Posts by Half banana

45

Who or What is the Holy Spirit?

by FusionTheism in

tradition within christianity has long been that any time the phrases holy spirit, holy ghost, or spirit of godare used in the bible (especially in the new testament), it always refers to the mysterious third divine person of the trinity, who is fully god, co-equal to the father and son, yet somehow distinct.. i want to present a simplified alternative view: let the context determine the meaning!.

(one thing to keep in mind is that the meaning of the bible words used for spirit basically is unseen force or invisible presence.).

the holy spirit as the mind and personality of god.

Half banana

Holy spirit is mumbo jumbo. The evidence for this is negative evidence; there is no evidence for any action purported to be accomplished by holy spirit which can unequivocally be connected to an outcome.

Believers however are constitutionally gullible.

@Crazyguy, I'm thinking along these lines, i.e. the major mythical input is from Egypt. Not only in the source myths which underlie OT beliefs and the "conquering hero saviour" which is both OT and also the central theme of the Greek NT texts... but also the post pharaonic influence on early Christianity when Egypt was under Greek rule centered at Alexandria.

My source for believing that Egyptian myth may have Ethiopian origins comes from the pen of John G Jackson who wrote Christianity before Christ. AAP 1985

@

51

My first post

by thewalker in

jw
friends

hi, i just joined the board and wanted to present myself.. i'm active, in fact very active in congregation activities serving "where the need is great" in a foreign language congregation somewhere in western europe.

as a young brother, i'm seen as an example as i'm doing all a good witness should do.. i had doubts years ago but i decided just to ignore them and move to another congregation to preach more.

that worked for some years but i'm now at the exact same point.

Half banana

Hi and welcome thewalker. Your English is exemplary! There were no mistakes betraying a foreign first language.

Indeed most of us have been in your shoes. We had doubts which we suppressed at first but in the end needed to be examined.

The first assurance is that outside of the JW religion everything is not doom and gloom. The world is in fact full of wonderful people. The baddies though get the news exposure.

Looking forward to hearing more of your story.

One option you might consider in the near future is to step down from organisation responsibility for "personal reasons" without leaving the congregation. This will give you more time and space to do research and buy some thinking time.

30

70 inch t.v.'s on stage

by dbq407 in

so the other night we had a resolution to purchase two 70 inch t.v.

's to hang on either side of the stage.

and also a smaller t.v.

Half banana

Finky baby, I love the glittering plasma field hovering behind his holiness Pope Anthony the third signifying the appropriate spiritual aura befitting these sainted beings.

15

Should Jehovah`s Witnesses be worshiping Jehovah ? or Jesus.

by smiddy in

jehovah`s christian witnesses , as they like to be known as , used to worship jesus in earlier times ,but now they do not worship jesus .

they worship a god named jehovah , who they admitted in the first edition of " aid to bible understanding " was not the correct pronunciation of the tetragrammaton `s four letter hebrew letters that represented god` name , by the way , a catholic monk of the 13th century came up with jehovah by just adding a couple of vowels.. to those four hebrew letters .which has since been revised to correctly translate the tetragrammaton as yhwh and many scholars put this name more accurately as yahweh or something more similar.. fact 1 .

the tetragrammaton does not appear in the " kingdom interlinear of christian greek scriptures " printed by the wtb&ts , a word for word translation of the greek scriptures.

Half banana

How can you answer this question Smiddy if you don't believe the Bible to be God's doing in the first place?

9

2016 WT printing reduction - Figures

by Splash in

the wt has been reducing it's printed output of the public wt magazine since 2012.this is how the figures breakdown:.

month ................. wt printing each issue ............. total pages per issue ..... languagesjanuary 2012 ....... 42,182,000 .................................. 1,349,824,000 ...................... 194january 2016 ....... 58,987,000 .................................. 943,792,000 ......................... 254. during 2012 the public wt had 32 pages, so there were 1.35 billion wt pages printed for the public to read each month.1,349,824,000 pages x 12 months = 16,197,888,000 (16.2 billion) pages per year.

by 2016 the public wt has only 16 pages and is being printed only on alternate months.943,792,000 pages x 6 times per year = 5,662,752,000 (5.7 billion pages per year).

Half banana

The world's most boring and paranoid magazine. It was and perhaps is still being distributed in vast quantities if those figures are right Splash.

Who though is interested in this trash? It's hard enough for the JWs to read... how can the public make sense of the GB's obsessive propaganda? Five times as many printed as there are JWs, that means only one fifth are opened and then only reluctantly read and many of those do so do it out of JW ritual not from interest.

It should come with a mental health warning:

Please be aware that the Watchtower Magazine can seriously endanger the soundness of your judgements and the unity of family relationships.

34

Hypothetical Question...

by JW_Rogue in

i was just thinking that the org has said lots of outrageous things over it's history and most jws just continue onward without a second thought.

so my question is what do you think would have to be said from the platform or wt to get people to get up and walk out immediately?

is it even possible?

Half banana

"Dear Brothers, we have an important announcement to make. The WTBTS has realised that although it has diligently served spiritual food to you all, it now humbly recognises that it misled you. The Bible, we realise, is not the inspired word of God and the WTBTS do not have God's special blessing otherwise we would have made correct date predictions. Immediately the organisation will begin to liquidise all assets and dissolve all legal associations. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your total support and commitment but henceforth there will be no more meetings."

Even this would only get rid of a large percent of JWs! The rest would re-form under many splinter groups, which are already waiting in the wings, to crank out the old propaganda minus the uncomfortable bits like overlapping, shunning and field service...........

37

Why does Antoine Leiris' powerful tribute to his wife, killed by ISIS in the Paris attacks, bother me so much?

by nicolaou in

here is the translation of monsieur leiris' words;.

friday night, you took an exceptional life - the love of my life, the mother of my son - but you will not have my hatred.

i don't know who you are and i don't want to know, you are dead souls.

Half banana

Why does it bother you/ me? Perhaps his noble words could not contrast more with the anti-human depravity of Islamic terrorism.

The gut political reaction is for reprisals... which M Leiris is not espousing...how can more deaths correct the ignorance of religious criminality?

ISEL is an anarchic would-be theocracy born of an Islamic dream. Revenge and death to unbelievers are at its foundations. It was nurtured in poverty, religious superstition, poor education and paradisaic hope. (familiar parallels?) Faith in the supremacy and vindication of its invisible god blindly propels its followers to place 'mere' human life lower than its religious ideals, justifying beheadings and mayhem.

Fundamentalist Islamic belief has fostered among the marginalised, the psychopathic and the criminal elements like Abdulhamid Abaaoud the glory of being culture heroes... something which ordinary life would not have granted them.

Isn't the real answer to work towards the elimination of world poverty and full secular education for all?

28

I'm a cynical, sarcastic and curmudgeonly old bastard most of the time.

by nicolaou in

but as i move into my early 50's i find i'm more and more comfortable in my thick, leathery hide.. please get it into your thick skull's that i don't insult or make snarky comments with the intent of hurting anyone's feelings.

that being said, if your precious feelings are hurt it's probably your fault for being a prissy, over sensitive drama queen who can't defend his argument.. i do actually love you all, it's just that most of the time you spineless pussies really get on my nerves!.

good god i feel better for that!

Half banana

Cats get grumpy too. My cat is in a bit of a mood this morning, he is sitting by the pond ready to pounce wondering why there are no more fish to catch. The reason being he ate the last one a couple of days ago.

27

Evolution and Creation—both are stories!

by lsw1961 in

there are number of nobel laureates and other great scientists in both the camps defending their respective theories of evolution and creation, which means both are just stories, and both suffer from having no eye-witnesses.

if either of them were true, all scientists would have accepted it unanimously as they do with rest of the laws such as law of gravity..

this does not mean that there is no god.

Half banana

The evolution theorum does not need defending since it is factually based. The Bible's story of creation is a literary fantasy which only the educationally stunted believe.

85

My letter to Bethel about the flood

by Cornbread in

i've decided to go full public with a new username on this forum.

it's been almost a decade since i've been out and i don't care at this point who knows.

that being said, here's a letter that i'm mailing to bethel.

Half banana

Cornbread, love your post. Speaking as someone familiar with prehistory, an understanding of earth sciences is vital to contextualise the archaeological artefacts and past events on our planet. It so happens that the last 15,000 years of late ice-age and post ice-age geology and geography is very well recorded and understood.

The ice cores were a fundamental tool used to resolve the accuracy and pattern of ice age events and climate change during the late Pleistocene and present Holocene period. The deep sea sediment cores back in the1970s were even more important but the data is less transparent to the general public. In fact the picture of the Earth’s climate has been determined by the corroboration of quite a number of careful scientific endeavours culminating in a clear framework of historic and prehistoric climate, none of which allow for a global flood (academic references available if you are interested).

Indeed with a massive scientific data base to the contrary, and set alongside the nature of the account as a mythical narrative and the sheer logistical impossibility of the story; Noah’s flood categorically did not and could not have taken place. It is naive in the extreme to imagine that one took place so recently in the historic period and JWs should feel shamefaced for such ignorance.

The fact that Jesus and Peter refer to it, is no authority at all since there is little to no evidence that these individuals either existed or were the authors of the words attributed to them. Most certainly what they are purported to have said, was never taken down verbatim and at best could only have been recalled many years later giving the real writer every opportunity to pen precisely what he wanted them to say. A concept alien to the gullible Watchtower organisation and other fundamentalists...who blindly believe any ‘sacred’ thing they want to hear.

I would love to hear a reply from WT HQ like this: Thank you Bro Johns for your input on the contrary evidence for the Flood. We all agree here that you are right and we had got it wrong all along. We will immediately stop believing in this childish nonsense and dissolve the WTBTS immediately. Your Brothers WTBTS.

Well you can dream!