Posts by Perry

23

Gave my first hour talk sunday before last

by Perry in

jw
friends

i started going door to door at age 5 and was giving no.

2 talks by age 7. during the 8 years i was an active adult jw i was never a ms or elder (although i was a regular pioneer once).

so, i never qualified to give an hour talk.

Perry

It was a great personal achievement for me to be able to talk objectively about Jehovah's Witnesses and encourage Christians to have real compassion for members at their door. I was able to explain why when Christians talk about Heaven it doesn't mean the same thing to a JW, as well as other areas of disconnect, .... trinity, soul sleep, etc.

I wrapped up with a door to door demonstration. My wife was the JW and came on stage with my 8 Yr. old and knocked on the door. I showed how to avoid arguments and with only 2 scripture citations from the NWT leave the Witness with the "I don't know" look.

I prepared for a week but, I think everyone liked the 3 minute demo the best.

23

Gave my first hour talk sunday before last

by Perry in

jw
friends

i started going door to door at age 5 and was giving no.

2 talks by age 7. during the 8 years i was an active adult jw i was never a ms or elder (although i was a regular pioneer once).

so, i never qualified to give an hour talk.

Perry

I started going door to door at age 5 and was giving No. 2 talks by age 7. During the 8 years I was an active adult JW I was never a MS or Elder (although I was a regular pioneer once). So, I never qualified to give an hour talk.

I gave my first hour talk two Sundays ago (complete with Powerpoint) at my church on the subject of Jehovah's Witnesses and some of their doctrines.

Funny how things end up.

12

The intcal13 dataset: The best evidence I know of for C14 dating.

by bohm in

carbon 14 dating is often dismissed as relying on the assumption the c14/c12 ratio in the past has been comparable to the present, however what is rarely acknowledged is this assumption can be checked.

the way the assumption is checked is by finding a system which admits dating independent of c14.

popular choices are dendrochronology, where tree-rings are counted and by matching variation in tree-ring width across trees it is possible to build a chronology stretching back 12000 years, or varvas, where yearly variations in sediment deposits in lakes admit chronologies to be build stretching back tens of thousands of years.

Perry

http://www.debate.org/debates/Radiometric-Dating-is-Accurate/3/

I'm not supportive of Watchtower theology, but after my families' experience with authority figures in the WT, I doubt much of what gets passed off as fact in our world. See above link for a pro & con discussion on dating.

11

The Bible's huge implicit contradiction on the subject of love for God vs love for your fellow man.

by Island Man in

"if anyone makes the statement: i love god, and yet is hating his brother, he is a liar.

for he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot be loving god, whom he has not seen" - 1 john 4:20. here the bible implies that it is far easier to love a visible person than an invisible one.

therefore if one lacks love for a visible person, how much more so he must lack love for the invisible god.

Perry

And by the way, what kind of loving God would require his worshippers to have greater love for him than for their family - to sacrifice their family relationships for him?

The kind of people that believe God when he says that there will be judgment after death will appreciate this requirement if their family demands that they do things or believe things in a way that is disobedient to God....Like the WT does for example.

12

Books/texts/scriptures mentioned in the bible , though not incorporated in the bible cannon .

by smiddy in

if a bible writer / scribe refers to a particular book text or scripture by name , for one reason or another, shouldn`t that be a legitimate reason for including it in the bible cannon as a part of the bible ?.

just how many texts , books, scriptures are left out of the old testament bible that are mentioned there in and how many, if any are their in the new testament..

Perry

If a bible writer / scribe refers to a particular book text or scripture by name , for one reason or another, shouldn`t that be a legitimate reason for including it in the bible cannon as a part of the bible ?

Not necessarily. Some books were simply history books available during that time period. I own the Book of Jasher, and it sheds some more light on the extent of wickedness in pre-flood times. Interesting, but I take it with a grain of salt. Interesting nonetheless.

55

I'm studying with Jehovah's Witnesses!!

by Kulotti79 in

jw
friends

hello all... i currently studying the bible teach book and i'm just curious what information does the study conductor record about the student and is it passed on??

and they keep on saying "the truth" which is starting to get on my nerves.

lol.

Perry

In John 14:6 Jesus explains that he himself is the truth - "Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

He told us this knowing that in future generations others would claim that they alone had the truth. The truth isn't in a location. The Truth is a person.

7

In search of WWWW (What's Wrong with Watchtower)

by Fernando in

in more than 40 years of doorknocking not a single person was ever able to sit down with me and kindly and patiently explain exactly "what's wrong with watchtower" in simple terms and baby-steps that i could grasp at the time.. of course i have to admit it is not as easy as one might hope.. this morning one possible (not simple enough) summary came to mind:.

the bible promotes belief in jesus and the liberating and transforming gospel message about him (in both the nt and ot).. the watchtower instead promotes belief in a visible golden calf and pseudo-mediator between god and man in the form of:.

blind authoritarian clerics who have co-opted the word "elder" and turned it into a title (aka apostate "clericalism").

Perry

One nice Christian lady took the time to explain to me that Christians believe in a "paradise earth". I was dumbfounded and didn't know what to talk about since we both believed the same thing on this topic.

I now know that both Christians and Jehovah's Witnesses refer to this future time period as Christ's Millennium Reign. The term "paradise earth" doesn't appear in scripture.

It would be helpful if Christians could explain to JW's how they are personally saved through the blood of Christ and that this is necessary because there will be a personal judgment after a person dies according to Hebrews 9: 27... even in the NWT bible.

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?

Perry

In the words of Dr. Robert Lee, in 1981 he wrote an article for the Anthropological Journal of Canada, in which stated:

"The troubles of the radiocarbon dating method are undeniably deep and serious. Despite 35 years of technological refinement and better understanding, the underlying assumptions have been strongly challenged, and warnings are out that radiocarbon may soon find itself in a crisis situation. Continuing use of the method depends on a fix-it-as-we-go approach, allowing for contamination here, fractionation there, and calibration whenever possible. It should be no surprise then, that fully half of the dates are rejected. The wonder is, surely, that the remaining half has come to be accepted…. No matter how useful it is, though, the radiocarbon method is still not capable of yielding accurate and reliable results. There are gross discrepancies, the chronology is uneven and relative, and the accepted dates are actually the selected dates.”

Incidentally, live mollusks off the Hawaiian coast have had their shells dated with the carbon-14 method. These test showed that the shells died 2000 years ago.
Article

74

Why Do Atheists Struggle So Much Against God Who Supposedly Doesn't Exist?

by Perry in

an athist made this casual statememt on another thread:.

this would suggest to me that there are at least some atheists that do have consistant beliefs.. .

as an atheist, how could he possibly trust the reason that suggests this to himself?

Perry

Reason, evidence and rational discussion are enemies of faith.

If you watched the video you would understand the such statements prove you know that God exists, deep down. Athiests have wrought the severest from of self-deception upon themselves by borrowing the reason and rationality that could only be possible but for God. Reason and rationality are not products of random chaos, chance, and mindless happenstance....but are consistent with intellect. The very thing the atheist denies.

Like a spoiled child the atheist uses God-given tools, which are consistent with intellect and not mindless chance to attack the very source of that reason and rationality. This is a very big problem for the atheist.... as well as the half dozen or so other impossibliites and self deceptions described in the video.

74

Why Do Atheists Struggle So Much Against God Who Supposedly Doesn't Exist?

by Perry in

an athist made this casual statememt on another thread:.

this would suggest to me that there are at least some atheists that do have consistant beliefs.. .

as an atheist, how could he possibly trust the reason that suggests this to himself?

Perry

An athist made this casual statememt on another thread:

this would suggest to me that there are at least some atheists that do have consistant beliefs.

As an atheist, how could he possibly trust the reason that suggests this to himself? If reality is simply a chance happenstance, how can the reason that results from the chaos the atheist presupposes be trusted?

What scientists are saying is that atheists deep down believe in order and reason which are not the product of chance and chaos, but are consistent with being made in the image of God. In other words, you need to borrow certain things from the Christian worldview in order to struggle against it.

In other words, Atheists Don't Exist.

This video below fully develops these findings. Merry Christmas to all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbSeIVxqZdM