Oh, and not to be missed: Life, How Did It Get Here? By Evolution and Creation?
Seriously--research into all of the scholarly, accurate and highly responsible quotes in that book was what convinced me, once a die-hard creationist, that evolution was true!!!
Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea by Carl Zimmer. This is a great place to start, if you've already checked out the invaluable talkorigins website.
Life: The First Four Billion Years by Richard Fortey, who takes a very wide angle, examining not just organic evolution but also what was going on geologically and climatalogically at the same time, since everything affects the other. He's got a great "chatty" style which is pleasant to read.
Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters by Don Prothero. So much for the fallacy of there not being any transitional fossils! This book is good because it digs deep (but not too deep for the lay person) into explaining WHY a particular fossil demonstrates evolution and how it fits into the broader play.
The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins. This one's more daunting than the previous three but an excellent read once you've got the basics under your belt. He models his tale on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, admittedly quite loosely, but it's a fascinating trip back in time, examining retrogressively the last common ancestor before each major "break off" in homo sapien lineage.
so i'm still stuck on the jw email spam train, and my mom sends me this powerpoint with a horrible, horrible presentation with job 38 set to a bunch of pictures of the universe and whatnot.
you know the passage, it's all "where were you when i created the earth, you insignificant gnat".
and the point, i guess, is to show that god is all powerful and awesome.
Thank you, Leo, for adding those points! Please keep them coming...
yes the watchtower says yoga can "open ones mind to demonic control..." so, i wen't to a class at my gym held be a pregnant instructor who was not dressed as a witch???
was her baby the "anti-christ devils child" i thought to myself in my witness mind.
we did some relaxing streching and i still did not feel under control of demons!
Waffles--TOO FUNNY! What's the acronym? ROFLMAO? is that right?
how long does the society or christians say, "man has been on earth?
" according to the bible.. how long does scientist say, "man has existed on earth?
" which can be reasonably proven.. how does the neanderthals fit into the picture of the bible?.
No.
so i'm still stuck on the jw email spam train, and my mom sends me this powerpoint with a horrible, horrible presentation with job 38 set to a bunch of pictures of the universe and whatnot.
you know the passage, it's all "where were you when i created the earth, you insignificant gnat".
and the point, i guess, is to show that god is all powerful and awesome.
You're right, God's final speech to Job is troubling. The issue raised thematically is, of course, the question of justice and while God has no hesitation defending his justice in other parts of the Bible (Psalms, for instance), that doesn't happen here. Instead, as Jack Miles points out in his book, "God, A Biography," "The deity rises to his full majestic stature, drawing the robes of creation around him and regally changes the subject." You might find his treatment of the God of Job rather gratifying.
Miles also asserts that Job catches on, he's not fooled. The traditional translation of Job's response, "now my eye sees thee, therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes," is, according to Miles, a mistranslation, since "myself" was added to LXX as the object for the transitive verb "despise". He proposes that what Job feels sorry for isn't himself but humanity, and that a more accurate translation might be "Now that my eyes have seen you, I shudder with sorrow for mortal clay."
hi, everyone, just wanted to say hi to y'all.
i've been lurking for a long time... .
i only wished i had visited sites like these before!
Finch: OMG I'd totally forgotten about "The Day After." We must be about the same age--I was a young teenager when that was on TV and, like you, it scared the sh*t out of me. I remembe that my (elder) dad stayed up late with me afterward going over all the scrips as to why God won't allow that to happen. Sigh.
Welcome to the board BTW. "Who Wrote the Bible" by R. Friedman should be on your reading list, as well as "The Bible Unearthed" by Finkelstein (sp?), both very eyeopening to JWs like myself who had always taken the authorship as set out in the that neat little chart at the back of the NWT. Amazing what a bit of scholarship can do for a person.
i was thinking the other day about a potential answer to the frequent party question 'what was your most embarrassing moment?'.
immediately my mind went to my last experience on the theocratic school.
as an aspiring ms, i volunteered at the last minute to give a #4 talk on a particular individual (ignorant of what i was about to get myself into).
Heard this from a friend who spent a while in a small rural congregation in the north, where the publishers were a little, um, rough around the edges. Anyway, a local needs part was about how just because you took a territory out in your name, it didn't mean it was yours but "Jehovah's" and how they needed to be shared to make sure they got worked. At the end, an old brother raises his hand and says, "All I want to know is who's the son-of-a-bitch that's been working my territory?"
Sad, so sad.
on april 1, 2009 a letter was sent from the governing body of jehovahs witnesses to congregations in spain informing them that the printing, shipping, and storage of watchtower publications would be discontinued at the madrid branch office.
the letter expressed confidence that the spanish witnesses would, despite the move, continue to generously support the world wide work and ends with an appeal to remain united under the direction of the witness leadership.. at a glance, this story may seem like a non-issue, perhaps, just another example of reorganization and consolidation within a multinational corporation; however, the dissolution of the printing branch has caused considerable hard feelings among some of jehovahs witnesses in spain.
to understand the reason we must first look at the history behind the branch office and external factors that some feel prompted this abrupt move.. early in their history, jehovahs witnesses began printing their trademark watchtower magazines and associated books and tracts in-house at their bethel headquarters in brooklyn, new york.
Interesting! Thanks for the update, Wantarevolution!
