hi friends,.
i have been overwhelmed by the number of witnesses contacting me on the net lately.
traffic to the site has more than tripled since feb. 1999, and i am getting tons of email every day.
>No offense to you or John, but, are you gay?
What was your point on that one Cygnus? I am beginning to suspect you are a real jerk. What you did was NO CLASS and if my guess is correct, you did it because Randy is a born again Christian.
Do you ever actually contribute to this forum?
Rex
i wanted to pass along this personal experience.. the other day, my wife called me on the phone while i was at work.
keep in mind that she's unfortunately a blind jwfollowwhatevertheysay type.
she was all worked up.
>Now how many books written by respected Evolutionary scientists have you read?
The keyword is 'respected' and the usual defenition of that is: those who wholeheartedly support MY world view. What I want to believe.
Right, Rem?
Rex
i just read this article in the chicago sun times.
when i started reading the parents were religious and then saw home-schooling, i had a gut feeling they were jw's.
i read on and found out i was right.
That's it, Andee.
Paint all fundy Christians with the same brush of smear and slander. No one advocates abusive behavior except abusers.
Nothing beyond a hand or paddle used on the rear is needed but certainly one can't hit any child in anger. Physical punishment is NEVER advocated as the first option, fundy or not.
Parents in families for thousands of years have used some form of physical punishment to correct children. We've got schools that are zoos from total lack of any correction, corporal or non-corporal. People are raising criminals that WE are going to have to pay for, lock up or get mugged/killed by. What's better, a well-placed swat and parental love now or a prison cell later?
Rex
ok, jesus refers to god as his father.
jesus also refers to himself as god saying they are one.
john 14 can i have some other opinions on this.
Here ya go!
http://www.watchman.org/jw/answers.htm Answering Watchtower Objections
http://www.gospelcom.net/apologeticsindex/t03.html The Biblical Basis of the Doctrine of the Trinity by Robert Bowman
http://www.gospelcom.net/apologeticsindex/t10.html The Doctrine of the Trinity
http://answering-islam.org.uk/Trinity/beckwith.html The Trinity by Francis J Beckwith
http://www.probe.org/docs/bel-trin.html Why We Should Believe in the Trinity Pat Zuckeran
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/9t8/9t8072.html Writing the Trinity Philip Yancey
http://www.atlantaapologist.org/Sharp.html A Bicentennial Defense of Granville Sharp's Argument for the Deity of Christ.
Lots of good Russellite/arian debunking here. JWs are just plain wrong. They have never had any real scholars and I include the most recent well known apologists, Stafford and Furuli.
Rex
i was just wondering about some points in the bible... no, i'm not saying there's a contradiction, i'm trying to find a reasonable answer here.... anyone remember when those two kids started to insult... elijah i believe?
and then he called god on them and a bear killed not only them, but also hundreds more???
jeez.. okay, that's one thing.
For the Junior Agnostics,
Since the same questions get asked over and over, wrong context, wrong facts, time after time, you can check out this site and do your own research.
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/topix.html
All of the objections about God's judgements are moot since He determines our life's end anyways. Whining about the exposed warts of Biblical characters only confirms that they were real people living in a real world. Jesus took the events of Genesis and the rest of the Bible as literal facts, He proved Himself God in the flesh by His resurrection, therefore any claims against the Bible MUST be false.....
Let's see, did I miss anything?
Rex
the thread started by mr moe http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=15635&site=3 has occupied my thoughts for a considerable while today.
fortunately, i'm off sick, so have the luxury of some free time!.
for some reason, that subject really got to me.
Hi Unc,
>Judeo/christian religion before seeing Paul for the scheming anti-jesus Roman he truly was.
Paul wrote the theology of the church and it lines up perfectly with scripture, including the gospels.
>Mohammed- 'My teachings lead to the attainment of truth'
Buddha- 'The truth has been revealed to me'
Jesus- 'I am the truth'
Lao tzu- 'be'
...and the only one to back up His claims with miracles, including His own resurrection was Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Rex
this article, which mentions the recent probable discovery of a comet impact crater in iraq around the time for the biblical flood, might interest some on this board.. .
http://space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth/comet_bronzeage_011113-1.html.
i personally believe the myth of a global flood is nothing more than ancient legends but then we now know that the earth is routinely blasted by fairly large asteroids and comets that can release the energy of 10 million atomic bombs and dramatically effect life on earth.
You guys like to toss around words like "debunk" all the time.Anytime someone writes a book it is the "final word". What you don't realize is that the same 'geology' for "no flood" is also applied to "the flood". You think science has it all figured out? Just look at it every ten years and see that it changes even faster than the Watchtower publications. LOL
Rex
that's right, read it for yourselves, you other christians.
our resident theological authority could not come up w a single non-pagan original christian concept.. 'why in the world would you expect christianity not to contain the truth gleaned from paganistic beliefs.'.
see the complete thread at:.
Hi Jan,
I have a very expensive and reputable Catholic university about 5 miles from me. If they have the type of scholarship that made up the Jesus Seminar gang (I hope they don't), then I say 'no thanks'. My friend, you applaud some of the most biased scholarship today as being 'reputable' when all they are doing is promoting their own agenda, ala, Bishop Spong.
You don't even seem to recognize moderate scholarship as legitimate and I can't understand you casually dismissing valid reasoning just because it is 'fifty years old'. Just my view, no judgement of you.
As usual, we part disagreed. But that's OK.
Rex
that's right, read it for yourselves, you other christians.
our resident theological authority could not come up w a single non-pagan original christian concept.. 'why in the world would you expect christianity not to contain the truth gleaned from paganistic beliefs.'.
see the complete thread at:.
Here's some more valid infor for ya, SS:
http://www.bloomington.in.us/~lgthscac/monotheism.htm
Some of the text:
That is also made very clear in the writings of a modern writer, Don Richardson. In his book Eternity In Their Hearts, he challenges the smug conclusions of scholars, Huxley, Spencer, Tylor, and others who believed: "They had thoroughly debunked all pretensions about the supernatural origin of religion. Religion, they claimed, evolved mentally just as biological forms evolved physically.
Back on the Kalahari Desert, in the Ituri forest, and innumberable other locations, however; the young anthropologists were getting down to a deeper level of questioning. They would ask the animists: "By the way, who made the world?" and were startled to hear them respond, often with a happy smile, by naming a single Being who lived in the sky.
"Is he good or bad?" was a usual second question.
"Good, of course", was the invariable reply. "Show me the idol you use to represent him", the researcher might ask. "What idol? Don't you know that he must never be represented by an idol?"
(Wow! Isn't that the first of the Ten Commandments?)
This of course opposes the teachings of many modern scholars. However, as Don Richardson says: "They began discovering what thousands of missionaries had already known for a hundred years - that about 90% of the world's folk religions are permeated with monotheistic presuppositions.
"They knew, of course, that Huxley, Tylor and the others would be disappointed, not to mention embarrassed. Some researchers may have shelved this aspect of their research to avoid embarrassing their high priests. In any case, these later revelations did not find their way into early textbooks. The result: Anthropology and the public developed a collective "blind spot!" Andrew Lang was alone in protesting the suppression of this contradicting data."
Finally, Dr. Wilhelm Schmidt, an Austrian, set out in the 1920's to compile every "alias of the Almighty" discovered by explorers around the world. It took Schmidt an amazing six volumes totalling 4,500 pages to detail them all! A minimum of a thousand more examples have come to light since then. An approximate 90 percent or more of the folk religions on this planet contain clear acknowledgment of the existence of one Supreme God! Schmidt's classic "Der Ursprung der Gottesidee" (The Origin of the Concept of God) was finally published in 1934.
He pays tribute to Andrew Lang before him for, in anthropologist Gordon Fraser's words, presenting to the public the facts of the matter, when it was almost intellectual suicide to oppose the doctrine of evolution and its high priests. Fraser himself, also spent much of his life extending Lang's and Schmidt's research. G. Foucart's treatment of the subject in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics further confirms the conclusions of these three unblinded men: "The nature, role, and characteristics of this universal sky-god may be concealed under the most diverse forms, but he is always more or less recognisable to the historian of religions and always identical in essential definition ... The sky-god has reigned everywhere. His kingdom still covers the whole of the uncivilised world. (He reigns over much of the civilized world as well as under different names.) No historical or proto-historical motive can be assigned as a cause, and neither the migration of races nor the diffusion of myths and folklore affords the slightest justification of the fact. The universality of the sky-god and the uniformity of his essential characteristics are the logical consequence of the uniformity of the primitive system of cosmogony."
"King Solomon said it much more concisely: "(God) has also put eternity in the hearts of men!" Ecclesiastes 3:11,
Don Richardson elaborates with tribe after tribe, even showing that there were hymns with theology that was clearly consistent with the fact of one true God. Here is one selection, from the Karen people of Burma:
"Y'wa is eternal, his life is long.
One aeon - he dies not!
Two aeons - he dies not!
He is perfect in meritorious attributes.
Aeons follow aeons - he dies not!"
(Y'wa = Yhwh?)
Such people actually refer to Him as Creator. Another hymn extolled Y'wa as Creator:
"Who created the world in the beginning?
Y'wa created the world in the beginning!
Y'wa appointed everything.
Y'wa is unsearchable!"
Still another hymn conveyed deep appreciation for Y'wa's omnipotence and omniscience, combined with acknowledgment of a lack of relationship with Him:
"The omnipotent is Y'wa; him have we not believed.
Y'wa created men anciently;
He has a perfect knowledge of all things!
Y'wa created men at the beginning;
He knows all things to the present time!
O my children and grandchildren!
The earth is the treading place of the feet of Y'wa.
And heaven is the place where he sits.
He sees all things, and we are manifest to him."
It almost seems that such people have the Bible record of creation before them. Don Richardson states: "The Karen story of man's falling away from God contains stunning parallels to Genesis Chapter 1:
"Y'wa formed the world originally.
He appointed food and drink.
He appointed the "fruit of trial."
He gave detailed order.
Mu-kaw-lee deceived two persons.
He caused them to eat the fruit of the tree of trial.
They obeyed not; they believed not Y'wa ...
When they ate the fruit of trial,
They became subject to sickness, aging, and death ..."
(Ouch! That's very close to Genesis 'myths' being actual origins!)
These Karen people had obstinately adhered to their own folk religion dispite high pressured attempts by the Burmese to convert them to Buddhism" ... and they had, throughout their generations, from the inception of their history, expected a white brother, one who would bring a book authored by Y'wa the Supreme God.
Don Richardson demonstrates that the Greek term Deos (God) has gone through pronunciation/ geographical changes, to be Deos in one area, Deus in another, and Theos in a third. It was only a minor step to Zeus, a major "God" in Greek mythology. The meanings have gradually changed, but the original concept is readily traced to one common source. This world-wide belief in monotheism explains how "illiterate yet practical minded, close-to-the-earth Santa/folk religionists insist so firmly that there is in fact an omnipotent and moral beneficent Creator."
(Do you remember Paul's exposition in Romans, "those who had no law being a law unto themselves"? Could Yahweh really be universal in all ancient religious 'myths'?)
Don Richardson shows that such findings have "disturbed evolutionists more than any other cultural phenomenon." Evolutionary theorists hold that the concept of one Supreme Being was reached only after proceeding through more lowly beliefs such as fetishes, nature gods, and polytheism. They now find that the more "primitive" the tribe, the more advanced, their ideas about one true God - monotheism!
I'm sure there will be rebuttals but maybe this will open some eyes of ones who have banked on the relgion of science and it's main doctrine of evolution.
Rex
that's right, read it for yourselves, you other christians.
our resident theological authority could not come up w a single non-pagan original christian concept.. 'why in the world would you expect christianity not to contain the truth gleaned from paganistic beliefs.'.
see the complete thread at:.
Here's the flip side of that argument from one of your favorite sources, the Catholic encyclopedia:
PRIMITIVE MONOTHEISM
Was monotheism the religion of our first parents? Many Evolutionists and Rationalist Protestants answer No. Rejecting the very notion of positive, Divine revelation, they hold that the mind of man was in the beginning but little above that of his ape-like ancestors, and hence incapable of grasping so intellectual a conception as that of Monotheism.
They assert that the first religious notions entertained by man in his upward course towards civilization were superstitions of the grossest kind. In a word, primitive man was, in their opinion, a savage, differing but little from existing savages in his intellectual, moral, and religious life. Catholic doctrine teaches that the religion of our first parents was monotheistic and supernatural, being the result of Divine revelation. Not that primitive man without Divine help could not possibly have come to know and worship God. The first man, like his descendants to-day, had by nature the capacity and the aptitude for religion. Being a man in the true sense, with the use of reason, he had the tendency then, as men have now, to recognize in the phenomena of nature the workings of a mind and a will vastly superior to his own. But, as he lacked experience and scientific knowledge, it was not easy for him to unify the diverse phenomena of the visible world. Hence he was not without danger of going astray in his religious interpretation of nature. He was liable to miss the important truth that, as nature is a unity, so the God of nature is one. Revelation was morally necessary for our first parents, as it is for men to-day, to secure the possession of true monotheistic belief and worship.
The conception that Almighty God vouchsafed such a revelation is eminently reasonable to everyone who recognizes that the end of man is to know, love, and serve God. It is repugnant to think that the first generations of men were left to grope in the dark, ignorant alike of the true God and of their religious duties, while at the same time it was God's will that they should know and love Him. The instruction in religion which children receive from their parents and superiors, anticipating their powers of independent reasoning, and guiding them to a right knowledge of God, being impossible for our first parents, was not without a fitting substitute. They were set right from the first in the knowledge of their religious duties by a Divine revelation. It is a Catholic dogma, intimately connected with the dogma of original sin and with that of the Atonement, that our first parents were raised to the state of sanctifying grace and were destined to a supernatural end, namely, the beatific vision of God in heaven. This necessarily implies supernatural faith, which could come only by revelation.
Nor is there anything in sound science or philosophy to invalidate this teaching that Monotheistic belief was imparted by God to primitive man. While it may be true that human life in the beginning was on a comparatively low plane of material culture, it is also true that the first men were endowed with reason, i.e., with the ability to conceive with sufficient distinctness of a being who was the cause of the manifold phenomena presented in nature. On the other hand, a humble degree of culture along the lines of art and industry is quite compatible with right religion and morality, as is evident in the case of tribes converted to Catholicism in recent times; while retaining much of their rude and primitive mode of living, they have reached very clear notions concerning God and shown remarkable fidelity in the observance of His law. As to the bearing of the Evolutionistic hypothesis on this question, see FETISHISM.
It is thus quite in accordance with the accredited results of physical science to maintain that the first man, created by God, was keen of mind as well as sound of body, and that, through Divine instruction, he began life with right notions of God and of his moral and religious duties. This does not necessarily mean that his conception of God was scientifically and philosophically profound. Here it is that scholars are wide of the mark when they argue that Monotheism is a conception that implies a philosophic grasp and training of mind absolutely impossible to primitive man.
The notion of the supreme God needed for religion is not the highly metaphysical conception demanded by right philosophy. If it were, but few could hope for salvation. The God of religion is the unspeakably great Lord on whom man depends, in whom he recognizes the source of his happiness and perfection; He is the righteous Judge, rewarding good and punishing evil; the loving and merciful Father, whose ear is ever open to the prayers of His needy and penitent children. Such a conception of God can be readily grasped by simple, unphilosophic minds -- by children, by the unlettered peasant, by the converted savage.
Nor are these notions of a supreme being utterly lacking even where barbarism still reigns. Bishop Le Roy, in his interesting work, "Religion des primitifs" (Paris, 1909), and Mr. A. Lang, in his "Making of Religion" (New York, 1898), have emphasized a point too often overlooked by students of religion, namely, that with all their religious crudities and superstitions, such low-grade savages as the Pygmies of the Northern Congo, the Australians, and the natives of the Andaman Islands entertain very noble conceptions of the Supreme Deity. To say, then, that primitive man, fresh from the hand of God, was incapable of monotheistic belief, even with the aid of Divine revelation, is contrary to well-ascertained fact. From the opening chapters of Genesis we gather that our first parents recognized God to be the author of all things, their Lord and Master, the source of their happiness, rewarding good and punishing evil. The simplicity of their life made the range of their moral obligation easy of recognition. Worship was of the simplest kind.
There are almost always two valid sides to any argument. I'll try to come up with some more non-protestant views that are more close to our specific needs.
Later,
Rex
