“Respond With Graciousness: When we receive a negative response, we should always reply with graciousness and mildness”
This applies only if you're talking to an actual person. Many times the responses I get aren't any different than unsolicited spam from spambots: automated computer programs designed to assist in the sending of spam.
alice.in.wonderland
JoinedPosts by alice.in.wonderland
-
53
Preparing for D2D Opposition July 26, 2010 KM
by blondie inso there is nothing negative to be said about jws?
are they perfect?
because it is negative does it mean it is a lie?.
-
-
alice.in.wonderland
-
97
"Life" Brochures: 3 Easy Disproofs
by metatron init may be time consuming and exhausting to correct all of the deceptions, half-truths and out of context quotes contained in the watchtower's new brochures, so i'll make it simple.
here's 3 easy points that disprove all of their nonsense.. 1) australia proves evolution happened - what's the one country in the world with the weirdest animals on earth?
australia!
-
-
alice.in.wonderland
Australia as “proof” for evolution is one of the lamest excuses I've heard to substantiate evolution.
I placed it here to see what kind of response it would get: -
53
Preparing for D2D Opposition July 26, 2010 KM
by blondie inso there is nothing negative to be said about jws?
are they perfect?
because it is negative does it mean it is a lie?.
-
-
alice.in.wonderland
“Blondie, it seems as if the "misinformation" is getting a foothold in people's minds. Now they have to debunk the questions in people's minds placed there by the various youtube videos and websites dedicated to shining light on the "Truth".”
I've addressed some of the issues in youtube videos and websites.
As for debunking the questions in people's minds, I rarely come across anyone that even looks at these aside from opposed ex-Jehovah's Witnesses. Opposed ex-Jehovah's Witnesses don't seem to care about these websites anyway.
http://www.freeminds.org/search-jehovahs-witness.html
Free Minds continues to have a financial crisis in 2009.
Getting involved with the arguments of opposers can be time-consuming. I occasional say a thing or two for light entertainment, however some sink to new lows to make a case against Jehovah's Witnesses.
Silentlambs for example, is not a support group for abuse victims. It never has been. It's a religious hate group masquerading as a victim support group. People here start using profanity and hate speech when it is displayed that Jehovah’s Witnesses have an outstanding child-protection policy. If you want questions in people's minds placed there by the various youtube videos and websites "debunked" (provided they are even there) behave like an adult and don't do that. -
88
Was God over reacting destroying the whole planet in Noah's flood to kill afew evil people...too bad Noah forgot the Unicorns and Dinosaurs according to the Watchtower!
by Witness 007 inyes instead of striking them dead he decided to flood the entire planet killing every living plant and animal {sorry peta members} which only afew years before he created declaring it "good.
" then he made a "rainbow" as a sign that never again will he destroy every living thing.. wasn't this over the top?.
too bad they forgot the poor unicorns and dinosuars though!.
-
-
alice.in.wonderland
"In fact the bible does give an example when god supposedly does, destroy the wicked without destroying the surrounding animal and plant life and quietly so the Israelites did not see it.
(2 Kings 19:35) . . .And it came about on that night that the angel of Jehovah proceeded to go out and strike down a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the As·syr′i·ans. When people rose up early in the morning, why, there all of them were dead carcasses."
Is this an attempt to give the nation of Israel the appearance of a Stalinistic regime? The Assyrians had no moral right to exist.
There was a continued close relationship between Assyria and Babylon throughout their history. Assyria was an imperialistic empire. Assyria’s religion was largely inherited from Babylon. One of their warrior monarchs, Ashurnasirpal, describes his punishment of several rebellious cities in this way:
“I built a pillar over against his city gate, and I flayed all the chief men who had revolted, and I covered the pillar with their skins; some I walled up within the pillar, some I impaled upon the pillar on stakes, . . . and I cut off the limbs of the officers, of the royal officers who had rebelled. . . . Many captives from among them I burned with fire, and many I took as living captives. From some I cut off their hands and their fingers, and from others I cut off their noses, their ears, and their fingers, of many I put out the eyes. I made one pillar of the living, and another of heads, and I bound their heads to posts (tree trunks) round about the city. Their young men and maidens I burned in the fire . . . Twenty men I captured alive and I immured them in the wall of his palace. . . . The rest of them [their warriors] I consumed with thirst in the desert of the Euphrates.”—Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, by D. D. Luckenbill, 1926, Vol. I, pp. 145, 147, 153, 162. -
97
"Life" Brochures: 3 Easy Disproofs
by metatron init may be time consuming and exhausting to correct all of the deceptions, half-truths and out of context quotes contained in the watchtower's new brochures, so i'll make it simple.
here's 3 easy points that disprove all of their nonsense.. 1) australia proves evolution happened - what's the one country in the world with the weirdest animals on earth?
australia!
-
-
alice.in.wonderland
The discovered changes in geographic landmass allows for the distribution of species in Australia and other locations. If scientists believe the “ice age” resulted in oceanic and landmass changes you can certainly say the same the thing about the global deluge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erosion
Erosion is the process of weathering and transport of solids (sediment, soil, rock and other particles) in the natural environment or their source and deposits them elsewhere. It usually occurs due to transport by wind, water, or ice; by down-slope creep of soil and other material under the force of gravity; or by living organisms, such as burrowing animals, in the case of bioerosion.
Shoreline erosion, which occurs on both exposed and sheltered coasts, primarily occurs through the action of currents and waves but sea level (tidal) change can also play a role.
http://geology.about.com/cs/evolution/a/aa072703a.htm
The Rise and Fall of Land Bridges
Similar land bridges are postulated between Britain and Europe, between New Guinea and Australia, between the Philippines and Indonesia, between Sri Lanka and India, and between the Southeast Asian mainland and the Indonesian islands.
The earliest humans in Australia, the Philippines, Japan and the Americas probably arrived on land bridges.
These shallow, short-lived land bridges are a far cry from the ones geologists used to talk about. But at least they actually existed. The ones envisioned early in the last century were a different creature.
It stands to reason that animals could have likewise arrived on Australia via land bridges. -
88
Was God over reacting destroying the whole planet in Noah's flood to kill afew evil people...too bad Noah forgot the Unicorns and Dinosaurs according to the Watchtower!
by Witness 007 inyes instead of striking them dead he decided to flood the entire planet killing every living plant and animal {sorry peta members} which only afew years before he created declaring it "good.
" then he made a "rainbow" as a sign that never again will he destroy every living thing.. wasn't this over the top?.
too bad they forgot the poor unicorns and dinosuars though!.
-
-
alice.in.wonderland
"alice, I saw right through your quack "scientist".
no proof, just his "bible" trained answers"
He wasn't my “quack scientist.” I didn't know who the man was until yesterday. I haven't taken a thorough look into how the global deluge in the Genesis account relates to all physical scientific laws. This is another investigation into how fish could have survived the Genesis flood.
http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=351
by Kenneth B. Cumming, Ph.D.
SURVIVAL STRATEGY
Runoff to the Ocean
Heavy rainfall over the land would quickly fill the river basins with torrential flows. These in turn would empty out onto the encroaching coastline as a freshwater blanket. Odum[5] refers to situations similar to this as a "highly stratified or `salt-wedge' estuary." Such a massive freshwater outflow from the continents would join with the oceanic rainfall to form a halocline or strong density gradient, in which fish flushed out from the land aquatic systems could continue to survive in a freshwater environment. Stratification like this might even survive strong winds, if the freshwater depth was great enough to prevent internal current mixing. Thus, a situation might be envisioned where freshwater and marine fishes could survive the deluge in spite of being temporarily displaced.
Turbidity Flows
On the other hand, large turbid particles and enormous bedloads could move into the ocean as settleable particulate rain and ground-hugging slurries. Heavier particles would fall out in the slower-moving coastal waters, and the mudflows would sediment out over the ocean floor. Although there would be turbulence at the freshwater/saltwater interface, the particle insertion would probably occur without appreciable mixing. With the range of tolerance given above, many fishes might be able to survive extended exposure to high turbidity.Serendipity at Mount St. Helens
The biotic recovery at Mount St. Helens after the May 18, 1980 eruption demonstrates rapid and widely ranging restoration. Obviously, the Flood would have been one or more orders of magnitude greater a catastrophe than that eruption. But such an event does help us to see ways of recovery.
SPIRIT LAKE April 4, 1980 June 30, 1980 Alkalinity (mg/l) 0.01 150.5 Temperature (°C) 4.0 22.4 Turbidity (mg/l) 0.75 24.61 With regard to the three factors of interest (salinity—approximately alkalinity, in the sense of dissolved solutes—, temperature, and turbidity), significant changes were seen in the affected areas (data transformed to units used previously).[9,10]
Still, a little more than a month after the eruption, the lake most exposed to the catastrophic event, Spirit Lake, had tolerable alkalinity, ambient temperature, and low turbidity. This is not to deny that all the endemic fish were killed in the event and probably could not have survived if replanted in these waters on June 30, 1980, due to large organic oxygen demands from decaying tree debris and seeps of methane and sulfur dioxide. But within ten years, the lake appears to be able to support fish, as many other aquatic species are back and well established. If the lake were connected directly to the Toutle River, then salmonids probably would have made their reentry by this time.
Perhaps the most significant observation, though, in examining the post-eruption history, is that a variety of habitats within and adjacent to the blast zone survived the event with minimal impact on the continuity of the ecosystem. Meta Lake, within the blast zone for example, had an ice cover at the time of the searing blast, which protected the dormant ecosystem from experiencing much disruption from the heat, anoxia, and air-fall tephra. Fish and support systems picked up where they left off before the onset of the winter season.
Similar experiences were observed in Swift Reservoir, in spite of massive mud and debris flows into the lake by way of Muddy Creek (personal conversation with aquatic biologist on duty at that time). Fish were displaced into the adjacent unaffected watersheds or downstream into lower reservoirs. However, within two years, massive plankton blooms had occurred and ecosystem recovery was well underway with migrant recruits.
Such a confined catastrophe (500 square miles) enables one to project expectations from a major catastrophe, such as the Flood. First, in spite of the enormous magnitude of such events, there appear to be refuges for survival even in close proximity to the most damaging action. Second, recovery can be incredibly fast—from one month to ten years. Third, recruitment from minimally affected zones can occur with normal migratory behavior of organisms. Although some animal and plant populations or even species might be annihilated in such events, remnant individuals can reestablish new populations.Establishing Biblical events as harmonious with the laws of science isn't really evidence for the existence of God. Most people I've come across believe that real evidence should be obtained from God himself, not just what's on printed page.
-
30
Re-reading "Crisis of Conscience" again....
by ziddina inthe 'revelations' hit me even harder, the second time around..... i purchased two copies, the version copyrighted 1983 and the version copyrighted 2004. i kept the old version [1983] and just donated the 2004 copy to my local library - with a quick warning that 'cult' members may be inclined to steal the expose.
i decided to read it again to try to visualize how a "worldly" person who is unacquainted with the jws would view the book.... in reading the book again, i am more forcefully struck by the blatant contradictions between the 'official' stance of the watchtower society and their 'behind-the-scenes' behavior.... chapters 3 & 4 - "governing body" and "internal upheaval and restructure" - contain some eye-popping material... the earlier portion of chapter 3 touches on the intrusive regulation of sexual practices between husband and wife [i'll bet any worldly person reading that would find that chilling, to say the least...], and then goes into the power struggles between russell's followers and rutherford's ousting of said followers during his successful bid for control.. very revealing... i was also struck by the fact that the wtbts was a religion with a single man leading it, until the very end of nathan knorr's period of leadership, despite the claims of the watchtower magazine that "god's organization" was being run by a "governing body" of spiritual "caretakers" for several years prior to the actual existence of said "governing body"!!!.
as ray franz states, page 65 of 1983 version: "[quote from 12/15/71 watchtower...]: "thus, too, even though there were no apostles of christ on hand in the nineteenth century, god's holy spirit must have been operative toward the formation of the governing body for his anoited remnant ... the facts speak for themselves.
-
-
alice.in.wonderland
"Alice
If you ask dumb questions, expect a few sarcastic answers in reply. Read CofC for yourself and find out which God Ray Franz is referring to."
I get the gist of the novel simply from the book's synopsis. Most people disillusioned with Christendom's churches dissent from religion altogether but the dissent of Ray Franz from a religious movement to Christendom's churches is flip flopping in the mind of most seculars. I'm more comfortable with their point of view because they're more honest than the Christian assessment of a cult. I posted this on another thread but it has more application here. If Crisis of Conscience is a book about the struggle between loyalty to God and loyalty to one's religion, how does God factor into religion if Jehovah's Witnesses are a cult.
The word cult has more than one definition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult
The word cult pejoratively refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are reasonably considered strange.
This here is strictly in the mind of the beholder as many religions teach very different things. To me everything Jehovah's Witnesses teach (comprehensive view of existence) makes perfect sense.
By the 1940s the long held opposition by some established Christian denominations to non-Christian religions and supposedly heretical Christian sects crystallized into a more organized "Christian countercult movement" in the United States. For those belonging to the movement all new religious groups deemed outside of Christian orthodoxy were considered "cults".
In the late 1980s psychologists and sociologists started to abandon theories like brainwashing and mind-control. While scholars may believe that various less dramatic coercive psychological mechanisms could influence group members, they came to see conversion to new religious movements principally as an act of rational choice.
A person who is a member of a religion out of rational choice can easily debunk theories like brainwashing and mind-control that others try and apply to them. To me, a cult is a religious group that confuses loyalty to institutional church leaders with loyalty to God. Some members of clergy appear to have deified themselves considering titles like Holy Father and the Infallible Pope as only God is infallible.
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/003275.html
[The Church] was also much concerned with man, with man as he really is today, with living man, with man totally taken up with himself, with man who not only makes himself the center of his own interests, but who dares to claim that he is the principle and [the] final cause of all reality. Man in his phenomenal totality ... presented himself, as it were, before the assembly of the Council Fathers.... The religion of God made man has come up against the religion--for there is such a one--of man who makes himself God.
And how did the Council respond to this specter of godless man, of "man who makes himself God"? Far from condemning this falsehood and asserting the superior claims of the Christian faith, the Council, said the Pope, was filled only with an endless sympathy. The discovery of human needs--and these are so much greater now that the son of the earth has made himself greater--absorbed the attention of the Synod.... We also, we more than anyone else, have the cult of man...
Thus, alongside God, the Church had added a second Lord, man, with everything ultimately focusing on man instead of God. Archbishop Karol Wojtyla, later Pope John Paul II, fully subscribed to the Vatican II doctrine, having been one of its leading framers. In his first encyclical after becoming Pope, he repeated the theme of Gaudium et Spes, declaring that human nature has been permanently "divinized" by the advent of Christ. -
88
Was God over reacting destroying the whole planet in Noah's flood to kill afew evil people...too bad Noah forgot the Unicorns and Dinosaurs according to the Watchtower!
by Witness 007 inyes instead of striking them dead he decided to flood the entire planet killing every living plant and animal {sorry peta members} which only afew years before he created declaring it "good.
" then he made a "rainbow" as a sign that never again will he destroy every living thing.. wasn't this over the top?.
too bad they forgot the poor unicorns and dinosuars though!.
-
-
alice.in.wonderland
"In a search for answers of the origin of life by an unguided natural process, science often contradicts itself and nullifies its own theories.
Again, Morris makes a blanket statement without backing it up with anything."
I made this statement, not Morris. It was in reference to this here:
http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2010/02/not_on_the_origin_of_species_but_the_origin_of_lif.html
"Allowing for the fact that this may trouble the spiritual notions of some people, scientists have nevertheless set about trying to determine how the chemistry on an early Earth might have combined into complicated building blocks of life, and from there began to show Darwinian-like evolutionary behavior."
“In his lab, Szostak has had some success in trying to replicate life. His group is trying to build self-replicating protocells out of the chemical bath that scientists believe was available when Earth's first life emerged about [3.8 billion] years ago.”
“After the dinosaurs died out, nearly [65 million] years passed before people appeared on Earth.”
"There is now widespread evidence that a meteorite impact was at least the partial cause for this extinction."
If some random cataclysmic event completely exterminated the race of dinosaurs, did it devastate all life on Earth? If so, the chemistry on an early Earth necessary to combine into complicated building blocks of life no longer exists. Naturalism, while a plausible and a logically consistent worldview, ultimately runs into too many difficulties to be taken seriously as an unguided process through which life originated. The existence of a supreme being allows the most explanatory power with the fewest non-trivial assumptions. -
88
Was God over reacting destroying the whole planet in Noah's flood to kill afew evil people...too bad Noah forgot the Unicorns and Dinosaurs according to the Watchtower!
by Witness 007 inyes instead of striking them dead he decided to flood the entire planet killing every living plant and animal {sorry peta members} which only afew years before he created declaring it "good.
" then he made a "rainbow" as a sign that never again will he destroy every living thing.. wasn't this over the top?.
too bad they forgot the poor unicorns and dinosuars though!.
-
-
alice.in.wonderland
“Likewise, if an army in biblical times needed some extra daylight - one would think an intelligent god could do so efficently. Not only are the biblical authors ignorant that the sun doesn't actually move - the earth rotates ("Sun, stand still!"), but they likely didn't understand the magnitudes of energy that would be involved to 'stop the sun'. The mass of the earth is around 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000 metric tons. From calculations I found online, it would require ~6.98 x 10^33 watts of power to stop the rotation of the earth (God would have to make sure everything not bolted down didn't fly east at about 1000 mph at the equator, of course). And then, just a few hours later, he'd need to spend another ~ 6.98 x 10^33 watts of power to start it back up again.”
Accordingly the sun kept motionless, and the moon did stand still, until the nation could take vengeance on its enemies. Is it not written in the book of Ja′shar? And the sun kept standing still in the middle of the heavens and did not hasten to set for about a whole day. 14 And no day has proved to be like that one, either before it or after it, in that Jehovah listened to the voice of a man, for Jehovah himself was fighting for Israel. Joshua 10:13-14
What was recorded in Joshua 10:13-14 was Joshua's perception of the solar system as he observed it. Joshua completed the writing in 1450 BCE. The earliest working telescopes were refracting telescopes that appeared in the Netherlands in 1608 CE. As far as stopping the rotation of the earth, I take it you're a driver that slams on the breaks with brute force while breaking the speed limit. -
88
Was God over reacting destroying the whole planet in Noah's flood to kill afew evil people...too bad Noah forgot the Unicorns and Dinosaurs according to the Watchtower!
by Witness 007 inyes instead of striking them dead he decided to flood the entire planet killing every living plant and animal {sorry peta members} which only afew years before he created declaring it "good.
" then he made a "rainbow" as a sign that never again will he destroy every living thing.. wasn't this over the top?.
too bad they forgot the poor unicorns and dinosuars though!.
-
-
alice.in.wonderland
"I can't continue this any longer. I think my point is made. It's easy to explain any idea that you wish to propose when you A) Don't have anything but the most basic grasp of science, B) Are writing or speaking for an audience that is at the same level of scientific illiteracy as you, and C) have the ace up your sleeve that anything that is impossible was actually done by the invisible wizard in the sky."
If a supreme being created the universe and life as we know it, he can certainly engineer a cataclysmic event and ensure the survival of life as we know it. Stop with the theist = illiterate, atheist = literate take. You know that's intellectually bankrupt. What you think is immaterial to me as I get paid by a credible organization for what I contribute to society. What do you do? Deliver pizzas?