Skeeter, Thanks - I made a post over there but some support would help from this board if anyone would be kind enough to share their perspectives. outofit
Gedanken
JoinedPosts by Gedanken
-
4
Jack at telicthoughts defends WTS on blood!
by outofit inhe writes: .
ethel said: "that is certainly true in terms of private opinions.
but, e.g., i happen to think that jehovah's witnesses (as well as id proponents) are crackpots and have provided some examples of quotes (up the thread) from their literature to demonstrate that their medical beliefs are not just religious - they claim scientific credibility too " .
-
-
-
74
An Especially Stupid Watchtower Issue (Mar 15, 06)
by metatron inwhat makes this latest watchtower particularily dumb?
well, let's see.. take a look at this gem:.
" ...would a christian who is a self employed contractor bid on a job that involves painting one of the churches of christendom and thereby.
-
-
Gedanken
Good post metatron. False = "not Watchtower" and Truth = "Watchtower." Just look 'em up in the Newspeak dictionary... "His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself -- that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word "doublethink" involved the use of doublethink."
-
240
Desolation of Jerusalem
by Alwayshere inusing the wts's dates in the january 1.1965 page 29 : nabonidus= 17 years.
add 17 to 539=556, neriglissar==4 years, add 4 to 556=560, evil-marduk=2 years, add 2 to560=562, nebuchadnezzar=43 years, add 43 to 562 =605.
the bible at 2 kings 25: 8 and 9 says "in the 19th year of king nebuchadnezzar the servant of the king came to jerusallem and burned the house of jehovah.
-
-
Gedanken
Kaput, Please don't show this to our scholar-in-residence - he's liable to mistake it for a drinking fountain.
-
240
Desolation of Jerusalem
by Alwayshere inusing the wts's dates in the january 1.1965 page 29 : nabonidus= 17 years.
add 17 to 539=556, neriglissar==4 years, add 4 to 556=560, evil-marduk=2 years, add 2 to560=562, nebuchadnezzar=43 years, add 43 to 562 =605.
the bible at 2 kings 25: 8 and 9 says "in the 19th year of king nebuchadnezzar the servant of the king came to jerusallem and burned the house of jehovah.
-
-
Gedanken
Oh Laudacious Scholar,
Forsooth, I have been noticed! My heart doth quake and my loins grow moist as those of a virgin who catcheth the eye of her prince! How I wish I could translate my innermost feelings into long words, well built phrases both loquacious and fair. If only the thoughts welling up in my now quick beating heart could be translated into prose limpid and true, words expressing with precision my true delight, even in your hastily thrown off rebuke. Instead my tongue groweth thick in my mouth, my lips do fairly fatten and fall away, and so the words emerge stillborn, dismembered bloody corpses which stick with a great stickiness to this electronic parchment. And yet, for all that I take my rebuke seriously and address your lofty admontion even from my disgustingly low place down here in the dust.
Dear Scholar, unlike the sorely misled Dr Johnsson whose tome only serves to advance the conventional wisdom, being based on the published reserach of others (and so not itself publishable in scholarly journals, as you well know, oh you tricky scholar you!) yours alone is new in all the land. Publication is reserved for those with novel findings - primary and original findings that shake the very academic community to its roots and, with a great upheaving sound, do rend the actual livers of those who defend the status quo into many pieces, and cast them both far and near, to the four corners of this Earth and beyond. This is what is in your grasp - the learned Johnsson can only hope to add a small piece or two to the jigsaw puzzle now extant while you and your coterie of celebrated Watchtower scholars can overthrow the field itself and start anew! Throw these men out of their ivory towers and have at it! In a nutshell you have novel findings of primary significance! Publish my man and be right quick about it!
And finally, good scholar I shall present thee with a small riddle as a mischievous test of thy mettle - for I don't want to be woneth over quite so easily. Answer it well dear sir! If the Watchtower scholars be celebrated then, pray tell, can you name those who it is that celebrateth them?
-
240
Desolation of Jerusalem
by Alwayshere inusing the wts's dates in the january 1.1965 page 29 : nabonidus= 17 years.
add 17 to 539=556, neriglissar==4 years, add 4 to 556=560, evil-marduk=2 years, add 2 to560=562, nebuchadnezzar=43 years, add 43 to 562 =605.
the bible at 2 kings 25: 8 and 9 says "in the 19th year of king nebuchadnezzar the servant of the king came to jerusallem and burned the house of jehovah.
-
-
Gedanken
Truly it can be said that lesser mortals such ourselves can only stand on the shoulders of such Giants as yourself!
You are clearly on to something major. The reticence of AlanF and, indeed C. O. Johnsson himself to admit to this egregious error is certainly because they recognize - and only too well - that this is the first stitch to unravel in what is clearly a sordid fabric of frabication, indeed, a veritable pablum of prevarication and prestidigitation. It is rather rare to read posts as insightful as yours which not only penetrate to the core but do so with modesty and a light touch. With laser like precision you have gone straight to the very root of the whole 607/1914 chronology, indeed to the very heart of the matter - first and foremost you have cleaved the very bone from the marrow and, secondly, the fatty tissues have been rent from the not so fatty tissues. I have to admit that, until now, I also had been misled by the chronological scratchings of Mr Johnsson and his ilk. I owe you a debt of deep gratitude, for now, in the glorious light of your post, I see Watchtower chronlogy for what it actually is! To think that the entire eschatological exegesis of the past 100 years (and more) can be summarized in the precise mathematical statement that 17 + 1 = 18. Sometimes the simplest solution is the best. If only Russell had been blessed with your clarity of thought, intellect and sincerity of motive in his numerological studies of Giza's varied dimensions, then how different might the past 122 years have been! Why we might even now be residing not merely in the spiritual paradise but in the actual Day of His Rest. How true it is that the light gets ever brighter!
Clearly, you deserve elevation - at least to the pantheon of celebrated Watchtower scholars - and, I have heard mutterings amongst prominent Assyriologists that you may have actually transcended them all. I am certain that your natural modesty will incline you to shrink-back from even the contemplation of scaling such heights but scale them you must. For it is clear that your discovery will resonate not only with the professional Assyriologist; its widespread implications for eschatology, reflexology, sexology, scatology and even gerontology - to name but a few soon-to-be-impacted fields - mean that your fame will be known throught the earth is guaranteed.
However, Oh Soon-To-Be-Lauded Scholar, there is one necessary and somewhat tedious first step which you must take in your journey to the rarefied heights of Academic Near Eastern Studies and it is this: pray do not delay even a second in submitting your meaty meditations, your fatty findings, indeed your seminal maculations, together with your prehensile perpotations to a learned journal. I'd recommend Nature but even a modest rag such as the Journal of Near Eastern Studies - a link to which I humbly provide for your convenience here: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JNES/home.html - would cement your claim to fame and fortune. Do not worry about florid presentation, elaborate diagrammation or intricate indentation! Why, your findings are so astounding that even a doorkeeper - yea even a janitor or toilet attendant - in the house of the University of Chicago Department of Near Eastern Studies will recognize your outpourings for what they are and, I am sure, deal with them accordingly.
-
240
Desolation of Jerusalem
by Alwayshere inusing the wts's dates in the january 1.1965 page 29 : nabonidus= 17 years.
add 17 to 539=556, neriglissar==4 years, add 4 to 556=560, evil-marduk=2 years, add 2 to560=562, nebuchadnezzar=43 years, add 43 to 562 =605.
the bible at 2 kings 25: 8 and 9 says "in the 19th year of king nebuchadnezzar the servant of the king came to jerusallem and burned the house of jehovah.
-
-
Gedanken
AuldSoul,
(for some reason I couldn't edit my earlier post in which I forgot the HTML tags!)
Interesting points. I guess I should have been clearer. As you indicate, explicitly changing the 607-1914 chronology would be a real shock for many JWs - even the uber braindead ones who still remain caught in the amber of WT scholarship. So, as Ray Franz predicted, the Society took a slightly different course in that it retained the chronology but robbed it of all meaning by making the generation "elastic." It's a lot like me saying that today, January 22nd, marks the start of a period during which we will be invaded by aliens. But that's only useful if this time period has some sort of end date by which point aliens will have invaded and, if, in fact there is something special about today versus tomorrow or yesterday (e.g., we received signals from the invading fleet today rather than yesterday or tomorrow). Most JWs are now so hopelessly confused that when a Circuit Overseer quotes Fred Franz as saying "if it takes a million years, it will still come" they don't see a contradiction and, oddly, happily embrace such statements: an elder I know quoted these words to me to demonstrate how my thinking on the "generation" change was flawed, so I can't vouch directly for their authenticity but they certainly capture the JW mindset. \
But my feeling - and what I meant by "the WTS overestimating the intelligence" of JWs who remain - is that these sorts of chronological - and chronic - contortions are no longer necessary to keep "the brothers" in line. The JW organization now seems to be so depleted of real thinkers that all the Society has to do is stop mentioning something and "the brothers will forget." An example is the length of a creative day. Ask a longtime Witness how long it is and the answer is 7000 years, while to newer ones it's "thousands of years long." Writing to the Society elicits no direct answer to this question either. So, in discussing these issues with active JWs the first requirement is educating them as to what they actually believe. Most of the time this is enough, in and of itself, to get one labeled an apostate. Officially a creative day is still 7000 years long since this teaching has never been revoked and so it remains "current truth" (at least as far as I know, no linger being current with the most recent WT literature). Simply saying that a creative day is "thousands of years long" does not contradict it being 7000 years long. So by replacing the precise number 7000 with "thousands" everyone is happily deluded. Eventually the 7000-year-ers will die out and voila, a creative day will not have - and never did have - a precise length. I predict that the same thing will happen with the date 1914 - it will become so disconnected in practice from day to day Jw-ism that it will be no more real to JWs as is 607 BCE. The blood doctrine is another example of this self-serving and abusive treatment of JWs by the Society.
-
240
Desolation of Jerusalem
by Alwayshere inusing the wts's dates in the january 1.1965 page 29 : nabonidus= 17 years.
add 17 to 539=556, neriglissar==4 years, add 4 to 556=560, evil-marduk=2 years, add 2 to560=562, nebuchadnezzar=43 years, add 43 to 562 =605.
the bible at 2 kings 25: 8 and 9 says "in the 19th year of king nebuchadnezzar the servant of the king came to jerusallem and burned the house of jehovah.
-
-
Gedanken
AuldSoul, Interesting points. I guess I should have been clearer. As you indicate, explicitly changing the 607-1914 chronology would be a real shock for many JWs - even the uber braindead ones who still remain caught in the amber of WT scholarship. So, as Ray Franz predicted, the Society took a slightly different course in that it retained the chronology but robbed it of all meaning by making the generation "elastic." It's a lot like me saying that today, January 22nd, marks the start of a period during which we will be invaded by aliens. But that's only useful if this time period has some sort of end date by which point aliens will have invaded and, if, in fact there is something special about today versus tomorrow or yesterday (e.g., we received signals from the invading fleet today rather than yesterday or tomorrow). Most JWs are now so hopelessly confused that when a Circuit Overseer quotes Fred Franz as saying "if it takes a million years, it will still come" they don't see a contradiction and, oddly, happily embrace such statements: an elder I know quoted these words to me to demonstrate how my thinking on the "generation" change was flawed, so I can't vouch directly for their authenticity but they certainly capture the JW mindset. But my feeling - and what I meant by "the WTS overestimating the intelligence" of JWs who remain - is that these sorts of chronological - and chronic - contortions are no longer necessary to keep "the brothers" in line. The JW organization now seems to be so depleted of real thinkers that all the Society has to do is stop mentioning something and "the brothers will forget." An example is the length of a creative day. Ask a longtime Witness how long it is and the answer is 7000 years, while to newer ones it's "thousands of years long." Writing to the Society elicits no direct answer to this question either. So, in discussing these issues with active JWs the first requirement is educating them as to what they actually believe. Most of the time this is enough, in and of itself, to get one labeled an apostate. Officially a creative day is still 7000 years long since this teaching has never been revoked and so it remains "current truth" (at least as far as I know, no linger being current with the most recent WT literature). Simply saying that a creative day is "thousands of years long" does not contradict it being 7000 years long. So by replacing the precise number 7000 with "thousands" everyone is happily deluded. Eventually the 7000-year-ers will die out and voila, a creative day will not have - and never did have - a precise length. I predict that the same thing will happen with the date 1914 - it will become so disconnected in practice from day to day Jw-ism that it will be no more real to JWs as is 607 BCE. The blood doctrine is another example of this self-serving and abusive treatment of JWs by the Society.
-
240
Desolation of Jerusalem
by Alwayshere inusing the wts's dates in the january 1.1965 page 29 : nabonidus= 17 years.
add 17 to 539=556, neriglissar==4 years, add 4 to 556=560, evil-marduk=2 years, add 2 to560=562, nebuchadnezzar=43 years, add 43 to 562 =605.
the bible at 2 kings 25: 8 and 9 says "in the 19th year of king nebuchadnezzar the servant of the king came to jerusallem and burned the house of jehovah.
-
-
Gedanken
Alan,
"celebrated WT scholars" puts me in mind of Samuel Johnson whom I misquote:
A WT scholar is like a dog walking around on its hind legs; it's not that it's done well that's cause for celebration, it's that it's done at all.
As for your "what if" question re: 607. Essentially the Society has already done that with its redefinition of a generation. Why change the dates 607/1914 when you can, instead, eliminate their significance altogether? What does it matter when the kingdom was set up if the "generation" can last forever? Incredibly the Society has stripped 1914 of all meaning by (i) declaring that the kingdom was set up then but invisibly (here Carl Sagan had it right!) and (ii) that this date marked the start of a time period which would see the end of the world, but which period could go on indefintely. However, this second sleight of hand by the Society overestimates the thinking capacity of the dubs who still remain.
It's hugely entertaining to watch dubs such as scholar mentalmasturbaticus trying to defend dates that mean nothing at all for current WT eschatology.
-
240
Desolation of Jerusalem
by Alwayshere inusing the wts's dates in the january 1.1965 page 29 : nabonidus= 17 years.
add 17 to 539=556, neriglissar==4 years, add 4 to 556=560, evil-marduk=2 years, add 2 to560=562, nebuchadnezzar=43 years, add 43 to 562 =605.
the bible at 2 kings 25: 8 and 9 says "in the 19th year of king nebuchadnezzar the servant of the king came to jerusallem and burned the house of jehovah.
-
-
Gedanken
Al
-
41
Physics Challenge! Explain "entangled particles" to me
by AlmostAtheist inhey all,.
i'm totally fascinated by the concept of entangled particles.
as i understand it, you take a proton (or something tiny like that), split it apart, but don't observe the resulting particles.
-
-
Gedanken
AA,
That's an excellent question and if the particles were, say, "red" or "blue" then you would be correct. What makes it intresting is that unlike colors which don't change, spins can change. Please consider the following;
Imagine Each particle has a spin which can take one of two values, let's say +1 or -1 (for electrons it's actually +/- 1/2 but it makes no real difference).
Now, here's the twist, the spin is defined with respect to some coordinate system, let's say x, y, z. So you can measure the z-component of spin, or the x-componet or the y-component, whatever you like. Think of it like a ball spinning around a particular direction in space (again, this is a simplification but it's ok for the discussion). Now a funny thing about QM is that you can't know all three spins at once, you can only know one of them. So, let's say you measure the z-component and get +1. What value would you get had you measured the x-component? You have no idea execpt that you would get either + or - 1. It can eb either but you don't know which you will get until you mak eteh measurement. 50% of the time you get +1 and 50% -1. It's the same for all directions.
Now imagine you make 2 measurements and get
z-component: +1
x-componnet: -1
now you measure the z-component again, what do you get? You might think it would still be +1 - just like if you "measure" a ball's color to be red, then weigh the ball, you don't expect it's color to change to green. But when you measure the z-component again you get + or - 1 but which one you don't know until you've measured it. So you could get;
z-component: +1
x-component: -1
z-component: -1 So spin isn't like color that is fixed. The actual spin you measure isn't known until you measure it. Now, if you **always** measure the z-component you always get the same result as the first time you measured it, but if you measure x or y in between then that disrupts the z-measurement.
So this demonstrates that particles don't have known spins until they are measured. You only need one particle to prove this. Now consider two particles;
Imagine that you and AlanF go to opposite sides of town but have secretly agreed ahead of time that you will measure the spins of particles that pass you by, but that each time you will measure a different spin component. You decide on the order z,y,x,x,z etc. Also you decide that you will go first.
Obviously the particles don't know what you agreed. They have no idea whihc component you will measure first and, if you believe the above, they can't have pre-assigned values for all three components.
So, two particles arrive, one at you and one at alanf. Now you know that whichever spin component you measure you will get +/-1 but you also know that you can't know all three spin components at the same time. So it's not like the particles have pre-assigned values for x, y, and z components - that is, it's not like they have special colors.
Now, being a sneaky bastard you decide to measure the x-component first and not the z-component as you agreed and you get +1. AlanF being equally sneaky also decides to cheat and has also by luck, measured the x-component. He gets -1. Had he measured teh x-component as agreed he'd have got +/-1.
Now imagine this, the next two particles coming flying out and unbeknownst to you someone between you and the origin measures the z component of spin and gets -1 for your particle. Then you measure the x-component and get +1. Then AlanF measures the x component - he can now get +/-1 so he might also get +1. The entanglement was broken by the intruder's measurement. When you compare notes you can tell in thi scase that someone broke the entanglement. Of course, if AlanF had got -1 (which he would 50% of the time) you couldn't have told. So you need to look at the statistics not at any single measurement to detect the intruder.
With the ball analogy if an intruder had a glimspe of yoru ball then that wouldn't have altered it's color.
This is a tricky subject and I hope this helps a bit