I am not an atheist by the way. But that is another fruitless discussion. As for now, I know that you are convinced you have considered my words and yet drawn different conclusions, and apparently that is the best that will occur. Our mutual concern will only turn to greater and greater frustration if we continue this topic.
peacefulpete
JoinedPosts by peacefulpete
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34
"Dead conscious of nothing at all" .....
by anti-absolutism in.
when speaking to a jw the other day, i didn't really have a good explanation of ecclesiastes 9:5, where it says that the dead are conscious of nothing at all.. what is everybody's take on it?
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only once
by joelbear in.
i heard it reported on npr that scientists have decided that the universe will keep expanding, not collapse back in on itself.. i found this to be very comforting.. joel
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peacefulpete
It is funny isn't it how we allow events that will take place many billions of years distant to effect us. Our boundless egos somehow equate the temporary nature of things with meaninglessness. This tendancy has fostered shortsightedness. And the "why bother" attitude tward improving this world among Armagedon believers. Every road trip comes to an end, it's the quality of the ride that matters. We can do much to improve the human lot by being environmentally and politically conscious. It might even result in the ride lasting a few million years longer.
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34
"Dead conscious of nothing at all" .....
by anti-absolutism in.
when speaking to a jw the other day, i didn't really have a good explanation of ecclesiastes 9:5, where it says that the dead are conscious of nothing at all.. what is everybody's take on it?
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peacefulpete
You have missed my points by prepaing a defense without considering carefully my arguements. Your comment dismissing the arguement was not as witty as you think. Whether I accept the the Bible as inspired or not is not relevent. You and millions of others do, and this is the reason my comment equates the maxim, "Bible interprets Bible" with the phrase I used , "involving Divine assistance for proper interpretation". Since this has been acknowledged by you as how you feel, my comment was accurate. This "solution" has formed through awareness that sincere readers of the Bible have drawn very different conclusions as to what a writer was saying. This is unintentionally confessed by the creation of this supposed solution. The next step is to say that a proper understanding of the rest of the Bible makes interpretation of controvertial passages possible. The hitch is that any Church/cult has a unique understanding of the Bible as a whole and therefore "proper" interpretation of any one verse becomes an exclusive possession of the cult. This in turn reinforces the cult's claimed ability to interpret verse properly. This is why I said that the view that "Bible interprets Bible" opens the door to exclusiveness and cult developement.
When I spoke of your previous bias necesitating a way of harmonizing this passage in Eccl. I was not speaking about any particular interpretation (although of course this occurs), rather I was saying your bias of using Scripture to interpret Scripture was necessitating that the verse not be understood the way millions of people have understood it. That is that the author did not entertain hope of resurection or an afterlife.
The JWs are of couse equally guilty of the same bias , "Bible interprets Bible", and this is in part why they have become a cult. It is inconceivable for such ones to recognize contradictions within the Bible for the favored passages superceed the less favored by reshaping the meaning of the latter. Your escape from cultlike thinking has not yet been complete.
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Origin of Hydrogen
by Satanus inmost elements on this earth were made inside stars.
stars fuse the lighter elements into heavier ones.
stars, in turn, are born from hydrogen clouds, generally called nebulae.
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peacefulpete
hojon..I read somewhere years ago that they found large deposit of encapsulated exceptionally pure uranium in Africa and there was evidence of self catalysing or whatever the word is. In other words the large mass of very pure uranium 2?? had begun a fission cascade right in the ground many thousands of years earlier. This of course left tell tale evidence in the surrounding rock and the body itself. The odds against this happening are astronomical according to the article. What do you think did aliens bury it there to nuke us off the planet? (joking)
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34
"Dead conscious of nothing at all" .....
by anti-absolutism in.
when speaking to a jw the other day, i didn't really have a good explanation of ecclesiastes 9:5, where it says that the dead are conscious of nothing at all.. what is everybody's take on it?
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peacefulpete
Without your previous bias on the matter (bias formed through reading other Bible passages) There is no way you would arrive at the conclusions you have. Many say it like, "Bible interprets Bible", this is merely another way of saying superhuman judgement (Divine assistance) You feel there is a need to explain this verse the way you do to accomodate the teaching found in other verses. My conclusions when reading this passage in context leads me to an opposite conclusion, why do you say this is? You are driven by necessity to harmonize this text with your religious training. Your conclusions then seem quite obvious to you. To me they seem like a complication of a simple statement. A theological elaboration if you will.
Am I wrong? Do you not feel that the "proper" understanding of this passage can only be had if you understand the rest of the Bible? Or said another way, Do you not feel that by reading this book without the rest of the Bible a person might draw a "wrong" conclusion? I'll say it again it should concern us that the Bible "requires" Divine assitance to understand it "properly".
This opens the door to multiple meanings and the cult belief that only a chosen few have the "correct" interpretation.
I read this book as the spiritual musings of a man/men confused by the bitter realities he sees yet he contritely expresses conviction that a Divine plan is at work. This is the work of of a spiritual man seeking to understand spiritual things. I think he would be insulted at your belittling of his attempts at answers. -
34
"Dead conscious of nothing at all" .....
by anti-absolutism in.
when speaking to a jw the other day, i didn't really have a good explanation of ecclesiastes 9:5, where it says that the dead are conscious of nothing at all.. what is everybody's take on it?
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peacefulpete
It ought to strike everyone as distubing that this "inspired" book of Eccl requires superhuman judgement as to whether passages are expressions of divine truth or expressions of men speaking without divine assistance. Besides the context speaks of the "spirit" or force of life as leaving the body of men and beast only to go to an unknown place and there for it is difficult to see how the author was not contemplating spiritual matters but mearly the physically visible as you have proposed. The fact that this verse and others contradict later concepts of an immortal soul allluded to in Rev should make us question the idea of inspiration.
Edited by - peacefulpete on 13 February 2003 15:14:21
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Origin of Hydrogen
by Satanus inmost elements on this earth were made inside stars.
stars fuse the lighter elements into heavier ones.
stars, in turn, are born from hydrogen clouds, generally called nebulae.
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peacefulpete
the big bang, produced the three atomically lightest elements.
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Isaiah's Prophecy- Light for all Mankind??
by joe_from_kokomo ini don't know if anyone else has posted this yet, but i must say, that the isaiah's prophecy books are the most boring drivel i have ever had to endure.
i don't know which member of the writing department or the gb wrote this 2 part set, but i have to say that it is super-duper-dull beyond words.
perhaps the author suffers from alzheimers and forgot that he wrote the same thing again and again and again... .
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peacefulpete
The Isaiah book was instrumental in helping my wife leave the organization. Page 336 vol1 says, "Confirmed atheists say that there is no Jehovah. In effect, so do "intellectuals" and others who ACT as if there is no God., BELIEVING THAT THEY ARE ACCOUNTABLE TO NOONE. The truth is not in such ones. THERE IS NO GENEROSITY IN THEIR HEARTS. THEY HAVE NO GOSPEL OF LOVE. IN CONTRAST WITH GENUINE CHRISTIANS,THEY ARE SLOW TO PROVIDE FOR NEEDY ONES IN DISTRESS OR FAIL TO DO SO ENTIRELY." My wife of 10 years knew me better than that. This slanderous selfrighteous charactorization of anyone who disagreed with them finally opened her eyes to the cultlike techniques being used. Can you imagine saying that "intellectuals" have no generosity and will watch the sick and old suffer without feeling anything? Disgusting!
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If Time were running in reverse would we know it?
by D wiltshire inif "time" is running backwards i dont see how that we would ever know, perhaps some clever physicist could devise an experiment to find out for sure.. some theoreticians have suggested the reason the arrow of time runs from past to future is tied intimately to the expansion of space.
since einstein special theory of relativity we have come to see that "time", space and speed are all relative.
we now more correctly speak of "space-time" instead of just space.
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peacefulpete
PRINT EDITION
Satellite data reveal universe's Big Bang birth date
BySTEPHEN STRAUSSWednesday, February 12, 2003 PageA13
A satellite barely the size of a minivan has stared at radio waves emitted by the earliest universe and produced a picture of cosmic evolution that is astounding astronomers with its precision.
Operating at a distance of 1.6 million kilometres from earth, data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anistropy Probe indicate that the universe is 13.7 billion years old. If not exactly 13.7 billion, then that age plus or minus 1 per cent.
It tells us that stars were first formed 200 million years after the Big Bang and not 500 million years as previously thought.
The universe is made up of 4 per cent atoms, 23 per cent cold dark matter and 73 per cent a mysterious substance called dark energy.
The supposition that the universe experienced a huge expansion in the first few moments of its existence is now not a theory but a fact. And with WMAP data, astronomers are well on their way to determining which of a number of explanations of that expansion is correct.
Finally, the universe will expand forever and will not fall in upon itself in what has sometimes been termed the Big Crunch.
The exactitude with which the new results fit with previous findings is seen as a eureka moment by astronomers.
"Every astronomer will remember when they first heard the results from WMAP," Dr. John Bahcall, professor of natural sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., told a NASA press conference yesterday in Washington, D.C.
He added that the new data marked a "rite of passage from speculation to precision science."
The precision was arrived at by running WMAP's extremely accurate temperature readings of hot microwave radiation through hundreds of thousands of computer simulations that model cooling. These eventually coalesced into a coherent picture that both accounted for how the universe would have evolved to look like it does today and gave a 380,000-year date to when the radiation first appeared.
The scientists then worked back from the 380,000 figure using models that would explain how long it would have taken for the microwave radiation to have come into being.
This produced, among other things, the universe's age.
The physicists involved stressed that their data are impressive not only because the simulations work, but because their model accurately fits with a whole host of independent age and evolution measures. -
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If Time were running in reverse would we know it?
by D wiltshire inif "time" is running backwards i dont see how that we would ever know, perhaps some clever physicist could devise an experiment to find out for sure.. some theoreticians have suggested the reason the arrow of time runs from past to future is tied intimately to the expansion of space.
since einstein special theory of relativity we have come to see that "time", space and speed are all relative.
we now more correctly speak of "space-time" instead of just space.
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peacefulpete
The article you provided a link to offered some gackground for this project but it was 2 years old and did not have the findings released yesterday. I expect some big stories in science magazines next month.
Edited by - peacefulpete on 13 February 2003 12:11:13