Posts by JanH

6

Stigmata & the Lost Saying of Jesus

by ShaunaC in

jw
friends

morning guys!

hope you all had an enjoyable weekend!.

i just watched the movie "stigmata" last night.

JanH

I just watched the movie "Stigmata" last night. Although it was about receiving the 5 wounds of Jesus, it was more about lost sacred writings of Jesus. I figured that this was completely fictional until I read at the end of the movie that in 1945 scrolls were discovered.

That's the Nag Hammadi library, named after the Egyptian place where it was discovered.

It's an interesting collection of Gnostic texts, including alleged lost sayings of Jesus.

See http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html

What was particularly interesting about the Nag Hammadi library, was that for the first time scholars could find out what Gnostics believed from their own writings. Earlier, practically everything we knew about them came from their opponents, escpecially Irenaeus.

According to the movie, the Catholic church wants to keep these newly discovered scrolls secret because these contain Jesus' instructions, in his own words, of how he wanted his church to be continued.

Now, this is just conspiracy theory nonsense. It is fiction, not fact. The Vatican has no say here, except they consider the books to be non-canonical, which is their prerogative (it's a matter of faith, not anything science can tell anything about). These texts are widely distributed. In fact, some professors at my University has been involved in the translation and interpretation of these scrolls, so I know them well.

The Jesus Seminar based some of their work on the Gospel of Thomas ("The Five Gospels"), and consider it older than any of the four "canonical" ones, and most scholars now tend to agree.

There is no longer anything secret about these texts. And unless you are a gnostic, or inclined towards the mystical versions of xtianity, you'll most likely find the Gospel of Thomas and the other gnostic texts quite underwhelming in their wisdom.

- Jan

17

England 2 Finland 1 !!!... World cup next???

by digderidoo in

jw
friends

what a result!!

!...so are we gonna do it???.

is the dream of a repeat of 1966 possible???.

JanH

: Any way I can assure football is not a game for wussies, matter of fact they are thinking or redesigning the helmet because so many QB's are getting brain damage.

I have another theory about that brain damage...

: And unlike soccer at least football has some action

Football -- what merkins call soccer -- actually has 90 minutes of action.

: and anyway jan some of the best things in life can be accomplished in 5 second spurts of action.

5 seconds? Sheesh. No wonder American women turns to European men

- Jan

17

England 2 Finland 1 !!!... World cup next???

by digderidoo in

jw
friends

what a result!!

!...so are we gonna do it???.

is the dream of a repeat of 1966 possible???.

JanH

Is the dream of a repeat of 1966 possible???

English football will only recover when you forget all about 1966. the whole tragedy of English national football is that the English live in their delusions of grandiour and 1966-paradise lost. And every manager who doesn't live up to this fantasy is sacked as soon as he loses a game. This will, I'm afraid, happen to this Swede as well.

You're one of the nations in the world that can do very well on a good day. As long as you change your expectations accordingly, you'll be able to play well, enjoy the good games (like against Spain) and try to forget about the bad ones just like everybody else has to do. Until you do that, I'm afraid the national side has nothing but disappointments to offer for the future.

- Jan

17

England 2 Finland 1 !!!... World cup next???

by digderidoo in

jw
friends

what a result!!

!...so are we gonna do it???.

is the dream of a repeat of 1966 possible???.

JanH

Now football there is a sport, the strategy of chess coupled with the ferocity of nature and the grace of ballet.

It must be something wrong with the language over there... Why call something football that is about people holding and throwing a ball with their hands?

Besides, helmets and shoulderpads is for wuzzies. American "football" is just a perversion of Rugby, a real sport. I guess you made it like that to leave room for all teh advertising breaks. The whole game is a single long transmission of TV ads punctuated by short spurts of 5 second action (at most!).

- Jan

26

Bad Defensive Arguments

by AlanF in

jw
friends

a bozo calling itself "shiningone" recently posted on the h2o board some typically bad arguments supposedly defending the bible.

i posted a rebuttal to a number of specific points, which is reproduced below.

guess what the response was.. those familiar with jw teaching will recognize some of the bad defensive arguments.. <hr>.

JanH

Thanks, Alan.

It's interesting how much ignorance of the physical world sacred texts often demonstrate. It seems that those who are concerned with religious things are less likely to know much about the real world than even the people around them. The Torah authour couldn't even count the legs of locusts! As we know so well, Greeks knew about the round Earth centuries before Christ, and even its size to a decent precision. Possibly, the Sumerians knew 4000 years ago. A lot of writ-less civilizations who had sea-farers almost certainly knew it.

Yet, the Bible authors did not know 1900 years ago. The Quran authors actually didn't know either, writing/redacting perhaps no more than 1200 years ago.

I've been discussing a bit with more-or-less-fundamentalist Muslems on a Norwegian web discussion board, and it's fun to see that the Quran -- written many centuries after the Bible -- has the same flat-earth and (of course) geocetrictist ideas. One sura the muslems have a hard time explaining, is a story of a man coming to the muddy spring where the sun sets at night.

Yet, like fundie xtians, the muslems have all sorts of excuses, and they even have the dishonesty to author texts about all the wonderful things the Quran "knew" centuries in advance, and then they jump through all sorts of hoops to try to fit some ambiguous poetic text to an ill-understood scientific fact.

It's my strong opinion that the success of the monotheistic religions have been a particular tragedy to humanity. These religions have at their core not only intellectual dishonesty, but also a potentially genicidal separation of humans into worthy believers and unworthy heathens whose life is worthless. Followers often soften these ideas through their common sense and their decency, but it's still there, and in times of trouble, it can spring out in the open and justify all sorts of evil.

This happens on a small scale when JWs shun their non-believing relatives, and it happens on a larger scale in Islamic extremist groups.

- Jan

60

How Well Do You Know The Bible?

by dark clouds in

jw
friends

i want to share a perspective, with everyone that comes here to read, for i feel it will take some of us in a new direction.

perhaps it will allow for some creative thinking and interesting discussion or maybe it simply wont go anywhere.

it does not really matter either way, for there are subjects which can only be speculated on and thoughts which can only be shared.

JanH

UO,

and what about all the prophecies in the Bible that have come true?

Yes, what about them?

I have asked this before: which prophecies exactly in the Bible have come true?

- Jan

102

In there no good in the WTBTS??? or ourselves??

by jst2laws in

jw
friends

we hopefully all agree it is wrong to reject an entire race because we have found one of its member to be flawed, or to reject an entire concept an the basis of finding a flaw in its argument.

would not fair people look for a way to accept the good in the concept, modify the flawed portion and rejoice in what was gained from the refined concept?

it would also be wrong, as the wt does, to reject an entire institution because some of its precepts are flawed.

JanH

So would it be wrong to accept the fact that the WTS, despite its flaws, has many good scriptural truths to share.

Yes, that would be wrong. The WTS has no truths, scriptural or otherwise, to share.

Can we reject what they have pressed to the world: God has a name,

Various gods have zillion names. Yahweh is the name for an old Semitic tribal god. Another name for the same god, carefully hidden in modern transklations, is El, the Semitic sky god. Another name was Ba'al, which we see (again hidden by modern translators) frequently used in the most ancient parts of the old testament.

The interesting thing is that a name for a deity implies polytheism in some form. If there is only one god, as xtians are suppoed to believe, a personal name for this one god ceases to be a topic of interest.

And it's certainly a fact that there is not a shred of evidence that Jesus, Paul nor any Christian in the first century ever used any personal name for God. The "Yahweh" name was long discarded in monotheistic Judaism, and the Christians did nothing to reintoduce it.

His Kingdom is to solve man’s problems,

If man's problems is to be solved, man has to do that. It's ludicruous, after around half a million years of human history, most of which the population has lived as animals, people start proclaiming some supernatural being will drop down from heaven to help is. Is not gonna happen.

the Earth is to become a paradise as God purposed,

Fantasy.

man will live endlessly on Earth as intended,

Let's be serious. Death is an integral part of life on this planet. Predators and prey have always existed, as long as there was life. As the intelligent author of Ecclesiastes said, there is no difference between humans and (other) animals when we die. When we're gone, we're gone, and the sooner people realize that, the sooner they can get on with the life they have.

those who died will return in a resurrection of the dead rather that burn in hell,

Neither, of course.

But since you discuss scriptural: it's a fact that the New Testament teaches that God will torture non-believers in a fiery hell eternally. The JWs and other conditionalists surely have their heart in the raight place, but the explaining-away of certain Bible verses is just pathetic. Surely Jesus, if we are to believe Matthew, taught that the evil would be tortured in hell. And the Revelation is most explicit. The acrobatics the WTS has to engage in to cover up this fact is simply a form of intellectual dishonesty.

and this good news is to be preached in all the earth.

It's not good, and it's a long time ago any of this was news.

- Jan

8

Things That Make You Go Hhmmm. . .Samson

by dark clouds in

jw
friends

for a long time i have thought about yahweh, and the kind of deity that he was.

leader, savior, protector of the israelites, quick to strike down anyone who dared oppose him.

his compassion seemed to be masked beneath his jealous nature, but he had his reason and it was for "spiritual cleanliness".

JanH

Hi Dark Clouds,

It's a fascinating story indeed, and one it is fun to watch JWs pr fundies squirm trying to explain or make sense of.

It seems to come from a time or region which didn't frown upon sexuality so much. I'm convinced it was a very popular story predating the Yahweh-worshipping days. When Yahweh worship united with the cults for El and outcompeted Ba'al and other fertility deities, anything related to sexuality -- the domain of fertility worship -- was banned from Palestine religion.

When JWs give talks or notes about these sections in the Bible, they are expected to come up with a "lesson for us today". What would the lesson be for the story about Samson and Dalilah?

Well, how about "sleep with the girl, but never let her cut your hair."

(less family friendly versions exist )

I live by that principle!

- Jan

12

The Forbidden Top SeKret jWs Manual

by Tallyman in

jw
friends

you are not permitted to click this link:.

* http://www.intrex.net/tallyman/kultlaw.html.

...uhh, unless, of course you are "a elder".. .

JanH

Lurkernomore,

I think all decent people would prefer it if you went back to lurking. It's hardly imaginable to imagine a worse way to demonstrate total lack of morality and human feelings than what you just did.

Out of respect for Simon I'll restrain from saying more here...

- Jan

12

I-CHING, U-CHING, We ALL-CHING, CHING

by Farkel in

jw
friends

in a post below i noticed that your posted was edited twice:.

: i hope this helps you make your decision.. :i-ching.

: edited by - fred hall on 22 march 2001 15:41:40. : edited by - iching on 22 march 2001 15:47:44. care to explain what happened here?

JanH

It's a bit funny. That was the first thought that entered my mind when I saw this mess.

Usually the simple explanation is the correct one, as every illusionist will know.

Edited by - Russell on 31 October 1916 06:66:0

Edited by - Da Judge on 8 January 1942 19:14:0

- Jan