happy with his BS, he will fight tooth and nail against anyone who threatens them.
I agree with this from my own personally experience.
The thing is Dawkins and hitchings are not running these books to convert the religious, by their own words their accept they would be lucky if they converted anyone, that isnt how rejection of belief works, it always comes from within.
However what their books do is put argument out their for anyone to ponder on.
I think the article misses the point. Someone who rejects the idea of any kind of god, what does she/he face, they face a organizations that claims.
1. they hold the answer to everything and claims an authority above any other human
your not dealing with rational mindset, so rational arguments never get anywhere. The problem is when you deal with a religious belief, you are hitting at the heart of someone core, some people have spent their entire life running it on the basis of reverence to their God, and you come along and say/ show that the chance of God existing is improbably, of course they will reject it, you are not dealing with rational mind you are dealing with an emotional mind. your suggesting that they have mis spent their entire life!
SO how do you deal with this, well you need to jar their own thinking, and in our society religion holds a prestigious and respectful place, they get given repsect above everything else. so you first need to bring this reverence down, you do it by showing how little scene it actually makes,
People used to believe in fairies and goblins etc, why don't they, i know not of any anti goblin movement still. but a mixture of lack of evidence and people own specticism growing due to the the inability of those who believe to show any really evidence. This is the way religion will go. atheist will not last in the sense of a social stand, it will just become that no on takes the idea of God generally as a rational view. having said that people will always believe something...e.g
I perform Mind-reading and other psychological illusionism for corporates, now even though i state that i am not psychic and have any extra powers, i always have some come up and clearly showing they believe what i am doing is real. so belief will always be with us. so even when i out rightly state this is all smoke and mirror, because it appeals to someone belief they take this evidence as proof they are right, even thought i tell them it not, that a hard mind set to break.
stumping a believer is met with ' well we don't know the mind of God or the horrible cringing god works in mysterious ways. which seem to surface the believer, and you are stale mate again, i recent discussion i had with a family member made the incredible statement of well you put to much trust in science, you know they gets it wrong sometimes.
I think softly softly approach and pandering to someone belief, and giving it reverence somehow isn't helping that person at all, in fact it is damaging them more.
For this time in our history i think Dawkins approach and moreso hitchings is they best way forward, but this approach will have to change in time, but right now religion has had many thousands of years to become accepted without question and above earnt respect. That needs to be challenged head on. Rational argument don't work at this stage in the main.
recently i have been reading some research that refers to josephus and some roman scribes that reported about jesus and his activities.
there are reportedly, thousands of writings (the bible excluded) that confirm that jesus in fact existed.
i was wondering, how many of these writers were there at the time, or was in direct contact with jesus.
Yes thousands of references to Jesus is HUGLY exaggerated.
There are a few point of the possibility of weather Jesus exisited, and bear in mind this search for evidence is based on a human man Jesus and makes no reference to any divine origins.
I need to find some references for this but for now, there were actually a couple of jesus mention around the christian Jesus time that were prophets, which surprised me.
A historical Writer called Philio ( i think) was writing about Jewish history and theology from around 20 CE onwards to mid first century and never mentions Jesus!. So here you have a historian alive when Jesus was meant to live, living in the same area, so would have been around to see the Big finale, yet seemed to have missed the whole thing.
The Josephus work is generally accepted by scholars as a later addition by some over zealous christians, writing style and wording is very different from Josephus and the way he describes Jesus would be such a foreign concept to him being a Jew ( from what i remember )
I would humbly point you to this site, which lays out some very good ground work for the case against Jesus ever to have lived, weather you accept all of it or not, there are some very strong argument based on evidence
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/jesus_myth_history.htm#1.
There are a number of books around on discussing Jesus and weather we really did live, i have read most of them, and while they all run along the same lines of little to evidence that he every exisited, what stood out to me, was the way the bible from john on wards talked about Jesus, certainly the way Paul spoke of him, Paul would have been around during the life of Jesus, yet never knew him? considering the zeal in which Saul (Paul) went after his followers, it struck me that Paul always referenced Jesus as a heavenly spirit not a man on earth when he was around.
steve
if a witness came to this site and began using it regularly under totally annonymous id, and this came to the attention of local elders as almost certain fact, would this actually be considered apostacy?
he knows nobody, they do not know him, and he tells no lies about the orginazation anyway.
he does not want followers.
thought crimes. you gotta love the WTS
although you may not practise any religion anymore do you still defend what the bible says to your best, when someone of another faith says something you know is completely false...
Yes i have to do this all the time. My step children go to a Christian school ( so naturally i have the Darwin fish on the back of the car). But i quite enjoy using their own bible against them. My favorite scripture is about twisting the scriptures for your own ends, although the verse escapes me at the moment, but i use that one quite a lot. Steve
healthy people don't go to a doctor.
if they do they are hypochondriacs.
hypochondriacs spend their time and money on imagined illnesses.
With due respect may I offer this link to a google video link
Neil degrasse Tyson, who hosts the nova science series and is one of the brightest guys around when it comes to space and all that is big. Neil gives a excellant overview of nature and the universe
One thing he bring up is when we reach the limit of our understanding, when science reaches its current limits of understanding.
regards
steve
