Spriritual truts for the masses!
The image on the lower right corner of the front page with the 7x7000, where is that from?
Posts by bohm
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22New online archive with older Watchtower writings
by processor inlots of older watchtower and watchtower-related publications can be found here now:.
http://wtarchive.kilu.de.
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6
Inference and what jehovahs witnesses fail to see wrt. 607, evolution, the ark, etc.
by bohm in"hey guys, last summer i spend 3 days in the stomach of a live sperm whale".
the imediate reaction when you hear that is to think im lying.
if i had written that in a book called "the things i did last summer", everyone would tend to treat that rest of the material in that book with sceptisism.
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bohm
bluecanary: you are right on the money about the holy spirit. sometimes it feels that the less you know, and the more you believe, the mor faith you have and the more worthy are you. Its a really strange psychology to assume God possess - on one hand he want us to believe and obay, on the other hand, he wants to give us as little reason as possible to do that. Somehow that makes God a good guy.
Im even willing to buy the part about belief being an emotional thing that i just havent experienced yet - like Love it cannot be explained through reason. This forum has learned me that it is possible to feel that way and through that feeling experience a lot of good things in life and be a really cool person. Where the chain jumps of is when you, like a obsessive lover, try to impose that emotion [belief] on other, by demanding they follow your way of doing things, ie. disfellowshipping, blood, no university, etc.
DaCheech: No problem, i LIVE in a small backward european country :-). Supernaturnal phenomena are allmost impossible to proove false. Try to read Dean Radins book "The conscious universe". There is a bit of junk statistics (okay a lot :-) ) in it and some selective datapicking, but beside all that its a really fascinating tale of how hard it is to create experiments with humans. (though you got to use google and read about the experiments to get the most out of the book)
Farkel: At the convention, the only time they mentioned evidence for noahs ark, or anything for that matter, was in one sentence: "The best evidence for the flood is that jesus mentioned it in xxx". uhm, okay. so we can believe in noahs ark because jesus says so. we believe in jesus because he is in the bible. we believe in the bible because the things told in the bible are factual. uhm..
My experience is that nobody likes circular reasoning and illogical things. It simply hurt the brain. That means it creates cognitive dissonance when pointed out to someone, even though it may have to be through examples from other religions. Actually i made this thread because a guy on this site [like to talk about babylon and celebrate scholars he dont know who are] once AGAIN failed to realize that if there is evidence against the biblical explanation on something, even though it can be rationalized by a bit of hopefull thinking, it is STILL evidence against the bible. garh. think i should not post before lunch, im to grumpy :-). -
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The WTS's start of the "70 years"
by Doug Mason init is my understanding that the scholars of the wts say that the "70 years" began when the land was "completely depopulated", not when jerusalem was destroyed.. .
if that is the case, they should have jumped from their 537 bce date back to the removal of inhabitants during nebuchadnezzar's 23rd year, thus making that 607 (or 606) bce.. .
did russell start the 70 years (and hence his 2520 years) with the destruction of jerusalem or with the depopulation of the land?.
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6
Inference and what jehovahs witnesses fail to see wrt. 607, evolution, the ark, etc.
by bohm in"hey guys, last summer i spend 3 days in the stomach of a live sperm whale".
the imediate reaction when you hear that is to think im lying.
if i had written that in a book called "the things i did last summer", everyone would tend to treat that rest of the material in that book with sceptisism.
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bohm
"Hey guys, last summer i spend 3 days in the stomach of a live sperm whale"
The imediate reaction when you hear that is to think im lying. If i had written that in a book called "The things I did last summer", everyone would tend to treat that rest of the material in that book with sceptisism. Sure there might be explanations, the whale might have had a giant bag with me surgically placed inside it which i lived in while i breathed through a tube, or Thor the thundergod may have prevented me from dying, but at the end of the day its the kind of statements that hurt your crediability.
The obvious connection i want to make is with the bible (and the jw interpretation of it). It says a guy DID infact live inside a whale for a couple of days, however (im guessing) it would be rationalized in the following way: "I know the bible is true, so when it says Jonas lived inside a whale that was a miracle. It does not affect the crediability of the bible because God does perform miracles and this is just one of them". What happends here is that the person says the bible is true, invent a RATIONALIZATION of the evidence (that God may have performed a miracle), use THAT to explain the evidence, and thus isolate the bibles crediability from evidence. This is done time over here on this forum, with 607-chronology, noahs ark, no evolution, magic hair, talking snakes, etc. playing the role of the whale.
This way of arguing is simply false, provided one will accept the basics of statistics and logic. If a person wish to continue argue this way, fine, but you got to throw logic out of the window and pretend that does not matter. Thats what i want to point out in this thread.
In reality, noone was not born knowing that the bible was true. They was convinced. Thats why the preaching work makes sence: you CONVINCE people by arguments. Thus the truthfullness of the bible is inferred based on evidence, i want to show here how evidence affect the level of trust we can put in the bible.
Say we are having yet another discussion with a guy who likes to defend biblical 607 chronology, and he point out that he trust the bible more than secular history. Lets call the belief the bible is true for "B" and the evidence from secular history which contradict the bible for "H". What we want to do is talk about the level of trust we put in the bible given the evidence from history. In statistics we write: P(B | H). We want to compare that to our level of trust in the bible BEFORE introducing the evidence, P(B). Notice this analysis is insulated against various retionalizations, like "the kings may be lying", "we may find more cuniform tablets", etc. Using bayes theorem we may calculate:
P(B | H) / P(B) = P(H | B) / P(H)
the bible is true, B, or not true, here "not B". We may marginalize over this event and get:
P(B | H) / P(B) = P(H | B) / [ P(H | B)P(B) + P(H | not B)P(not B) ]
However, since we must assume P(H | B) is much less than P(H | not B), ie. if we assume the bible is false, its a hell of a lot easier to explain secular history around 607 than if we assume bible is true, we must have (P(B) + P(not B) = 1):
P(B | H) / P(B) < P(H | B) / [ P(H | B)P(B) + P(H | B)P(not B) ] = P(H | B) / P(H | B) = 1
Thus: P(B | H) < P(B)
So we are just stating the obvious fact that evidence that contradict the bible, even if it may be rationalized by various explanations, reduce the probability of the bible being true, no matter how you twist it. you got to throw out statistics and or logic to get a different result.
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The WTS's start of the "70 years"
by Doug Mason init is my understanding that the scholars of the wts say that the "70 years" began when the land was "completely depopulated", not when jerusalem was destroyed.. .
if that is the case, they should have jumped from their 537 bce date back to the removal of inhabitants during nebuchadnezzar's 23rd year, thus making that 607 (or 606) bce.. .
did russell start the 70 years (and hence his 2520 years) with the destruction of jerusalem or with the depopulation of the land?.
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bohm
scholar: mmm. okay. you know, enlighten me on this interesting subject. Who are those scholars? (by who i mean what are their names) and what are their credentials? Please, i want to join in on the non-pagan-celebration of them.
Ill help you, Rolf Furuli from norway is one right? the guy who is a jw and an expert on ancient languages and NOT NEOBABYLONIC HISTORY? What other scholars do you refer to?
just as an aside - you know that when biblical chronology disagree with history, that is EVIDENCE AGAINST A LITERAL INTERPRETATION OF THE BIBLE. just like all that evidence for evolution, against noahs ark and a gazillion other things in the bible is EVIDENCE AGAINST THE BIBLE. I dont think you appreciate that fact when you so happily point out disagreement between the bible and secular history. you know what, i think i will write a thread about this not to derail the discussion.
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Songs that remind you of your youth or make you feel all fuzzy inside............
by jambon1 inhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7n_in7jqrk&feature=related.
i give you this seventies classic which featured in a 2004 hit film.. love it so i do!.
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bohm
champagne supernova by oasis!
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THE WITCHTOWER 09/2009: The "Shulammite remnant" exposed
by processor inthe september 2009 issue of the witchtower is available for download now.. .
the shulammite remnant exposed: the shulammite rejected king solomon - what does that tell us about the relationship between the shulammite remnant and the greater solomon?.
bacteria and parasites glorify jehovah: germs are part of jehovahs works of creation and are wonderfully made.
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bohm
hahaha! i especially liked the part about the bacteria! love how it capture the quote-out-of-context feel of the real watchtower :-) .
"You can live forever with parasites on earth!"
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Does everyone else get this reaction from their JW family when discussing objections to the religion?
by jambon1 inwhen pointing out my objections to the jw religion with my wife, i have noticed a worrying trend which even after 3 or 4 years shows no sign of relenting.. after speaking calmly for an hour or so and logically pointing out my objections, my wife starts to put forward outrageous assertations about my points.
for instance, if i am refering to the fact that disfellowshipping is a form of extreem punishment & i mention the terrible effects that being d/f'd can have on people, she will eventually retort with something like "so what you are saying is that we should tolerate paedophiles, rapists & thieves in the organisation then?".
of course, i've never at any point said anything of the sort.. or if i have been overly critical of the amount of control the society wants over peoples lives, she would reply "so what you are saying is that we should all just go out & do what we want, get drunk & live an immoral life?
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bohm
Hey! two new faces here, WELCOME TO YOU ALL!!.
For those who have not read it, i abselutely second leavingwt about reading stephen hassans book - this cult mode has nada to do about logic and you need to help them out of it to reach them. Stephen Hassans book give some tools and ideas that might be of help.
The part about misrepresenting the opposite argument - its a common logical fallacy. The wt is full of them. You might find it helpfull to read about them here: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ and perhaps use google to find out how they apply to the typical jw argument. Then you can perhaps draw the discussion over to a meta-discussion regarding how you should talk to each other generally and the importance of not mis-representing each others arguments?.
carla: Thats very interesting about the facial expression. I have never observed that, but i will keep a close eye when i meet someone truly programm... faitfull.
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The WTS's start of the "70 years"
by Doug Mason init is my understanding that the scholars of the wts say that the "70 years" began when the land was "completely depopulated", not when jerusalem was destroyed.. .
if that is the case, they should have jumped from their 537 bce date back to the removal of inhabitants during nebuchadnezzar's 23rd year, thus making that 607 (or 606) bce.. .
did russell start the 70 years (and hence his 2520 years) with the destruction of jerusalem or with the depopulation of the land?.
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bohm
inbetween: my thought exactly. when i hear that expression i get an image of Rutherford pissing his own pants on a drinking binge. There was an old thread where Scholar was quizzed about what scholars he was referring to, and he claimed there was also scholars outside jw who supported the 607 date. After some time he provided a list. Turns out the scholars was mostly old pyramidiologists and all of those with any authority either belonged to jw or splinter religions of jw.
But who cares, its fun to see scholar get his ass kicked yet again :-).
Doug: I think its an excelent question, jw chronology relies on not being fleshed out, and having a lot of loose ends (especially with relation to evidence against it) that leaves the believers to guess on rationalization and give them oppertunity to think its themselves that are to stupid for not being able to understand the proof. Look forward to what kind of quotes others can dig up, it would surprice me if the WT did not contradict itself on this topic as well :-).
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Tower Of Babel
by Blue Grass innote:this was a post i made on another thread but i felt it was off topic so i giving it it's own thread.. someone(who i can't remember) on a thread(which i can't remember) said the tower of babel story is proven false because some languages evolved from others and thus that was another strike against the bible as being fiction.
however this person doesn't realize that there are languages on this earth that has absolutely no relation whatsoever such as chinese-english, spanish-arabic, greek-xhosa, etc.
not to mention all of the ancient languages that are now extinct due to invading countries forcing their own language on other countries.
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bohm
BlueGrass: Im an atheist. Thanks for your incoherent illogical drivel. Its the most fun i had since trying to nail my balls to a fence with a stapler. You make Reniaa seem logical and well-researched.
Okay just wanted to bump up Leolaias excelent response up. It deserve a thread on its own, as opposed to mr. troll here.