Posts by Jonathan Drake

22

How do flood apologists explain these?

by marmot in

spear points dating to thousands of years before the flood (or even adam's alleged creation, for that matter) found preserved in situ among mammoth bones in naco, arizona.. or the 14,000 year-old footprint of a child at a mammoth hunting camp unearthed in a bog in monte verde, chile:.

the kicker is that this isn't even the oldest evidence for human settlement of the americas.

since the wt loves to trot out frozen mammoth carcasses as "proof" that mammoths died in the flood, who were these mammoth eaters in north america?

Jonathan Drake

The way the explain it is with facts, such as water damage or exposure causing objects to date thousands of years older than the really are. This then implies, to me at least that, you must choose between believing or not with no reliable proof of either one.

The following is taken from a wiki page about carbon dating, and yes I know wiki isn't the best source of information; however, there are many other credible references to establish the effects water has on the objects being dated. So the conundrum becomes, if there was a flood, nothing pre-flood would date properly.

Other effects
If the carbon in freshwater is partly acquired from aged carbon, such as rocks, then the result will be a reduction in the 14
C
C/12
C
C ratio in the water. For example, rivers that pass over limestone, which is mostly composed of calcium carbonate, will acquire carbonate ions. Similarly, groundwater can contain carbon derived from the rocks through which it has passed. These rocks are usually so old that they no longer contain any measurable 14
C
C, so this carbon lowers the 14
C
C/12
C
C ratio of the water it enters, which can lead to apparent ages of thousands of years for both the affected water and the plants and freshwater organisms that live in it.[12] This is known as the hard water effect, because it is often associated with calcium ions, which are characteristic of hard water; however, there can be other sources of carbon that have the same effect, such as humus.[19] The effect is very variable and there is no general offset that can be applied; the usual way to determine the size of the effect is to measure the apparent age offset of a modern sample.[19]
Volcanic eruptions eject large amounts of carbon into the air. The carbon is of geological origin and has no detectable 14
C
C, so the 14
C
C/12
C
C ratio in the vicinity of the volcano is depressed relative to surrounding areas. Dormant volcanoes can also emit aged carbon. Plants that photosynthesize this carbon also have lower 14
C
C/12
C ratios: for example, plants on the Greek island of Santorini, near the volcano, have apparent ages of up to a thousand years. These effects are hard to predict—the town of Akrotiri, on Santorini, was destroyed in a volcanic eruption thousands of years ago, but radiocarbon dates for objects recovered from the ruins of the town show surprisingly close agreement with dates derived from other means. If the dates for Akrotiri are confirmed, it would indicate that the volcanic effect in this case was minimal.[19]

5

Questions from a non-catholic

by Sir cid fatos in

hello guys.

since i have few jw friends i thought a lot of jehova witnesses.

they are all nice guys.

Jonathan Drake

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090203105013AAizkOL

As for for everything else you said, I suggest buying a Strongs indexed interlinear bible, vines dictionary, and strings concordance - find your own answers. keep a journal. Follow the direction vine outlines in the beginning of his dictionary (or was it strong.... Well one of them said it) which is to look for frequency and consistency in word use before asserting meanings. What harmonizes with the entire bible is likely the correct understanding of what is meant. (Per strong and vine)

44

rama singh WHAT HE REALLY SAID, so you men can stop lying

by atheist_R_stupid in

"there have been repeated scientific challenges to the.

theory of evolution in the past, and the nonbelievers of evo-.

lution cite them as support for their case.

Jonathan Drake

@pistoff

im going to assume you're attempting to show me what the watchtower was doing, but I still don't think that's exactly the same.

You're attempting to say I'm using the bible to support its own idea when what I actually did was attempt to use the bible to explain how it might not be out of question for evolution to fit into scriptural explanations of life. I'm on evolutions side, and you're trying to discredit my argument in favor of evolution by saying that using a scripture to support evolution, which is also in the bible according to you, is circular reasoning. So, in essence, we are agreeing then that evolution just might be scripturally supported?

Also, yes, assuming we do live in a world of gods who made man, it would be a good comparison; because, in the mind of a believer in God, it is understood that this was a comparison that was being made there in the scripture by Christ not by me. So, regardless of what I think about it, I was merely positioning an already made comparison in their own book - not coming up with one myself. Therefore, however you may feel about the logic of it, since it wasn't of my own origination, it doesn't reflect on me in the slightest.

Further, your post appears to assert I was at some point talking about the creation of life, but I was not. This is also the failure of the awake journal in question. Evolution is absolutely, unequivocally NOT about how life began. It is about how life developed. So to be a proper simile in your post you'd have to say instead, "there is proof and historical record of the date and time and means by which the seeds of each tree used to build this house sprouted." Is there? No. However

there is proof and historical record of the building of a house.

there is also proof and historical record of how evolution developed.

Therefore there is proof and historical record of both, and that is a proper simile.

However, as creation and evolution are two different subjects, I completely agree that there is no proof and historical record of how life actually sparked.

3

Reasoning with JW's: chapter 1.

by runForever in

chapter 1: where to start?.

if a jw says to you: "we have the truth and you know it!".

how could you reply?.

Jonathan Drake

"Since you have the truth I was hoping you could answer a question for me?

i have been to JW,org and read that the governing body is the faithful slave Christ mentioned. The logic makes sense and all, Christ was talking about the time of the end in the context, but the all scripture inspired book on page 175 I believe states that Matthew isn't written in chronological order... And the parallel account in Luke has no such context about the time of the end.... So doesn't this demonstrate Christ wasn't talking about the time of the end?"

44

rama singh WHAT HE REALLY SAID, so you men can stop lying

by atheist_R_stupid in

"there have been repeated scientific challenges to the.

theory of evolution in the past, and the nonbelievers of evo-.

lution cite them as support for their case.

Jonathan Drake

Listen, I concede i too fail to see how this is a misquote of the man; however it doesn't change the fallacy of presentation in this magazine.

Evolution is absolutely not about the origin of life, it's about the development of it after its origination. They are presenting evolution as if it's the discussion of life's befinning, or its start, and they are incredibly incorrect.

The bible itself says that "every house has a builder" and "he that built all things is God." How could a person compare building a house to creation of creation was just, "poof, there it is!" When you build a house, do you just snap your fingers and make it appear? No.

evolution is accepted by a great many Christians as gods method of building. And it makes life a lot more beautiful to imagine God as an artist painting an elaborate picture as oppose to taking a can of paint and throwing it at the canvass.

18

Watchtower Accused of Intellectual Dishonesty

by wannaexit in

jw
friends

watchtower never learns.. i applaud dr. singh for speaking out and his open letter to watchtower.

http://jwalumni.org/2015/01/17/rama-singh-awake/.

Jonathan Drake

You know, as much as I wanna see Watchtower burn, this isn't making sense to me.

The comment made by the doc is, "The opposition to evolution goes beyond religions fundamentalism and includes a great many people from educated sections of the population, including biologists, nonbiologists, and the lay public."

That at is the entire sentence. In fact, the point he is making here is that there are people educated on the subject who still don't accept it - that is his point.

Now, if you read the watchtowers content - while I agree that it does indeed incorporate the same ole brainwashing garbage to influence the reader, their point was solely that there are those of both lay people and educated who can't agree on evolution. That's the entire point.

Regardless of the goal being aimed for in establishment of this fact, both the doc and the awake were, in fact, making the same point. This particular section of the watchtower has no other purpose than to establish this point. The doc might not agree with them using this statement of fact from his own article, but unfortunately they did nothin wrong. TECHNICALLY.

i do do agree with you all that this is shady, but you all must know by now that the watchtower does everything they do while maintaining plausible deniability. All they will say is exactly what I've said here.

12

The Plurality of God in Old Testament

by Clambake in

i am not going to claim to be any kind of bible expert or a good writer or anything like that but do you ever notice how the wts has completely whitewashed this idea or anything relating to this..

from the beginning of the bible in the beginning god said let us make man in our own image , to the term elohim which literally means gods , to the angel of the lord in the old testament which is identified to being with god and god himself.

it is just kind of interesting when you read the book of john in the new testament and you start to read things like the word was with god and the word was god or no one has seen the father only the son it kind of makes sense without really fully understanding it.

Jonathan Drake

I wasn't actually talking about the book of genesis at any point in my posts except as a reference. But as to its history specifically as a subject:

Im well aware that the writer of genesis may likely have used older sources to put together the human history recorded according to genesis. i don't see how this relates to what I said. Just because some secular sources of the day may have been used to gather the history isn't going to change that what was recorded was still older. In fact, all it does is confirm that this worship of a god that only later came to be named YHWH was older than the pagan system developed around it and eventually changed it into a whole different system.

so I'm pretty sure we are already in agreement.

the use of secular works as referenced or quoted in the bible is a well established pattern. Jude quotes one, Christ is recorded as quoting one, Joshua quoted a couple I believe, as did the writer of the books of kings, and of course the writer of genesis. This doesn't disprove those books any more than our quoting secular works here disprove us.

12

The Plurality of God in Old Testament

by Clambake in

i am not going to claim to be any kind of bible expert or a good writer or anything like that but do you ever notice how the wts has completely whitewashed this idea or anything relating to this..

from the beginning of the bible in the beginning god said let us make man in our own image , to the term elohim which literally means gods , to the angel of the lord in the old testament which is identified to being with god and god himself.

it is just kind of interesting when you read the book of john in the new testament and you start to read things like the word was with god and the word was god or no one has seen the father only the son it kind of makes sense without really fully understanding it.

Jonathan Drake

Well then my apologies. I'm really touchy right now for a variety of reasons. Maybe that's why I didn't see that as your point.

From my my own studies of the Old Testament i agree that there was always a plurality in the religion of Yahweh. This isn't because of the use of Elohim though, which while it does mean plurality doesn't necessarily mean that was the intent. At the moment I dont have my notes and can't speak as to the reason that is. Elohim I mean. But testimony of the old and new testament definitely paint a plural picture, yet do so all the while asserting the superiority of one.

Basically, it has been posited very pursuasively that technically there are two in the bible credited with creation - one being created by the other and then both creating the rest. So that yes there is one almighty father, and one son, but one God FROM OUR PERSPECTIVE being both of them. If that makes sense.

from the human perspective in the bible they might as well be equal even though they aren't.

oh and regarding babel, I have one book that if I remember suggests babel might be Sumer, but I could be wrong. Most are dealing with various scholar views of the OT so they just use the name Babel. I can check that later if needed.

the most persuasive position that I see, and I will grant some opinion involved here but history sure seems to back it up. Emphasis on seems.

But it is this. If we position the flood as a historical event. It has been argued that the Melchizadek of Jerusalem (salem) who blessed Abraham was actually Shem, Noah's son. According to an ancient Egyptian story, depicting a man usin the power of his mouth to kill someone significant, it has been suggested that Shem headed up worship of the God yahweh which included the same restrictions which society spurned before the flood and was destroyed. There is very strong evidence suggesting nimrod may have been responsible for spearheading a false religion in the face of a God who would kill so many. And that the Tower of Babel was set up so that they could survive if it ever happened again by climbing to the top. Anyway, according to what a few references I have suggest, Shem, seeing nimrod leading mankind down a similar path to what caused the flood, went to Egypt to pursuade them to stop him before another catastrophe happens. So Egypt, with the flood legend so fresh in their minds, called nimrod down to their country where he was cut to pieces which were sent throughout the land in the patriarchal fashion of warning which is also recorded in the bible. This is positioned as a possibly explanation for the long period of time in which idol worship seems to disappear in history and then reappear - because it was under ban while Shem lived to prevent it, and any practice of it must have been secret.

Something that seems to support this is how Abraham was blessed by Melchizadek. Because if the latter was Shem, then the recorded story of Abraham burning all the idols in his home town before he left would certainly garner shems approval and blessing.

But the reason I say this is because what history can be asserted with almost surety, shows that worship of Yahweh (whether plural in nature or not, though very likely so) came before the pagan system was adopted - but was still always centered around a promised messianic deliverer. This is the reson why you find a trinity of father becming the son as promised and returning to heaven in each pantheon of history. And when that pattern is so clear, while the originality of it MIGHT not be the system set up by this Melchizadek, the likelyhood seems extraordinarily probable that Melchizadek came first with his religion that was then taken and reformed.

And remember, some of the above is theory since archeology can only go so far back. But I find it very persuasive. Also, it isn't my primarily research subject - I mostly only study the bibles testimony to know what it says about subjects rsther than history this far back. But I've come across some very interesting information, this theory being one of them. And it presented all the historical references used to position the factual information used which I took the time to verify. Since you seem interested in the pagan system I thought I'd share it.

12

The Plurality of God in Old Testament

by Clambake in

i am not going to claim to be any kind of bible expert or a good writer or anything like that but do you ever notice how the wts has completely whitewashed this idea or anything relating to this..

from the beginning of the bible in the beginning god said let us make man in our own image , to the term elohim which literally means gods , to the angel of the lord in the old testament which is identified to being with god and god himself.

it is just kind of interesting when you read the book of john in the new testament and you start to read things like the word was with god and the word was god or no one has seen the father only the son it kind of makes sense without really fully understanding it.

Jonathan Drake

I don't think either one of those last comments is on topic. The OP is looking for evidence of plurality in OT, which I muself went a little off using the NT but he didn't ask for anyone's opinion on how the Israelites may or may not have done something.

Both of these last comments are pure conjecture for which there will never be any proof or documentation because archeology isn't going to be able to uncover specifics from so long ago almost everything is dust.

Also id point out that what archeology has found regarding the pagan rituals and history demonstrates your both incorrect. history attests to the reality that the pantheon of what was known as the pagan gods originated in babel, spread to Egypt, then to Greece, and then to Rome. They always had a pantheon and stories about their immortal heroes who ascended to the heavens as constellations, because babel invented the zodiac so far as we can tell. This pagan system provided a great deal more freedom in terms of morality and ethics because the people didn't want to be strapped down by law.

i don't particularly want to go on because it's off topic. But this is the reason why I don't post here and usually stick to reading. Why post something that is absolutely not factual? And again, not even on topic at all.

I know now thisnis rather confrontational but, seriously - don't stop reading when you find something that supports what you want history to be, which is easy to do. I have no idea where you got all of that, but compared to the vast majority of resources to say otherwise that information above is certainly in the minority; I've never even heard of it and I have a small library of religious history and culture. Which include ridiculous amounts of references inside them as to their sources of information and quotes.

*signs out to lurk eternally

12

The Plurality of God in Old Testament

by Clambake in

i am not going to claim to be any kind of bible expert or a good writer or anything like that but do you ever notice how the wts has completely whitewashed this idea or anything relating to this..

from the beginning of the bible in the beginning god said let us make man in our own image , to the term elohim which literally means gods , to the angel of the lord in the old testament which is identified to being with god and god himself.

it is just kind of interesting when you read the book of john in the new testament and you start to read things like the word was with god and the word was god or no one has seen the father only the son it kind of makes sense without really fully understanding it.

Jonathan Drake

I usually don't post when visiting this website. But I've done extensive research on this so I'll share what I've found.

Check out out the following:

genesis 48:15,16, Israel (Jacob) refers to an angel, "who has redeemed me from all evil" as, "the God who has been my shepherd." He invokes both God and this angel (referred to as God) as separate entities but appeals to both for his blessing.

Then in hosea 12:3-5 reference is made to genesis 32:24-30 where Joseph wrestles with the angel. In genesis Jacob refers to this angel as seeing the face of God, and in Hosea the angel is referred to with the Tetragrammaton as yahweh.

john 1:3, Colossians 1:16 and there's another escaping me at the moment, both testify to Christ being a co creator.

John 5:22,23 Christ himself states that all should honor (in Greek Timao, which means to prize or revere) the son JUST AS (equally) they honor the father and in this way they show due reverence for the father who sent him.

since the bible demonstrates Christ a co creator of man, in the lords prayer at Matthew 6:9 it is curious that the word in Greek Pater is used, since this word refers to ones immediate father or possibly a forefather - but since the bible testifies we have two fathers would not this then address both of them?

Hebrews 1:5-12, shows the Angels bowing down to worship Christ, and also in verse 10 applies an Old Testament scripture in psalms 102:25 to Christ even though it's talking about Yahweh all through out the chapter leading up to that statement. This pattern of using Old Testament references to Yahweh in application to Christ is found all through the new Testament. Another I have noted in my journal is 1 peter 2:6-8, where Christ is referred to as the stone of stumbling in Isaiah 18:13-14, but in Isaiah it is talking about Jehovah or Yahweh.

however the bible at the same time clearly demonstrates they are separate people. Such as 1 Corinthians 15:24 where at the end of his reign Christ as king hands the kingship back over to his father, and at john 14:28 where Christ clearly shows that the father is superior to him. Along with all the instances where Christ prayed to the father who obviously just have been there to hear him and the fact that the father resurrected the son when he died.

Christ certainly seems to be referenced as our God, but not the almighty God. Larry Hurtado, a New Testament scholar, posits very convincing evidence of a binitarian view held by the first century Christians; a view these scriptures certainly demonstrate.

This also demonstrates the impersonality of the Holy Spirit, since its reference in john 14 shows that Christ does not have authority over the Holy Spirit, but must petition for the father to send it; yet, Hebrews demonstrates that Christ has authority over all things but the father. Yet he must petition for the father to send the spirit. So this all comes together painting a very binitarian view of the father almighty being superior to the son but both being the creators together of all things and therefore both deserving of our reverence as God.