You seem to be omitting the possibility of theistic evolution.
I believe in evolution, am an atheist with regard to the Jewish/Christian/Muslim God and very doubtful to atheist on other God claims. That is, I see no need for the existence of a creative intelligence who acts with human welfare in mind but cannot absolutely discount such an entity. When it comes to Gods about whom specific and testable claims are made, they always seem wanting.
Posts by LeeT
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14Evolution or Creation?
by Doug Mason inwhat would the outcome be among people at this site if we were able to conduct a poll on belief in evolution or in creation?.
what would the outcome be if at the same time we asked for religious affiliation (including formal, informal, or none)?
doug.
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LeeT
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79
Who really is the faithful and discreet* slave whom his master appointed over his domestics, to give them their food at the proper time?
by Alex Williams inthis statement was answered in a form of a question to a question posed by one of his followers;.
jesus realized that composite slave had to qualify for such an appointment when he came into power of his kingdom promised by jehovah god.
[and they came to life and ruled as kings with the christ+ for 1,000 years].
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LeeT
Alex
w72 4/1 p. 197-200 ‘They Shall Know that a Prophet Was Among Them’
"So, does Jehovah have a prophet to help them, to warn them of dangers and to declare things to come? These questions can be answered in the affirmative." . . . "This “prophet” was not one man, but was a body of men and women. It was the small group of footstep followers of Jesus Christ, known at that time as International Bible Students. Today they are known as Jehovah’s Christian witnesses.
"As time went on and further developments fulfilled the prophecy of Ezekiel, a three-volume set of books titled “Vindication” provided an up-to-date understanding, showing more fully the application of the prophecy.
Thus this group of anointed followers of Jesus Christ, doing a work in Christendom paralleling Ezekiel’s work among the Jews, were manifestly the modern-day Ezekiel, the “prophet” commissioned by Jehovah to declare the good news of God’s Messianic kingdom and to give warning to Christendom.
"The scroll was doubtless delivered to Ezekiel by the hand of one of the cherubs in the vision. This would indicate that Jehovah’s witnesses today make their declaration of the good news of the Kingdom under angelic direction and support. (Rev. 14:6, 7; Matt. 25:31, 32) And since no word or work of Jehovah can fail, for he is God Almighty, the nations will see the fulfilment of what these witnesses say as directed from heaven.
"Yes, the time must come shortly that the nations will have to know that really a “prophet” of Jehovah was among them. Actually, now more than a million and a half persons are helping that collective or composite “prophet” in his preaching work and well over that number of others are studying the Bible with the “prophet” group and its companions."So here are the Governing Body, declaring themselves as prophets, as modern-day Ezekiels and teaching that the annointed were the FDS, not the Governing Body.
Did Jehovah tell his prophet to teach these false teachings? Surely not.
Deut. 18:20
But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.”
Rather than put them to death, you choose to follow them.
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79
Who really is the faithful and discreet* slave whom his master appointed over his domestics, to give them their food at the proper time?
by Alex Williams inthis statement was answered in a form of a question to a question posed by one of his followers;.
jesus realized that composite slave had to qualify for such an appointment when he came into power of his kingdom promised by jehovah god.
[and they came to life and ruled as kings with the christ+ for 1,000 years].
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LeeT
Alex
JWs believe this was in 1914 -1919 when he [Jesus] came into power
Garbage in, garbage out.
What makes you think that is true? -
8
Researching the "The Origin of Life" brochure
by Doug Mason ini am preparing a critique that looks at the 51 instances the wts's brochure "the origin of life" uses scientists.. without preempting what i am looking for, i will appreciate your thoughts on the following endnotes: 7, 12, 17, 21, 23.. i need you to read what the brochure's author wrote and then compare that with the source.. thanks,.
doug.
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LeeT
Ref 17
You can read implications that the researchers whose work is reported here "feel that DNA and its coded instructions came about through undirected chance events that took place over the course of millions of years" but there's no unequivocal statement to that effect.
The cited article says "through the millions of years, evolution has added bells and whistles around this highly conserved central engine.” for example. They clearly believe in evolution, but the WT caricature of evolution simplifies it to "chance events." The cited article nowhere says that DNA isn't originally the handiwork of God.
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Researching the "The Origin of Life" brochure
by Doug Mason ini am preparing a critique that looks at the 51 instances the wts's brochure "the origin of life" uses scientists.. without preempting what i am looking for, i will appreciate your thoughts on the following endnotes: 7, 12, 17, 21, 23.. i need you to read what the brochure's author wrote and then compare that with the source.. thanks,.
doug.
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LeeT
Ref 12
Again, this looks like a mis-reference. Not only does the linked article not seem to be making the point made in the body text but it is such a generic point that reference to a more accessible dictionary of human biology of similar would be more instructive for the layperson reader than a link to a technical paper on "The role of proteomics in defining the human embryonic secretome."
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Researching the "The Origin of Life" brochure
by Doug Mason ini am preparing a critique that looks at the 51 instances the wts's brochure "the origin of life" uses scientists.. without preempting what i am looking for, i will appreciate your thoughts on the following endnotes: 7, 12, 17, 21, 23.. i need you to read what the brochure's author wrote and then compare that with the source.. thanks,.
doug.
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LeeT
Ref 7
I've just checked and found I'd missed the second half of the reference.
The full reference, copy/pasted from the brochure is7. Princeton Weekly Bulletin, “Nuts, Bolts of Who We Are,” by Steven Schultz, May 1, 2000, (http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/00/0501/p/brain.shtml), accessed 3/27/2009.
a. “The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2002,” Press Release, October 7, 2002, (http://nobelprize.org/nobel?prizes/medicine/laureates/2002/press.html), accessed 3/27/2009The first link, as you note, seems quite unrelated to the associated section in the brochure. Indeed, the following quote from the linked article might have started JW readers who had bothered to check sources wondering about how responsible we are for our own morals.
"Greene has proposed that not all moral decisionmaking is the same. Some moral decisions, he argues, are produced in an "abstract" or "cognitive" way, while others are driven by emotional response. The scanning experiment will compare activity in brain areas known to be associated with logical reasoning and activity in areas associated with emotion.
If different kinds of moral questions produce dramatically different patterns of brain activity, that will suggest that "the innate functional organization of the brain, and not just the things we've learned from experience, shapes our moral thought in surprising ways," Greene says."Oddly enough, RJ Downard makes a related point in the Tortucan videos I've just linked to you on another thread. Namely that ideas we disagree with trigger the part of the brain which deals with revulsion to things like bad smells and disgusting biological ooze.
The second link in the brochure reference is dead, but this press release from the same day on the same prize should help.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2002/press-release/
I can't see where abouts in the body of the brochure reference '7a' is mentioned. Nor can I find mention of the names of any of the winners or the word Nobel. This prize was awarded for work on programmed cell death.
Maybe they chose not to use this press release because of this quote from it.
It is now clear that one of the signaling pathways in humans leading to cell death is evolutionarily well conserved.
My guess is one of the scholars celebrated for their accuracy and attention to detail in the Nov 2017 JW Broadcasting episode dropped the ball here and entered the wrong reference. What is interesting is that it gives us a glimpse of some of the other material which was damaging to their argument they had been looking at and chose not to use but linked to accidentally.
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50
Did Jesus die on a stake or pole?
by sweetyj inwe already know how jws will respond ( on a pole).
but i found an article that talks about jws views on how jesus died.
i didn't know that there was a time when jws accepted the cross unlike now.
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LeeT
Here's an oldie but goodie from Leolaia, who was always brilliant, but hasn't posted in these parts for some time. This is well referenced and covers a fair amount of ground.
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11
Why do JWs reject the 587/586 BCE date?
by Doug Mason ini do not want this to develop into another discussion on "607 bce date is wrong".. when the a-e section of "aid to bible understanding" was published, i was able to show that the article on "chronology" employed deceptive techniques when it cited its sources.
whenever i provided jws the evidence in print, it was like water off a duck's back.
"the brothers in brooklyn have done all the research, write to them", they would tell me.. i soon recognised that the jws followed the wts because of who it claimed to be.. it became clear that another, stronger force existed--the impact of shunning with the loss of close friendships and with the impact on their family relationships.. one could only stand by with concern thinking of the impact of the cognitive dissonance and observing the regular changes requiring lock-step obedience.
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LeeT
Doug,
Why do JWs reject the 587/586 BCE date?
They have a misplaced trust in the authority of whatever the publications and broadcasts say, failure to do so displeases Jehovah. Motivated reasoning means all humans tend to accept what a trusted source says and treat untrusted sources with scepticism. Looking for a balanced range of opinions and basing conclusions on an investigation of such is anathema to them. To adapt a quote from the Scopes monkey trial, JW's don't think about things they don't want to think about and aren't good at thinking about the things they do want to think about.
This half hour lecture in 3 parts by RJ Downard, though largely about Young Earth Creationism, in a broader sense covers the psychology of why people come to be convinced by bad ideas.
The Absurdity of Religion : Tortucan Traps [1of3] -
62
Evolution - A Conversation with Alex Williams
by cofty inalex - thank you for your offer to have a conversation about evolution.. i accept the scientific evidence that all life - including humans - evolved from a common ancestor through unguided evolution over millions of years.
this isn't even a controversial position in the scientific community.. the evidence rests on the data from many interconnected fields including paleontology, comparative anatomy, geology and especially genetics.
it is no exaggeration to say that the evidence for your own non-human ancestry is contained in every cell in your body.. it is my experience that jws are generally quite ignorant (not in a pejorative sense) of the scientific case.
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LeeT
Alex,
Do you think that Noah took on board the Ark all the species (groups of animals capable of producing fertile offspring) which currently exist? How do they fit?
Do you think he took on board just a few representatives of the Biblical 'kinds' (baramins) and they speciated to create our current biodiversity after the flood?
The WT says that pre-fall animals were vegetarian. Coprolites are fossilised turds. Many coprolites contain bone fragments as the animals that pooped them had been eating meat. Are these all post-fall? If so, can you explain the rapid fossilisation and how it is they occur in layers conventionally dated to well over 200m years old? Are you about to explain it as an artefact of flood geology?
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How did Adam and Eve survive when kicked out of the Garden of Eden?
by I believe in overlapping init’s funny how a simple question like this is something that the dubs never even consider.
my dad asked this question to a couple of witnesses and they wondered for a minute and said; .
“i never thought about it, i’ll have to ask the elders”.
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LeeT
So Adam and Eve get booted from the Garden.
Gen 2:5 (NWT)
No bush of the field was yet on the earth and no vegetation of the field had begun sprouting, because Jehovah God had not made it rain on the earth and there was no man to cultivate the ground.
Great, so crop plants need rain according to the Bible and as Jehovah with his infinite wisdom and perfect morality hadn't decided that just about everything needed to be killed by drowning in a deluge, it hadn't rained yet. We'd have to wait for Noah and the flood for that.
So what did people do for food before the flood? Hunter-gathering presumably. Apparently not. Oddly enough we read in Gen 4:2 (NWT) that
Cain became a cultivator of the ground.
Maybe that explains why Jehovah was displeased with his sacrifice. As it hadn't rained yet, he could cultivate nothing but weeds which were displeasing to Jehovah. A poor choice of profession if you are reliant on this stuff called rain which had never happened before and wouldn't happen for a thousand plus years into the future.It's almost as if the early chapters of Genesis were written by fallible men.