Posts by Half banana

17

Hi your df but your invited to the memorial but we will not welcome you or talk to you .

by poopie in

jw
friends

but your welcome to come as guest we just will not talk to you stupid idiot

The argument over wood petrification and the pertification of animal dung?

by Crazyguy in

there's two sides to the explanation of petrified wood not sure yet about what creationists say about petrified dung.

on one side evelutionists say it's a long process the creationists say it happen rapidly caused by noah's flood and after.

has anyone really looked into this argument to see if there a decisive way to show the bible believers wrong.

Half banana

Just a qualifying comment Crazyguy. For fecal matter to remain identifiable does not require fossilisation.

The location within the living site under investigation, i.e. in pits away from the dwellings, the texture and colour of the material and most usefully the contents microscopically examined including bugs which feed on dung, human parasites, undigestable wheat chaff, pips from fruit etc, all can identify human (or other animal) excreta which may be many thousands of years old and too young to be fossil coprolites. These latter tend to be individual specimens, the former tend to be found in voluminous and amorphous deposits.

Archaeology is such good clean fun!

11

Why is the Bible silent about the real Israel/Egyptian connections?

by fulltimestudent in

the bible does connect egypt and israel (including judah), but does not tell the truth about the connection.. an exhibition at the israel museum tells a clearer story.. it tells of two periods of connection;.

the first connection around 1800 to 1550 bce when canaanites settled in the eastern section of the nile river delta.

it seems this is the era that saw the development of stories like the joseph story and the mose's story.

Half banana

The history of the Jews is so interesting because it is built on the same unfounded and overblown claims which also powers fundamentalist Christianity.

Truthfulness and facts are not the motivation factors in either politics or religion. The sucessful leaders of people are aware of this...

13

The argument over wood petrification and the pertification of animal dung?

by Crazyguy in

there's two sides to the explanation of petrified wood not sure yet about what creationists say about petrified dung.

on one side evelutionists say it's a long process the creationists say it happen rapidly caused by noah's flood and after.

has anyone really looked into this argument to see if there a decisive way to show the bible believers wrong.

Half banana

Crazy guy, you say "there are two sides to the petrification of wood!?" Not quite sure which sides you are referring to.

However on this subject it is worth understanding that the stone like covering which can be deposited on a number of objects from certain mineral springs by its water passing over them in an evaporating situation... has nothing to do with petrification.

Petrification takes a long long time. I believe that crystals of the mineral apatite have been known to form on and inside the bones in an undisturbed cave containing the right mineral environment, sometimes as soon as 25,000 to 28,000 years as a beginning of the process. Petrification, as opposed to mineral coating; is the replacement of the molecules of living tissue with silicaceous (silicon) compounds from the overlying silts and normally takes a minimum fifty to a hundred thousand years. I am familiar with handling bones of bison, horse, elephant and mammoth etc, including teeth and ivory and also wood with ages up to approaching a quarter of million years old, all from local archaeological sites in southern central England, most of which material is not petrified.

Petrification for dead matter is not the norm, it only happens under very specific circumstances and that is why when specimens are found in good shape it is a great boon to paleontology.

The whole subject of death, burial and fossilization comes under the discipline of "taphonomy". It is useful to the police forensics as well as archaeologists and paleontologists.

Fossil dung has to meet the same criteria for preservation so it is extremely hard to see how a global (or local) flood could contribute anything other than the total dispersal of any fecal matter.

56

Hello, fairly new, studying for around 7 months, just thought I would introduce myself.

by Conanthebeliever in

hello everyone, i hope you are all ok. .

my name is conan, i am 25, and from the uk.

i have some brain damage, so i apologise in advance if my syntax is off or i go a long way around explaining things.

Half banana

Hi Conan, glad you made it here. Yes friends are a really good thing to have and helping others for no personal reward shows you love mankind!

I'm glad too that you have been encouraged to research for yourself.This really is the most important thing for you at your stage of learning.

If you only were to read one side of a story without the proper knowledge of the facts, it can easily look very distorted.

Most of us here have been amazed how different things look when you do an unbiased investigation into the reasons for writing the Bible and the origins of religious organisations.

I hope you enjoy finding out what truth is!

11

Why is the Bible silent about the real Israel/Egyptian connections?

by fulltimestudent in

the bible does connect egypt and israel (including judah), but does not tell the truth about the connection.. an exhibition at the israel museum tells a clearer story.. it tells of two periods of connection;.

the first connection around 1800 to 1550 bce when canaanites settled in the eastern section of the nile river delta.

it seems this is the era that saw the development of stories like the joseph story and the mose's story.

Half banana

I suggest your question Fulltimestudent, leads to a vital conclusion as to why the Bible was written!

The essential detail is that Israel was ever historically a subordinate territory and a nation occupied by the prevailing dominant powers, namely Egypt, Babylon and Assyria in succession. Israel remained a backwater for centuries and was the land through which lay the highland route for connecting between the great powers in the north and south. Normally, with fortified garrisons and occupying troops at ten mile intervals or so along the way. No people would celebrate its occupying forces, and to write things down was like a divine edict so Israel would not want to record that indignity.

Israel (the worshippers of El the father of Jehovah) are first mentioned about 1200 BCE. For some centuries the unproductive highlands of central Canaan had been a refuge for the dispossessed from all over the north of the Levant and Assyria. These were loose bands of refugees called the Ebiru which seems to be the source of the word ‘Hebrew’ (recorded at least from 1500 BCE onwards).

Unlike the illustrious neighbours such as the highly organised, wealthy, literate and tolerant Egyptians to the south west or the Philistines to the south or the maritime traders the Phoenicians next door to the west; Israel by contrast was very small potato. This is borne out by the archaeology.

The archaeology of Israel in the British Museum correspondingly shows very little indigenous material other than humble domestic ware intermittently over a long period. The two more interesting areas of finds are the things left behind by the foreign occupiers or objects copied from neighbouring lands. (Jehovah for example was seated idol in imitation of the Egyptian ones, with either an ox head or sometimes a human head with large cow horns). Having said that, the territory of modern Israel has a fascinating archaeological record notable for its continuity stretching back from early human and Neanderthal finds around 90,000 years bp (before present) right the way through the rest of the Old Stone Age and into the New and then on into the Bronze Age and later.

However the artefacts from native Israel before the early seventh century BCE tend towards revealing a culturally and materially impoverished people and small in population number...don't believe what the Bible says on figures.

Perhaps it is this very impoverishment and the political impotence of early Israel which drove the people there to create the imaginative Biblical narrative towards the hyperbole of power and military triumph? For certainly the dream of the conquering king is a leitmotif.

It was the material poverty of Israel which I suggest led to a literature of messianic hope and hence the enduring quality behind the success of the Bible. Truth however has little to do with its content.

78

Animals were created without needing Toilet Paper ... but not Man ... Why???

by RubaDub in

my dog and other pets do their "business" and run away and are happy.. man does not have that luxury.

any thoughts on why animals were created with the "poop and go" capacity while man has to go through more steps?

was this perhaps an additional issue that god added on when adam and eve sinned (such as eve having significant more birth pains)?

Half banana

Chimpanzees have been known to use leaves especially when afflicted with diarrhea (or is that dire rear?)

92

Only a few days ago I was entirely lost and without hope the rug was pulled out from under me

by elderess in

jw
friends

only a few days ago i was walking around the house in a mindless wander thinking if i needed to seek professional help.

then i got the courage to seek the comfort of complete strangers on the internet and found a world of support here on this website.

thank you simon and whoever else has made this website possible.

Half banana

Just a brilliant post Elderess. How about approaching your children in the same way as you spoke to your husband?

23

New June Awake with Misleading Statements about Evidence for god

by ttdtt in

the article (faith) is all about why you should have solid evidence based reasons for belief in god.

it's not good enough to believe in god just because you were raised to believe in god.. (from the article).

but god wants those who worship him to have genuine confidence in his existence and in his love.. then it goes on to tell us how we can get that genuine confidence that there is a god.

Half banana

Jehovah's Witnesses are a dim-witted cult. They are brought up to believe that quoting the scriptures is the finest thing a person can do and all you need to do.

They wouldn't know a fact if it hit them in the face. To draw conclusions from evidence (such as the geological record to demonstrate evolution for example) would overstretch the thinking ability of most JWs.

98

OKAY, GAME OVER! The number one reason the New Testament amounts to bunk

by Terry in

for me, the dead giveaway is this.

jesus wrote nothing.. stop and think about that.. if jesus were the authentic messiah, his ministry would not simply be local.. his instructions, his mission, the details of his teachings would be too precious to risk leaving it in the hands of "men unlettered (illiterate) and ordinary (blue-collar yokels).".

jesus, were he the one and only hope of mankind, would be absolutely certain to write down with great simplicity and specificity the exact owner's manual necessary to rescue mankind.. never happened!.

Half banana

Sorry to appear brutal for the things I am going to say; but I wish someone else had informed me of these when I was a young JW.

It was due to the political demands of the ruthless but superstitious Roman Emperor Constantine the Great who for political gain declared the Jesus cult to become the state religion. This was because his mother (as Finklestein alludes) came from the peasant class and had adopted the rustic Jesus cult. Constantine’s authority established the Catholic faith as the official religion with its chosen texts which later came to be called the Bible. All modern Jesus-belief, including JWs and yours Michelle, sprang from this Roman source.

There never was a primitive uncorrupted Christianity, there never was a real person called Jesus.

He was the saviour- god-man character of pagan theatre. The Jesus story evolved from paganism and was politically managed as the central figure of the establishment religion of Imperial Rome in the fourth century CE.

If you believe that Jesus is the son of God, you are parroting the Catholic church and ignorant of the pagan origins of Christianity. Besides how could anyone know who the invisible son is of an invisible father?

Constantine did not care a fig about the teachings of the Bible, as I said, it was for him a superstition; it brought him “good luck” in warfare. The fusion of all pagan belief in the new Roman Catholic Church; politically united the pious in a cosmopolitan Roman Empire. This religious and political unison was a platform of strength for the emperor. As it turned out, as history shows, the new religion out-lived the Roman Empire.

The Catholic fusion of beliefs in the fourth century Rome involved taking the folk literature centred on the universal astrological stories and clothed them in reverential language. The figure or character of a god-man saviour was recorded from the earliest writings in Babylonia and Egypt. Thousands of years before Jesus, Osiris (also called Krst) healed the sick, raised the dead, was born of a virgin mother called Meri, had twelve disciples, walked on water and raised his ‘friend’ Lazarus from the dead. Space does not permit me to list the rest of similarities.

So why not have Osiris in your heart as your saviour instead of one of his later imitations? Perhaps you might like the sound of Dionysus “The true vine” was born of the Virgin in the stable with oxen in midwinter, who turned water into wine at the wedding feast, was crucified went to the grave and was resurrected after three days. Or perhaps you might prefer the Virgin-born Great Shepherd Mithra, symbolized by a cross who was crucified and whose body and blood was commemorated every year at the spring equinox by a ritual last supper.

Christianity is pure pagan belief dressed up in a literary confection to obscure its origins. Jesus is just an imitation of the older God-man beliefs. There is no concrete evidence, no first hand eyewitness account of him...and my goodness! if a man could raise the dead he would have immediately become known and celebrated for his remarkable skills in the interconnected and literate Roman world.

Alas! True resurrectionists have always been a bit thin on the ground.

Since therefore Jesus is a literary figure not a literal one, the likely-hood of Jesus being a real person is at the same betting odds as Harry Potter becoming a breathing human being in the future and doing all of the things written about him. Please think about it.

Why didn’t somebody tell me these things when I was at school?