Posts by Anony Mous

207

Scholar and Fisherman

by Jorden in

scholar and fisherman, i started this thread because i didn't want to highjack the one in regard to 588/568.. i just wanted to ask if you were both current active jw's that believe the jw's beliefs?.

do y'all believe the gb are the f&ds?

if the answers are no, then why do y'all defend so passionately the date 607?

Anony Mous

@Scholar: What is your evidence, other than the Bible. Basically without using the Bible or WTBTS references, using only 'scholarly' accepted references.

Planetary positions should be the simplest to refer, which of the references talks about a very significant portent that would've been notable had ANYTHING coincided in 607, especially the destruction of a major city.

If you say the 70 years is literal, even the Bible wouldn't agree on when the 70 years starts and ends:

And all this land will be reduced to ruins and will become an object of horror, and these nations will have to serve the king of Babylon for 70 years.”
Jeremiah 25:11 – New World Translation

in the first year of his reign I, Daniel, discerned by the books the number of years mentioned in the word of Jehovah to Jeremiah the prophet to fulfill the desolation of Jerusalem, namely, 70 years.
Daniel 9:2 - New World Translation

Based on the verses above, either they are in conflict, given Daniel references Jeremiah, or they aren't referencing an event, but rather a sign.

Daniel talks about "discerned by the books the number of years" which given he supposedly LIVED at the time, he would've "KNOWN", not needed to discern. This clearly shows 70 years wasn't literal, since he had to 'discern' the number.

So are you talking about the "desolation of Jerusalem" or "serving the king of Babylon"? Those are two different events, one came before the other, when did King Jehoiakim started sending tribute, why is the Bible even unclear about the event, even though they supposedly reference each other directly.

207

Scholar and Fisherman

by Jorden in

scholar and fisherman, i started this thread because i didn't want to highjack the one in regard to 588/568.. i just wanted to ask if you were both current active jw's that believe the jw's beliefs?.

do y'all believe the gb are the f&ds?

if the answers are no, then why do y'all defend so passionately the date 607?

Anony Mous

However, not one of those 2000 tablets mentions or refers to the biblical 70 years.
scholar JW

No duh, because the modern translation is wrong. The Bible is not a historical document, it talks in the language of signs and portents.

According to the Jews, "70 years" is a complete period of judgment from G-d, 7 being the natural order of things and 10 the number of completeness. So they were exiled "until the completion of the natural order of things" or "complete judgment", it's not literal.

Jews today accept that their leadership was exiled, but Jerusalem was historically never really abandoned, although scripture says it was a wasteland, they accept the historicity of ~50 years, they still call it '70 years' because it's a sign, not a fact. They accept that the place was never really abandoned and that at no point has anyone literally removed or torn down every stone from either the temple or the city walls as the Bible also predicts. Jews have lived in Jerusalem and the surrounding land for thousands of years continuously, even today, there are millions of people in the area, however they still call it spiritually 'abandoned' from the viewpoint of G-d no longer being present (with the holiest places currently being held by a terrorist state).

Literal interpretations of the text only started with late 19th century evangelicals looking for mystical connections and numerology, CT Russell and co being a big proponent of them, copying them from others such as Miller and giving it his own spin. The late 1800s and early 1900s were full of cults reinterpreting and giving several dates for apocalyptic events. Interestingly enough, all of these, take part of the text literally and part of the text to be figuratively, depending on what suits their current eschatology better. The WTBTS had predicted the end of the world based on the actually correct date of 587, only inventing 607 numerology when the promised end didn't happen and retroactively applying it to some other random event.

Also note that MOST of the texts (Daniel and Jeremiah) were written and edited long AFTER the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, again, something most modern Jews will accept and they say it is a "warning" to future generations, not a numerological prophecy involving advanced math. No Jew is waiting for the rebuilding of the temple to happen in 1914, you'd think they come to the same conclusion if it were so simple.

As far as the texts you don't take literal is these components of the same verses in Daniel that describe 70 years: to put an end to sin, to bring in everlasting righteousness, the description of four beasts and everything ELSE in Daniel, yet somehow you think the number 70 is relevant and literal and then only when it suits you, again, sometimes the WTBTS says that days and weeks are actually years, other times it does not, no explanation as to why other than to shoehorn in a falsified prophecy. Even Daniel said prophecy would END after the 70 years, yet WTBTS continues prophesying, Jesus supposedly prophesied after the Jews returned. I don't see an end to sin or everlasting righteousness anywhere happened literally.

207

Scholar and Fisherman

by Jorden in

scholar and fisherman, i started this thread because i didn't want to highjack the one in regard to 588/568.. i just wanted to ask if you were both current active jw's that believe the jw's beliefs?.

do y'all believe the gb are the f&ds?

if the answers are no, then why do y'all defend so passionately the date 607?

Anony Mous

Before you say the scientific evidence is arguable, there are over 2000 documents from the time that set the dates for the first and second siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, including the destruction of the temple in the second siege. It sets this from both contemporary dating methods as well as astronomical evidence. One thing the Babylonians were good at was keeping track of things, basically a bunch of bureaucrats. If you follow the WTBTS calculations, the sieges and mobilizations of troops from Babylon would’ve had to start before Nebuchadnezzar even started ruling.

Note the WTBTS often use the same sources to prove a point but then inexplicably dismiss the same source for the remainder of the dates they set.

207

Scholar and Fisherman

by Jorden in

scholar and fisherman, i started this thread because i didn't want to highjack the one in regard to 588/568.. i just wanted to ask if you were both current active jw's that believe the jw's beliefs?.

do y'all believe the gb are the f&ds?

if the answers are no, then why do y'all defend so passionately the date 607?

Anony Mous

Well, then, here is an argument from the WTBTS own publications:

Babylon fell	"Babylon fell in 539 B.C." Babylon the Great Has Fallen - God's Kingdom Rules p.184	539 B.C.
Plus Nabonidus	"On the basis of cuneiform texts he is believed to have ruled some seventeen years(556-539 B.C.E.)." Aid to Bible Understanding - Nabonidus p.1195	17 years
Plus Labashi-Marduk	"Labashi-Marduk ... was a vicious boy, and within nine months he had his throat cut by an assassin." Babylon the Great Has Fallen - God's Kingdom Rules p.184	1 year
Plus Neriglissar	Neriglissar ... reigned four years Babylon the Great Has Fallen - God's Kingdom Rules p.184	4 years
Plus Evil-Merodach	"After reigning but two years King Evil-Merodach was murdered" Babylon the Great Has Fallen - God's Kingdom Rules p.184	2 years
PlusNebuchadnezzar	"Nebuchadnezzar ruled as king for 43 years" Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 2 p.480	43 years
Equals start of Nebuchadnezzar's reign	Calculated by adding above figures	606 B.C.
MinusNebuchadnezzar's 19th year	2 Kings 25:8-9 "And in the ... nineteenth year of King Neb·u·chad·nez´zar ... the servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. And he proceeded to burn the house of Jehovah"	19th year
Date for Destruction	Therefore calculated as: 587BCE

207

Scholar and Fisherman

by Jorden in

scholar and fisherman, i started this thread because i didn't want to highjack the one in regard to 588/568.. i just wanted to ask if you were both current active jw's that believe the jw's beliefs?.

do y'all believe the gb are the f&ds?

if the answers are no, then why do y'all defend so passionately the date 607?

Anony Mous

I don’t think the debate between the dates is pointless, one is clearly wrong and one is clearly right. The JWs NEED 607 otherwise 1914 is incorrect, so they say 607 is correct because otherwise 1914 is incorrect and we know 1914 is correct because if you calculate forward from 607, you get 1914. That’s literally the reasoning in the WTBTS publications, circular logic.

Archeological and plenty of other evidence has debunked 607, if you still want to believe in it, you’re only deluding yourself.

77

Biden running in 2024 🤣

by LoveUniHateExams in

i've filed this under news and world events, although i could've posted it under entertainment, lol.

apparently, joe biden will be seeking re-election for another term in the white house.. this, despite a recent poll showing that 70% of people don't want him to run again.. biden just has to be the worst president i've seen.

his gaffes, over-relience on a prompter, and, more than any other president, his refusal to answer journalists' questions, all go to make him top of the list in terms of bad presidents.. it will certainly provide entertainment, if nothing else..

Anony Mous

Again with the hyperbole, I would like to see all the accounts where D&C were truly denied, because no abortion law is banning any of that. All you have is activist doctors and the media trying to make a point based on a poorly conceived notion.

When people make statements of fact based on what they see in the mainstream media, there truly is no difference than just parroting what the WTBTS has to say on any topic.

The world is a lot more complicated, ideological stories hurt more people than the legislation supposedly does. It’s why left-wingers across the world, are, by misrepresenting, are pushing actual racism, pushing actual harm to both men and women, pushing harm to actual victims, pushing actual harm to children, actual harm to the LGB community; and they want it that way, because as long as there are victims or people that believe they are victims, there are voters for them.

63

Evolution is a Fact #27 - Monkeys, Typewriters, Shakespeare, 747s etc.

by cofty in

most creationist arguments can be summarised as "complexity, complexity, complexity - therefore god".

we have all heard the illustrations about the odds of (insert favourite example) evolving, being less than 10,000 monkeys typing macbeth by pure chance.

evolution is not like that.

Anony Mous

Here’s an interesting question: if a monkey is not at all related and we are specially begotten by the maker, then what are the odds of monkeys being able to naturally perform mathematical operations, constructs which humans supposedly ‘made up’ with their superior intelligence.

78

Top AI inventor Geoffrey Hinton reluctantly concluded that AI will probably humanity fairly soon

by slimboyfat in

geoffrey hinton, major inventor of artificial intelligence: .

“if you take the existential risk seriously, as i now do—i used to think it was way off, but now i think it’s serious, and fairly close—it might be quite sensible to just stop developing these things any further, but i think it’s completely naïve to think that would happen.

there’s no way to make that happen.

Anony Mous

@Cofty: who unplugs what exactly?

First, define what the topic is we are talking about, people here seem to think that AGI and ChatGPT are nearly equivalent, they’re not even in the same realm. ChatGPT is a simple model, it can fit in a very small memory footprint. There are models that are 100-200x larger than GPT and even 1000x larger is well within the realm of anyone with $100k to spare for the hardware.

If you make the case that GPT models are ‘evil’ and you need to halt their progression, there are much better algorithms currently in use that are much more useful and powerful.

I work on “AI” models (advanced self-driving filters, which we call classifiers, not AI) that can do automated path tracing and activation measurements in brains, this allows us to model the movement of blood and relationship of thousands of individual ‘nodes’ in the brain.

China is using similar models on a city and perhaps even country wide scale in a pipeline with widespread CCTV to classify individual nodes aka people, their movements and potential relationships. London has even more CCTV and uses something similar to classify threats. So the US agrees to put a pause on GPT, which is a simplified model of what we use but applied to language, do you think China will agree, the U.K.? The military won’t have some secret program that continues the research?

In the end, these AI models are just computer programs, we can disassemble and understand them, we’re just too lazy to actually do this because for the most part they are very wasteful. Biological creatures are much better optimized and more well róunded. I do think we can eventually approximate a simple creature like a dog, but for human level intelligence and beyond, we first need to understand what that even means before we can build a program that goes into that direction.

77

Biden running in 2024 🤣

by LoveUniHateExams in

i've filed this under news and world events, although i could've posted it under entertainment, lol.

apparently, joe biden will be seeking re-election for another term in the white house.. this, despite a recent poll showing that 70% of people don't want him to run again.. biden just has to be the worst president i've seen.

his gaffes, over-relience on a prompter, and, more than any other president, his refusal to answer journalists' questions, all go to make him top of the list in terms of bad presidents.. it will certainly provide entertainment, if nothing else..

Anony Mous

@Jan: that is pure BS, any of those books are available on Amazon or many other book outlets. Some of them, I can even go to Barnes & Noble today and pick them up as they are advertised right as you walk in. Many of them are even available in schools for little children to read (although some of them are obviously inappropriate for small children).

Hint: it’s CBS, left-wing state propaganda.

169

Rich Man and Lazarus

by Ding in

i have never understood the watchtower's explanation of the rich man and lazarus story jesus told in luke 16. of course, they don't believe jesus is talking about what happens in an "afterlife" after people die.. but from the watchtower's point of view:.

1. who are the five brothers?.

2. why can't lazarus go witness to them?

Anony Mous

@aqwsed: where modern English translations are biased towards Christian doctrine, they do indeed translate ‘hell’ where it should read Sheol, which is not the idea of a fiery place, but rather a disconnect with God, a place where you bring yourself voluntarily through deeds and can lift yourself up. Jewish lore is a lot closer to Hinduism in that they almost believe in a sort of karma that follows your soul through the “incarnations” of life as well as death.

Hence why in your OT references, you have to stretch a lot to get to an idea of hellfire whereas your NT references only have an approximation of hellfire in specific “authors” but not in others, most of them being anachronistic with and most likely inserted later in comparison with the rest of the text (as in the Lazarus and the Rich Man story).

The biggest differences between the NT and OT when it talks about death, is that the NT beliefs in redemption after death through faith, whereas the OT/Jews do not, redemption is only through action and your deeds follow you into the afterlife and even applies to higher levels of consciousness, including for example, angels, whereas in the NT figures like Jesus and the angels are infallible.