i love science fiction books and have run into a dry spell.
i have read alot of david weber but he has been quite slow with new books lately...anyone have any good suggestions for a good read...i need 5 star authors with "blow your socks off" books...any suggestions...
Props for Greg Bear--I loved Darwin's Radio. Also second the suggestion for Harry Turtledove. In addition to his alt-history series (the one that begins with How Few Remain), I like the series that starts with aliens invading during WWII (World War series).
Also, big props for Simon Green. He's really good.
I like classics: A Canticle for Liebowitz; Time After Time.
Jankyn
after reading elaine pagels book the gnostic gospels, ive wondered if theres ever been a statement made by the wtbs regarding the origins of the nwt, besides the painstaking efforts made to keep the translation accurate despite how the rest of the world translated the bible.
as jws we were taught to follow the example set forth for and by the first century christians, however no doubt many of those first century christians were or became catholic as at the time that was the first legitimate, or universal, christian church established in spite of opposition and persecution from the romans.
in essence the great harlot herself defined many things that modern day jws still see as fact.
Couple of book suggestions:
Karen Armstrong's The Bible: A Biography
Richard Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible?
Bart D. Ehrmann's Misquoting Jesus
These are all very accessible introductions to biblical studies--the Armstrong just came out last fall. She's got a gift for writing for the non-scholar. I'm really fond of her introduction to Islam.
Jankyn
i like rodney dangerfielsd's .
"so i hear a knock at the door.
i open the door and there are two jehovah's witness, they look at me and both say 'they are not interested' ....i get no respect.. and .
Why do Jehovah's Witnesses have concave chests?
From all those years of people poking them and yelling, "Get the hell off my porch!"
ok here's a scholarly review of this week's book study lesson in the revelation climax book.. the wild beast leaping out of the sea on page 189.. about 6 out of 10 of the heads look like they are laughing hysterically.
open mind.
if anybody's able to post the picture that would be great..
Looks like they're sneezing to me. Ahhh-CHOO! Take that, world!
never having been baptized, i never got too them.
anyone have them handy?
just what did i need to know to be a dedicated dubbie?
Your Word is A Lamp To My Foot. That's the one we got the questions from in the '70s.
on recent a thread a poster here discussed about having discovered his daughter was gay.
whilst reading this my 11 year old son was looking over my shoulder, and reading along with me, some of the discussion was quite adult but respectful .
so i began thinking what age would you discuss these things?
Bravo, bravo! Especially to you, chickpea. What a wonderful way to parent: "It doesn't matter to me who you love; just remember that 14 is too young to be intimate!" I really wish I'd had someone to tell me that.
Hamsterbait, you nailed it about JW literature covering these things too early (and in such a repressed, sick way) with kids. I remember a WT study on sexual sins when I was about 10 or so (fifth grade). There was a whole paragraph on the evils of homosexuality (by then I knew what "having relations" meant, of course), and at the very end of it, this sentence: "Female homosexuals are called lesbians."
And the clouds cleared, as I finally had a word to describe who I was. Of course, that didn't help much--it was so evil to be a lesbian that I couldn't talk to my mother. And since I didn't dare talk to my mother (this is the woman who told me, at nineteen when I finally came out, "If I'd known you were going to be a homosexual, I'd have smothered you in your crib"), the only person I had to talk to about it ended up being the first woman I had sex with--I was 15, and she was older than my mother, and a JW on the "down-low."
32 years and beaucoup bucks on therapy later, I recognize just how damaging that was. I'm so grateful Chickpea's daughter has a mother with the tools to actually parent her questioning teen.
http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/?274692.
i am a bengal tiger named didimon..
I am a raccoon named Nicoleus. How cool is that!
I absolutely love these books--His Dark Materials series: The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. Haven't seen the movie yet, but I will soon.
I recommend these books highly to counter-act any sort of mind-control. Despite misplaced accusations of being anti-religion or atheist, they are in fact encouragements to question authority. That's a good thing.
so is this witness mother of my son a glutton for punishment or what ?
to avoid boring you all ( as if this isn't getting a bit redundant already ) i have edited bits and pieces of the best parts of her first e-mail , and his return e-mail, and her last e-mail after his reply so you can see what went down in conversation .
thanks for reading, here is his mom on sunday night .
The Watchtower society insists that humans are inherently corrupt, and there is nothing that can be done by any of us to change that. What a depressing world it must be to live with that viewpoint . I wholeheartedly disagree. I choose to see the inherent goodness in all of us.
He nails it right there. That's one of the things that makes me craziest in trying to talk to JW relatives: their pessimistic world view. It also puts the lie to "the happiest people in the world." Oh, no, they aren't! They're always looking for proof that everything is getting worse--which probably goes a long, long way to explaining the depression and "illness of the month" that seems so endemic among JWs.
But I think we all, eventually, come to the place where we have to stop trying to talk sense to crazy people. If a person believes that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God (though if you actually read it, it says that Jesus is the Word, not the Bible), you can never have a conversations because the premises cannot be agreed upon. Mom believes the Bible is true; I think it's just a book. No room for a discussion to begin, because we share no common ground.
Sooner or later, I fear, Mr. Flipper's son will realize one simply cannot reason with unreasonable people.
Jankyn
it was interesting to read abcs response to knocking part 1 and 2 which exposed the funding, doctrine and hypocrasy.
you might also find interesting mr. engardio's response to abc at the bottom of the webpage.
http://www.gayxjw.org/knocking02.html.
Haven't we all figured out that Joel is trying to convince his mom to love him even though he's gay?
Geez, he's so sad.
i listen to this show on public radio almost every saturday.
last show they had a guest who had lived for eight month biblically and wrote a book about it:.
:09 - michael welcomes a.j.
I recently read that book. The encounter with the JW had some funny moments, but I also got a bit irritated at Jacobs' willingness to take what the JW said at face value and the fact that he didn't look into it any further.
Of course, he was trying to write a funny book. Oh, well.
