Bungi Bill

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Posts by Bungi Bill

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  14

  New book on early Christianity

  by careful in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  i'm not quite sure that this post fits under jws/wts since they do not keep up with real biblical scholarship, but i don't know where else to post it.. thomas a. robinson (university of lethbridge) has just published a book through oxford university press on the earliest christians, entitled who were the first christians?

  : dismantling the urban thesis.

  for some years the idea has dominated scholarship that christianity grew strongly at first in ancient cities like rome, alexandria, and corinth; the notion has been largely influenced by wayne meeks' (of yale) thinking in his book the first urban christians (1986).. i once saw a member here cite meeks' idea of how many christians existed in the roman empire.

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  Bungi Bill

  Interesting discussion, careful!

  
  
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  7

  Atheism is likely as old as Religious thinking - thinkers often doubted the existence of supernatural beings.

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i've only just discovered an important book on the topic of atheism was published in 2015. it's title is, "battling the gods: atheism in the world.

  " by tim whitmarsh, professor of greek culture at the uk's university of cambridge.. whitmarsh reviews a 1000 years of greek/roman writings and can demonstrate that the surviving writings of many famous ancient authors discussed disbelief in the god(s).that alone casts doubts on the concept many 'believers' today promote, that a belief in divinities is hard wired into the brain.

  and, just as clearly, atheism is not just a modern view.. whitmarsh argues, " that early societies were far more capable than many since of containing atheism within the spectrum of what they considered normal.

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  Bungi Bill

  Annon,

  Unfortunately, that is all too believable.
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  7

  Atheism is likely as old as Religious thinking - thinkers often doubted the existence of supernatural beings.

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i've only just discovered an important book on the topic of atheism was published in 2015. it's title is, "battling the gods: atheism in the world.

  " by tim whitmarsh, professor of greek culture at the uk's university of cambridge.. whitmarsh reviews a 1000 years of greek/roman writings and can demonstrate that the surviving writings of many famous ancient authors discussed disbelief in the god(s).that alone casts doubts on the concept many 'believers' today promote, that a belief in divinities is hard wired into the brain.

  and, just as clearly, atheism is not just a modern view.. whitmarsh argues, " that early societies were far more capable than many since of containing atheism within the spectrum of what they considered normal.

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  Bungi Bill

  fulltimestudent,

  As always, very interesting!

  
  
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  25

  Kids ... and baptism.

  by Tallon in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i have noticed, from reading posts on this and other related websites, what to me is an alarming practice taking place within the jw's.

  and that is the baptism of kids.. on a recent discussion posted by pe ( video of the girl now forced to shun her sister) this child was baptised at 9 years old.

  all of us who were baptised at a much older age know of the many questions one needs to give serious consideration and understanding of to become eligible for baptism, not to mention the two baptism questions asked before being dunked.. surely the organisation must know that children of such a young age are not mature enough to fully grasp the seriousness, demands and consequences of making such a decision.. another point; if jesus is the example to follow, then why did he only get baptised at age 30, and he was perfect!.

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  Bungi Bill

  fulano,

  When the "elder arrangement" was first implemented in September of 1972, some very young men were appointed as elders. I personally know of one boy who was only 19, and another who was 21.

  In both cases, it was very definitely a case of "who you knew". However, that is another story for another time!
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  33

  So how did JF Rutherford function...?

  by HowTheBibleWasCreated in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  every picture i have seen at him at beth shirim and other private places are with a bottle of alcohol.. while for me personally i couldn't care less anymore.... for jw's this is low moral character.

  so i'm an going to guess he was a functioning alcoholic... how did that work with his closest workers?

  was he gay too?

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  Bungi Bill

  It seems that I might have opened a can of worms here!

  I know of a lot of beer kegs that did feature some sort of external pressurisation. The old "Four-and-a-half" had mounted on its top a non-return valve of the type also used on bicycle tyres; and indeed was often pressured by means of a bicycle pump (seen that more than once!). As for the selection of glasses, I don't recall any of my drinking acquaintances being too fussy about which type of utensil got used. In fact, there were more than a few social occassions in which beer was consumed from china tea cups.

  Nobody in that photograph was flat on the floor - yet. Just like there are various stages of consciousness, there are, too, various stages of inebriation - ranging from just mildly "tipsy" right through to an alcoholic coma.
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  33

  So how did JF Rutherford function...?

  by HowTheBibleWasCreated in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  every picture i have seen at him at beth shirim and other private places are with a bottle of alcohol.. while for me personally i couldn't care less anymore.... for jw's this is low moral character.

  so i'm an going to guess he was a functioning alcoholic... how did that work with his closest workers?

  was he gay too?

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  Bungi Bill

  vienne,

  Root beer dispensers are something quite unknown in this part of the world, so I wouldn't be able to comment:

  - except that the container in the above photograph looks awfully like the ubiquitous "Four-and-a-half-gallon" beer keg once so popular in this country!
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  33

  JWs biggest problem is not doctrinal issues

  by Chook in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  it's biggest problems are associated with its lack of genuine love and concern for the rank& file.

  the average person doesn't need a food critic to tell them their hamburger is shit, in the same manner the average person can discern kindness and love.

  gbs fake love and concern is evident in the way head office deals with victims of sexual abuse by jw clergy.

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  Bungi Bill

  According to Raymond Franz in Crisis of Conscience, the late Nathan Knorr even volunteered as much; once readily admitting that "The Mormons treat their people better". Of course, admitting to it is one thing. Doing something about it is quite another matter!
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  33

  So how did JF Rutherford function...?

  by HowTheBibleWasCreated in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  every picture i have seen at him at beth shirim and other private places are with a bottle of alcohol.. while for me personally i couldn't care less anymore.... for jw's this is low moral character.

  so i'm an going to guess he was a functioning alcoholic... how did that work with his closest workers?

  was he gay too?

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  Bungi Bill

  In his time, this esteemed gentleman earned himself the unenviable nickname of "Booze Rutherford".
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  22

  How smart were the ancients?

  by Coded Logic in

  1. social
  2. current

  growing up as a jw, i always thought the ancients were scientific morons who knew next to nothing.

  ashamedly, i used to run around citing isaiah 40:22 as proof of the bible's 'divine authorship' because it talked about "the circle of the earth".

  as though this were somehow an unknowable before spaceflight.

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  Bungi Bill

  Even that phrase "circle of the earth" was interpreted differently by different bible readers.

  Some took it to mean that the earth was a disc rather than a sphere. One such person was Paul Kruger, who, during the late 19th Century, served as president of what was then the Transvaal Republic (now a province of South Africa). Furthermore, Kruger was by no means alone amongst his people (a people whose formal education often amounted to no more than reading the bible) in thinking the world was flat.

  Contrast that with the knowledge held by certain other peoples whom Europeans would have regarded as "uncivilised". One such group were the Polynesians. They knew that the earth was a sphere, and knew how to navigate by using the sun and the stars as guides. This enabled them to populate that whole vast triangular-shaped expanse of the Pacific Ocean - from Hawaii in the north, to Easter Island in the south east, to New Zealand in the south west.

  Polynesian feats of navigation were so impressive that early European explorers speculated that originally, the Pacific Islands of Polynesia must have all been part of one great landmass. They figured that after being populated by humans, this landmass then sank into the ocean, just leaving the mountain tops behind and thus forming the Pacific Islands.

  More recent commentators such as Professor Keith Cumberland put Polynesian migration down to "tropical voyages that went wrong" - i.e. according to him, Polynesian migration consisted of boatloads of people who got lost and somehow washed up ashore on the next island group along.

  The fact is, though, that these seafarers knew exactly what they were doing when they migrated across the Pacific, between 1200 BC and 1300 AD. Not bad for a group of "primitive" peoples!
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  39

  DId you ever fall asleep at the meetings, Assemblys??

  by karter in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  if i'm tierd i fall asleep anywere so the meetings ect were no diffrent my wife would always try to wake me but im a deep sleeper.

  karter .

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  Bungi Bill

  Frequently!

  For several years, the work I did was extremely demanding physically, so drifting off to sleep during the meetings was simply irresistable - and my wife was forever jabbing me in the ribs to wake me up. (Like about every five minutes!)

  After several years of that I finally woke up to myself and decided to resume the apprenticeship that the borg made me abandon pre-1975. That, however, is another story for another time!