Rapunzel

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Posts by Rapunzel

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  16

  Retraining our WT-controlled minds - THE GAME 1

  by Lady Lee in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  inspired by the thread about a mom wearing pants to the kingdom hall i thought this might be a good way to help many of us to see the absurdity of some of the wts/jw rules "principles" .

  i'll post one "rule" a day.

  so let's start with the way men have to wear their hair.

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  Rapunzel

  1 Corinthians 11:14 mentions that men's hair should be shorter than women's hair.
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  12

  Retraining our WT-controlled minds - THE GAME 2

  by Lady Lee in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i thought this might be a good way to help many of us to see the absurdity of some of the wts/jw rules "principles" .

  women can't wear pants to meetings or service or i've heard even to go clean the hall.. what scriptures would the elders use to get a jw to conform.

  you don't need to quote whatt he scripture and i certainly have no desire to do that but if you have the quotes handy feel free to post them.. the rule principle.

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  Rapunzel

  1 Corinthians 11:14 does seem to prohibit men against wearing their hair long. Of course, one could ask: How long is (too) long? Throughout history, various groups of people have defined themelves in reaction against other - usually dominant - groups of people. So, perhaps the Roman men of that era tended to wear their hair long. I read somewhere that the ancient Egyptians used to shave their heads bald, hence the Old Testament regulation that Israelite men NOT cut their hair.
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  23

  I got a jesus question

  by lancelink in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  with the memorial season behind now, there is a question i have that in over 30 years as a jw i never got a solid answer.

  jesus died for our sins; he was the perfect sacrifice, etc, etc.

  i always heard how tough it must have been for god to watch his only begotten son die the way he did.

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  Rapunzel

  Burger Time:If you have not done so already, I would highly recommend that you read a book entitiled God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Imortant Question - Why WeSuffer, written by Bart Ehrman. This book deals with the issue of theodicy, which is the question of how a supposedly all-powerful and just God can permit the existence of evil and suffering in the world. Ehrman's thesis is that the Bible offers various and conflicting explanantions for the existence of evil in the world. Another book that deals with the same issue from a different perspective is Abraham's Curse by Bruce Chilton.
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  13

  WHY ARE SO MANY PEOPLE USING CAPS NOW?

  by Rapunzel in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  please stop shouting; it hurts my ears.

  by the way, i've been thinking of the so-called "liar's paradox.

  " you know the one where the cretan [the man from crete] states: "all cretans are liars.

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  Rapunzel

  Please stop shouting; it hurts my ears. By the way, I've been thinking of the so-called "liar's paradox." You know the one where the Cretan [the man from Crete] states: "All Cretans are liars." If the man is telling the truth, then the statement is false. But if the man is lying, then the statement is true. So, if the statement is true, it's false. And if the statement is false, it's true. I think it was Bertrand Russel who claimed that if a person thought about such paradoxes for enough time, he or she would be driven to insanity.

  Another paradox is as follows -

  1. The following sentence is true.

  2.) The preceding sentence is false.

  One way to escape the paradox is to state that, given the fact that the two sentences refer to nothing but each other, they merely constitute a self-referential, verbal "hall of mirrors" - a kind of endless "tape loop." Since neither sentence refers to anything outside of the other sentence, neither sentence has any real meaning at all.
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  8

  Lies, Myths and fairy Tales....

  by nomoreguilt in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  in order to avoid doctrine, dogma and interpretation i am going to quote this one scripture.

  i will leave it to the rest of my esteemed colleagues here to apply it to the appropriate tale in the bible.

  i will start with adam and eve and the garden.. isaiah 46: 9-10.

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  Rapunzel

  "When one reads Bibles, one is less surprised at what the Deity knows than at what He doesn't know." - Mark Twain

  "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindicative, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sado-masochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." Richard Dawkins.

  Your thread has not been "hijacked." On the contrary, you have received responses. But it seems that you don't like the answers. Too bad for you. As has been stated, if you consider the context of the passage in Isaiah that you quote, you will see that the passage refers to a specific group of people, living in a specific era in history - namely the Israelites living in the period of Babylonian captivity before their liberation by Cyrus. As the previous poster has pointed out, the Witnesses can be faulted for having lost sight of - or for having purposely concealed - the fact that context is crucial; it determines everything.

  To restate Twain's idea in a different fashion, reading the Bible will leave you more surprised at what "God" does not know than at what "God" knows.
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  27

  J.W's Forbidden To Use The Word "Lucky"

  by Rapunzel in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  on another thread, a poster alluded to the witness prohibition on uttering the word "lucky," as the word "lucky" is associated with dreaded paganism.

  as i recall, instead of saying "lucky", witnesses are "counseled" to employ the term forunate.

  the problem is this - the roman goddess of good luck was named fortuna; her greek equivalent was named tyche.

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  Rapunzel

  Velettan: It's unbelievable that the Witnesses should forbid the "faithful" using the words "dime" and "nickel". In fact, the word "dime" - in referring to one tenth (1/10) of a dollar - is not slang at all. The word "dime" is ultimately derived from the Latin word, decimus, which means "one tenth." Etymologically, the word dime is related to decimal and decimate - to reduce to one tenth of the original amount.

  In truth, the word "dime" could be slang, if it used to designate a ten-dollar amount. If someone said: "This book was cheap; it only cost me a dime," meaning the book cost ten dollars, then that would be slang. But if they mean ten cents, it's not slang.

  As for the word nickel, it refers to the metal from which the coins were originally made. It's not slang either if it refers to a five-cent piece. It's only slang if it refers to a five-dollar amount.

  It's amazing how controlling the Witnesses are, to the point that they "micro-manage" every aspect of people's lives down to the level of the words that they are allowed to use.
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  8

  Lies, Myths and fairy Tales....

  by nomoreguilt in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  in order to avoid doctrine, dogma and interpretation i am going to quote this one scripture.

  i will leave it to the rest of my esteemed colleagues here to apply it to the appropriate tale in the bible.

  i will start with adam and eve and the garden.. isaiah 46: 9-10.

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  Rapunzel

  "That eagle, Cyrus" refers to Cyrus the Persian. The "prophet" here is referring to the fact that the Persians would liberate the Israelites from Babylonian captivity. The biblical writers had their own contexts, and thus, their own agendas. And those contexts and those agendas are not those of later [or earlier] peoples. The prophets were speaking only to their contemporaries. They were not crystal-ball gazers looking into the distant past or future.
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  8

  Lies, Myths and fairy Tales....

  by nomoreguilt in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  in order to avoid doctrine, dogma and interpretation i am going to quote this one scripture.

  i will leave it to the rest of my esteemed colleagues here to apply it to the appropriate tale in the bible.

  i will start with adam and eve and the garden.. isaiah 46: 9-10.

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  Rapunzel

  It should also be noted that for well over the past one hundred years, scholars have realized that the book of Isaiah has at least three different authors. Chapters 1 through 39 were written before Assyria was poised to attack the northern kingdom of Israel in the eighth century B.C.E. Chapters 40 through 55 presuppose a situation in which the southern kingdom of Judah has been destroyed, and its people taken into exile in Babylon in the mid-sixth century B.C.E. Chapters 56 through 66 were written by yet a third, later prophet.
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  27

  J.W's Forbidden To Use The Word "Lucky"

  by Rapunzel in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  on another thread, a poster alluded to the witness prohibition on uttering the word "lucky," as the word "lucky" is associated with dreaded paganism.

  as i recall, instead of saying "lucky", witnesses are "counseled" to employ the term forunate.

  the problem is this - the roman goddess of good luck was named fortuna; her greek equivalent was named tyche.

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  Rapunzel

  On another thread, a poster alluded to the Witness prohibition on uttering the word "lucky," as the word "lucky" is associated with dreaded paganism. As I recall, instead of saying "lucky", Witnesses are "counseled" to employ the term forunate. The problem is this - The Roman goddess of good luck was named Fortuna; her Greek equivalent was named Tyche. Thus, it seems that the word "fortunate" is as closely - or even more closely - asociated with paganism as the word "luck" or "lucky." On what basis do the Witnesses forbid use of the word "lucky," while suggesting use of the word "fortunate." Is this yet another example of their picking and choosing among supposed "pagan" customs. After all, don't they wear wedding rings? Don't they throw rice? In English, French, and Spanish, the days of the week and names of months are all derived from "pagan" [either Roman or Germanic] sources. For example, Wednesday is none other than "Wotan's day." And Thursday is "Thor's day."
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  36

  Supernaturalism and reason.

  by Narkissos in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  reading one more time (on the umpteenth thread about the 70 weeks of daniel, into which i'm not going again) the idea that "anti-supercalifragilnaturalistic bias" ruin the unbelievers' (or misbelievers') exegesis of bible texts, and readily admitting to such... bias, i have one very general and simple question which might be worth its own thread.. here it is:.

  once you admit such thing as the "supernatural", .

  on what grounds can you assess anything.

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  Rapunzel

  Reafton Jack: I have no wish whatsoever to "hijack" this thread, but I am curious regarding the events that you witnessed in P.N.G. that cannot be explained by science. I was wondering if you could briefly list them and describe them. Just a brief account, please.