Posts by Dunning-Kruger

98

Evolution Deniers - An Endangered Species

by cofty in

evolution explains how everything descended from a common ancestor over millions of years.

creationists only seem to want to talk about what came before that common ancestor.

just for the sake of discussion let's pretend that the following is true.

Dunning-Kruger

I don't want to get involved in any argument between Ruby and Cofty. The point I was making in my earlier post is that, even though Muslims are commonly pigeon-holed as creationists, that is an over-simplification. Clearly some devout and educated Muslims do not feel any inconsistency with accepting the science.

I was just adding the point to show the pool of creationists was even smaller than Cofty was suggesting.

I do agree with Ruby that, in my limited observation, Muslims don't read the Quran etc in a "sola scriptura" manner. For example, the dress requirements for women (burkas etc) are mostly from tradition, not from the Quran or other texts. But I want to stress again that I am no expert on this.

98

Evolution Deniers - An Endangered Species

by cofty in

evolution explains how everything descended from a common ancestor over millions of years.

creationists only seem to want to talk about what came before that common ancestor.

just for the sake of discussion let's pretend that the following is true.

Dunning-Kruger

Only Muslims in and Protestant Evangelicals are still fighting against it.

I live in the Middle East. I am not Muslim, and my observations are anecdotal, but plenty devout Muslims who pray 5 times a day accept the science of evolution, and see no contradiction. I am not an expert on why, but was told the Koran is unclear on the topic.

On the other hand, there are other Muslims who do believe creation, if you ask them. I have seen pseudo-textbooks written for kids try to explain away the fossil record, etc, but I am pretty sure none of that is taught in schools.

There is a third group (probably the biggest) who have not been exposed to Western debate about the issue, and do not know whether their religion contradicts the theory of evolution.

From what I have read, there are flat-earth Muslims as well (based on certain Koran passages) but I haven't met any.

I know the official standard view in the West is that Muslims are creationists, but I wonder if that is because in the past, the West pigeon-holed Islam as creationist, Muslims with contact with the West adopted that interpretation as their own, and it has filtered back to the Middle East.

26

Every Country and Land... Except Oman

by ILoveTTATT2 in

jw
friends

so the other day someone asked me what use was it to make the list of countries in which there have been reports.... well... to know that, as far as i can tell, there has never been preaching done in oman.. it has never appeared in any report, and the reports go back to 1926!.

all other countries and lands have appeared, but not oman.. so there... first useful fact about the watchtower that we can get from 90 years of data..

Dunning-Kruger

Oman is probably one of the "Thirty other lands". I understand there are two congregations in Oman, made up entirely of expats. One English, and one in one of the Indian languages (I can't remember which). They don't dare evangelise to locals.

29

Watchtower is cashing in on China

by nakanozzi in

japanese brother in china recently revealed thatmany wealthy chinese are interested in watchtower’s teaching and donating money.ex-cos and ex-district os are now preaching undercover in china,and, numberes of special pioneers in china are growing !

Dunning-Kruger

The 2015 Yearbook reports that there were 35,795 publishers in the "30 Other Lands". I have lived in 2 of those 30 Other Lands, both middle-eastern. One of them has perhaps 500 to 600 JW's. I doubt any other middle-eastern country has that many. The other has 200 max, and I can say that with a high degree of confidence.

As a result, the majority of those 35,795 must be in China. (Where else could they be?) Remember, a fair proportion of that number would be evangelising foreigners, not Chinese citizens.

Also, the growth reported in the "30 Other Lands" is supposedly 7.3%. I can't see that growth occurring in the middle-east, so again, it must be mostly China.

in any event, in a country with 20 million plus Christians, there is inevitable going to be some JW's, so I believe the OP.

47

Help finding a video of GB member saying that Jehovah may not really be God's name

by mamacita29 in

jw
friends

hi everyone i'm at work and need to show this video to a jw.

i saw it a few weeks ago i think it was geoffry jackson who said that jehovah may or may not be gods real name but we use it anyways.

can someone help me find that video?

Dunning-Kruger

Finkelstein said:

The tradition, which was in effect at the time of the Messiah, of teaching the people that the name “Yahweh” was too sacred to pronounce, and to speak this name was blasphemy...

Exactly. Parts of the Hebrew scriptures written well before then mention the tetragram, but it disappears from scriptures written around Jesus's time.

In fact Islam (7th Century and influenced by early Christianity) has a similar stance. Giving God (Allah) a name is blasphemous because it implies other gods exist.

Also, I note in the Koran, Jesus is effectively pronounced Issa or Essa. It seems to be just an anglicisation to add the "J" to names such as Yahweh, Issa, Ioshua etc. "Jehovah" only starts to appear from around the middle ages.

I am not sure which point johnamos is trying to make. If johnamos is trying to justify the use of "Jehovah", relying on the NWT "translation" to make his point is just a bootstrap argument. If johnamos is trying to justify the use of "Yahweh", well that term already appears in most, (probably all) bible translations in certain parts of the Hebrew scriptures, anyway.

32

Apathy trolley chat

by punkofnice in

i was in a different city this weekend so i decided to natter to 2 bored jws on the apathy trolley.i just nattered, nothing thought provoking or anti witness.

i was waiting for someone so hard time to spare.what struck me was, that no matter how many times i said that i don't believe in god, they spoke to me as if i did.

they kept asking me how god would feel about stuff.

Dunning-Kruger

One thing that I have noticed is that Witnesses are quite good at coming up with expressions that might stumble another sort of Christian out of their faith and into Watchtower, but they are pretty lame at intellectually engaging with atheists. Or Muslims or Hindus, for that matter.

It seems to me that if you don't or no longer believe the bible is inspired, you are pretty immune to their "bag of tricks", like the ones described by the OP.