Gedanken

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Posts by Gedanken

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  22

  Why I Believe the Bible, A Nuclear Scientist Tells His Story

  by VM44 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  from awake!, january 22, 2004, pages 19-23.. "why i believe the bible - a nuclear scientist tells his story".

  read how a nuclear physicist reconciled his knowledge of science with his belief in the bible.. -- page 19. .

  why i believe the bible.

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  Gedanken

  I sent this email:

  Dear Professor Williams,

  It was certainly interesting to read your article in the Januray Awake! magazine. I am left wondering, though, if you applied the same standards to it as to one of your scientific publications? You stated that you had "checked the mathematical accuray [regarding the 1914 date.]" I found that comment slightly puzzling insofar as the 607-1914 chronology is less a matter of mathematics than of history. I wonder if you have read the book "The Gentile Times Reconsidered" in which astronomical, historical and scriptural arguments are applied to this problem. Here is a link to the book at amazon.com

  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0914675060/qid=1075129696/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-4494209-6527244?v=glance&s=books

  As a scientist who publishes peer reviewed articles it only seems fair and honest that you consider this material - after all your comments in Awake! stand to affect millions of sincere people, many of whom will be influenced mainly by your elevated status as a scientist and, consequently, may not bother to consider alternative views. That this they may assume that you have done your homework.

  If you have not already considered this material then I do sincerely hope that you will approach this in the same objective manner you might use when preparing a paper for, say, the Physical Review or as did the Beroeans.

  I am also curious what you make of the Society's recent changes of doctrine - that a creative day is no longer 7000 years - this change has not been emphasized and so many Witnesses haven't even realized that there has been a change at all - and that the generation of 1914 is not a literal generation in any normal sense. It seems to me that these two changes essentially negate any significance of the 1914 date.

  Finally, like many I was a teenage witness in the 1970s and actively preached the Society's message that God Himself had promised that the _literal_ generation that had seen 1914 would not pass away (see the masthead of Awake! from those years and up to about 1995). In retrospect Deut. 18 seems to apply. But I wonder if you are aware that Witnesses youths were actively discouraged from seeking higher education because the end was so close? Those that did go to college were often ostracized almost as severely as if they had been disfellowshipped. So severe were the strictures against university education.
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  33

  Deprogramming your "Last Days" phobia...

  by logansrun in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  raised in a religion that preached a massive, theocratic holocaust for the majority of mankind can leave you with more than a few mental and emotional scars.

  i remember being terrified on new years eve in 1986 (i was 9 yrs old) because of all the talk that that year was the "international year of peace.

  " i was conditioned to look at world events as being a sign that the end is near, sound familiar?

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  Gedanken

  I am reading a book called "A History of Interest Rates" by Sydney Homer. He traces interest rates and credit back to Baylonian and Assyrian times. Anyway, he had a quotation - which I will paraphrase since I don't have the book to hand - from an Assyrian tablet that basically went as follows.

  The world is going mad. Crime is on the increase. Children are disobedient to parents. Every man wants to write a book. Clearly the end of the world is near.

  Unfortunately, Homer is dead and he didn't give a source. I'll post the exact quote when I have a chance. I'm assuming it's legit since the book seems very well researched.

  But the Society's last days mentality is hardly new - I'm assuming that Homer's quote goes back to around 1800 BC.

  Gedanken
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  27

  St. Louis Reporter Seeks Silentlambs for Interview

  by abbagail in

  1. watchtower
  2. child-abuse

  from: "silentlambs" [email protected].

  date: tue, 7 jan 2003 23:19:35 -0600. to: [email protected].

  subject: st louis area.

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  Gedanken

  SwordofJah,

  : But see, why should I judge Jehovah's representatives on that one case.

  Why do you call them Jehovah's representatives?

  Gedanken
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  163

  So, where DID the 1914 timeline go awry?

  by Xander in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  okay, i know that historical evidence is that jerusalem fell in 586/7 instead of 607 - as the wtbts would have.

  however, that is not compelling enough to show a hypothetical jw.

  they (generally) must not only be show that the opposition is correct, but that the wtbts is wrong.

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  Gedanken

  Alan & Earnest,

  Interesting discussion. As Alan alludes the Society is not interested in defending its chronology because it simply cannot do it. Instead it seems to hope that by not talking about such embarrasing matters the average Witness will forget that the chronology ever existed while 1914, they hope, will (perhaps) survive as a key date, hanging in mid air. This thoroughly dishonest tactic works. For example, my mother, a JW of some 50 years standing wrote several letters to Brooklyn Bethel asking a variety of pointed questions, mainly having to do with the policy changes on blood that have been slipped in unnoticed over the years. In one letter she also asked how long a creative day was since I'd challenged her to tell me what the current teaching was: she couldn't get answers from the elders so when she wrote to HQ she asked that as well. She received no answer to that question and so, in her next letter, at the end, she specifically asked that they at least tell her how long a creative day was. Was it still 7000 years long or not? Their response was a letter filled with a the usual mumbo jumbo on the blood issue; in the conclusion they said "we haven't answered all your questions but ...blah blah blah" Well, that was pretty damn clear. If you ask most JWs how long a Creative Day is they either have no clue at all or think that it is still 7000 years long. Given the number of publications and books produced by the WTS and the countless hours wasted at meetings and assemblies, you'd think that they could spend a bit of time actually explaining the most basic of their doctrines. In itself this is essential evidence that the WTS not only does not speak for God but is actually a fraud.

  At Christmas I had occasion to ask an active, although self-described "spiritually weak" JW what they taught these days. This otherwise intelligent woman (in her late 30s) who's been a JW all her life had no answer to such a direct question. Most JWs simply don't know what they believe anymore. So I asked her how she felt about being labelled "weak." She was totally miserable, caught between the supposedly wicked and hostile "world" and the local goons at the KH who tell her she should "do more."

  What a morally and intellectually bankrupt outfit this so-called religion is.

  Gedanken
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  45

  For those who don't believe in God

  by freedom96 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  when we were witnesses, we certainly believed in god.

  some of us were born into it, and others have perhaps come from other religions, while still others may never had any religious faith at all.

  some here on the board now claim that there is no god at all.

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  Gedanken

  acsot,

  Mark Ridley's book "Evolution" is pretty good although a bit technical in parts.

  Gedanken
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  69

  Most ridiculous statements from the JW stage?

  by Smiles in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  we have all sat at jw meetings and heard some ridiculous statements that were either shocking or just plain old bunk.

  usually it is the same jw individuals that make those statements time and time again.

  you know the type..... you can almost expect such comments from them.. jws place great importance on what statements or persons are 'stage worthy'.

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  Gedanken

  Howdy Alan!

  Thanks for posting the Rogerson quote again - that's a classic. I love the way he says "whenever this literature strays into..." The stuff on the Mammoths is so typical of the JWs and fundies in general - they eagerly seize on to any argument that sounds good without the least desire to check it out, while closing their ears totally to everything that casts even the slightest doubt on their beliefs. After all, since they know that they are right it really doesn't matter since the real facts simply must be in accord with their beliefs.

  Have you read Janet Browne's biography of Darwin? The second part, just out, is wonderful. I'll lend it to you when I'm done if you haven't. Also, I'm getting a biography of Alfred Russel Wallace too. But, maybe I should dump these books into the river and study "Did man get here by Evolution or Creation?" instead.

  Gedanken
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  45

  For those who don't believe in God

  by freedom96 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  when we were witnesses, we certainly believed in god.

  some of us were born into it, and others have perhaps come from other religions, while still others may never had any religious faith at all.

  some here on the board now claim that there is no god at all.

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  Gedanken

  freedom,

  Once one starts to think critically about things it becomes hard to stop at the boundaries of the WTS. Why not put the Bible and all religions under the microscope too? Also, after one has rejected cut and dried (but erroneous) WTS teachings such as "why has God permitted wickedness" etc. then it's natural to re-examine these questions from a new, more objective angle. In my own case, e.g., studying the evidence for evolution was a real eye opener. By the way I'd recommend Janet Browne's two part biography of Darwin since it shows clearly how objective observation of nature was really at the root of Darwin's theory.

  Perhaps there is a God but I don't see much evidence for his existence and certainly none for the existence of the classical Christian type of God. Recently I read God: A guide for the perplexed by Keith Ward who's a theologian at Oxford University in England. He raises a lot of issues concerning the nature of God. However, the book will probably leave most people who "believe in God" more perplexed than ever. The simplest nonperplexing solution seems to be to work on that premise that God does not exist until actual concrete evidence arises. That might also, incidentally, be a healthier context in which to think about war, the environment, health issues etc. As Thomas Huxley put it, in regard to Darwin's work (I'm paraphrasing from memory); "Extinguished theologians lie all around the cradle of science like the dead serpents around Hercules." In other words, what has religion done to advace anything? What has it done to stifle progress and encourage repression through dogmatism? If God's behind this then what sort of a god is he?

  Gedanken
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  69

  Most ridiculous statements from the JW stage?

  by Smiles in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  we have all sat at jw meetings and heard some ridiculous statements that were either shocking or just plain old bunk.

  usually it is the same jw individuals that make those statements time and time again.

  you know the type..... you can almost expect such comments from them.. jws place great importance on what statements or persons are 'stage worthy'.

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  Gedanken

  AlanF,

  I have heard similar things said about the tides. One that always used to bug me was an elder who everytime he gave that same talk (or one similar) would point out, incorrectly, that "no one knows why ice floats" (which stops lakes freezing from the bottom up); ergo there must be a Creator. Another elder used to claim as proof of the Flood that Bird's Eye (a frozen foods company) once tried to flash freeze an elephant but that it had rotted on the inside before it could be frozen. Therefore the only way the Mammoths could have been flash frozen with fresh food intact in their bellies was if there was a Flood..

  Yet another brother, not an elder, used to state (although I can't swear he actually said it from the platform) that the only mathematics a child needed to know was that 1914 + 607 = 2520 after correcting for there being no year Zero. Then again this individual kept a German Shepherd dog constantly tied up in his house and which he fed almost exclusively on raw carrots - I don't know if that was due to poverty or because animals were originally created to be vegans. Either way the dog was pretty pissed off most of the time and had to be avoided.

  Another elder refused, and also refused to allow his wife and kids, to brush their teeth, since "Adam didn't need a toothbrush." This guy sold ice cream from an ice cream van. He parked the van outside his house and so the local kids would often come knocking asking for ice cream. This sometimes happened before the book study which was held at his house - so up he'd jump, and this was what was funny, he'd don his ice-cream-man outfit first, go sell them the ice cream and then come back, tale of his outfit and do thestudy. I suppose that was the thing to do on grounds of hygiene but it was pretty funny - but imagine buying ice cream from someone who refuses to brush his teeth. He also was the elder who would work with you in field service and then ask if you were having problems with self-abuse, explaining that he used to have a terrible problem with it. After he'd told us this we all used to tell him "no, not me" and that was that. He wasn't too happy but what could he do? Tell us that it was normal?

  Of course this is all pretty mild stuff compared to the statements routinely made in WTS publications.

  Gedanken
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  21

  STAN ARTHINGTON

  by burnley fc in

  1. watchtower
  2. child-abuse

  .

  if anyone has heard of the name please state

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  Gedanken

  Yes, he was in one of my former congregations.

  Gedanken
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  7

  Cremo's Response to REM

  by ThiChi in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  cremos response to rem .

  rem asked this regarding cremos work regarding acelogical evidence:.

  ""why does he spend so much time on these old anomalies?

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  Gedanken

  Thi Chi,

  That's true if you try to include Creation "science" in a paper - just like a paper prmoting the ether would be rejected. The reason isn't prejudice it is lack of evidence for Creationist arguments and actual evidence that they are wrong.

  In addition, the most obviously damning thing against Cremo is the Weekly World News stunt. Honest researcheers would never in a billion years do such as thing.

  Gedanken