Shining One

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Posts by Shining One

• 
  21

  Terry, Leolani: your flat-earth lie is debunked..

  by Shining One in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/98216/1692264/post.ashx#1692264 .

  go here then you will find the link.

  enjoy the read.

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  Shining One

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/98216/1692264/post.ashx#1692264
  
  Go here then you will find the link. Enjoy the read.
  Rex
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  27

  Dembski's defense: quote and link(s) for the non-dogmatic

  by Shining One in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  http://www.designinference.com/documents/2000.11.id_coming_clean.htm .

  ill come back to what it means for design in nature to have empirical content, but i want for the moment to stay with the worry that intelligent design is but a disguised form of creationism.

  ask any leader in the design movement whether intelligent design is stealth creationism, and theyll deny it.

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  Shining One

  >Write it up, get it peer reviewed and published and lo and behold all those 'dogmatic' scientists will roll over.
  
  We've seen the 'feeding frenzy' that evelopes anyone who actually does this!
  Rex
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  44

  Battle Royal.

  by Daunt in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  when i told my mom and dad that i did not believe in the truth, i was jumping into unknown territory.

  it has just never happened before.

  now my parents are trying harder than ever to bring me back into the ranks.

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  Shining One

  Let's deal with the pesky passages in Psalms and Matthew now, from the above link 'tektonics':
  
  Ps. 103:12 As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. A minor point on this verse - it is sometimes alleged that this indicates a flat earth, for on a globe, east does meet west. The Hebrew terms here - mazrach and ma'arab - are equivalent to saying, "the rising" and "the setting", so that it is essentially like our "sunrise" and "sunset". Obviously, we still use this sort of phenomenonological language today, so this verse can hardly be criticized on the same basis. Even so, it is a bit tricky to assert that abstract concepts like "east" and "west" are like physical objects that can meet around a globe and come to a grinding halt! One would suggest that they could proceed around the globe infinitely since they have nothing to run into! As a side note, we should consider the verse previous to this one:
  
  Ps. 103:11 For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. So then - this reckons as a parallel to the next verse; and since the idea the Psalmist is putting across is that God's mercy and forgiveness are INFINITE, this seems to argue for an infinite distance along the earth - which would work either on a globe OR on a flat earth (after all, east and west don't stop at the edge, either!) - and for an infinitely high sky, we might add, as we proceed to...
  
  Finally, we note this passage:
  Matthew 4:8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them...This verse in Matthew by no means implies a flat earth, nor a monstrous mountain large enough to oversee the earth. Indeed, I have always thought that the trip to the mountain was a cheap psychological ploy by Satan -- indeed, given what we know of the honor and shame dialectic of that social world, it fits as the premise of an "honor challenge" by placing Jesus in a pre-eminent position -- and that the showing of the kingdoms was accomplished by means of projecting images of some sort, as on a computer screen! Indeed, this is suggested by the parallel verse in Luke 4:5 -
  "The devil led him up to a high place, and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world."
  However, as anyone who has climbed mountains knows - and the writer of Matthew surely knew, if he lived in the area around Judea, as Matthew did - the higher up you go, the smaller things down below get, by your perspective. So it seems unlikely that (even if he did believe it a flat earth, personally) Matthew's offering is not compatible with a globe. Note that even on a flat earth, a high mountain would be a very poor place to observe the kingdoms of the world "in their glory." Furthermore, if Matthew was implying that a mountain existed from which all the world was visible, then obviously, the mountain would be visible from all parts of the world, and Matthew's reader's would roll over laughing and throw his book in the garbage! It is ludicrous to suggest that Matthew believed such a mountain existed. (The mountain in question was probably Mt. Quarantania, not far from the site where John probably baptized. It commands an incredible view of the Jordan Valley. Monkeys who further wonder who gave this account seem to forget that Jesus was perfectly capable of doing so after the fact to his disciples.)
  Matthew 24:30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
  Revelation 1:7 Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.
  Those verses are the 'bottom line' and in reality metaphors about the second coming of Jesus. They are also the verses that Jesus quoted from Isaiah that caused the Jews to deliver Him up for crucixtion.
  Rex
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  44

  Battle Royal.

  by Daunt in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  when i told my mom and dad that i did not believe in the truth, i was jumping into unknown territory.

  it has just never happened before.

  now my parents are trying harder than ever to bring me back into the ranks.

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  Shining One

  Have you had enough yet, Leo? What about you, Terry?
  http://tektonics.org/af/earthshape.html
  Perhaps you need to spend less time congratulating each other on how smart you are and actually do some research at sites other than skpetic sites? LOL
  Rex
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  44

  Battle Royal.

  by Daunt in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  when i told my mom and dad that i did not believe in the truth, i was jumping into unknown territory.

  it has just never happened before.

  now my parents are trying harder than ever to bring me back into the ranks.

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  Shining One

  A little more info for you, Leo:
  In the Old Testament, Job 26:7 explains that the earth is suspended in space—the obvious comparison being with the spherical sun and moon. By 150 B.C., the Greek astronomer Eratosthenes had already measured the 25,000-mile circumference of the earth. The round shape of our planet was a conclusion easily drawn by watching ships disappear over the horizon and also by observing eclipse shadows, and we can assume that such information was well known to New Testament writers. Earth's spherical shape was, of course, also understood by Christopher Columbus. Some people may have thought the earth was flat, but certainly not the great explorers. Some Bible critics have claimed that Revelation 7:1 assumes a flat earth since the verse refers to angels standing at the "four corners" of the earth. Actually, the reference is to the cardinal directions: north, south, east, and west. Similar terminology is often used today when we speak of the sun's rising and setting, even though the earth, not the sun, is doing the moving. Bible writers used the "language of appearance," just as people always have. Without it, the intended message would be awkward at best and probably not understood clearly.
  This is what I mean by the statement that 'skeptics deliberatly ignore context'.
  Rex
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  44

  Battle Royal.

  by Daunt in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  when i told my mom and dad that i did not believe in the truth, i was jumping into unknown territory.

  it has just never happened before.

  now my parents are trying harder than ever to bring me back into the ranks.

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  Shining One

  Hey Leo,
  Here ya go. Read this link and see what a pack of lies you two have bought into:
  http://id-www.ucsb.edu/fscf/library/RUSSELL/FlatEarth.html
  
  The Bible is not intended as a scientific textbook. You are talking about passages that either describe something from the subjective view of a hebrew person of that time, in that age or have been taken out of context. One of the big problems with skeptics is their consistence at ignoring the context in type, style, historicity and the 'audience intended/author intent' of scripture. You can't denegrate scripture because it uses the viewpoint of the writer at the time.
  Christianity has often been held responsible for promoting the flat Earth theory. Yet it was only a handful of so-called intellectual scholars throughout the centuries, claiming to represent the Church, who held to a flat Earth. Most of these were ignored by the Church, yet somehow their writings made it into early history books as being the ‘official Christian viewpoint’.
  
  Lactantius
  The earliest of these flat-Earth promoters was the African Lactantius (AD 245–325), a professional rhetorician who converted to Christianity mid-life. He rejected all the Greek philosophers, and in doing so also rejected a spherical Earth. His views were considered heresy by the Church Fathers and his work was ignored until the Renaissance (at which time some humanists revived his writings as a model of good Latin, and of course, his flat Earth view also was revived).
  
  Cosmas Indicopleustes and Church Fathers
  Next was sixth century Eastern Greek Christian, Cosmas Indicopleustes, who claimed the Earth was flat and lay beneath the heavens (consisting of a rectangular vaulted arch). His work also was soundly rejected by the Church Fathers, but liberal historians have usually claimed his view was typical of that of the Church Fathers. Many such historians have simply followed the pattern of others without checking the facts. In fact, most of the Church Fathers did not address the issue of the shape of the Earth, and those who did regarded it as ‘round’ or spherical.
  
  Washington Irving and Rip Van Winkle
  In 1828, American writer Washington Irving (author of Rip Van Winkle) published a book entitled The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. It was a mixture of fact and fiction, with Irving himself admitting he was ‘apt to indulge in the imagination’. Its theme was the victory of a lone believer in a spherical Earth over a united front of Bible-quoting, superstitious ignoramuses, convinced the Earth was flat. In fact, the well-known argument at the Council of Salamanca was about the dubious distance between Europe and Japan which Columbus presented — it had nothing to do with the shape of the Earth.
  
  Later writers repeated the error
  In 1834, the anti-Christian Letronne falsely claimed that most of the Church Fathers, including Augustine, Ambrose and Basil, held to a flat Earth. His work has been repeatedly cited as ‘reputable’ ever since. In the late nineteenth century, the writings of John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White were responsible for promoting the myth that the church taught a flat Earth. Both had Christian backgrounds, but rejected these early in life. Englishman Draper convinced himself that with the downfall of the Roman Empire the ‘affairs of men fell into the hands of ignorant and infuriated ecclesiastics, parasites, eunuchs and slaves’ — these were the ‘Dark Ages’. Draper’s work, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874), was directed particularly against the Roman Church, and was a best seller. Meanwhile White (who founded Cornell University as the first explicitly secular university in the United States), published the two-volume scholarly work History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, in 1896. Both men incorrectly portrayed a continuing battle through the Christian era between the defenders of ignorance and the enlightened rationalists. In fact, not only did the church not promote the flat Earth, it is clear from such passages as Isaiah 40:22 that the Bible implies it is spherical. (Non-literal figures of speech such as the ‘four corners of the Earth’ are still used today.)
  
  Encyclopedias erase the myth.
  While many will have lost their faith through the writing of such men as Irving, Draper and White, it is gratifying to know that the following encyclopædias now present the correct account of the Columbus affair: The New Encyclopædia Britannica (1985), Colliers Encyclopædia (1984), The Encyclopedia Americana (1987) and The World Book for Children (1989).
  
  Here is some more for you, Leo and Terry:
  
  Flat-earth heyday came with Darwin
  The idea that the earth is flat is a modern concoction that reached its peak only after Darwinists tried to discredit the Bible, an American history professor says.
  Jeffrey Burton Russell is a professor of history at the University of California in Santa Barbara. He says in his book Inventing the Flat Earth—written for the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s journey to America in 1492—that through antiquity and up to the time of Columbus, ‘nearly unanimous scholarly opinion pronounced the earth spherical.’
  Russell says there is nothing in the documents from the time of Columbus or in early accounts of his life that suggests any debate about the roundness of the earth. He believes a major source of the myth came from the creator of the Rip Van Winkle story—Washington Irving—who wrote a fictitious account of Columbus’s defending a round earth against misinformed clerics and university professors.
  But Russell says the flat-earth mythology flourished most between 1870 and 1920, and had to do with the ideological setting created by struggles over evolution. He says the flat-earth myth was an ideal way to dismiss the ideas of a religious past in the name of modern science.
  Ottawa Citizen, May, 1992.
  The Bible of course teaches the correct shape of the earth. Isaiah 40:22 says God sits above ‘the circle of the earth’ (the Hebrew word for ‘circle’ can also mean a ‘sphere’). Also, Luke 17:34–36 depicts Christ’s Second Coming as happening while some are asleep at night and others are working at daytime activities in the field—an indication of a rotating earth with day and night at the same time.
  Rex
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  44

  Battle Royal.

  by Daunt in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  when i told my mom and dad that i did not believe in the truth, i was jumping into unknown territory.

  it has just never happened before.

  now my parents are trying harder than ever to bring me back into the ranks.

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  Shining One

  Why do you waste bandwidth here so much, Terry? A link would suffice. It would take hours just to go through and debunk this entire post. Some people have a life that doesn't revolve around being an ex-JW. I hope you contribute generously to Simon's costs here.
  Rex
• 
  27

  Dembski's defense: quote and link(s) for the non-dogmatic

  by Shining One in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  http://www.designinference.com/documents/2000.11.id_coming_clean.htm .

  ill come back to what it means for design in nature to have empirical content, but i want for the moment to stay with the worry that intelligent design is but a disguised form of creationism.

  ask any leader in the design movement whether intelligent design is stealth creationism, and theyll deny it.

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  Shining One

  Hey Kid-A,
  I am surprised that you did not draw the same parallel with evolution (as you did with belief in God) from your cartoon! When one thinks of the swine tooth that 'proved' evolutionary theory in the Scopes (monkey) trial the similarity is triking! Scientists has a neat text book drawing of a monkey turning into man and it was all derived from ONE PIG TOOTH. There is nothing like, 'casting your pearls before swine' is there, Kid? LOL
  Rex
• 
  27

  Dembski's defense: quote and link(s) for the non-dogmatic

  by Shining One in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  http://www.designinference.com/documents/2000.11.id_coming_clean.htm .

  ill come back to what it means for design in nature to have empirical content, but i want for the moment to stay with the worry that intelligent design is but a disguised form of creationism.

  ask any leader in the design movement whether intelligent design is stealth creationism, and theyll deny it.

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  Shining One

  TS,
  Why are you so blind to the holes in the major tenents of naturalism that make it look like swiss cheese? Is this a leftover JW thing with you, your lack of open-mindedness and utter hatred of Christianity?
  Rex
• 
  34

  From Fundementalist to Humanist

  by peacefulpete in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  .

  for your reading pleasure:.

  from fundamentalist to humanist

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  Shining One

  >WHY do you worry about us "hateful" hell-bound non-believers. We're going to get it in the end, right?
  
  Dan,
  I apologize if I have given you the wrong impression! Why would you think that I want you (or anyone else) to suffer eternal separation from God? I gain no pleasure from anyone having to face that. My thinking is nothing like many JWs express. There is real, sick joy in thinking that those who ridicule us as JWs are going to be destroyed in Armageddon. I remember the days when we used to pick out homes, cars and other possesions when some rude householder gave us the 'boot'.
  Sure, I warn people about 'mocking God' but there is no unforgivable sin until we ultimately disbelieve (John 3.17-18). I don't want anyone here to meet that fate. Nothing would please me more than to see many more people here find reasons to believe and trust Jesus as their Lord and savior.
  Grace truly is amazing. To think that any sin we commit will in fact, not hold us from heaven if we truly repent of that sin, give our life to Christ and receive His sacrifice as payment in full for all of our sins, past, present and future. Yet that is exactly what scripture teaches. No one has to earn their way to eternal life as described in Rev. 20, 21.
  Please don't mistake my defense of Christianity as some macabe desire to see vengeance. Read John 3.16, Romans 5.8; 6.23; 10.9-11; 8.1, 28; Eph. 2.8-10; Rev. 3.20. See what you find then please get back to me.
  Rex