Half banana

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Posts by Half banana

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  31

  22,000 years of arctic ice cores melt, and wash the YHWH/JESUS concept down the sewer

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the full story, as told in the uk guardian can be found at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/apr/16/arctic-ice-cores-melt-university-alberta-canada.

  and briefly it tells of an equipment failure at a storage facility for ice cores that had been extracted from the polar ice cap in various locations.. but note, that the layers of ice evident in the cores covered a period of 22,000 years.

  and from the christian/jw perspective, that's impossible, for the bible story of the flood (verified by jesus and sundry other biblical writers) maintains that 4000+ years ago, the ice caps would have melted during the period when the earth was covered by the divinely caused deluge.

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  Half banana

  Apolgies.... ambiguity!......I'll reorder the sentence:

  It was back in the middle of the 19th century that the Swiss researcher Louis Agassiz first determined that there had been an ice age (in recent geological history). People then had been looking for evidence of the Biblical flood but did not suspect an ice age event, so Agassiz' observations were not popular. There is no evidence for a global flood but there is coherent and tangible evidence for a succession of ice age glacial events over the last 2.6 million years.

  No earth scientist could survive at his or her job believing the folk tale of Noah's flood to be a true happening.

  Why is it so hard for some to distinguish between fact and fiction?
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  31

  22,000 years of arctic ice cores melt, and wash the YHWH/JESUS concept down the sewer

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the full story, as told in the uk guardian can be found at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/apr/16/arctic-ice-cores-melt-university-alberta-canada.

  and briefly it tells of an equipment failure at a storage facility for ice cores that had been extracted from the polar ice cap in various locations.. but note, that the layers of ice evident in the cores covered a period of 22,000 years.

  and from the christian/jw perspective, that's impossible, for the bible story of the flood (verified by jesus and sundry other biblical writers) maintains that 4000+ years ago, the ice caps would have melted during the period when the earth was covered by the divinely caused deluge.

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  Half banana

  We have, or rather scientists have a very good record of past climate data going back a couple of million years.

  Our best clues are from the pattern of climate change which has occurred during the present Holocene as a continuation of the Pleistoscene geological periods. Snow buried WW2 aircraft are no help whatsoever in determining the overall scientifically determined pattern of climate oscillations.

  It was the Swiss researcher Louis Agassiz who first determined that there had been an ice age back in the middle of the 19th century. This despite the popular certainty that there had been a global flood. He showed evidence for his hypothesis which eventually was accepted. Later researchers showed that there was not just one ice age but four ice ages, this early 20th century idea also had evidence but it was the deep sea sediment cores from the Pacific mainly, which told the whole story. Arctic ice core information amongst others corroborated the sediment cores.

  By the end of the 1980s, earth science had all the data to show the slow 'tide' of ice advance and retreat over the polar regions was due to the relative positions of the Earth and sun in their periodic changes of position. They 'wobble' with a periodicity having maximum effect relative to the amount of incoming solar radiation from max. to min. during an epoch of just over 100,000 years.

  This last climate minimum (full on ice age) was between 20,000 to 18,000 years ago followed by global warming and pluvial period up to the present interglacial maximum which has been around for ten thousand years and might last another ten to fifteen thousand years.

  The evidence for climate history is built up from dozens of types of sources in hundreds of thousands of locations. The faunal assemblages, the floral, the insects, the pollen, river life, river and lake deposits (varves), yes ice cores and dozens of types of other more esoteric data all add up to a real knowledge of what climate existed in the past.

  There is not the slightest evidence that the Biblical flood could have ever happened but there is evidence to the contrary that it did not happen.
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  38

  Cirencester Congregation UK: My story

  by erbie in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  dear all,.

  i have been a member here for some years although mostly in the background.

  many of you have bravely shared your own experiences and i am very grateful for that but i have never been open about my own experience.. nevertheless, i would be very grateful to those of you who would now take the time to read about my own personal journey from the jw religion and the circumstances that caused me to abandon that way of life and how i landed up where i am.

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  Half banana

  Well done erbie, my experience with family, me leaving the org and staying in the marriage for the sake of the children parallels yours. I did not however have to deal with crazy in-law elders and in my case my two of my three children are still in thrall to the seven dwarfs of Brooklyn (or wherever they now hang out). I also live near you and frequently go to Ciren.
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  43

  How long has it been since you have seen your family?

  by Christian Gutierrez in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  howdy guys!

  so how long has it been since you have seen your jw family or friends?

  or do you even care to have them in your life anymore?

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  Half banana

  Yes Finky baby and jp1692, the splitting apart of families is deplorable. It is simply built into the genes of the JW cult.

  You cannot talk to ex JWs because they will contaminate you. . . actually they will inform you of the realities of the JW scam. If you talk with ex JWs; you must lose the 'privileges' of club membership, it's a basic cult thing.

  It is absolutely true that if you join Jehovah's Witnesses that you are likely, over time, to split your family in two. All it takes is for a new generation to arise and either the parents or the children to leave the cult and bingo! you are trapped in an ideological standoff being shunned.

  Now since most JWs leave their religion eventually, this becomes an inevitable state of affairs and therefore it is completely true to say "Jehovah's Witnesses splits families". Yes there are millions of split families!

  To anyone new here who has not made up their mind about the value of this religion, I want to reinforce what jp 1692 has said: get out of the JW cult before your family is torn apart!

  Jws offer paradise but give you hell.............
  
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  38

  If we are further away from perfection, why are we more moral?

  by stuckinarut2 in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  as we know, witnesses teach that adam and eve were perfect and then committed the first act of sin and rebellion.. they in turn were cursed,and we all declined as their offspring.

  humans supposedly lived shorter and shorter lives, and became more imperfect and sinful.. the further away in time humans go then, they should be getting worse.

  so why is it then that as a society, humans have actually improved in so many ways?.

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  Half banana

  Agreed Steve2.

  (Erratum: the Enlightenment was essentially an 18th century affair) What it demonstrated was that the fixtures of monarchy and religious power were working against the interests of the French population in particular, and were outmoded generally. In principle these two evils were highly undemocratic since they favoured the rich and perpetuated their entitlement to undue privilege. The philosophes offered reason as a substitute for religious superstition.

  It might be said that early Christianity attempted to create a God centered society and by the fifth century it was being enforced as a political instrument in the ailing Late Roman Empire. In reality Christianity's weaknesses were apparent right from the start. There are very few contemporary secular texts on the subject but one from the early second century by the Stoic and rationalist Epictetus (pron; epic teetus) called the Jesus Christians "Galileans" to distinguish them from other christian sects. He felt a philosophical sympathy with their calmness in facing death but noted their passivity and gullibility in believing holy things.

  Christianity like all irrational belief has a lot to answer for. The response has got to be the the Enlightenment ideal of reason before faith.
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  38

  If we are further away from perfection, why are we more moral?

  by stuckinarut2 in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  as we know, witnesses teach that adam and eve were perfect and then committed the first act of sin and rebellion.. they in turn were cursed,and we all declined as their offspring.

  humans supposedly lived shorter and shorter lives, and became more imperfect and sinful.. the further away in time humans go then, they should be getting worse.

  so why is it then that as a society, humans have actually improved in so many ways?.

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  Half banana

  RT, I can't reconcile an increase in disease today with my perception of the past?

  Homo sapiens is a young species and while having begun to turn towards organising ourselves for the betterment of all, we remain for the time being at the level of raw recruits working out how to do it. This difficulty is not surprising since no other species has attempted a conscious democratic governance. Brute force was the only rule available.

  Religion worked as a political unifier in the past especially when all societies were rigidly class layered but the time for blind faith in the numinous world is rapidly declining. Our species is only just setting out on a real star treck although we've hardly got off our own planet, yet surely, the technology does seem to be pointing in Roddenberry's direction?

  If we take the typical life of a human in his or her development as a pattern; It seems to me that humans in the 21st century are collectively at the stage of teenagers still trying out the world, with some more grown up than others. Human society/societies have made progress and religion with faith in holy magic is no longer a beacon for the future.

  The next stage toward maturity: will it be built on the foundations set up by the "philosophes" of the 19th century Enlightenment?
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  38

  If we are further away from perfection, why are we more moral?

  by stuckinarut2 in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  as we know, witnesses teach that adam and eve were perfect and then committed the first act of sin and rebellion.. they in turn were cursed,and we all declined as their offspring.

  humans supposedly lived shorter and shorter lives, and became more imperfect and sinful.. the further away in time humans go then, they should be getting worse.

  so why is it then that as a society, humans have actually improved in so many ways?.

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  Half banana

  We are more educated, more likely to base actions on reason rather than cultural obligations and much less religious.

  Morality is not something which can be quantified.

  From the utilitarian viewpoint of nineteenth century philosopher Jeremy Bentham, we are doing better. Today in the Western World more people have more pleasure and less pain and live longer with a greater sense of wellbeing than ever before.
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  8

  Long article, but it explains a lot of things

  by JeffT in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i found this the other day, and read it last night.

  i think it explains a lot of what is going on in both american politics and many religions around the world.

  https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/this-article-wont-change-your-mind/519093/?utm_source=feed.

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  Half banana

  “Having social support, from an evolutionary standpoint, is far more important than knowing the truth.”

  Then there is the mention of the "mental gymnastics" needed by believers to maintain the irrational premise for their being. . . and that is the whole thrust of WT literature, relentlessly showering the flock with propaganda to keep them within the social club.
  
  
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  16

  God never knew Jesus would be killed?

  by venus in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  jesus gave an illustration with a landowner being the central character:.

  “there was a landowner who planted a vineyard.

  he put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower.

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  Half banana

  To get the Jesus cult going with the largest number of (paying) members, it had to be rationalized for acceptability to the Jews and then the Romans, Greeks and others in western Asia and the Levant. That is why Paul and other writers used different premises for belief for each of the believing groups and skillfully harmonised their often incompatible dogma. Christianity was not a new religion so much as a fusion of all contemporary temple and Mithraic beliefs in the second, third and fourth centuries.
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  40

  Another recorded Judicial Meeting...

  by NikL in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i've listened to quite a few but for some reason, this one has me really angry.. my heart goes out to the young family dealing with this bull shite.. give a listen.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifkpiqigq9c.

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  Half banana

  It seems that the org is moving toward the idea that it does not need facts at any stage of being a believing JW.

  What now counts for membership (as the clip shows) is just total conformity with the culture of JWs as espoused by its governing body. You can be df'd for holding opinions which differ from the prevailing orthodoxy of the organisation.

  Thou shalt not think for thyself!

  The next stage in this increasingly despotic cultic regime is to demand that the GB are "God's Anointed" and that to disagree with them is to touch God's anointed (Psa.105:15). Watch this space. . .

  This brainless bunch of desperadoes is using every method of cultic reinforcement possible to fend off reality.

  Every means of aggrandising their own unjustified power over their flock is used: through dishonesty, alarmist distortion of evidence, through daily enforced exposing them to false propaganda and through powerful threats of social severance from family and friends if you do not conform to their will.

  And to what end: that more and dumber, subservient JWs are in thrall to stratospherically elevated GB members.

  Spare us!