Posts by cofty

33

Self indulgent attention whore thread....

by _Morpheus in

today is my birthday :) in happy to be able to say that guilt free!

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How old's the human race?

by Freedom rocks in

hi does anyone know any good articles or videos about how old mankind and the earth are and carbon dating?

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i've just started looking into it but there seems to be a lot of conflicting ideas over accuracy so i'm unsure what to think.

cofty

I'm not sure you will get a definite answer on this. However, you can make your most educated conclusion yourself - scratchme

Actually the science is very good on these questions. The universe is 13.7 billion years old. The total mass of the universe has even been calculated. Earth is 4.5 billion years old.

Life first appeared around 3.8 billion years ago - although if you want consensus you can go for 3.4 billion years when the evidence is not disputed. The origin of Homo sapiens is less exact because there was no such thing as the first human (see video above) so there that date is open to debate depending on how we categorize ancient hominids.

40

After leaving the JWs - Has anyone stayed with Christianity?

by rulehayl in

i recently made the decision to stop studying with my study conductor, due to a situation i found myself in that led to a high possibility of my unbaptized publisher "rights" being taken away from me.

i have since told my study conductor i have joined a new church (to which she dropped me like a hot rock, of course).... last time i posted on here, i was progressing nicely towards baptism, and was well into it.anyhoo, i like my new church, very hillsong-esqe.

so just wondering if anyone else has stayed the course of christianity after leaving the jws, and if so - where did you go?

cofty

I became a xtian for about 9 years after leaving the cult.

I am now convinced that there is no god.

49

How old's the human race?

by Freedom rocks in

hi does anyone know any good articles or videos about how old mankind and the earth are and carbon dating?

.

i've just started looking into it but there seems to be a lot of conflicting ideas over accuracy so i'm unsure what to think.

cofty

@Venus. Shepherdless is correct. The earth's population was very stable for most of human history. More than once our species came close to extinction.

If you are going to talk about science please try reading an actual science book first.

49

How old's the human race?

by Freedom rocks in

hi does anyone know any good articles or videos about how old mankind and the earth are and carbon dating?

.

i've just started looking into it but there seems to be a lot of conflicting ideas over accuracy so i'm unsure what to think.

cofty

The speaker was probably misunderstanding a couple of different facts about our ancestry.

In a nutshell ancestors are much rarer than descendants. All humans alive today can trace their mitochondrial DNA (passed on only by females) to a last common ancestor sometimes called 'mitochondrial Eve' who lived in Africa about 100,000 - 150,000 years ago. Please bear in mind that she was only one of a population of many thousands who no longer have living descendants.

Similarly all men have a Y-chromosome that can be traced back to a single individual - also one member of a large population - who lived at approximately 180,000 years ago. Having said that different studies have come up with different results for those dates but none of them are less than 100K. These are examples of genetic bottle-necks but it is highly unlikely that they occurred within mellennia of each other or in the same population.

49

How old's the human race?

by Freedom rocks in

hi does anyone know any good articles or videos about how old mankind and the earth are and carbon dating?

.

i've just started looking into it but there seems to be a lot of conflicting ideas over accuracy so i'm unsure what to think.

cofty

That's a huge topic FR!

Modern humans have been around for perhaps 200,000 years but there was no 'first human'. The evidence for the origins of our species comes from a variety of scientific disciplines including comparative anatomy, paleontology and genetics. You will find a number of examples in this index of threads...

There is a good article here about radiometric dating by a scientist who is also a christian and who hopes to help other christians who doubt the evidence.

Dates are confirmed by multiple independent radiometric 'clocks' that move at different speeds. Radiocarbon dating is only useful for artefacts up to about 45,000 years old.

If you have any specific questions please let us know.

...

17

Newspaper is interested in interviewing me!!!

by dubstepped in

a friend and client and former politician just called me.

he knows people in the media and had offered a few months back to see if anyone would be interested in doing a story on what i'm doing through my podcasts this jw life" and "shunned".

of course i was excited but things take time and you never know if they'll pan out.

cofty

Outstanding! Please keep us posted.

8

Mary Magdalene - Movie Review

by cofty in

so mrs cofty and i went to see the new movie last weekend on the gospel story told from the perspective of mary magdalene.. the first ten minutes are excellent and then jesus turns up and it's all downhill from there.

it was pope gregory who decided in 1591 that mary m was a penitent prostitute, even though the gospels contain no such reference.

was she the mary from whom seven demons were cast or was she just unlucky to share a name with a different mary?

cofty

overall, would you recommend the film? - LUHE

No to be honest I wouldn't. I lost interest in it about 30 minutes in and it it didn't get better. If it ends up on TV then watch it but save your tenner.

I just disliked the Jesus character a lot. An egomaniacal wimp!

This is a feminised Jesus who I suspect will be disliked by men and women. I guessed the script-writers were female and I was correct - Helen Edmundson and Philippa Goslett.

23

Jesus Christ—The Greatest Scientist (and Psychologist) who ever lived on earth!

by Ireneus in

if we eliminate all the controversial and confusing verses attributed to jesus we will get the crystal clear truth from him because his source was (1) god which can be seen from his habit of early morning talking to god in prayer (mark 1:35; john 8:1, 2) which would not have been for material blessings (mathew 6:8; 16:24), and (2) also observance of people.. 1) jesus who said judgment is based on whether we acted humanely or not (mathew 25:31-46) would not have spoken about god’s people and pagans (which means bulk of the things found in gospel had not been spoken/done by jesus).. 2) another important truth he said was about the real key to our happiness which he said is with each one of us.

(luke 17:21).

from his observance of history, he knew there are people from adversities who made great contribution to the world; and there are people from all abundance who lived a life of wastage accomplishing nothing; and there are people who are mixed in varying degree.

cofty

we are much more than our mind which is just a tool used by our very essence, the immaterial entity within, which is not in the time-space continuum

All the evidence from neuroscience shows that we are our brains. There is no 'ghost in the machine'.

8

Mary Magdalene - Movie Review

by cofty in

so mrs cofty and i went to see the new movie last weekend on the gospel story told from the perspective of mary magdalene.. the first ten minutes are excellent and then jesus turns up and it's all downhill from there.

it was pope gregory who decided in 1591 that mary m was a penitent prostitute, even though the gospels contain no such reference.

was she the mary from whom seven demons were cast or was she just unlucky to share a name with a different mary?

cofty

So Mrs Cofty and I went to see the new movie last weekend on the gospel story told from the perspective of Mary Magdalene.

The first ten minutes are excellent and then Jesus turns up and it's all downhill from there.

It was Pope Gregory who decided in 1591 that Mary M was a penitent prostitute, even though the gospels contain no such reference. Was she the Mary from whom seven demons were cast or was she just unlucky to share a name with a different Mary? The film awards her a role as one of the apostles and gives her a prominent place at the Last Supper.

Her story in the film begins as a motherless young woman with a father and brother who want to marry her off to an older widower with children. She has other ideas.

Then the Rabbi shows up with his ragtag bunch of followers including a black Peter. Mary is enchanted by the very scruffy teacher and runs away from Magdala to follow him. Mary's father implores Jesus not to divide a man and his daughter but the Rabbi replies that he has come to divide fathers from daughters and mothers from sons - the bastard! Peter talks of the wife and children he has abandoned to follow Jesus as does Judas and others.

As the story progresses we see a conflict between the passive intentions of Jesus and the militant expectations of his followers. Judas tries to force Jesus' hand by betraying him - to the Romans oddly enough? Perhaps the scriptwriter was afraid of accusations of anti-semitism.

Spoiler alert - Jesus dies and rises.

Mary M is the only witness to this in the story and goes to tell the disciples - that goes badly. Mary gets Jesus' message. He had absolutely nothing to say in his entire ministry apart from vague platitudes about being loving and forgiving. He never even hints about overthrowing the Romans or about ever coming back later to do so. Judas was convinced of the former and Peter of the latter, but Mary was content that the 'kingdom' is nothing more than changing the world one person at a time. Essentially this gospel is, 'be nice and all will be well'. Peter and the apostles split with Mary over this and go their own ways.

The Jesus of this story is infuriating. He rambles vacuous platitudes and seems to invite misunderstanding. This is an inoffensive Jesus who has nothing to say. He creates a scene in the temple but his ranting leaves the audience unsure what he is upset about. But here is the contradiction - even in this feminised version of the gospel story Jesus is not a 'good man'. He wilfully divides families and does so even without the apocalyptic justification of the biblical story.

The cinematography is beautiful and the soundtrack is excellent. All of the characters are pathetic. The man behind me fell asleep and snored loudly. I didn't blame him.