A fascinating book about how complexity can naturalistically arise from an evolutionist point of view is Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos, by Roger Lewin. The author has a Ph. D. in biochemistry, is a science writer, is a former editor of New Scientist magazine, and was Research News editor of the journal called Science. One of other his great books is called Thread of Life.
Disillusioned JW
JoinedPosts by Disillusioned JW
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Complexity, Evolutionists Biggest Problem
by Sea Breeze inrecently, some scientists modeled one of the simplest known cells - that of a bacteria.
it took an army of 128 computers running for 10 hours to process the data required in the 25 categories of molecules that are involved in this "simple cells'" life processes.
think about that for a moment - 128 computers running for 10 hours just to compute the data, not actually do it mind you; but just to model the known processes in one of the simplest known cells, which is many orders of magnitude simpler than a human cell.
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Disillusioned JW
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Spiritually Weak Ones Are Bad Association according to the Governing Body
by RULES & REGULATIONS inafter you read the words of jesus in mark 2: 17, you will see that the contrast between the teachings of jesus and the governing body.. .
you clearly read what's written in the bible, but the society is always twisting and bending scriptures to their benefit.
here is stephen lett talking about ''spiritually weak'' members and twisting jesus's words teaching on sinners:.
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Disillusioned JW
The idea about bad associations existing in Christian congregations and of such bad associations causing danger to the other Christians in the congregations comes from Paul's words at 1 Corinthians 15:33. The context of that verse (see verses 12 - 34 of the same chapter) is about Christians in the congregations saying that there will be no future resurrection of the dead. "The International Bible Commentary With the New International Version" [General Editor (revised edition): F. F. Bruce; New edition 1986] on page 1384 says regarding the "Bad company" portion of verse 33 the following: "Keeping company with men who reject the resurrection will corrupt Christian character. The quotation is a line from Menander's Thais, c. 320 B.C., although it may by Paul's time have been a common Greek proverb."
Regarding the "Bad company" reference "The New Bible Commentary: Revised" (Edited by Guthrie and Motyer; copyright 1970) says the following on page 1072 "... The Corinthians will ruin their Christian lives by mixing with those who live merely for selfish pleasures because they deny any resurrection or final judgement."
The "Life Application Study Bible: New American Standard Bible--Updated Edition" (copyright 2000 by Zondervan) on page 2028 in the study note for 1 Cor. 15:33 says "Keeping company with those who deny the resurrection could corrupt good Christian character. Don't let your relationship with unbelievers lead you away from Christ or cause your faith to waiver."
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I was looking at getting a set of the 1989 BV but not sure if it has what I want Help please
by mickbobcat inso i am looking for the watchtower that has the part about within our 20th century armageddon will come.
but i know they changed it on some bv.
i have an offer to buy one on line but not sure what page i need them to take a picture of to let me see if its the changed version to in our time.
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Disillusioned JW
In one of the topic threads someone made a post saying he took a photo of a BV in the KH library which said "in our 20th century" and showed the photo to an elder. I thus think that some bound volumes were printed with that wording. Some message board posts say it is on page 12 of the January 1 issue. -
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Prove That Jehovah’s Witnesses Do Not Have The “Truth”
by minimus insomeone is researching jehovah’s witnesses.
they happen to come on to this site.
do the witnesses have the truth??.
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Disillusioned JW
OnTheWayOut, if the claim of "articles in the WT ... are dilluted further when they are prepared for the bound volumes" is true, then it should be straight forward to provide quotes of such examples. Of course people reading the documentation would need to still have their individual issues of the WT or be shown images of those issues, in order to make the comparison. Likewise it should be straight forward to list the doctrines in the Truth book which the WT allegedly now claims are false if about 80% of those doctrines are now really considered false.
I was shocked when I read the claim regarding about 80% of the teachings of the Truth book, since that book was the primary doctrinal book I studied prior to becoming baptized as a JW and I was an active JW for numerous years after my baptism and was not aware of anywhere near that many doctrinal departures from the Truth book. However it has been numerous years after the year I became inactive and I have paid very little attention to what the WT has published after I became inactive (and I have avoided obtaining nearly all of their publications [primarily, other than some Awake! bound volumes and two brochures] published after I became inactive). Thus, maybe the WT has made far more doctrinal changes than I am aware of. I do see that numerous teachings of Russell and of Rutherford have been discarded.
I realize that the Truth book of 1968 was revised in 1981. I no longer have 1968 edition (my copy of it had become very worn); I replaced it with a like-new copy of the 1981 revision after making a photocopy of pages 8 - 9, but my recollection is that I hadn't noticed many differences between the two editions.
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Misquotes, Lies and deception in Watchtower Publications
by jwfacts ini have just finished an article misquotes, deception and lies and would like your comments, proof reading, and any other examples that you think are important to add.
most of these already appear on jwfacts.com within specific articles, but it is more powerful seeing them included together.
there have also been a number of requests over the years for such a collection.
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Disillusioned JW
Though I realize that all of the prior posts on this topic thread are from several years ago I am making this post in case others, like myself, are reading this thread. My comment is in reply to Phizzy's words on the first page of the thread. There that person posted the following:
'Dr Carol Cleland who is mis-quoted in the brochure had this comment to make about the WT in an e-mail about the matter:
"My work has been used before by these people and it really angers me because they are using it to defend views that I reject..... it is deeply dishonest for theists to deliberately distort the words of scholars for their own purposes; as I recall , this is a sin"
She was not happy !
"The Truth is not something you have to lie about".'
The quotes in "The Origin of Life" brochure of the WT of Dr. Cleland are not misquotes for the words in the quotes are accurate quotes of Dr. Cleland words as written in the source material on NASA's website. [Readers, please visit NASA's website (page 31 of the brochure lists the web page of NASA's article) to read Dr. Clealand's words in there full context.] Furthermore I don't see the quotes as being mishandled either, for in a footnote the brochure makes clear that Dr. Cleland believes/thinks that abiogenesis happened and that she is not a creationist. Note that the footnote on page 6 of the brochure says "Dr. Cleland is not a creationist. She believes that life arose by chance in some fashion not yet fully understood." I suspect that Cleland is unaware of that footnote. [I suspect that the person who emailed her about the WT's quotes of her did not inform her that the WT had a footnote saying she is not a creationist.] The WT brochure was pointing out that though Dr. Cleland is someone who considers abiogenesis to be true and who apparently also considers biological evolution to be true, she nonetheless perceives problems with certain theories of abiogenesis.
However, I do dislike that the WT chopped up here words by interrupting her words in between "astronomically low" and "Yet" and in between "Yet" and "most researchers". I also dislike how they quote her words of "None of them ... happened" after the other quotes they made of her words, rather than mentioning it before. That is because in the source of her words she said "None of them ... happened" before she said "The probability ... low". Perhaps those actions of the WT amount to mishandling the quotes of her words but I don't see how they could be misquotes of her words.
I do strongly disapprove that the WT brochure did not quote her words of:
"I suppose that if I had to pick a favorite theory, it would be Freeman Dyson's double origin theory, which postulates an initial protein world that eventually produced an RNA world as a by-product of an increasingly sophisticated metabolism. The RNA world, which starts out as an obligatory parasite of the protein world, eventually produces the cooperative schema, and hence life as we know it today. I like the fact that this account attempts to deal with the origin of the cooperative schema." Those words of hers were said (as shown in the original source of her words) immediately after she said "... the coordination will somehow take care of itself."
In the source article I was pleasantly surprised to read that the Cleland said "Scientists now believe that microbes can survive interplanetary journeys ensconced in meteors produced by asteroid impacts on planetary bodies containing life." I have read before that some scientists thought microbes could survive such journeys I had also read that scientists said they could not survive such journey's alive, especially while experiencing the immense heat as the meteors are passing through the atmosphere of a planet. But now I think, what if the planet (that the meteors were approaching) did not yet have free oxygen in the atmosphere, such as the early atmosphere of Earth?
Why does the WT typically not quote the explanations of evolutionist scientists [note: I am not using the word "evolutionist" in a pejorative sense, but merely to distinguish scientists which consider evolution to be true from those relatively few which don't] for the perceived problems of evolution theory? Besides of the obvious reason of the WT not wanting to present information which supports evolution and because the WT (or at least the vast majority of the believers of the WT/JW religion) is convinced that evolution is false, I think it is because they notice that the scientists strongly disagree about proposed scientific explanations on numerous topics. It is also because many scientific ideas that were widely accepted as facts (or as correct) in the past by scientists have later been discarded as false or have become greatly revised. Note for example that Cleland's (and Dyson's) idea of an "initial protein world that eventually produced an RNA" disagrees with the idea (quoted in the brochure) of Yockey regarding a "proteins first" type of origin of life.
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Prove That Jehovah’s Witnesses Do Not Have The “Truth”
by minimus insomeone is researching jehovah’s witnesses.
they happen to come on to this site.
do the witnesses have the truth??.
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Disillusioned JW
WTDeserter, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Prove your claim that ~80% of "The Truth that Leads to Eternal Life" is no longer considered truth by the WT. I am not aware of that drastic a change.
Prove your claim that "articles in the WT ... are dilluted further when they are prepared for the bound volumes", since I have only seen one sentence in one article in one WT issue out of decades of WT issues which became diluted in the bound volume.
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Belgium: Jehovah's Witnesses in court to respond to incitement to hatred
by yalbmert99 inbelgium: jehovah's witnesses in court to respond to incitement to hatred.
february 16, 2021.. https://www.levif.be/actualite/belgique/les-temoins-de-jehovah-devant-le-tribunal-pour-repondre-d-incitation-a-la-haine/article-news-1392951.html.
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Disillusioned JW
Figuratively speaking: WT/JW leaders in Belgium are being brought before the 'Judicial Committee' of the superior authorities. The WT/JW leaders should show a repentant attitude and act in subjection to the superior authorities if they don't want to suffer severe penalty. See Romans 10:1 - 7 (NWT). Hee hee.
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Good News Everyone!
by Anony Mous inthe non-profit organization behind the jehovah's witnesses in kraainem, belgium has been convicted of inciting discrimination and hatred or violence against former members who chose to leave the community.
the court in ghent has fined jehovah's witnesses eur 12,000 but due to the indexation adjustment, the actual payout to the victim will be (at this point) 8 times higher.
the multiplier seems weird to us, for those familiar with us law, the eur 12,000 is the statutory fine, taking into account the devaluation of currency, the court system sets an indexed multiplier for fines, currently at 8 - similar to how fines in the us were set in the 1800's at $100 would now be several thousands of dollars.. it is likely that the jehovah's witnesses will pursue this case to the european court.. according to the prosecutor, this case is therefore mainly about recognizing the malpractices within the community, not so much about sanctions: “in our opinion, this is a blatant violation of the discrimination law.
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Disillusioned JW
Just to make clear, my above post is not a reference to the terrorist attack on 9-11. Furthermore it does not promote violence. Instead it is a joke using language of the biblical book of Revelation about God's wrath being poured out during the great tribulation and about the fall of Babylon the Great. It also alludes the biblical story in the book of Joshua about the walls of Jericho falling down.
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New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures
by Quendi ini know this has been discussed before, but i want to reopen the topic.
i am currently reading ray franz's memoir crisis of conscience and ran across this footnote with respect to the new world translation of the holy scriptures:.
"the new world translation bears no translator's name and is presented as the anonymous work of the "new world translation committee.
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Disillusioned JW
The New Testament writers in a few verses when quoting the OT where The Name (the name of YHWH/Yahweh in the Hebrew OT, but typically "the LORD" in the Greek manuscripts of the OT) appears were equating Jesus with "the LORD" (Yahweh). See Romans 10:9 -13 in the NWT (1984) and then read the interlinear literal translation of the Greek text in the WT's Kingdom Interlinear. Look at the cross references (in the 1984 NWT) for verse 13 to Joel 2:32 and Zephaniah 3:9. Those OT verses are where The Name YHWH/Yahweh/Jehovah is used in the Hebrew Scriptures ("the LORD" in at least most copies of the Greek translation of those scriptures). Look at Acts 2:21 (NWT 1984) where it says "And everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah will be saved." Then look at the Kingdom Interlinear's literal interlinear translation and notice it says "the name of Lord" instead of Jehovah in that verse.
See also the website of https://www.tetragrammaton.org/ . Its author claims to have attended meetings at a Kingdom Hall of JWs on a weekly basis and that he has never been a JW (and thus never an apostate of the WT/JW religion). He is an evangelical Christian who has carefully examined the J (Jehovah) references in the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures.
There is evidence that the earliest Christians originally thought of the heavenly Christ as originally an emanation of Yahweh (or as part of Yahweh) and thus they thought he could be called Yahweh and "the LORD" and thus also be worshiped and be considered God and be prayed to (see John 1:1, John 20:28, Acts 7:59,60 [note footnote in 1984 NWT regarding alternate reading for "made appeal" and see the Kingdom Interlinear's literal translation of Acts 7:59, 60]). See Colossians 1:17 in the KIT and note that the Greek text for that verse has no Greek word meaning "other". Note that NWT Bible editions printed from 2006 and later exclude the brackets around the word "other" and thus obscure the fact that the word "other" in the translation of that verse does not complete the sense of that verse, but rather alters its meaning.
See also Hebrews 1:1 - 14 and note that Jesus is being contrasted with the angels and thus being considered as not an angel and thus not the Archangel Michael. Notice that verse 6 (in the 1984 NWT) says "... let all God's angels do obeisance to him." Note that the footnote for that verse in the 1984 NWT Reference Bible says 'Or, "let ... worship." '. Compare the wording of the verse to the 1970 and earlier editions of the NWT; they say in the main text for Hebrews 1:6 the following '... And let all God's angels worship him." ' [See also the ASV and KJV Bibles for that verse.] In contrast the latest revision of the NWT (the 2013 Revision) in Hebrews 1:6 in the footnote for "do obeisance" doesn't give the alternate rendering of "worship .." but says "bow down" instead. [See https://www.jw.org/en/library/bible/nwt/books/hebrews/1/#fn161259120 .] Step by step the WT in the translation of their NWT has diminished the significance of sayings in the Bible which ascribe worship to Jesus Christ.
Let me make clear, I don't believe/think that Jesus is the God or a god - I'm now an atheist and a philosophical naturalist - but I now think that parts of Bible do teach that Jesus is God (in some sense - in a much greater sense than the WT interpretation of "and the Word was a god") and that the earliest Christians thought of Jesus as God (in some sense - in a much greater sense than the WT interpretation of "and the Word was a god"). See the book by Earl Doherty called The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus. See also Doherty's website at https://www.jesuspuzzle.com/jesuspuzzle/index.htm .
The earliest extant New Testament manuscripts didn't write out the name Jesus but used nomina sacra instead. Regarding nomina sacra see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomina_sacra . -
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True Religion vs. False Religion and James 1:27
by Ultimate Reality insomething that opened my eyes as i was re-examining "the truth" was the verse at james 1:27. in the new world translation the greek word in this verse, threskeia, is translated worship, which is fine except that it hides a more important meaning.
this same word can be, and most often is translated religion.. for witnesses, the matter of being the "one true religion" is all important.
pure and undefiled religion before god and the father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, to keep oneself unspotted from the world.. english revised version.
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Disillusioned JW
In the Rutherford days the JWs said they were not a religion but instead were true worship. In the Rutherford days they said all religion is bad ("religion is a snare and a racket") and false. Later they began saying that they were a religion, the true religion, and that there is a distinction between false and true religion. There former view of religion probably influenced their NWT translation of James 1:27.
Page 104 -105 in Rutherford's book called "Religion" (copyright 1940) says "Again let the people be reminded that religion is a snare and a racket, originating with the Devil, the leader of the demons, and forced upon the people by the demons: the snare of the Devil, in which to catch the people, and the racket of the religious leaders to rob the people. All the practitioners of religion, and the adherents thereto, will find no place of safety or escape at Armageddon."