Back in the old days when Fred Franz was the main "Bible scholar" even though it was crap at least it had the slight flavor of an intellectual exercise. Raymond Franz, Lyman Swingle, and Ed Dunlap probably had some effect as well in making the theology interesting. Once these guys were gone it sounds to me like it has become very dumbed down.
Liberty
JoinedPosts by Liberty
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33
Does any real learning take place at the Kingdom Hall?
by truthseeker inprearranged comments, scripted answers, word-for-word answers from the paragraph,.
no outside material allowed, short comments.... .
does anyone really learn anything at the hall?
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14
Have JW's changed their tactics for talking with atheists?
by SickofLies ini attended a meeting with mash (mcmaster association for secular humanists) the other day where we had an excellent guest speaker, a professor from the university of toronto who founded and runs talkorigins website.
for those that would like to see the lecture titled "evolution a theory and a fact" i will be posting it on-line in the next day or two and will post the link in this thread.. back to my question, after the speech when we took the speaker out for drinks we were all sharing experiences talking about how talkorigins helped us and the issue of jw's came up, people there were telling me that when jw's come to their door now if they state they are an atheists or don't believe in the bible they simply stop the conversation and go away.. is this an official change in tactics for the jw's?
it would be great if it were, i can think of only one reason for not wanting to try and preach to the new atheists out there, that being that people who do are getting persuaded by their arguments and leaving the church.. has anyone else heard anything like this?.
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Liberty
I may have run afoul of this new tactic when a pair of JWs were visiting my inactive relatives to "encourage" them. I had known the elderly JW of the pair as a child so my relatives thought I should come in and say hello since I hadn't seen him for nearly 30 years. I came in expecting a bit of catching-up-small-talk but right after the introductions the younger of the pair asked if I was baptized. I responded that I had never been baptized even though raised as a JW because I was a skeptic about everything biblical.
The younger of the pair seemed keen on talking to me as my horrified relatives looked on. We had a nice discussion on the Creation story while the elder JW directed his attention to my relatives. At some point the elder JW had had enough of my rebuttals and cut the younger JW off by reading me a scripture which basically called me a fool and quickly got up to leave as I said his scripture had as much authority to me as the Book of Mormon did as they were retreating out the door.
I had assumed that I would have a better chance as a straight up Bible skeptic in keeping the discussion going than as a rabid anti-JW spouting what I knew about the corrupt nature of the Watch Tower Society, but I was wrong. I wish now I had taken a more aggressive approach since I was cut off anyway. Apparently Atheists aren't afforded any more discussion time than an Apostate.
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2012
by Vernon Williams inhey guys,.
an ex jw friend of ours ask about 2012. her sister went to a ca and the/a speaker(s) mentioned 2012?
this friend of ours was asking if i had noticed anything on this board about that date.
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Liberty
If the Watch Tower Society points to the year 2012 you can be ASSURED that nothing will happen. They have 100% failure rate when predicting anything or marking dates so that is the best reason ever 2012 will be just another year.
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Noah, Jerusalem, and Divine Judgment. How would you answer this?
by neverendingjourney injesus compared the last days with the days of noah 1 .
the wtbts says that noah preached for 40 years 2 before the flood came so that he could give his contemporaries a chance to repent and be saved.
when jehovahs time came, he closed the doors of the ark and brought a global deluge that killed everyone but noah and his family.
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Liberty
Hi neverendingjourney,
I hope no offense was taken, I kind of highjacked your thread. I didn't mean it as a criticism of you or your idea, I just wanted to point out that the WTB&S is dead wrong about the Flood analogy to their big "A" scenario. It is all conjecture.
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Noah, Jerusalem, and Divine Judgment. How would you answer this?
by neverendingjourney injesus compared the last days with the days of noah 1 .
the wtbts says that noah preached for 40 years 2 before the flood came so that he could give his contemporaries a chance to repent and be saved.
when jehovahs time came, he closed the doors of the ark and brought a global deluge that killed everyone but noah and his family.
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Liberty
I just read the Flood account directly from Genesis and there is no mention anywhere of Noah preaching to people about the coming flood nor was there any provision for any would-be converts from such non-preaching to be saved. That everyone else is to die in the Flood is a forgone conclusion already decided by God. It also appears that the only reason that the rest of Noah's family were saved is because of God's "covenent" with Noah, in other words none of the members of his family worked out their own salvation nor were they judged as "good" and "worthy" but were saved just because they were Noah's intimate family as a favor to Noah. The "real" Flood story is completely different from what the Watch Tower Society teaches and has not the slightest similarity to their salvation plan for the big "A".
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The Bible - God's Word or Man's? - What Convinces You?
by sweet pea inhaving believed the whole bible, hook, line and sinker all these years i get the impression many of you have come to the conclusion that we should take it with a pinch of salt and not hold to it so dogmatically.
and some possibly believe in it just as much as you did when you were a witness.
to save me some time please, lovely people, as i am very lazy - could you share with me why you do or don't believe in it - what evidence there is either way and if there are any particular books that you found helpful in coming to your conclusions?
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Liberty
The evidence is overwhelmingly clear that the Bible is a human made book right along with its close relatives the Qur'an and the Book of Mormon. All of these books are just bad copies of each other and ultimately from earlier works of so called "pagan" cultures. Ancient Sumerian texts of the Epic of Gilgamesh predate the Bible by more than 1000 years and hold the same familiar stories of the Creation and the Flood.
The Watch Tower Society's unoriginal (copied from Christidom's appologetics) excuse is that these earlier pagan writings are just corruptions of the more "accurate" Bible histories. Such excuses are unlikely since the general rules of literature (and common sense) tend to favor older copies as more accurate and original.
Even if there were an "accurate" Bible account the stories are patently ridiculous when read straight without complex appologetics to explain away all the contradictions and logic holes. The Creation sequence is scientifically impossible since light, the Earth, and the plants were created BEFORE the Sun and stars. For some strange reason all birds are created from the waters along with the fishes while other land animals are created from the earth. The birds are also created earlier than other land animals which makes no sense because the fossil evidence is clear that birds are a relatively late arrivals among the land animals.
I will just mention that the creation story looks like it is told twice as if it was a fusion of two different stories. In any case, the creation of man as the first human makes no sense either since all humans begin as females and not males. Male nipples are the most easily seen proof of this fact even if you could not see the direct fetal development of female into male form. If God intended males to be the first why the opposite switch in fetal development?
The Bible also claims that it does not rain in these days and that a mist comes up from the earth to water the plants yet the fossil evidence is clear that rain drops existed even before land plants had evolved.
The Fall of man story is interesting as well when we realize that there is no Devil mentioned anywhere in the story. The talking serpent is actually telling the truth as well and it is God who is proven a liar since the touching or eating of the fruit does not cause death and infact does provide new found knowledge. Strangely the serpent is punished for telling the truth by being told it would crawl on its belly (which is the only way snakes can move anyway since they have no legs) and eat dust, which no snake to this day does...so much for God Almighty's prophecy skills and ability to enforce punishments.
God's strange logic allows for a tree who's fruit can grant immortality if eaten and so He bans man from the Garden of Eden and posts angelic guards at the gates to keep humans out so they cannot become as gods. Wouldn't it just be easier to make the magic tree disaappear along with the whole Garden? Apparently this obvious solution never occured to the all knowing and all powerful God.
Next comes the very strange Cain and Able story. If Cain and his most intimate family were the only people in the world why did God give him a mark so people would not kill him for his crimes against Able? If Adam, Eve, and Cain's brothers and sisters are the Earth's only human inhabitants, then surely it is easier for God just to tell them not to kill Cain without some mark to interpret and even if there were further removed nieces and nephews how would they know about the crime or be able to interpret what the mark meant anyway? It is clear that such a mark was intended for far-flung strangers since Cain was to be punished by becoming a vagabond, how a stranger would know what the mark meant or how they would hear of Cain's crime we are never told. It seems that the teller of this tall tale had every expectation that there were other people scattered about the world besides Adam, Eve, and their family and hence Cain's fear and why it was so easy for him to find a wive in his vagabond travals and eventually finds enough people to found a city. Founding a city, by the way, is the exact opposite of being a vagabond so God's punishment/prophecy is easily thwarted. Another clue that this story is complete nonsense is the fact that God throughout the rest of the Bible is so forceful in punishing murder (and a whole host of lesser crimes) with death and yet Cain gets away with just a mark???
This is just in the first few chapters of the Bible and the sillyness does not end.
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50
Hating God?
by avidbiblereader ini cannot but read many of the posts in which god/jehovah or even christ is ridiculed, mocked and even hated?
so i ask the question why?.
what has god ever done to you personally?
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Liberty
Brother Apostate yet again reveals his ignorance of science. If the evidence is bad it is up to you B.A. to present better evidence so we can correct the "bad science". We await your evidence so we can be corrected. Calling someone a liar is not evidence, proving it is.
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50
Hating God?
by avidbiblereader ini cannot but read many of the posts in which god/jehovah or even christ is ridiculed, mocked and even hated?
so i ask the question why?.
what has god ever done to you personally?
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Liberty
Brother Apostate does not understand science. This is not an insult just a fact. Science cannot be compared to religion. Science is based upon the never ending search for evidence in order to get at the truth. This evidence supercedes all belief and scienctific truths are changed based upon the evidence. Religion has a set of concepts which remain untouched by evidence and claims it does not need to search for truth because this truth has already been revealed. Science and religion are complete opposits.
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50
Hating God?
by avidbiblereader ini cannot but read many of the posts in which god/jehovah or even christ is ridiculed, mocked and even hated?
so i ask the question why?.
what has god ever done to you personally?
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Liberty
If the God of the Bible were real I would hate Him. My detailed study of the Bible provided the evidence that He should be hated but it luckily also provided the evidence which makes my hate unnecessary, because God is clearly not real. For me, hating God is like hating Batman...it can't be done because Batman isn't real either. I can't hate, mock, or insult something that doesn't exist.
I do my best to not mock, insult, or hate believers because in my brainwashed ignorance I was once a believer too. I will not be silent about what I have discovered, however, because I want others to know the new peace and calmness that I now feel because I know there is no intelligence behind the chaos and cruelty in the universe.
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What's the big deal with Jesus' "sacrifice"?
by bluesapphire inwhat was the big deal with that dam tree to begin with!
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Liberty
You make a great point bluesapphire. The myth of Christ's death is purposely constructed to hit us on an emotional rather than a rational level. Religion is mostly about emotion and when logic and reason are applied these "great" events evaporate into mere folklore.
An omnipotent God would ultimately control what sacrifices He would demand so how could Jesus die for "our" sins since God contrived the entire situation to begin with? God defined the "sin". baited the trap, lured in the victims using deception, lied about the punishments, then waits thousands of years to offer a redemption by some sadistic blood ritual of Himself or His son and then promises a "great reform" which we are still waiting on 2000+ years later. The entire scheme makes no sense but it makes us cry and feel bad so it must be true.
Remove the guilt and emotion from Christianity and it crumbles. The Bible read without it's complex apologetics simply makes no sense.