Yes, an added note.
What cast me into outer darkness was the answer to a question about what I had learned in school the previous December weekend.
I said I noticed how Luke 23:39-43 was translated in the NWT.
That cost me everything.
kepler
JoinedPosts by kepler
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60
Do Jehovah's Witnesses know what happened to them in 1954?
by Terry in1954: the year jehovah's witnesses stopped worshiping jesus christ.
watchtower charter: http://www.jehovah.net.au/books/1945_cha..._wtbts.pdf.
did you know that from 1879 until 1954 the writings of c.t.russell, j.f.rutherford, nathan knorr and the watchtower's own charter all agreed that jesus christ was worthy of worship?.
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60
Do Jehovah's Witnesses know what happened to them in 1954?
by Terry in1954: the year jehovah's witnesses stopped worshiping jesus christ.
watchtower charter: http://www.jehovah.net.au/books/1945_cha..._wtbts.pdf.
did you know that from 1879 until 1954 the writings of c.t.russell, j.f.rutherford, nathan knorr and the watchtower's own charter all agreed that jesus christ was worthy of worship?.
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kepler
Terry,
Your topic here gives more definition to a fuzzy picture I had been wondering about. I couldn't put my finger on it.
In initially addressing issues on line here, I have used the pamphlet "What the Bible Really Teaches" as a jumping off point, a book that to an outsider like myself throws a whole lot of Biblical references at the reader. If a dream in Daniel can trump a Gospel in doctrine, well what could I say? But I would ask "What does this all mean?"
In the midst of this I was doing some independent research - and I located the transcripts of the 1954 (!!) Walsh trial where Franz and other officers testified in a court in Scotland. To my surprise I had discovered that the Brooklyn crew testified to their belief that Jesus was the Archangel Michael. It was news to me. And here I was taking all of this instruction ( on behalf of my ex) where no expense was spared to point out the error of thinking that Jesus was part of the Trinitiy ( whether I personally believed it or not).
But where did it say what they believed?
In an Appendix of the book.
Why?
Because it fit into the concept of corporate organization in heaven - or an army - or a corporation - and a battle was coming up with Satan. There had to be a chain of command. Besides, in an epistle it was suggested that Jesus or Michael had a voice like a trumpet.
This was it? No wonder this book was not up front about its beliefs.
In one of the few times I had attended a Sunday service back in the spring of 2009 with my ex, I was struck by the WatchTower text for the day. It was an examination of "stumbling" in Matthew - and in questioning people were encouraged to say how willing they were to cut off their arms or cast their eyes out. I did not observe any missing limbs or sensory organs. In passing, Christ's Sermon on the Mount was mentioned - and the text referred to his theme of "Blessed are..." as something I remember quite well in its strange condescension.
"Nifty."
I had assumed that the organization was not just Bible based, but lost in a sea of apocalyptic pronouncement based on the Old Testament. I hadn't stop to consider or even sensed that power and devotion were being concentrated on a present day institution.
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kepler
If I understand premise of this topic correctly, it would appear that
if there is any lack of consensus in the scientific community about carbon 14 dating or dendrology, then it's bingo - a score for Biblical chronology,
whatever that is, a chronology that begins with Adam and Eve begetting two sons and no daughters.
From time to time I do see things in astronomy journals like a revised measure of the distance to the Hyades star cluster or another galaxy. Should I assume each and every one of these arguments is a score for Biblical chronology as well?
I am aware of geological and archeological evidence for Ice Ages, but I am unaware of any for a world-wide flood as described. And I don't think that there is much follow-up beyond Genesis in the source. Other cultures speak of a flood at some distant time in the past, yes. And a couple of paleolithic events in the Mediterranean or Black Sea have been suggested as candidates (10,000 BC or earlier). And the end of an Ice Age would certainly constitute a huge melting flood somewhere... But I have never heard of dendrology or carbon 14 brought to bear on any evidence for biblical deluge, especially according to the timeline described.
Also, when you search via a Concordance for "Noah" or "flood", it appears that this subject too is dropped by the Bible perhaps entirely after Genesis. It doesn't seem to fit into the Abraham, Isaac or Joseph narrative. And doesn't fit into Exodus. Chronicles mentions Noah as an ancestor...
But if there were a flood, that does pose a demagraphic problem, considering that populations unknown to the Bible seem to have existed in Australia, East Asia and the western hemisphere for periods into antiquity many times longer than the timeline as interpreted. Shoot, just in Washington State there are arguments between native peoples and the local archeologists about the Kenwick man, and he would be much older than Adam's grandfather no matter what kind of carbon 14 error is ascribed to his remains by the arguments above.
Half-life for carbon 5370 years. For it to exist, it has to be continuously created in the atmosphere. The most likely source is high energy cosmic radiation's interaction with nitrogen. So amidst non reactive carbon 12 and 13 taken into a body, the percentage of carbon 14 is going to be small.
The fact that there is any debate about measurement accuracy with carbon 14 is not because of concerns about carbon 14 decay rates, but concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere or events such as nuclear blasts (e.g., in 1965) that increase its occurence over the natural background level. Since global warming debates are predicated on concentrations of atmospheric CO2 over thousands of years, ice core samples appear to be an obvious method of determining both CO2 levels and variations in carbon 14. If ice bubbles a meter lower in Greenland show a dispersion in their remaining C14 from concentrations above (due to an intervening volcanic event, for example), then corrections such as the ones discussed might be in order.
While the discussion earlier notes that C14 measures have been adjusted, it is not clear to me that each submitted revision is a score for Biblical accuracy, but rather continued scientific debate.
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kepler
RE:
Correct you are not a dendrochronologist so why do you assume they can factor it in then? And btw dendrochronology has being giving "fixed" dates for the best part of 100 years. Computers and technology you talk about has only been around for 30 years so how did they count 3000 rings 4000 rings 5000 rings, and compare them 50 years ago? Without computer technology - it relied on human interpretation!!! ergo human error
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How would this have been done 50 years ago? The same way stellar spectra were identified 50 years ago, with a micrometer and magnifying glass or low power microscope. It's the same basic problem. If you have ever done identification of absorption and emission lines in a stellar spectra, you can use a microscope if you have to, but you have the spectra placed against a micrometer scale and reference spectra for several elements.
From my reading, questions about Bible chronology have been there since books appeared about the Bible. And that was early on since Eusebius incorporates the criticisms and concerns of others. Even before it was fully compiled, Augustine complained of how could he get Methuselah's life wedged in before the Flood. People just assume that the Judges were all sequential. But on the other hand, you find a pharaoh's physical remains and you can find his (or her) writings in stone.
There's also a sleight of hand trick of claiming that the church had already fell into apostasy before the Bible itself was compiled. If everyone involved in its compilation and canonization was so utterly corrupt and wrong headed, how is its inerrancy explained? On this subject, perhaps it is worth mulling over Jeremiah 8:8.
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72
Do Jehovah's Witnesses feed the starving in third world countries
by Gnosis in.
or do they only help their own members ?.
is there anything in their publications that seems to cast a negative view on feeding the poor ?.
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kepler
Here was an entry that I made on this subject several months ago - Kepler #28
...In the midst of my instruction via “What the Bible Really Teaches”, Haiti was struck by a severe earthquake 12 January of 2010. In the following Saturday morning session at my house, the elder in charge of instruction cited this as proof that we were near the end prophesied, but he was extremely vague about how else we should respond other than to get to the bottom line of the book we were reading through. ...
And the segue to that was an earlier "Matrix Moment" recollection of someone else.
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101
Help with Mathematical Concepts, Not Arithmetic
by Band on the Run inmy math background is embarassing.
my public education was very sad.
although i received good grades in college track math courses, i never understood the underlying ideas or motivations.
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kepler
Say, someone brought up Fermat...
Here's a variation on a theme.
3 x 3 + 4 x 4 = 5 x 5 And it's observable as a right triangle.
Was surprised to note one night while out for a jog that
3x3x3 + 4x4x4 + 5x5x5 = 6 x 6 x 6.
I was anxious to get home to check what would happen if I went to the next level.
It didn't work. But maybe it was telling something anyway.
Consider that A^2 + B^2 - 2AB cos theta = C^2. That's the general two dimensional formula formula for triangles. With right triangles (theta =90 degrees) the cosine expression vanishes. And then when you draw triangles on spheres, the angles do not always add up to 180 degrees. I can't visualize four dimensional space, but if I could, I think the rules for right angled geometry would be different from two and three dimensional objects.
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How Christian thinking was corrupted by Paul's clever explanations
by Terry inwhen modern writers, thinkers, believers in christianity talk about their religion they are almost always depending on saul of tarsus (paul) rather than.
jesus.. there is a good reason for this.
paul wrote letters.
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kepler
Terry,
Hope this topic runs a while. As a proposition, there's a lot to think about and not be quickly dismissed.
For many, I am sure, there has been introduction to the idea of Paul as an interpreter of Christianity - whatever one might think Jesus specifically had in mind - or whether Jesus was always nodding his head in assent from on high to what Paul might have preached or wrote. But additionally, when I was confronted by assertions from people who were instructing me on JW beliefs ( another story) based on Biblical text, I had to ask myself what the compilers of both the Old Testament and New were thinking - or, to be brief, what did the OT mean to Jews when it was published or compiled.
"Published or compiled" might sound like splitting hairs - save for the fact that in reading what you are saying, there seems a straw man of Jewish belief. It is a shame that Old Generation Dude has thrown in the towel on such panel discussions. For whatever I have to say is as a quick study and not from present-day Jewish perspective - I'm not Jewish and never was. But the sense I got from "70 CE" is that Jewish faith did not face the two alternatives that you describe. Synagogue groups came into ascendency and a whole lot of theological reasoning became more like an accident panel review of the whole basis for belief. What do you do when the Temple in Jerusalem is destroyed twice? What do you take away from a covenant agreement when the your people do not occupy and control all the territory between the Nile and Tigris Euphrates? Yet you still believe in monotheism, right? What do you do in this situation? . You review everything you've been doing and come up with new procedures and perspectives. Since Paul does not know the outcome on this, we need not elaborate. But it is even remarked by observant Jews that had Moses turned up in some of those sessions in the centuries subsequent to 70 CE, he would have either been confused or would have been asked to sit down and listen.
This did not happen simply after 70 CE when Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed. It obviously happened before because the OT repeatedly integrates several sources into new narratives. And that's the way the book is built from Genesis chapter one. To the modern eye, there are loose threads showing in chapter two, etc. And as you describe above. Even in as much as Paul quotes from it, what after all is Deuteronomy? King Josiah and court say, "Look what we just found in the (first) Temple... I didn't know that was there!" Uh-huh....
In fact, beside looking at Jewish thought over centuries and in response to historical events, there also exists evidence in Jewish writing that there were many different sects co-existing within its community prior and in Paul's time. Josephus describing the difference between Pharisees and Sadducees for an outside audience is illustrative. These two groups could not agree on the nature or existence of afterlife, for one thing. Early writers of the Bible evidently thought that longevity was God's reward. Some Jewish scholars have come to think that the illustration of long reigning King Manesseh and then the inclusion of Job in the Bible were cases in point confounding early chroniclers' beliefs. How come bad things happened to good people or the good people died early? Chronicles claimed that Manesseh repented of evil deeds in Assyrian captivity. Kings had forgot to mention this temporary absence. Did it happen or did it resolve a religious issue?
As to Paul's reasoning or motives, there are other jury panels that I would feel more at ease on. The premise that he was on a mission to disarm the Christian movement - sounds interesting - but considering all the other social divisions and the fact that Christians were not even on Josephus's horizon...? That's going pretty deep undercover for a relatively small faction.
A little farther afield. I had noticed in the JW literature some interesting extrapolations from Paul. Like Jesus and Paul, Adam and the serpent never exchanged a word. It's Paul that identifies a fall in the Garden. But when Paul speaks of it, he describes it as a failure of Adam in the sight of God - and therefore a redemption is required. I interpret this as a result as an issue between man and God. The JW re-telling of this sounds more like a hostage issue between God and Satan: the ransom. This is very dualistic. Instead of a question of man's unworthiness, Christ's passion becomes a drop off of "ransom" at Satan's door. Another earlier topic, but related to this one.
For what it's worth...?
K.
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101
Help with Mathematical Concepts, Not Arithmetic
by Band on the Run inmy math background is embarassing.
my public education was very sad.
although i received good grades in college track math courses, i never understood the underlying ideas or motivations.
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kepler
BOTR,
Hi. This is a fascinating and upbeat topic. Like you, hope it doesn't end soon.
For one thing, mathematics has so many different perspectives. An analogy: consider buying a laptop computer and loading it up with software. The software is mathematical, but it could have so many different applications. Same with people.
About the time I came on line with this board, I was looking at the operation of the Kepler extra-solar planet transit observatory and the history of transits. So the name was much on my mind. A second candidate might have been (Pierre) Gassendi. But when I stop to reflect, for much of my career I had been occupied with the outgrowths of the 17th and 18th century mathematics which had been nudged along by needs of describing Newtonian physics.
That historical perspective wasn't exactly what attracted me to the subject when I was a kid. It was: How do you get a satellite into orbit or how do you get a spacecraft to Mars? And the latter pre-occupation was the result of reading science fiction stories by people like Robert Heinlein or his 1940s and 50s contemporaries. Heinlein, an Annapolis graduate and engineer who pioneered aircraft carrier design and operation in the early 1930s, was probably a better children's writer than he was when he was writing to supposed adults. There was an insistence that someday sailors would sign on to ships that would sail oceans wider than the ones of centuries ago - that the ships' building blocks were all there and the sailors would learn to navigate by studying books "like this one here". I worked after school to pay high school tuition at a school run by teaching brothers for one reason among several: they promised to teach calculus, something that Robert Heinlein had highly recommended from his writer's retreat somewhere off in Colorado.
Have had only brief experiences on the teaching side of the classroom - and, just by chance, in the midst of another one with a local STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) program in the school district which involves a summer camp for rocketry and robotics. So far I have only completed the preparatory workshop of assembling and programming toy robots, but it is an opportunity to reflect on what Quendi and others are talking about: What are good teaching practices? What are valuable aspects of mathematics? What is it all about?
Not to recount all my career, but I did not immediately attend college after high school. In four years of military service I did some correspondence and overseas campus courses and then enrolled in a midwest university where I had intended to go to in the first place to study engineering (insufficient funds for sure). And later another school for graduate study that including being a teaching assistant in astronomy - my longest previous teaching experience. As observed, there was a distinct difference between the mathematics department approach to mathematics and that of the physics and engineering departments. At Michigan, the applied mathematicians remained in the math department, but at Washington, the applied mathematicoians were in my home department: aeronautics and astronautics. In either case, my hands were full dealing with their assignments; and I survived rather than excelled. But along the way I did learn some of the things I had wanted to find out about when I was a teenager. And, of course, encountered new problems.
In the meantime main frame computer dinosaurs evolved into the notebooks such as the one on which I am writing this post- and this notebook will host many of the analysis programs developed on mainframes and more.
In the STEM program now underway, there was some introductory remarks about rocketry which included the description of a sounding rocket's path. Much like an arrow or an artillery shell, idealized without atmospheric drag into a parabola that arced up from the ground. It was observed in passing that the angle of elevation for maximum range over a flat earth was 45 degrees. I had seen the solution somewhere, I had thought, and then I got pre-occupied as the lecturer explained about assemblying LEGO robots with trying to figure it out.
It was vexing, because the angle I was looking for kept getting canceled out of the equations. Then there were two parabolas that we were dealing with: the y and x of vertical and horizontal distances - and then the y and t of vertical distance and time. The horizontal distance relation vs. time was the necessary link to setting up a calculus solution. The distance between launch and "impact" on the x axis could be found when the quadratic equation solution for time of flight was substituted into the horizontal distance relation based on an initial and constant horizontal velocity. Seeing a derivative ( =0) of this distance with respect to an angle of launch would provide a maximum or minimum. This turned out to be a an expression in cosines squared minus sines squared multiplied by a constant. cosine A x cosine A - sine A x sine A = cos 2A, I believe. If cosine 2A =0, then A=45 degrees would work.
This took longer to figure out than I had expected and there could have been several false alarms about solution. I make typos in math just like in posts - and that had always been a problem. The main difference is is that with math you believe your own mis-statements. As a grader once, I encountered a similar interesting problem about light sources from stars and three students figured it out ("Use the vector triple product", one of them said later)- I didn't. And so when I got done with that homework set, I wondered if it would be a good excuse to drop a bottle of booze on my head - or just accept it - that there would be days...
In the recent exercise, I think only one or two people appreciated having an answer to the problem: a math teacher and the lead of the workshop. But even in saying that, I could see and appreciate that the other people in the program had competencies and skills that were much different than mine. Some people simply aced the workshop material. Did that mean that in 2012 certain skills have been identified that make 18th century mathematics skills obsolete? Probably not as simple as that. Number series, set theory, encoding, statistics, ... numbers are handled quite differently in these fields than in the exercise just performed - but not necessarily in entire isolation. In the above trajectory example, I think it was an illustration of several tools in trigonometry, algebra and calculus having to be used together in a puzzle. In other areas of study in support of a science, technology or social studies, puzzle solving proceeds in a similar manner. It always helps to be lucky, not error prone and patient as well as enthusiastic.
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Checking the shelf life on Jehovah's Witness "Truth"
by Terry inquestion of the day (every day!
) for jehovah's witnesses: "if it's the truth, then, why does it keep changing?".
second question is, for the truth that hasn't changed, what is the shelf life?.
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kepler
GNNM,
Greetings. Not that I am in favor of dropping an amusing line of reasoning, your post merits reflection as well. And if I am summarizing correctly I believe you said, "Get used to the idea: JWs, like other Christian sects is going to be around for a long time. Look at the record."
At first I was going to say, "Odds are you are right." But I'm not sure that's true either. There is though, a natural selection process at work. Some movements around in the first century have vanished with hardly a trace. Others ,we read about courtesy of their church historian critics - unfavorable reviews. Still others we don't acknowledge because their beliefs have been assimilated into our (?) own. Example? Zoroastrians. And should we have had an opportunity to do some backward time travel to talk with the writers of classical antiquity, BC or AD, would there not be some surprised look on faces - theirs and ours?
What are the examples that you cited but mutations of belief systems prevalent earlier? Mutations out of Judea swept prevailing Mesopotamian belief systems aside. But did they owe nothing to the Mesopotamians?
Biblical study is something that I had off most of my life and was only galvanized into doing so by the outrageous claims I encountered, leading to participation in this forum. Since I found much that is troubling, I neither want to sweep it under the rug or simply be dismissive. There's got to be some other course. 100 or 1000 years ago, that appears to have been a pre-occupation of many people. Should this not be true as well in the future based on our children's children's perspective? (Well, wait a minute - I've got to remember the background of my audience. Maybe consensus will be a resounding NO!!!)
In the meantime, what do I tell younger members of my familiy? Or anyone that looks to me for guidance because I am old and read a book or two once? To me telling them to give up on understanding or following the example of Christ is like sitting high in a tree sawing away at the limb between you and the trunk. There has got to be a better answer.
And that brings me back around to the original topic: shelf life. If Christianity is built on a convergence on an end in the 19th or 20th century, that version has been shown repeatedly, demonstrably false. Scratchiong at a blackboard years ago, contemplating whether humanity will remain a proposition that would last as long as the stars we were discussing - or whether it was already on its way to termination due to conversations on red telephones, my thoughts then were that Chistianity had to have an underlying philosophy
Good whether the end was ten minutes from now or a billion years hence.
I'd like to think: If the end comes in a few minutes and you are standing around in an elevator with people of different faiths, Christian and otherwise, just like on a sinking ship, you should be able to say: "Hang on. It's going to be all right. We are in this together..."
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Checking the shelf life on Jehovah's Witness "Truth"
by Terry inquestion of the day (every day!
) for jehovah's witnesses: "if it's the truth, then, why does it keep changing?".
second question is, for the truth that hasn't changed, what is the shelf life?.
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kepler
Another analogous situation - if not a perfect match.
Over the years, would write small scale computer programs in competition with bigger packages produced by long-established departments. Sometimes there were situations when an alternative source would provide a different numerical answer, but it was a horrifying thought that a third source might actually produce a tie breaker.
Often got set down for a talking to. It went something like this:
"Don't interfere if you want to work around here. Our product is PERFECT. Get it?..
"Now if I were you, I'd spend more time reading our User's Guide, learning to run and adapt our successfully proven test cases..."
"There will be a new release in a few weeks.... Now what was that you were talking about?..."