Posts by kepler

14

How many elders does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

by mynameislame in

just one but he has to be constantly ready to replace it at a moments notice..

kepler

What does the Watch Tower say?...

Wait, I think I can find that in the KH Library. I'll tell you next meeting.

5

Sherlock Holmes predicted WWII - I saw it in a film

by kepler in

it was either "hound of the baskervilles" or "adventures of sherlock holmes" where sherlock himself, played by basil rathbone, after wrapping up the case with dr. watson and friends turned to the audience in the theater and urged them to fight on against the threat that menaced europe, the empire and the blessed isles alluding to hitler and mussolini.. since sherlock holmes lived in victorian times this must have been a revelation from god.. no doubt about it.

there is no other way that this could have happened.

and sherlock holmes wrote the story himself.. we studied sherlock holmes short stories attributed to arthur conan doyle in english class.

kepler

Well, now that others have had their say and business is as usual on other topics, I would like to give my rebuttal to several claims or efforts to debunk Sherlock Holmes' writing and prophetic work.

The fact that Sherlock Holmes made his prophetic statements on film is merely a difference in medium ( vs. printed word on paper). Sherlock Holmes foresaw the great conflict of the 1940s and warned against it, urging the Anglo-American alliance to soldier on to the end. It's quite clear.

What other possible explanation could there be for such a document but a direct message from God via his prophet to the faithful of this age?

101

The Most Insane Thing Ever Printed by the Watchtower?

by Leolaia in

i found this while perusing through old golden ages at the new york public library.

it is so patently ridiculous and offensive, i thought i'd just post the thing without comment.

*** g27 11/30 pp.

kepler

One of the things I often wondered about Rutherford was his connection to the 19th century underbelly of the American politics, the No-Nothings and Nativists (sic). Here was why:

There was reading his rants in the early Yearbooks (excerpts of the WT as "thoughts for the day" 365 or 366 of them) and reading accounts of harassments of immigrant attending churches, especially Roman Catholics. And then there was the famous letter to Adolph Hitler. All of this struck me as the sort of thing associated with the Klu Klux Klan or the Nativist movement.

Other than that he was an intolerant midwestern tied to the campaigns of William Jennings Bryan, I never did find anything conclusive. It seemed like most of his ties in that regard were probably over drinks at his private bar or over cigars and cards. For sure he was part of the the attitudes that seemed to permeate the world 8 or 9 decades back and still seemed to leak out of crevices in my 1950s childhood.

More than anything else he seems to emerge like one of those characters that were sitting int he same parlor car on the train with Sinclari Lewis on a cross country ride. Fact stranger than the fiction Lewis wove in "Elmer Gantry" and "It Can't Happen Here" combined. He actually was a combination of the two.

I hope to God we don't have to look back the same way on this era someday...

13

Wheels within wheels of celestial chariot? this FEATURE is discovered in our galaxy

by prologos in

jw
friends

in today's 'astronomy picture of the day' are clearly shown rotating rings that move at 90 degrees and through each other.

it is celestial, mysterious, entirely possible, and physical.

luminous.

kepler

Thanks for digging this one up. It's an interesting image.

But when you look at it closely, you have to wonder whether it is in this galaxy ( e.g., a planetary nebula) or another galaxy. I went back back to the APOD site and it turns out that is another galaxy. NGC 2625 according to its catalog name, 40 million light years away and about 50,000 light years across. In Ursa Major, it should be visible off to the north somewhere near or within the Big Dipper.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

As to why there should be two spiral pattern? A merger of two galaxies? There is some discussion at the web page, but the spiral patterns are so clear it is tempting to think that one galactic image is imposed on top of the other - whereas in contact you would expect more disruption.

Probably have to stay tuned...

5

Sherlock Holmes predicted WWII - I saw it in a film

by kepler in

it was either "hound of the baskervilles" or "adventures of sherlock holmes" where sherlock himself, played by basil rathbone, after wrapping up the case with dr. watson and friends turned to the audience in the theater and urged them to fight on against the threat that menaced europe, the empire and the blessed isles alluding to hitler and mussolini.. since sherlock holmes lived in victorian times this must have been a revelation from god.. no doubt about it.

there is no other way that this could have happened.

and sherlock holmes wrote the story himself.. we studied sherlock holmes short stories attributed to arthur conan doyle in english class.

kepler

It was either "Hound of the Baskervilles" or "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" where Sherlock himself, played by Basil Rathbone, after wrapping up the case with Dr. Watson and friends turned to the audience in the theater and urged them to fight on against the threat that menaced Europe, the Empire and the Blessed Isles alluding to Hitler and Mussolini.

Since Sherlock Holmes lived in Victorian times this must have been a revelation from God.

No doubt about it. There is no other way that this could have happened. And Sherlock Holmes wrote the story himself.

We studied Sherlock Holmes short stories attributed to Arthur Conan Doyle in English class. English is our sacred mother tongue and it's ancient.

God spoke in that tongue in the King James Version of the Bible which all the disciples carried with them everywhere and every land.

It is also the ancient language of King Arthur's court and the Knights of the Round Table. They discovered the Holy Grail.

If you don't believe this, then you will never achieve salvation. In fact, you will die with the rest of them...

If you don't go door to door telling other people that this is true, you are going to be in trouble too.

If you don't meet your monthly quotas telling people about this, then that's another problem.

Do not associate with anyone who does not believe this. Or even think that it might not be true.

You will receive more instructions and commentaries about these and similar phenomenally glad tidings in a bi-weekly leaflet. The opinions of our leader will be explained in anonymous editorial content. He is president of our corporate body - or a governing board.

You will receive extra copies. Distribute them.

Now about your selections in attire...

11

March of the world powers in DANIEL 2. Proof the Bible is the inspired word of God. Wadda ya think?

by punkofnice in

.

how would you answer the jw that says that the vision of daniel predicting world powers into the future (where the toes have no significance according to the wbt$), is proof of the inspired prophecy in the bible?.

could it be that the 'powers' are not actually named and can be interpreted any way you want?.

kepler

Daniel 2:1

"In the second year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar had a series of dreams, he was perturbed by this and sleep deserted him."

So this means Daniel was already in the service of Nebuchadnezzar before any of the Jerusalem sieges.

Later:

At this, King Nebuchadnezzar fell prostrate before Daniel; he gave orders for Daniel to be offered an oblatin and a fragrant sacrifice. The king said to Daniel: "Your god is indeed the God of God, the Master of kings, and the Revealer of Mysteries..."

But Nebuchadnezzar goes off to besiege and capture Jerusalem and, eventually leveling it entirely, desecrates its temple. So why are we informed of his declaration. Either it was empty or it never occurred. When all of Daniel is read, you have to wonder if there is any historicity to it.

Question:

Is there any evidence that Babylonian kings were described as divine? Now how about Antiochus IV - Epiphanes?

Chapter II concludes with Shadrach, Meshach and AbedNego appointed to provincial rulers.

In chapter III, the King builds a golden statue of himself, confounding the lesson he supposedly learned in the previous chapter and threatens to burn the trio to death in an oven. In calling high officials to admire and worship the statue, he includes "Satraps" - a Persian Empire official ( an Empire yet to be invented). People "heard the sound of "horn, pipe, lyre, zither, harp, bagpipe and other instruments."

Strange? Not only he desecrate the temple of the God he acknowledged, but claims he himself is divine to boot amid anachronistic descriptions.

If you want to consider two empires encountering each other, study in detail how the Romans displace the Seleucids that ruled Palestine in the mid second century BC. Antiochus III ("the Great") was defeated by the Romans in Asia minor in 190 BC. Rolled back. The Greek mainland sought Rome's protection. The Romans spread around the Mediterranean and then (drawing from sources):

---------------------

...In 168 BC Antiochus IV Epiphanes led a second attack on Egypt and also sent a fleet to capture Cyprus. Before reaching Alexandria, his path was blocked by a single, old Roman ambassador named Gaius Popilliu Laenas, who delivered a message from the Roman Senate directing Antiochus to withdraw his armies from Egypt and Cyprus, or consider themselves in a state of war with the Roman Republic. Antiochus said he would discuss it with his council, whereupon the Roman envoy drew a line in the sand around him and said, "Before you cross this circle I want you to give me a reply for the Roman Senate" – implying that Rome would declare war if the King stepped out of the circle without committing to leave Egypt immediately. Weighing his options, Antiochus IV Epiphanes decided to withdraw. Only then did Popillius agree to shake hands with him.

While Antiochus was busy in Egypt, a rumor spread that he had been killed and The High Priest appointed by Antiochus, Menelaus, was forced to flee Jerusalem during a riot. On the King's return from Egypt in 167 BC enraged by his defeat, he attacked Jerusalem and restored Menelaus, then executed many Jews.

"When these happenings were reported to the king, thought that Judea was in revolt. Raging like a wild animal, he set out from Egypt and took Jerusalem by storm. He ordered his soldiers to cut down without mercy those whom they met and to slay those who took refuge in their houses. There was a massacre of young and old, a killing of women and children, a slaughter of virgins and infants. In the space of three days, eighty thousand were lost, forty thousand meeting a violent death, and the same number being sold into slavery." - 2 Maccabees 5:11-14

To consolidate his empire and strengthen his hold over the region, Antiochus decided to side with the Hellenized Jews by outlawing religious rites and traditions kept by observant Jews and by ordering the worship of Zeus as the supreme god (2 Maccabees 6:1–12). This was anathema to the Jews and when they refused, Antiochus sent an army to enforce his decree. Because of the resistance, the city was destroyed, many were slaughtered, and a military Greek citadel called the Acra was established...

------------

The book of Daniel is NOT history of Babylonia. For further evidence, compare Daniel Chapter 4 and Dead Sea Scroll 4Q242"The Healing of King Nabonidus".

"I Nabonidus wsa smitten with a severe inflammation lasting seven years ... I was thus changed becoming like a beast. I prayed to the Most High and he forgave my sins. An exorcist, a Jew, in fact, a member of the community of exiles, ..."

Daniel is un-named in the scroll, but Nabonidus is. As recounted by the editor of the DSS, "the name was changed not to protect the innocent, but to implicate guilty ... who had sacked Jerusalem, burned the Temple and carried the people into exile in 586 BCE." Repeat: 586 BCE.

Any resemblance here to Antiochus IV?

Curiously enough, events in chapter 5 pick up the Nabonidus story again, without using his name, when Cyrus acquires the city for the Persian Empire.

It seems to me that ,the more people talk about how Daniel seems to concern the present day, the less they seem to dwell on Daniel in context. ...But this could go on forever.

6

Why Do Some People Still Disagree With Special Relativity?

by DT in

jw
friends

i have to admit that i feel poorly equipped to address this subject.

i'm more interested in the feedback of others than in trying to persuade others of my opinions.

i should also point out that although this topic is specifically about special relativity, much of what is said could also apply to general relativity.. special relativity has had a profound effect on both science and modern culture.

kepler

DT,

This is a challenging writing topic, but I'll give it a try. Not my specialty, but I have had exposure as well...

When I first scanned your introduction, my knee jerk reaction was to respond and somehow say something in support of relativity theory being a theoretical answer to physical observation. But then when I look more closely at what you said, I don't think that would be necessary. It sounds like you've been examining the subject for yourself and find it plausible enough to defend in argument yourself.

To others I would say that special relativity arrived on the scene because there was an odd discrepancy in physical observations: No matter what motion was observed in a source of light, arriving light seem to be moving at the same speed. And if the speed always remained the same, then maybe time was not absolute... The physical and geometrical implications are included in college introductory physics courses, but the philosophical implications are left to the student. Special relativity was the camel's nose of this initial observation. General relativity gave us a concept of space and time that made time another dimension which was warped by mass - or as the saying goes:"Space time tells matter how to move, matter tells space-time how to curve." In the space of 10 years from 1905 to 1915 Einstein and some correspondents worked out most of the deep implications of this theory, derived from the initial observations...

And continually confirmed by subsequent experimental observations ( residual movements in celestial space of Mercury's perihelion, the bending of light in neighborhood of stars about twice what Newtonian theory would predict...) and practical applications (GPS satellite programming includes corrections for relativistic effects).

Speaking of Newton's theory, celestial mechanics for centuries and present day space navigation have done very well without Einstein, save for:

- such small discrepancies in the solar system

- and much larger effects elsewhere in the universe where there are objects where motions often approach light speeds

- or in the laboratory with particle accelerators

All these regions depart from newtonian mechanics. But what's more. Newton never had an explanation for why matter attracted other matter. Einstein's GR does. Matter warps the shape of space. And energy has an equivalence to matter ( e= mc^2) - so that means a sphere of energy would alter the path of passing matter as well - just by being intensely "hot".

And in describing the physical world - all this seems to work.

That's about where special and general relativity theory stand. Explanation. But as edifices of human thought, they are as excellent as anything ever produced.

Is there no argument about either in the science community?

I wouldn't say that. There have been periods of neglect between 1915 and the current day, because GR seemed to be removed from practical application other than an explanation for stellar evolution or making bombs. But there have been controversies within it.

In recent years my e-mail box has been stuffed with arguments about the nature of GR and the discussions have been heated. One that is easier to characterize than most is the issue of inertia and Mach's contribution to Einstein's thought. Since Einstein explained attraction of bodies there was still the question of where does inertia or centrifugal force come from? If a bar bell with two masses were rotated in space, an inhabitant on one of the ( balanced ) pair would feel accelerations. He might become dizzy as he watched the spin of the fixed stars. Mach attributes this effect to the fixed stars, the entire mass of the universe causing a resistance....

OK. Now what if there weren't any? You wouldn't be able to tell if you were spinning or not. What if there were fewer or farther away? Would the acceleration be less. There are arguments pro or con or whether the effect is attributable to the total mass ( and energy) at all. But would either answer overthrow GR? Hardly.

Researching this question I found that Mach was a proponent of positivism. Which is to say that he did not believe in atomistic theory since there was no "observational" evidence for them in the 19th century. So he advised Einstein accordingly. Einstein at first adhered to his general advice, but broke with him later. On the other hand, Thompson in England attributed experimental results to a particle he named the "electron". Kaufman in Germany with better instruments and procedures saw the same phenomena more clearly, but discovered nothing. He was a positivist.

I gotta go...

11

Egyptian Timeline Research

by konceptual99 in

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23947820.

it is suggesting that the accepted dates for the egyptian timelines need to change.

does anyone have a more informed and scholarly view on this?.

kepler

Wow!

I used to think that the Egyptian timeline discrepancy with JW beliefs was simply that they were about 300 years off in the events during the New Kingdom, the time when Moses and Joshua were supposedly on the move. But then, when you add all the Flood and Tower of Babel inferences from the Society, you can see no matter of subtlety left here. Tthis is the realm of the looney bin.

Five years ago, when it might have made a difference, when I was watching someone jump back into this, I wish I had been aware of all this.

Thanks for digging this up.

24

is there any biblical event that has a universally accepted date on which it occurred?

by jeremiah18:5-10 in

i'm intrigued by the whole "bible chronology" topic, but have never really dug into it because to put any of it together you need a historically reliable starting point.

this wasn't a problem as a practicing jw because you just assumed their dates were right.

i would like for someone to give me one event described in the bible that is universally established and accepted historically that i can use as a reliable starting point.

kepler

I don't think anyone mentioned Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem recounted in Isaiah chapter 39 and 2nd Kings. Sennacherib gave his own account and his mishaps dealing with Egypt on his own obelisk. Our Biblical accounts have less provenance when you consider that Isaiah and 2nd Kings are almost the same, word for word. Did Isaiah write Kings, or did the chronicles of write Isaiah? No big deal except if you believe Isaiah wrote everything in Isaiah because that's its title.

Books I and II of Maccabees describe numerous events correlated by Josephus in his account of the Jewish War describing the siege and destruction of Jerusalem ( 70 AD) already mentioned. Seleucid King Antiochus IV Epiphanes lived, reigned, desecrated the Temple and put down a Jewish rebellion in the 160s BC. Re-examining it, the writing is clear, blunt and devoid of mystery or miracle - save for the lamps and their oil burning for days and instituting millenia of Channuka observances.

The issue, of course, is what constitutes an historical event written in the Bible. Many of the Bibles compiled throughout the world, which included for some time KJV, included Maccabees I & II under the title of deutero-canonical. Others no longer retain them, as well as other chapters that throw spanners into the works of theological sand castles. For example, the 14th chapter of Daniel: "When King Astyages joined his ancestors Cyrus of Persia succeeded him. Daniel was very close to the king, who respected more than any of his other friends..."

Well, forget for a moment about whether or not Daniel served more rulers of Babylon than Talleyrand did with Parisian kings and Emperors or whether he was any more than a fictional hero.

Who was Astyages?

According to Herodotus and other sources, the King of the Medes.

Once again. Who succeeded him?

Cyrus the Persian.

What about Darius the Mede?

Read a good translation of Thucydides and ask yourself who was king when the Greeks fended off at Marathon an invading force they characterized as "Medes".

Then tell me all about 2520 days.

49

JW. org: "No, we are not a cult. We do not look to any human as our leader."

by Faithful Witness in

i know this has been rehashed, time and again, but i saw this interesting blip on jw.org last night, and did a little thinking about it.... jw.

org answers the important question that so many have... are jehovah's witnesses a cult?.

jehovah's witnesses do not look to any human as their leader.

kepler

Question:

"How many Jehovah's Witnesses does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Answer:

"I don't know. What does the WatchTower say?

Acceptable alternative:

"I don't know. But I can go to the Kingdom Hall, do some research for you and find out."

Some other questions:

"I appreciate this opportunity to join an Organization that promises me that I will be able to see all my dead relatives again. It's as inviting as an offer the Unification Church once gave me. But my relatives who passed on weren't JWs either. How will I get to see them if I understand this organization correctly?

And if they didn't have to join under pain of death, then why do I?

Why do I have to distribute a magazine that I am not allowed to comment on except to say that it's God's word and explains God's word better than God's word itself?

If I look to a printing press full of anonymous, spiteful and deceitful articles, instead of an individual human leader, will that make me less a member of a cult?

If I belong to an organization that throws away its previous human leaders such as Russell and Rutherford much the same way that Soviet Marxism threw away Lenin and Stalin in exchange for more shadowy bureaucrats or theocrats, will that make me less a member of a cult?

How is this viewpoint different, say, from scientology or the black muslims?

Am I a little hard on the organization?

Yes. For personal reasons.