the course of this river has obviously been designed, it's avoiding every single tree on the riverbank!.
creationist: are you trying to tell me that all those plants know where the riverbank is?.
atheist: no one designed the river!
Behe is an old earth creationist / devout christian with an agenda, i wouldn't want to waste my time reading anything that guy writes. Especially not after some of the shit i've seen him come out with in interviews. My wobbly platform gives me a pretty good view of his lack of integrity.
PsychoP, I'd really like to hate professor Behe as much as you do, if it's not too much trouble is there any chance of you providing just one example of his lack of integrity? Thanks.
the course of this river has obviously been designed, it's avoiding every single tree on the riverbank!.
creationist: are you trying to tell me that all those plants know where the riverbank is?.
atheist: no one designed the river!
Villabolo, personally I reckon the Greeks nicked all their best ideas from the Egyptians (who certainly beat them to the earth being round). But I never claimed the knowledge in Ecclesiastes must have come from God, just that the observation is about cycles, and remarkable for its time. I agree though, as I intimated, I think the writer was speaking in the context of his time.
the course of this river has obviously been designed, it's avoiding every single tree on the riverbank!.
creationist: are you trying to tell me that all those plants know where the riverbank is?.
atheist: no one designed the river!
Psycho Parrot, from that comment I take it you have never actually read anything by Michael Behe? Meaning you are unencumbered by a first hand knowledge of his scientific argument and have only read what others have written about him? From this wobbly platform you suggest I should limit my freedom of speech? Er, no. When you can come here and demonstrate with your own evidence why Behe is the devil incarnate and his books are an anathema to science and dangerous contaminant to rational thought... well, even then I reserve the right to give an opinion if I think a parable is self-serving and loaded.
the course of this river has obviously been designed, it's avoiding every single tree on the riverbank!.
creationist: are you trying to tell me that all those plants know where the riverbank is?.
atheist: no one designed the river!
The riverbank story is entertaining enough, but of course is completely biased against the poor old creationist, since it is an observable and experimentally verifiable fact that rivers will and do go wherever they want to, (apparently) randomly, and that plants will survive wherever they are able. Nobody (not even a creationist) denies that processes that obey natural laws can have the appearance of design. The problem with this little parable is that it is loaded such that the creationist is, ipso facto, ignorant, and so it contributes little to the debate about origins other than to make a long-winded ad homini claim that anyone that disagrees with the current consensus is an idiot. Anyone that has read such books as Signature in the Cell by Stephen Meyer or Michael Behe's The Edge of Evolution will know that this is not the case, at least not for all those contending that the current theories about origins are completely inadequate.
the course of this river has obviously been designed, it's avoiding every single tree on the riverbank!.
creationist: are you trying to tell me that all those plants know where the riverbank is?.
atheist: no one designed the river!
Dr JohnStMark,
on the scripture at Eccl 1:7, I tend to agree the WT overplays its hand somewhat, and we can presume that the writer did not understand exactly how the water 'cycle' worked - but it's a little unfair to say that there is no mention of a cycle:
5 The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. 6 The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. 7 All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.
The whole context of these verses is about natural cycles - the solar cycle, the cycling winds, and the water cycle; that somehow the water that streams into the sea eventually returns to the streams again. These are scientifically accurate observations, and at the very least demonstrates remarkable insight, for the time.
barbara wanted me to post this info she shared recently at a speech she gave at a seminar.
all comments welcome.
peace out .. .
Fair enough Old hippie, it's just a shame that the one example you picked on to demonstrate Anderson's alleged 'vast exaggeration' is actually no exaggeration at all, as attested to by people here, from Watchtower documents, and from from my own personal experience.
barbara wanted me to post this info she shared recently at a speech she gave at a seminar.
all comments welcome.
peace out .. .
OldHippie, I applaud your call for balance, but when it comes to Lies that life is black and white, don't forget that it's the Watchtower Society that insists on seeing life in vivid monochrome. I've just read through Barbara's article again and, bitter or not, I find very little in there that is exaggerated although it is certainly critical. Maybe shining a light on 'the truth' is just too painful.
barbara wanted me to post this info she shared recently at a speech she gave at a seminar.
all comments welcome.
peace out .. .
OldHippie, Barbara Anderson's version is much closer to the truth than yours. Not that long ago I had to sit through a circuit assembly talk aimed directly at the youngsters which stressed that they shouldn't be seeking 'the falsely called knowledge'. Disgusting, if only for taking that scripture completely out of context. In our (quite affluent) area almost nobody chooses to go to university - it is absolutely frowned upon. You may be lucky where you are, but the pressure to avoid advanced education is not locally originated, it comes right from the top.
any thoughts on that particular phrasing?
personally, i think the wts uses it as another form of mind control.
by calling the individual "one of jehovah's witnesses," it lends a generic feel to the wording.
I'll think of that the next time I see a Craigslist ad, oops I mean, one of the ads from Craigslist.
I'm very pleased to hear that, although I think I prefer the more succinct, one of Craigslist's ads.
any thoughts on that particular phrasing?
personally, i think the wts uses it as another form of mind control.
by calling the individual "one of jehovah's witnesses," it lends a generic feel to the wording.
Hi Leolaia,
Yes, of course, if you make 'Jehovah's Witness' a noun then 'a jehovahs-witness', or even 'a jehovah-witness' is correct. But 'Jehovah' is not a thing, it's the name of a person who (allegedly) has, or posesses, witnesses or followers. Making the term into the noun 'Jehovahs-witness' results in a catastrophic loss of meaning of both of the individual words (what does jehovah-witness mean?). So 'one of Jehovah's witnesses' or 'one of Jehovah's followers' or 'a witness of Jehovah', is the only correct form in English (and is the way the society uses it, in print anyway) if meaning is to be retained. People get this wrong either due to ignorance of the fact that Jehovah is a name, ignorance of English grammar, or laziness. IMO witnesses themselves are inexcusable when they use the term as a noun or title because it disrespects the very name that they claim to hold sacred.
Thank you for your hideous examples. Apart from 'I don't give a rat's ass' (which seems reasonable to me since rat isn't a name and he certainly posesses an ass, although maybe 'I wouldn't give you a rat's ass' would be better), the rest demonstrate what happens when you let things slide.
