Saename

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Posts by Saename

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  12

  JW Definition of "Apostate"

  by Saename in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  so recently, after having a conversation with a jehovah's witness, i started wondering about how jws define the term "apostate.

  " officially, every elder would tell you that an apostate is one who leaves the jehovah's witness faith.

  but did anyone else notice that this is not how they use the word colloquially—that they're sort of dishonest about it?.

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  Saename

  Here's a smile from my favourite apostate:

  
  
• 
  12

  JW Definition of "Apostate"

  by Saename in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  so recently, after having a conversation with a jehovah's witness, i started wondering about how jws define the term "apostate.

  " officially, every elder would tell you that an apostate is one who leaves the jehovah's witness faith.

  but did anyone else notice that this is not how they use the word colloquially—that they're sort of dishonest about it?.

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  Saename

  sir82, I completely agree with what you said. It perfectly describes my experience as a JW.
• 
  12

  JW Definition of "Apostate"

  by Saename in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  so recently, after having a conversation with a jehovah's witness, i started wondering about how jws define the term "apostate.

  " officially, every elder would tell you that an apostate is one who leaves the jehovah's witness faith.

  but did anyone else notice that this is not how they use the word colloquially—that they're sort of dishonest about it?.

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  Saename

  So recently, after having a conversation with a Jehovah's Witness, I started wondering about how JWs define the term "apostate." Officially, every elder would tell you that an apostate is one who leaves the Jehovah's Witness faith. But did anyone else notice that this is not how they use the word colloquially—that they're sort of dishonest about it?

  During a "debate," for lack of a better word, they would tell you that an apostate isn't someone who actively and verbally disagrees with their doctrine; it's anyone who just leaves the faith and lies about the Governing Body (etc.) in order to turn active Witnesses against Jehovah. While I was conversing with a Jehovah's Witness a few weeks ago, I told him that it's not how Jehovah's Witnesses use the term in informal situations when they want to instill in you the fear of evidence.

  When I was an unbaptized publisher (never got baptized; left before that happened), elders would often tell me not to participate in sort of online debates with other religious people and atheists. I always enjoyed intellectual discussions, so that was my "weak spot," from the JW point of view. And they would tell me that what I was doing was wrong. Why was it wrong?

  Because apostates.

  Now, here's the thing; they knew I didn't talk to the ex-JWs. Hell, I've barely even met one in any of my discussions with other religious people and atheists. I simply conversed with people who held other opinions about the Bible and God, yet they still labeled these people as "apostates." They didn't necessarily do it consciously, but they did it nonetheless.

  So what did the Witness I was conversing with tell me? He told me that this is not how they define an apostate. He told me that the official definition of an "apostate" is one who leaves the faith and lies about the Governing Body (etc.) in order to turn active Witnesses against Jehovah.

  That's their *official* definition—that's true. It's in their publications. But did you notice that that's not how they use the word in informal conversations with others? Especially when you're studying with them, they will first tell you an apostate is an ex-JW who's trying to deconvert you so that you begin to fear the word itself. Then, they would start applying this word to other people as well—maybe even unconsciously.

  Have you had this experience as well? Or is it just me? That's what I was wondering about...
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  14

  What do scriptural contradictions convey?

  by venus in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  any book that claims to be god’s word should have the minimum qualification of clarity.

  if any of its verses are open to many interpretations, it cannot be god’s word.

  god can easily be crystal clear as traffic police who puts traffic signals (red means stop, green means start …etc.

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  Saename

  To be fair, including point #3 on a list of Bible contradictions is weak argumentation. It's either dishonest or ignorant.
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  53

  JW renaming things: "It's Not this, it's ....."

  by Muddy Waters in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  this was brought up in another thread, but i thought it should have its own thread.

  feel free to add your own observations and experience.

  the jws are so duplicit, and they rename things to somehow justify their own irrationalities.

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  Saename

  I have never understood the JW practice of having a meal at Christmas. The Witnesses would claim, and still do, that this is not a significant dinner—just another dinner with friends and family. But if so, why is this dinner always better prepared than the "usual" dinner they have? The table is decorated, the best plates and cutlery sets are out, and people stay late to play all sorts of games while enjoying lots of sweats and snacks. And then they say with a straight face that they're not celebrating Christmas... How is that any different from celebrating it—just without the Christmas tree?
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  30

  Finds in Jerusalem shore up biblical account of Babylonian conquest (586 BCE date)

  by Hecce in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  this is a nice article about archaeological finds, what caught my attention is the use of 586 bce as the date for the destruction of jerusalem.. according to biblical descriptions, in 586 bce, the babylonian king nebuchadnezzar vanquished the judaean king zedekiah and razed his capital city, jerusalem.

  the babylonian captain of the guard nebuzaradan was dispatched into the city, where, as told in the book of jeremiah, he “burned the house of the lord, and the king’s house; and all the houses of jerusalem, even every great man’s house, burned he with fire.”.

  http://www.timesofisrael.com/new-jerusalem-finds-shore-up-biblical-account-of-babylonian-conquest/.

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  Saename

  In addition to the claim that the generation who saw the events of 1914 is still alive, the Watchtower also says that these people—the "little flock"—understood the significance of the year. But that's not true. At the time, the Witnesses (under a different name) believed that in 1914 the Armageddon would come. They didn't believe, at the time, that this was when Jesus became God's King in heaven. Hence, they didn't understand the significance of 1914.
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  24

  Evolution is a Fact #6 - Human Chromosome 2

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  part 1 - protein functional redundancypart 2 - dna functional redundancypart 3 - ervspart 4 - smelly genespart 5 - vitamin c.

  the big book of how to build a human - your genome - is approximately 3 billion letters long.. the text is arranged in long molecules of dna called chromosomes.

  each letter of code in a chromosome is joined to its compliment - a to t and c to g - and the whole string is arranged in the iconic double-helix shape discovered by watson and crick in 1953.. our chromosomes come in pairs, one from our father and one from our mother.

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  Saename

  A conversation I had with an Orthodox Christian on another website (Quora).

  Here's the link to the answer he wrote: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Orthodox-Christian-stance-on-evolution/answer/Evan-Rodick-1 Our conversation is in the comments section.
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  24

  Evolution is a Fact #6 - Human Chromosome 2

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  part 1 - protein functional redundancypart 2 - dna functional redundancypart 3 - ervspart 4 - smelly genespart 5 - vitamin c.

  the big book of how to build a human - your genome - is approximately 3 billion letters long.. the text is arranged in long molecules of dna called chromosomes.

  each letter of code in a chromosome is joined to its compliment - a to t and c to g - and the whole string is arranged in the iconic double-helix shape discovered by watson and crick in 1953.. our chromosomes come in pairs, one from our father and one from our mother.

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  Saename

  Er... sorry, you can disregard my last request. He's quote-mining the other sources, too...
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  24

  Evolution is a Fact #6 - Human Chromosome 2

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  part 1 - protein functional redundancypart 2 - dna functional redundancypart 3 - ervspart 4 - smelly genespart 5 - vitamin c.

  the big book of how to build a human - your genome - is approximately 3 billion letters long.. the text is arranged in long molecules of dna called chromosomes.

  each letter of code in a chromosome is joined to its compliment - a to t and c to g - and the whole string is arranged in the iconic double-helix shape discovered by watson and crick in 1953.. our chromosomes come in pairs, one from our father and one from our mother.

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  Saename

  Pretty much nobody. Just somebody I talked to. I was wondering what your response would be. I'd really like to hear your take on the second paragraph, though.
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  24

  Evolution is a Fact #6 - Human Chromosome 2

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  part 1 - protein functional redundancypart 2 - dna functional redundancypart 3 - ervspart 4 - smelly genespart 5 - vitamin c.

  the big book of how to build a human - your genome - is approximately 3 billion letters long.. the text is arranged in long molecules of dna called chromosomes.

  each letter of code in a chromosome is joined to its compliment - a to t and c to g - and the whole string is arranged in the iconic double-helix shape discovered by watson and crick in 1953.. our chromosomes come in pairs, one from our father and one from our mother.

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  Saename

  Recently I heard someone argue that the vestigial telomeres in chromosome 2 don't exist in the numbers an "evolutionist" would expect. Those vestigial telomeres, he argued, also supposedly degenerated far more than, again, an "evolutionist" would expect. Therefore, they're not vestigial telomeres but telomeric sequences found throughout chromosomes. Here's what he specifically said:

  To address the science, though, the fusion was supposedly a telomere-telomere fusion, the first documented aside from in cancer cells: “Fusion of telomeres is a rare occurrence in normal lymphoblasts and fibroblasts, although it has been observed in 20-30% of the cells of certain tumors, where it appears to be nonclonal (25-29) . . . The frequency with which telomere-telomere fusion has participated in chromosome evolution cannot readily be assessed. ” (http://www.pnas.org/content/88/2...). That is because the function of telomeres is typically to prevent fusion and is a highly unlikely way for fusion to actually occur at all—much less lead to a higher organism.
  
  Humans typically have 2500 repeats of the telomeric sequence TTAGGG (15,000 base pairs). Chimpanzees have telomeric sequences that are twice as long (Blood cell telomere lengths and shortening rates of chimpanzee and human females.). If there was a fusion, even if there had been degeneration, we could have expected thousands of repeats. However, another group found “Only 48% of the 127 repeats in RP11–395L14 and 46% of the 158 repeats in M73018 are perfect TTAGGG or TTGGGG units” (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc...). So there were few repeats to begin with (127+158=285, ~4% of the 7500 that could be expected), and most of these were degenerate. That also forces them to raise the question “If the fusion occurred within the telomeric repeat arrays less than ∼6 Mya, why are the arrays at the fusion site so degenerate? The arrays are 14% diverged from canonical telomere repeats (not shown), whereas noncoding sequence has diverged <1.5% in the ∼6 Mya since chimpanzee and humans diverged (Chen and Li 2001)” (ibid.). They come up with several explanations, but of course they have to keep riding with the Evolution assumption and can’t admit that the data just don’t fit their assumptions because they have no other option with God excluded. The Christian response that these telomeric repeats are simply normal telomeric repeats that intersperse chromosomes and that the human chromosome, though similar (as humans and chimpanzees are also outwardly similar), is unique.
  
  Furthermore, we would expect there to be little genetic function in this region, since telomeres are not active, but are expendable parts of the chromosome that only protect the rest. On the contrary, though, the region around the fusion site is functionally quite active (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc...).

  [...]

  As I said, the vestigial telomeres don't exist nearly in the numbers one would expect, and have supposedly degenerated far more than one would expect. I find it more likely that they are just telomeric sequences that are found throughout chromosomes. Most are peri-centric (Distribution of non-telomeric sites of the (TTAGGG)n telomeric sequence in vertebrate chromosomes), about where the fusion location is supposed to be.

  What would be your response?