and i mean the whole bible, from start to finish.. first, the fear factor.
many that are deeply into the bible are afraid that, if they quit or disagree with it, they are going to suffer forever (destruction or hell).
they are also promised a major reward (life on earth forever, or heaven) if they obey.
I have included what most people will be stunned by, The Bible is more evil than the Koran both in count as a percentage.
Given the Bible is just over thousand pages, 1214 violent passages is quite an achievement, given each passage is often filled with detail and narrative.
http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com.au/2006/06/which-is-more-violent-bible-or-quran.html
and i mean the whole bible, from start to finish.. first, the fear factor.
many that are deeply into the bible are afraid that, if they quit or disagree with it, they are going to suffer forever (destruction or hell).
they are also promised a major reward (life on earth forever, or heaven) if they obey.
@tec
I will show that while NOT literally all books are disgusting, practically all are. I will present as evidence to show the dramatic contrast with good and bad messages, advice and actions. Please stop being so literal, i will let the numbers show overwhelmingly that the good book is anything but good. If you want to review the stuff that is counted as good and whats counted as bad feel free to follow the links.
http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com.au/2009/01/best-book-in-bible-revisited-again.html
When I did that, I found that there are only three good books in the Bible: Ecclesiastes (of course), Proverbs, and James. Three others have a zero net goodness. The other 60 books are all more bad than good.
Other goodness metrics that might be useful are the percentage of marked passages that are good and the net good number of passages per 100 verses. Since there are only three books with a positive net goodness, we can limit our analysis to these three.
Here is a table that summarizes the data.
| Ecclesiastes | Proverbs | James | |
| Good | 80 | 187 | 13 |
| Bad | 1 | 75 | 9 |
| Net good | 79 | 112 | 4 |
| verses | 222 | 915 | 108 |
| net good/100 verses | 35.6 | 12.2 | 3.7 |
| Percent good of (good and bad) highlighted verses | 98.8 | 71.4 | 59.1 |
| good/bad | 80 | 2.5 | 1.4 |
So no matter how you look at it, Ecclesiastes is by far the best (and pretty much the only good) book in the the Bible.
GOOD
http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com.au/2007/03/best-book-in-bible.html
When we adjust for size, then, Ecclesiastes is by far the best book in the Bible (36.0 good passages / 100 verses).
(The overall average for the Bible is 1.5 good passages / 100 verses.)
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/good/long.html
Contains a definite list of each and every good message or action in the Bible.
BAD
http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2006/07/bad-books-of-bible.html
Here's my list of the Bible's bad books:
(Let me know if you can find something good in them. If you can convince me, I'll add the verses to the good stuff and remove the book from the bad book list.)
http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com.au/2009/01/worst-books-in-bible.html
Okay, this won't be as easy. There are only three books in the bible that have more good stuff than bad (Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and James), so the best book had to be one of them. Ecclesiastes won that contest hands down.
But what about the other 63 books in the Bible? Well, let's start with a scatterplot of the net good by the number of verses in each of the Bible's books.
when was ancient jerusalem destroyed?.
a critique of the two-part article published in the public editions of.
the watchtower of october 1, 2011, pages 26-31 and.
They always quote Carl, too bad they dont mention he is a JW. talk about objectivity.
my family (wife and teenage kids) and i awakened to the true nature of the wt society a couple years ago and are fairly well faded now.. .
my son attends high school with a couple of jws, one of whom is an elder's son and an ardent true believer.
let's call him "con".
You might want to highlight how all jewish holidays all fall on astrologically significant dates. The themes of the holidays matches the astrological significance of the passing sign.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_holiday
PASSOVER
The word passover really means when the sun passes over the equator which is what happens on both equinoxes as the sun travels between the tropic of capricon(winter) and tropic of cancer(summer). Passover is actually the celebration of spring which is of course when the baby lambs are born and are available to be slaughtered for the festival.
Part of the problem is that the Jewish calender is lunar and floats but it is evident that the dates of events are clustered about major astrological dates, of the solstices and equinoxes.
YOM KIPPUR
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur
Yom Kippur (Hebrew: ???? ???????? or ??? ???????? , IPA: ['jom ki'pur] ), also known as Day of Atonement, is the holiest and most solemn day of the year for the Jews. Its central themes are atonement and repentance. Jews traditionally observe this holy day with a 25-hour period of fasting and intensive prayer, often spending most of the day in synagogue services. Yom Kippur completes the annual period known in Judaism as the High Holy Days or Yamim Nora'im ("Days of Awe").
Yom Kippur is the tenth day of the month of Tishrei. According to Jewish tradition, God inscribes each person's fate for the coming year into a book, the Book of Life, on Rosh Hashanah, and waits until Yom Kippur to "seal" the verdict. During the Days of Awe, a Jew tries to amend his or her behavior and seek forgiveness for wrongs done against God (bein adam leMakom) and against other human beings (bein adam lechavero). The evening and day of Yom Kippur are set aside for public and private petitions and confessions of guilt (Vidui). At the end of Yom Kippur, one considers oneself absolved by God.
This day of course happens on the autumn equinox where the Sun enters the sign of Libra or judgment. In astrology and even christianity we have a similar belief where people believe they are judged as they die. The Sun begins to die when it enters Libra and is considered dead in winter.
ROSH HASANAH
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosh_Hashanah
Rosh Hashanah ( Hebrew : ??? ???? ), (literally "head of the year"), is the Jewish New Year . It is the first of the High Holy Days or Yamim Nora'im ("Days of Awe") which occur in the autumn. [1] Rosh Hashanah is celebrated on the first two days of Tishrei . The beginning of the year for the Jewish is in March
Mid March is of course the start of Spring, Even our own calender used to start on March 25 or the Spring equinox. The zodiac also starts in mid march etc.
PURIM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purim
| 2011 date | Sunset, 19 March – nightfall, 20 March |
|---|---|
| 2012 date | Sunset, 7 March – nightfall, 8 March Purim is celebrated annually according to the Hebrew calendar on the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Adar (Adar II in leap years), the day following the victory of the Jews over their enemies. In cities that were protected by a surrounding wall at the time of Joshua , Purim is instead celebrated on the 15th of the month on what is known as Shushan Purim . [7] Today, only Jerusalem celebrates Purim on the 15th. |
Purim actually celebrates when the SUN conquers the cold days of winter, the days are now longer than the nights.
HANUKKAH
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanukkah
Hanukkah ( Hebrew : ???????? , Tiberian: ?anukkah, usually spelled ????? pronounced [χanu'ka] in Modern Hebrew , also romanized as Chanukah , Chanukkah , or Chanuka ), also known as the Festival of Lights , is an eight-day Jewish holiday
Hanukkah is of course the Hebrew equivalent of the Winter solistic which celebrates the birth of the Sun, which as we know is about the birth of the Sun or XMAS. Jesus is the SUN not the SON of God. No wonder its called the festival of lights.
and i mean the whole bible, from start to finish.. first, the fear factor.
many that are deeply into the bible are afraid that, if they quit or disagree with it, they are going to suffer forever (destruction or hell).
they are also promised a major reward (life on earth forever, or heaven) if they obey.
@tec
Im glad that tenatively you accept the OT is filled with racism, hatred, violence and a lot of nasty stuff. However Jesus accepted the OT as truth, which makes for an uncomfortable situation. How does one explain the total opposites of your "good" jesus and the "evil/vile" OT. How could gods message be so schizophrenic ?
This also leads to a interesting question was jesus really all that good ? Are you selectively remembering what is convenient ? You seem to think that we can cancel the problem moments by simply ignoring them and saying but jesus did got the next day lets for get about the passed. The scriptures however include those BAD stories for a reason. They shouldnt be ignored.
RACISM
You dont like to admit Jesus was racist, but one has to wonder if the attitudes of Jesus and the OT continues today with the apartheid system in Israel ? I wonder did they really create the two states simply to push the Arabs out because of race ? Are they simply not copying jesus example ?
SLAVERY
How many have suffered because Jesus and the Bible failed to denounce or ban slavery. Of course bad men will ignore this fact, but one cant help but wonder that it made it easier to justify slavery simply because the Good book didnt ban it. This argument can be found and is used by many such as the cotton plant owners in the southern states.
SUBMISSION TO EVIL
Given my previous assertions that Jesus taught stoicism and told his fellowers not to wish freedom and remain obedient slaves, one has to ask is this good ? Is it a good thing to tell victims to just take the pain and never criticize the authority ? We have the same thing in the JW with pedophilia, they tell the kids to shutup and protect the adult. Is there any good in such a policy ?
WAS HE REALLY PEACEFUL ?
Jesus taught a lot of bad wrong things, even his own disciples carried swords. Was he really peaceful or is that an illusion ?
As always i have dozens of scriptures and can provide them upon request.
and i mean the whole bible, from start to finish.. first, the fear factor.
many that are deeply into the bible are afraid that, if they quit or disagree with it, they are going to suffer forever (destruction or hell).
they are also promised a major reward (life on earth forever, or heaven) if they obey.
@zedina and @still thinking
Messiah firstly just means leader, be they a king or priest etc. In the OT every king and priest was a Messiah. The WTS is intentionally avoiding the discussion of this matter so that all Messiah references in the OT are automatically assumed by uninformed xians to mean Jesus. We can see that many are simply not about him.
The classic example if Micah 5:2 which supposedly predicts jesus will be born in Bethlehem. If we read the remainder of the chapter we see JC did not destroy the Assyrians which makes the so called prophecy a fraud.
There were actually many messiahs in jesus time, because the Jews themselves felt that was the time when someone would lead them to victory and freedom. They felt this because of astrology, jesus was born in about 1BC give or take which is exactly when the SUN enters the age of Pisces. At about the same time many opportunists throghout the land tried their luck and did convince many to follow them.
The story of John the Baptist is an example of this. He was not violent but it shows the people were looking for someone.
The Bible mentions many of these groups. Some of the apostles show this link to some of these groups.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_the_Zealot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_iscariot
There are many strange convulted reasons for the etymology given in the article on wiki. Most scholars nowdays believe Iscariot is just Sicarii another infamous group jumbled up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicarii
Sicarii (Latin plural of Sicarius 'dagger-men' or later contract-killer, Hebrew ????????) is a term applied, in the decades immediately preceding the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD , (probably) to an extremist splinter group [1] of the Jewish Zealots , who attempted to expel the Romans and their partisans from Judea using concealed daggers ( sicae ). [2]
In the name of Judas Iscariot , the apostle who betrayed Jesus, the epithet "Iscariot" is read by some scholars as a Hellenized transformation, by the simplest metathesis , of sicarius. The suffix "-ote" denotes membership or belonging to – in this case to the sicarii. This meaning is lost when the Greek Gospels are translated into modern Hebrew : the Hebrew meaning relates much more closely to the presumed Aramaic of the period which is the actual language in which Judas Iscariot had his name. In Hebrew, Judas is rendered as "Ish-Kerayot," making him a Jew from the townships or " ... from the district". "Judas" (like the Hebrew "Judah") refers to Judean identity, either membership in the state of Judea of the Graeco-Roman period or the Jewish people more generally. Many scholars accept this meaning, pointing out that it indicates that Judas was from the start "the representative Jew" who betrayed Jesus in the Gospel dramatization of events, and we may not have in him an actual person or perhaps only do not know his actual name. It would have been odd to give a person a defamatory name (in the Greek or Latin Gospels) that was not in the native tongue Aramaic, when there were words in that tongue that could mean the same. However, Robert Eisenman (Eisenman p 179) is amongst those scholars today who persist in identifying him instead as "Judas the Sicarios ". He offers as justification that most of the consonants and vowels tally – in Josephus, Sicarioi/Sicarion ; in the New Testament Iscariot .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Messiah_claimants
Read their stories you will see this was a very violent age or rebellion. Rome had to send three armies to defeat the rebels. They seriously believed these messiahs because they the jews could read the sky and saw that the SUN had entered a new age which was supposed to promise them victory. After they lost they came to accept something was wrong which is when peaceful Judaism and the Talmud was developed.
The fact that the Jews failed to see jesus is because they expected something more dramatic and victoruy and freedom. All we have in the gospels is a guy who walks around and is eventually killed by the Romans.
An interesting point to remember is that Matthew which is supposed to be written with a Jewish audience is the only gospel with the story of the Magi. The Magi or astrologers and the star of bethlehem were inserted to impress the Jews that Jesus was the messiah predicted. Even today in our own language we have the idea that important people are stars, we have just lost the astrological connection but the etymology of the word is still present.
There are many images that show zodiac circles in jewish synagogues from Jesus time. These can be easily found. Even Josephus said the temple in jerusalem had a zodiac within it. The temple of course pointed east to acknowledge the rising sun, if i recall the NWT has a map of jerusalem which shows the template on the eastern side and so on. There are many astrological symbolism inside the temple which is why they never show this in detail or explain in teh WTS.
Notice the many matches, they are an interesting read.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_views_on_astrology
![[icon]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg) |
In addition to its display in synagogues from the most ancient, such as Beth Alpha, to relatively modern, such as the Bialystocker Synagogue in the Lower East Side of New York City, the zodiac has been shown to correspond to the months of the Hebrew calendar.
For example, the month of Tishrei, beginning in September or October, has the sign Libra, the Scales. Tishrei is the month of Judgment, of Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur where good deeds and bad are weighed against one another. [1]
lets also not forget that the major Jewish holidays also relate to the solistices and equinox.
KABALLAH
Another interesting point is that Kabballah is itself all astrological thought. The seven centers along the body represent the 7 planets, sun and moon etc. This thought is just another direction the religion took using its astrological roots.
this thread is for everybody and everybody is welcome to comment on it .
however i'm going to direct my thoughts and comments in this initial post to lurking jehovah's witnesses who may read on this board and may be sitting on the fence pondering on whether to stay in the jehovah's witnesses organization.
also to newer members who may have joined the board.. in this latest 4/15 wt in the article , " jehovah knows how to deliver his people " it conveys the thought that only the wt society ( through god's help ) will be guiding any jw's through the alleged " armageddon " considered god's war against the wicked.
@flipper
well look at the message of the eucharist, all christians by definition are symbolic cannabals when they eat or drink the bread and wine. Well with JW only some get to be cannabals.
Cannabalism happened a lot in the recent past, its one of the really taboo topics that nobody likes to admit. Even just recently it was the one thing nobody ever admitted but it happened quiet often in the times of great exploration by the English and so on. Many times they ran out of food for numerous reasons such being caught in the doldrums etc and the last thing left to eat was a dead fellow crewmember.
assuming the historicity of jesus, and i do, i wonder how well he knew his real father, whether it was joseph, pantera or another man.
because he must have existed for jesus to have been born - you know, the sweet meeting of sperm & egg .
it appears though that no factual information can be gleaned from the bible or other sources about this but of course that hasn't prevented much speculation.. if, as seems likely, jesus father was absent what effect would that have had on the young child?
@nicolau
Actually jesus may have known that God was his father but Mary herself seems to have forgotten, we have the situation where Mary says something and Jesus says he is busy with his fathers work. In fact his entire home village of Nazareth just thought he was a nutter.
hello, i am doing some research on 1975 again, and i came across this on a couple different sites:.
are we to assume from this study that the battle of armageddon will be all over by the autumn of 1975, and the long-looked-for thousand-year reign of christ will begin by then?
possibly, but we wait to see how closely the seventh thousand-year period of man's existence coincides with the sabbathlike thousand-year reign of christ.
Yes the WTS edits its texts after the fact to remove uncomfortable or failed prophecies. Lets not forget the book it supposedly follows, the Bible has a history of exactly the same actions. The book of Daniel is presents itself as been written during the exile, so its text looks like prophecy. The same Daniel even has two extra chapters in the Catholic Bible. Many scholars today state that half of Pauls books were not written by him but are psuedogaphical. The same is especially true of 2 Peter and so on. Many scholars state that there are literally hundreds of thousands of chnages in just the NT. The same is true of the OT, we can confiorm this by comparing the bibles or going to online resources such as the http://codexsinaiticus.org/en/.
Lets not forget that the most famous fraud in the Bible, which is documented where Josiah finds the scroll of the Law which is supposed to be deuteronomy. It is never explained how the law was lost for hundred years and how god never told the many prophets between Moses and Josiah. Funnily enough the word "deuteronomy" means "second law" which is appropriate given its a "second" take with Moses laws being the first. Even the name of the book tells you its a fraud.
and i mean the whole bible, from start to finish.. first, the fear factor.
many that are deeply into the bible are afraid that, if they quit or disagree with it, they are going to suffer forever (destruction or hell).
they are also promised a major reward (life on earth forever, or heaven) if they obey.
@tec
you are dishonest by only talking about jesus good words. the value of his ministry is accepting all available details. we cant simply use our modern western mrality to sweep away questionable or uncomfortable teachings. everything was included, if we edit this story we are creating yet another gospel. in any other documentation exercise such edits would rightly be considered a fraud or dishonest. if a doctor gave you a medicine only saying the good without mentioning the bad, that would be a serious issue. you wouldnt be happy.
