Posts by kepler

8

Speaking of the Flood... Does the Earth Move?

by kepler in

just read over the long thread about a letter to hq regarding noah's flood.

reminded of another literal litmus test.

within 7 years of beginning telescopic observations of the heavens, galileo was called to judgment by the inquisition in 1616. disputes in this case abound, but the biblical arguments for which galileo was tried and condemned "revolved" around i chronicles 16:30, psalms 93:1, 96:10, 104.5 and ecclesiastes 1:5, summarized by "the world is established; it shall never be moved.

kepler

Vidiot,

"Yes, like any other planet. See Astronomy 101."

But let's examine the vintage of that course. For much of the 17th century and most of the time before this was not so. Ptolemy's textbook explained how it was otherwise. And I don't recall any Biblical references within. He was arguing based on an elaborate geometry - which did not then have the good fortune of introducing the phases of Venus into the argument. Jupiter's satellites, the Moon's imperfections such as craters and mountains and Copernican theory pointed in the direction... my on-line namesake was publishing at about the same time...

But phases of Venus were key to the argument.

Subsequently, transits of Venus were observed carefully by Jesuit astronomers...

When you read histories of astronomy in the 1500s and 1600s, it becomes very much tied up with the Reformations Protestant and Catholic with Copernicans and their opponents on both sides. However, since the ball of Fundamentalist thread in religious thinking was carried by reformers such as Luther and Calvin, in present day terms it would seem ironic that the Papacy and its Inquisition would stand as the defenders of Biblical inerrancy. Protestant circles tend to be self congratulatory about Galileo. Really? Why?

It wasn't Galileo that got burned on this, but even centuries later not all schools of thought learned from this either.

8

Speaking of the Flood... Does the Earth Move?

by kepler in

just read over the long thread about a letter to hq regarding noah's flood.

reminded of another literal litmus test.

within 7 years of beginning telescopic observations of the heavens, galileo was called to judgment by the inquisition in 1616. disputes in this case abound, but the biblical arguments for which galileo was tried and condemned "revolved" around i chronicles 16:30, psalms 93:1, 96:10, 104.5 and ecclesiastes 1:5, summarized by "the world is established; it shall never be moved.

kepler

Prologos,

I see what you are saying. But I believe you can both that the Earth revolves/rotates about its axis. And it also rotates/revolves about the sun. At least I meant as much.

My dictionary's "rotation" definition was rather non-committal, but on "revolve" it says:

"to spin around about an axis".

Also, revolution as "the movement of a planet around the sun or any celestial body around a center of attraction", "rotation about an axis..."

I should add that the center of attraction between the Earth and moon is near the Earth's surface due to the ratio of their masses, about 81 to 1 in Earth's favor and separation distance of about 59 earth radii.

Were we to bring this up with the Author and if there were to be a reply, most likely: "I am aware of that."

8

Speaking of the Flood... Does the Earth Move?

by kepler in

just read over the long thread about a letter to hq regarding noah's flood.

reminded of another literal litmus test.

within 7 years of beginning telescopic observations of the heavens, galileo was called to judgment by the inquisition in 1616. disputes in this case abound, but the biblical arguments for which galileo was tried and condemned "revolved" around i chronicles 16:30, psalms 93:1, 96:10, 104.5 and ecclesiastes 1:5, summarized by "the world is established; it shall never be moved.

kepler

Just read over the long thread about a letter to HQ regarding Noah's Flood. Reminded of another literal litmus test. Within 7 years of beginning telescopic observations of the heavens, Galileo was called to judgment by the Inquisition in 1616. Disputes in this case abound, but the Biblical arguments for which Galileo was tried and condemned "revolved" around I Chronicles 16:30, Psalms 93:1, 96:10, 104.5 and Ecclesiastes 1:5, summarized by "The world is established; it shall never be moved." Plus, "The sun rises and the goes down and hastens to where it rises." Elders believe this, don't they? After all, it is clearly written. Furthermore, we have the notable divine intervention following the battle against the five kings of Makkedah in which the Amorites found no surcease since Joshua said "Sun, stand still over Giberon, and moon, you too over the Vale of Aijalon... "Is that not written in the Book of the Just?" circa Joshua 10:13.

Galileo officially recanted his views. According to legend, it is claimed that he said otherwise under his breath. But the fact is, the text over which the dispute arose is not ambiguous. And that's the problem.

For in the case of ordering the sun and moon to stand still, most of their observed motion is based on that of the earth. The earth revolves; not the sun. And the apparent motion of the moon is largely that of the Earth's as well. I do not recall any mention in the Bible that either orb moves in the celestial sphere, disregarding whether the Earth is in motion or not. That information evidently was provided by other peoples. But the notion that the sun hastens under the ground to rise at its appointed hour is all wrong. At least to the modern perspective.

It is possible to split hairs and say that motion in space is relative. It's a matter of explaining the source of motion - and ancient peoples around the Mediterranean did not adhere to Newtonian or Relativistic principles of physics. There were no known forces acting at a distance such as Newton proposed - and Einstein later denied. Yet even though Einstein removes gravitational force as a mechanism for particle motion in the universe, Newton and Einstein still agree that interaction of bodies cause accelerations inversely proportional to their masses and contribute to their consequent velocities. I would not argue that God is unaware of that observed relation about the cosmos which we attribute to God's agency, but there is still that sticky problem of what is presumed in the collected works contemplating all this.

In an argument about literal interpretation, I brought up this matter, and my opposite, unaware of the particulars of the Galileo history, claimed that, of course the Earth moves and that these text passages did not suggest otherwise.

And, in heat of argument, that I was an atheist to suggest otherwise.

I don't think the literalists can have it both ways.

So the next time you have a debate about whether the literal word is true (e.g., such as a world-wide flood) try examining this issue too.

1

Naturalist Phillip Gosse (1810-88) - The Fundamentalist Answer to the Issue of the Geological Record

by kepler in

the inventor of the seawater aquarium was not only a famous 19th century british naturalist, but a member of plymouth brethren of sola scriptura fame and the publisher of an 1850s treatise to explain away the increasingly apparent, long geological and biological record.

his answer was that god had created that too.

in other words, god created the world to look like it did.

kepler

The inventor of the seawater aquarium was not only a famous 19th century British naturalist, but a member of Plymouth Brethren of sola scriptura fame and the publisher of an 1850s treatise to explain away the increasingly apparent, long geological and biological record. His answer was that God had created that too. In other words, God created the world to look like it did. And thus was resolved the issue of whether or not Adam had a navel, Greek book title "Ompholos". How do you suppose that went over when it was published in the mid 1850s? So well that the end of the publication run was turned to recycle paper. As one commentator says on line:

"In the end, Gosse had made the scientific search for reality into a great cosmic joke. At best God had deceived us. At worst, nothing was worth knowing anyway. After that, we were ready to quit messing with specious logic and to take the fossil record seriously, We were ready to allow that Adam had a navel after all, along with all his forbears. After Gosse, we were ready for Darwin. "

http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1154.htm

Dr. John Lienhard (quoted above) and his colleagues at the University of Houston based "Engines of Our Ingenuity" have logged over 3000 short radio essays over the decades ( http://www.uh.edu/engines/ ). I would recommend these essays generally and wholeheartedly, but this particular one ( number 1154 from the mid 1990s) was a particularly perceptive one to consider for this forum - and also to examine other leads. Read the original. My paraphrase will not do.

It turns out that Phillip Gosse was an early member of the Plymouth Brethren, a Biblically literal-minded sect originating from Dublin, Ireland. The group claimed among its founders the Reverend John Darby, one of the advocates of Dispensationalism and Divination. None of the constructs we see here today would have been possible without his own Disposition (a third "D").

Phillip Gosse also had a son who was of a much different bend. Edmond Gosse became a poet and literary figure that I am sure that many of our British correspondents would have many anecdotes already at hand. But apparently among his works was an examination of his parents' point of view and why he rejected it ( his mother was an illustrator and had a way with religious tracts).

In effect, when you consider the accomplishments and erudition of Phillip Gosse, his conclusion to Omphalos seems as logical as that of a misguided Dr. Spock and embedded in the notion of "by the book". Curiously enough, a Swiss American contemporary of his, Agassiz, advised his students, "Study nature, not books."

I guess we all get done in now and then by citations.

8

Length of a Generation? Ask a governing agency or member of governing board

by kepler in

in the saturday/sunday wall street journal for the weekend of april 9-10, 2016, in the us news section there was an article titled, "housing bust lingers for generation x.".

something clicked in my mind when i read.

"the data show an enormous swing in the fortunes of people born between 1965 and 1984, the group defined by the harvard joint center for housing studies as 'generation x'".. hmmm....generation did you say?

kepler

Consider the case of a December May groom and bride. Or more to the point December and March. People don't go around remarking what a long generation they are going to make. Not at all. But down the street from the church or the newsletter publisher are the demographers who came up with ideas like Generation X in the first place. They are talking about statistical generations, cohorts of people who go through life experiencing the same hurdles at the same time. They enroll in kindergarten and graduate from high school, and then marry or seek a profession over a period of 20 or so years. And then they might reproduce themselves.

In the past one generation passed oral traditions to the next. In that sense they were overlapping.

We have several generations of people who have leaders that are trying to convince them that they represent only a generation and a half.

Forever - or to the nth generation.

25

Update - Talk # 6 THE FLOOD OF NOAH’S DAY AND YOU

by ttdtt in

instead of scraping this talk they updated it.. so they still try and make this look like it happened, and that there is plenty of evidence.to do that they refer to the (w08 6/1 8) found at http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2008411the main evidence is that floods have happened in the past, including.... geologists studying the landscape of the northwestern united states believe that as many as 100 ancient catastrophic floods once washed over the area.

one such flood is said to have roared through the region with a wall of water 2,000 feet [600 m] high, traveling at 65 miles an hour [105 km/hr]—a flood of 500 cubic miles [2,000 cu km] of water, weighing more than two trillion tons.

similar findings have led other scientists to believe that a global flood is a distinct possibility.. i could not find such an event, except for remembering one of those "disaster" shows on discover about that.

kepler

"They exhibit a unique drainage pattern that appears to have an entrance in the northeast and an exit in the southwest. The Cordilleran Ice Sheet dammed up Glacial Lake Missoula at the Purcell Trench Lobe. A series of floods occurring over the period of 18,000 and 13,000 years ago swept over the landscape when the ice dam broke. The eroded channels also show an anastomosing, or braided, appearance....

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I was living in Washington state going to graduate school mixing engineering and astronomy together back in the late '70s - and coincidentally, that was when the eastern Washington scablands were offered up as an analog to the flow features seen on Mars. One of my courses was taught by a geologist active in the space exploration program and - he was probably aware of the history of the scabland controversy dating back to the 1920s. I was not.

But in this context, I can now see some other ramifications. Especially when about a year ago, I ended up digging up an article about J. Harlen Bretz and his theories about the scablands, written in the journal Science (22 December 1978).

One of the reasons I had pulled it up was on account of someone's argument about a universal flood occurring some time around 4000 years. My counter to that was that there were a lot of independent flood features around the world that appeared to older than that, independent of each others age - and they hadn't been wiped away. Since this one was attributed to a particular glacier lake and dam structure which burst around 10,000 years ago, I argued that a universal flood should have eroded this one away as well. Ditto for the Grand Canyon. But there they are.

Just for the record, that argument didn't cut much ice (sic) that time with the Noachian viewpoint. But then when I look at the original 1978 Science article, Noachian theories appeared to be in the background in the 1920s as well. The controversy then was whether the gradualist theory in geology was as gradual and non-catastrophic as many 19th century proponents had come to accept. Bretz was met with a good deal of skepticism even though he had tons of field data from Eastern Washington for a flood of enormous magnitude.

Here's the article conclusion:

The Spokane flood controversy is both a story of ironies and a marvelous exposition of the scientific method. One cannot but be amazed at the efforts to give a uniformitarian explanation for the Channeled Scabland and to uphold the [then prevalent] framework of geology as it had been established in the writings of Hutton, Lyell and Agassiz. The final irony may be that Bretz's critics did not appreciate the scientific implications of Agassiz's famous dictum, "Read nature, not books." Perhaps no geologist has lived and understood the spirit of those words than J. Harlen Bretz."

--------\

How much of the controversy in the 1920s and successive decades was based on a reaction in the geology community to anything that smacked of field work supportive of Biblical notions, is hard to determine from the article. But over the years catastrophism has been assimilated into both geology and evolutionary biology without the "framework" of the sciences collapsing. Impacting asteroids, volcanic explosions producing more devastation that nuclear bombs and melting glacial lakes have all had a role in both geology and biology over periods of tens of thousands of years, not to mention millions. But oddly enough, when you consider the connection with the martian surface, the flood model of Biblical literalists seems to apply more neatly out there, what with submerged hydrospheres and impacts causing gushers that sweep over frozen wastes...

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8

Length of a Generation? Ask a governing agency or member of governing board

by kepler in

in the saturday/sunday wall street journal for the weekend of april 9-10, 2016, in the us news section there was an article titled, "housing bust lingers for generation x.".

something clicked in my mind when i read.

"the data show an enormous swing in the fortunes of people born between 1965 and 1984, the group defined by the harvard joint center for housing studies as 'generation x'".. hmmm....generation did you say?

kepler

In the Saturday/Sunday Wall Street Journal for the weekend of April 9-10, 2016, in the US News section there was an article titled, "Housing Bust Lingers for Generation X."

Something clicked in my mind when I read

"The data show an enormous swing in the fortunes of people born between 1965 and 1984, the group defined by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies as 'Generation X'".

Hmmm....Generation did you say? And it is delineated as a period of 20 years?

According to some folks I know, they are supposed to extend from those that were alive in 1914 to the year 2016 of this system. Or else -can pass the torch. But evidently, for government or census study purposes Generation X would shift to Generation "Y" or some such after year 1984 with a span from 1985 to 2004.

If I use similar conventions for the 1914 situation, we would have an "overlapping generation" extending to 1934, about the time that Rutherford was writing love letters to Herr Schicklgruber and a new generation extending from thence (1935 to about 1954.), with a 1955 culminating in 1974, on the eve of a PAST END of the system of things, followed by another generation starting in '75 and reaching 1994.

Generation X is completely out of phase with things, but we should have experienced another end ( 100 years) around 2014.

Somehow the fates of the great-great grandfathers of today youth are tied up with present generation by a governing board of not so ancient pronouncement geeks.

Did all the current day governing board members know anyone like Rutherford or Franz personally?

12

True or False .... The JW Religion was Started by Amateur Self Avowed Bible Theologians ?

by Finkelstein in

.....who were able to propagate their self devised bible theology by utilizing a printing plant which they themselves were the head editorial writers .

c t russell and the man to follow him j rutherford, were both not academically trained bible theologians but they certainly were inspired businessmen to the fact, charlatans of their own era and time.. the return of jesus christ and a new world order to replace an old wicked world order, was just too much of a marketable and tangible concept for those men to just leave alone.

they exploited the already existing belief in the bible already structured within the population to where they preached their created version of the gospel, the rest is now history as well their many self devised albeit commercially appealing failed doctrines .

kepler

What's a professional avowed Bible theologian?

The accounts in the Bible itself do not emphasize the experts on texts. Rather ambivalent about them at best considering the NT perspective on Pharisees. But on the other hand, Paul tries to get everything to jive with what he read in Deuteronomy.

In the same period in the US that Rutherford and Russell were prominent, overseas the Documentary Hypothesis took a different approach to text. Whether that was professional or not, I hesitate to say, but it did arise out of efforts to interpret other documents from antiquity. What it did receive, however, in this country was a hostile reception from fundamentalist as well as a reaction of retrenchment.

The stunner for me was that Darwinism or cosmological discoveries do not have to be invoked to find serious holes in fundamentalist or literalist arguments. One day, just happening to notice a literary quirk in Greek historians ( Persians = Medes) pulled down several sand castles I had wondered about. And they were based on both fundamentalist assumptions of inerrancy and self-fulfilling hypotheses associated with the beliefs:

"It's the text, I understand it and it has to mean..."

Professional or amateur can exploit that in a pamphlet, a radio station, pulpit or consultation meeting. Adventists see a Second Coming that has to mean a world collapse. Behold a comet. It must mean we are in the last days. No? Well, let's try again.

3

Lourdes, Bigorre, Pyrenees, France.

by Joe Grundy in

(i never was a jw).. this topic occurred to me randomly.

i don't know whether any/many posters heer have visited.

the region is beautiful but marred, imho, by the scar that is lourdes.

kepler

JG,

Perhaps because I have never been a JW either, I can write this in reply.

There was a recent article in the National Geographic on the apparition of Mary phenomenon. Lourdes was mentioned among many other places and temporal settings across the globe. The nearest one to the US, of any consequence, was Guadalupe in Mexico. I imagine that if I were set down in the midst of Guadalupe - or most anywhere else in Mexico where the canvas image of "Our Lady" is sold, the picture would be similar to what you describe.

But still: I had been informed in several history classes or accounts that the Guadalupe legend originated in the 17th century. But yet when I read the account of conquistador Bernal Diaz of the "The Conquest of New Spain", put to ink in the 1570s or 80s by a witness and participant of the campaign of Cortez only a decade or two before

In the siege and capture of Mexico:

"Cortez ordered [Sandoval] to abandon his camp at Iztapalapa and go by land to blockade the other causeway, which runs from Mexico to a town once called Tepeaquilla, but now Our Lady of Guadalupe, the place of many miracles"

There are a few more brief references to Guadalupe in the Diaz account. I pulled that from my Penguin paperback, but I think there are more extensive versions available on line. Unfortunately, Diaz never spells out exactly what transpired, because he assumes that all the readers just knew. And elsewhere his account, though often righteous in perspective, invokes little or nothing of the supernatural, save what would be expected from a Catholic monarchist of the time. Natural selection at work when you are surrounded by a cult that sacrifices its victims.

So my point is that despite the tawdriness of the tourist towns, I would not dismiss the mystery entirely.

I think there is one.

Best regards, and have a good ( or better) continental stay.

11

On the Fundamentalist Notion of Babylon Destroyed - Forgot to Tell Ancient World

by kepler in

among puzzlements of sitting down with jw reps with "what the bible really teaches", was the assertion that babylon was destroyed - forever - just like it says in these here chapters and verses.

then the nwt claims that peter i & ii were written from babylon.

but beside that, ancient greek, hebrew and roman writings are full of reference to babylon as an important center.

kepler

Crazyguy,

I think we have both gone over some of this before. But to clarify for others, there was in fact a curse placed on Babylon by Sennacherib: desolation for 70 years. Sennacherib ended his days via assassination, a presumed conspiracy of his sons, of whom Esarhaddon was chosen to succeed him. In the "community" there was a lot of concern about the severity of measures against Babylon - so Esarhaddon had it reversed. A stone stela records how the curse of desolation was re-invoked, but read upside down - inverting the cuneiform to 11 years from the previous 70.

Seventy years elsewhere in the Bible is counted as a human lifetime. And one can imagine that the notion was borrowed or shared with Assyrians. So given all that, it would not surprise me that there would be a widespread acceptance among middle easterners of Assyrian notions of retribution or law. It might have even been a Babylonian notion as well. I've heard I remarked elsewhere that a lot of the notions about Covenants ( e.g., in Deuteronomy) seem to resemble Assyrian treaties with states intimidated into alliances.

StephaneLalIberte,

Thank you both for your recall and your source material. Because we all now can see the enforced disconnect among elements of recruiting, daily belief and "apologetics". I suspect that the last is a mental Potemkin village, a display of rationality and scholarship while concocting the new New World Testaments to back theological positions already made.

Reflecting on the times I felt that I was confronted with saying "two plus two equals five" or else, I understand the how, but I do not fully understand the why. Then there were simply the consequences of whatever I chose. And it affected my life irrevocably. As it has others.

Shortly after I had to made choices for "four" when signals all around me were for "five", I encountered another people in my neighborhood connected with Lyndon Larouche's political movement. Larouche provided his young adherents with quick set elements of a classical education. They sang patriotic and operatic choruses together; they studied the physical sciences, economics ( of course), the history of the Enlightenment - and then somehow molded it into political thought of their Leader. Oddly enough there was a pantheon of Enlightenment scientists, but Isaac Newton was the Judas among Copernicus, Kepler ( actually no relation), Galileo and Leibnitz. Larouche had a fondness for Germany - much like Rutherford initially. Anyway, of the five or six of Larouche's followers that seemed to settle at one of the local coffee houses, all of them were ready to explain at length Newton's infidelity.

... Otherwise they would have been thrown out of the movement.

So somehow in the case of Babylon being utterly destroyed ( with the assist of Darius the Mede), I see a force at work.