Posts by Half banana

32

What are the biggest holes in the ransom sacrifice?

by Half banana in

how honest are the proponents of jesus as the ransom sacrifice?.

curious to see what type of response there is on a topic like this or does their study only seek to confirm their preconceptions and ignore uncomfortable facts?.

Half banana

Searcher, the Wikipedia is a wonderful quick reference but the last thing it is, is scholarly. It is verboten as a reference in universities because it has no academic peer review by those who have given their lives to determining the veracity of the particular branch of research in question.

“Bible scholars” are usually driven by faith and divine revelation. Academic textual scholars are driven by archaeology, history, logic and text evidences. So religiously committed "Biblical scholars", and rabbis and popular opinions and Wikipedia just don’t cut the mustard.

General comment... If Jesus is your saviour, you are mistaken in thinking that Jesus has any credible, concrete, first hand, eyewitness evidence for his existence as a human.

There were many notable writers and commentators who were alive at the time of his purported existence who would have given their eye teeth to record a super-man, had he really been there.

Josephus was both a local man and a contemporary of the earliest years of Jesus-christianity had it existed.He was after all the governor of Galilee before getting Roman recognition and becoming a writer after the fall of Jerusalem. The very fact that he mentions Jesus as “the saviour” en passant without detailed explanation, which was his normal manner... is evidence that these words are later insertions into his text by desperate and dishonest believers. The historical silence about Jesus is deafening.

32

What are the biggest holes in the ransom sacrifice?

by Half banana in

how honest are the proponents of jesus as the ransom sacrifice?.

curious to see what type of response there is on a topic like this or does their study only seek to confirm their preconceptions and ignore uncomfortable facts?.

Half banana

There is not one account of any ransom sacrifice having effect whoever does the dying .

I like Xanthippe's picture of the validity of Jesus' sacrifice as a cheese with holes in it, I would like to add that the holes are connected only by a tissue of lies and superstition.

133

What are the biggest holes in evolution?

by shadow in

how honest are the proponents of evolution?

idk but curious to see what type of response there is on a topic like this or does their study only seek to confirm their preconceptions and ignore uncomfortable facts?

Half banana

Faith in Jesus is no hole in evolution, it is irrelevant to it.

133

What are the biggest holes in evolution?

by shadow in

how honest are the proponents of evolution?

idk but curious to see what type of response there is on a topic like this or does their study only seek to confirm their preconceptions and ignore uncomfortable facts?

Half banana

The principle of evolution is unchallenged. Abiogenesis is another subject as is the existence of God. I'm waiting to get my teeth into the supposed "big holes".

32

What are the biggest holes in the ransom sacrifice?

by Half banana in

how honest are the proponents of jesus as the ransom sacrifice?.

curious to see what type of response there is on a topic like this or does their study only seek to confirm their preconceptions and ignore uncomfortable facts?.

Half banana

how honest are the proponents of Jesus as the ransom sacrifice?

curious to see what type of response there is on a topic like this or does their study only seek to confirm their preconceptions and ignore uncomfortable facts?

8

The Evolution of Humans

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

tracing the evolutionary path of humans is complicated.

simply because human and proto-human remains (including bones) are perishable.

remains from the distant past are usually only preserved when some unique features exist that assist preservation.

Half banana

FTS, the unilinear model i.e. a single evolving thread remains an idealistic notion which does not easily fit with the findings. Whereas 1992 is a long time ago in paleoanthropology, the phylogeny or positions in the family tree, are still constantly being reconsidered as new finds and new species are discovered. Since that date we have even had two completely new types of human species living simultaneously with our own namely the Denisovans in the Urals and the so called 'Hobbit', Homo floresiensis from Indonesia.

Imagine the consequences of living with other species of humans...

12

Evolution is a Fact #9 - Less Chewing More Thinking

by cofty in

if you put your fingers on the side of your head, just above your ears, and move your jaw you will be able to feel your temporalis muscles doing their thing.. compared to our primate cousins our temporalis muscles are puny - approximately one eighth the size.

the reason for the difference is a mutation of the myh16 gene in humans that produces a protein called myosin heavy chain 16. in primates like the gorilla this protein produces the powerful chewing pressure of the jaw.. our closest hominid relative, the chimpanzee have an intact myh16 gene.

since the rate of mutation can be determined, hansell stedman and his team at the university of pennsylvania have calculated that the mutation that disabled the gene in our line happened between 2.1 and 2.7 million years ago.. the large temporalis muscle has to anchor to very thick and strong skull bones.

Half banana

Just a note on our relationship with Neanderthals.

Most of us posting here will have between 4% and 9% Neanderthal genes and the last known full blown member of that sub-species died out in Europe about thirty nine thousand years ago.

12

Evolution is a Fact #9 - Less Chewing More Thinking

by cofty in

if you put your fingers on the side of your head, just above your ears, and move your jaw you will be able to feel your temporalis muscles doing their thing.. compared to our primate cousins our temporalis muscles are puny - approximately one eighth the size.

the reason for the difference is a mutation of the myh16 gene in humans that produces a protein called myosin heavy chain 16. in primates like the gorilla this protein produces the powerful chewing pressure of the jaw.. our closest hominid relative, the chimpanzee have an intact myh16 gene.

since the rate of mutation can be determined, hansell stedman and his team at the university of pennsylvania have calculated that the mutation that disabled the gene in our line happened between 2.1 and 2.7 million years ago.. the large temporalis muscle has to anchor to very thick and strong skull bones.

Half banana

@Love Uni, As far as I know there is strong actual evidence in China for domestic fire in a hominin occupied cave at 800,000 years before present. More recently reported in Southern Africa is fire use probable at around 1.2 million years.

Neanderthals living in the colder parts of Europe would most certainly have used fire to keep warm and to make the meat and veg more digestible. It has been discovered that Neanderthals ate a wide variety of root vegetables. In the Ukraine they built huts framed with mammoth bones and made them windproof with the skins. They lived mainly during cold dry climate episodes. They burnt bones for fuel out there on the treeless steppe. Hearths are almost universal for Mousterian (Neanderthal) culture but only go back say 350,000 years.

For Homo ergaster , H erectus and H heidlebergensis, as far as I know there is very little actual evidence except at the Wonderwerk Cave in S.A. (the name has just surfaced) mentioned above. Otherwise it is just absence of evidence at present, not evidence of absence for fire use in the earlier human species.

@BethSarim, absolutley right! It only needs investigation on the skeleton of one proto-human to destroy faith in the Bible. The fact is there are thousands of finds with diverse species giving a picture of the human pedigree going back to the remote past.

The JW org dare not look at the evidence: if Adam was a myth; Jesus' ransom is invalid... and bang goes Christianity!

29

What's next?

by Grey Goose in

jw
friends

hi everyone.. thanks for the welcome a few days ago, it was nice to hear your support.. this is a pure speculation thread, but what do you think the next changes are going to be?.

will we see tything come into play?.

more evangelical style meetings?.

Half banana

I'm not actually in favour of giving JW org ideas but how about this for a future business structure?

No Kingdom Hells, (assembly hells for dunking) no d2d preaching (possibly incidental stuff) instead of printing their nasty propaganda, have everything accessible on line and pay for the privilege of watching your favourite holy clowns performing on your screen. This means you can sell the KH properties and earn a mint of money for the leaders and the JW true believers can all live happy deluded lives in their own homes without bothering anyone who is not interested. Way to go JW org.

There are bound to be scriptures which show that evidently it is now God's will to do this.

475

What is the alternative to JW?

by Formerbrother in

i mean this with all due respect, i would like to hear from genuine people who think jw have it wrong and then what is the truth?.

im not talking about silly little quibbles here and there.. is jehovah real?

the the bible is word?

Half banana

What is the alternative to JWs if their religion is wrong? This is a good question... but only if you have had the misfortune to have had your brain specially wired by JW thinking in the first place.

JW thinking does not permit or admit any other kind of thinking and that is why ex JWs are left high and dry mentally and emotionally without their regular fix of Watchtower propaganda and JW company to perpetuate the illusion.

So it’s tough on the outside and a JW is not prepared for real life because his or her premise was that “the world” is Satan’s domain and a JW is always fretting over the boundaries between their black and white thinking as a matter of habit.

Relax friend... real life is not like this... you can learn to make your own decisions based on reason and usefulness not on religious imperative as you did before. Perhaps for the first time you can become yourself!

So in the spirit of what you meant by what alternatives are there to the JW belief; the intelligent answer has to be: become a sceptic (or skeptic if you are American). By looking behind any proposition consider why it was made, be doubtful rather than gullible, find physical evidence rather than belief and build your life on knowable things not emotional blackmail such as religions teach.

This is in agreement with what Finklestein said “get an education” which is the opposite of indoctrination... and also 007’s suggestion on how Jehovah began. Would you want to worship an ox headed idol? If Jehovah began as such, how did he also get to be the creator of the universe?