I only recognized the acronym because "SST: Death Flight" is one of the greatest movies ever
Apognophos
JoinedPosts by Apognophos
-
9
Went to a non-Witness memorial service
by CaptainSchmideo inthis was a service at a southern baptist church for the father of a teacher at my son's school.
we had developed a friendship with her over the past few years, and i had met her father, knew about his terminal illness, and i wanted to pay my respects.. i have to tell you, it was a better show than the average jw "ceremony".first, lots of personal tributes about the man they were memorializing.
uplifting stories, funny stories, serious stories, describing a real life individual that many in that room knew and were going to dearly miss.. lots of singing!
-
-
-
28
Be effective or people will die
by Odrade inmy husband and i have been out of the org for quite some time, but still find that old ideas and values come up and bite us on the ass.. lately, i've been plagued by an increase in the frequency and severity of my nightmares (which have always been an issue,) so i've begun to dream journal.
in just a few days, this realization cropped up.
i can't save people.. i've been blogging again recently.
-
-
Apognophos
I think I never worried about this particular issue because I never in my life believed that God was going to destroy all non-Witnesses. I never even considered the possibility. It was "obvious" to me that God would not destroy people unless they were really wicked. I suppose it was a form of cognitive dissonance, since that's not what I was supposed to believe.
That being said, the religion has affected each of us in different ways according to our personalities and our upbringing. For instance, some parents probably harped on the "bloodguilt" thing while others were obsessed with demons and others were bigger on the subject of sex-shaming. In some cases we may have been inherently sensitive in one of those areas to begin with. So thse two factors determined in which area we developed our particular neurosis.
-
1
Society claims Bible creation account is unlike pagan myths, clearly doesn't read any scholarly work
by Apognophos inso, during the service meeting this week, they were showing a few pages on the web site that we could share with an interested one (using the projection screen in the hall), and i sat up a little in my seat when i read this part of the page "do science and the bible agree?
" (er, or "does science agree with the bible?
", depending on which place you look for the title):.
-
-
Apognophos
So, during the service meeting this week, they were showing a few pages on the web site that we could share with an interested one (using the projection screen in the Hall), and I sat up a little in my seat when I read this part of the page "Do Science and the Bible Agree?" (or "Does Science Agree with the Bible?", depending on which place you look for the title):
The universe had a beginning. (Genesis 1:1) In contrast, many ancient myths describe the universe, not as being created, but as being organized from existing chaos. The Babylonians believed that the gods that gave birth to the universe came from two oceans. Other legends say that the universe came from a giant egg.
Someone could run down the whole page and rebut the other points too, but I don't have that kind of time, and I wanted to share a lesser-known fact (among non-scholars) about the creation account that starts in chapter 1. I don't see that Leolaia ever covered this subject, which is surprising, but perhaps I missed it. She did cover a related subject in depth, which I will be linking to below. My goal here is just to briefly sum up the scholarly opinion on this account.
First, here's the Cliff's Notes version of what I'm going to talk about: Contrary to the Society's claim that Genesis is unlike those dirty heathen myths about the world coming from a chaos without any beginning, in fact that is exactly what Genesis chapter 1 describes. It does not describe a "universe with a beginning", as they say it does, but instead shows us God setting a pre-existing chaos in order.
The huge mistake that a modern reader makes, aided and abetted by his Bible, is thinking that Genesis 1:1 refers to the creation of the universe and the planet Earth. This concept is what's called creatio ex nihilo, "creation from nothing". But if 1:1 were really referring to the creation of outer space and the planet Earth, then light could not just be getting started in 1:3 -- because clearly the stars, such as our Sun, would have been made in 1:1.
But if we interpret "the earth" to literally just mean "the solid ground we stand on", and "the heavens" as "the sky", things begin to make more sense, in terms of both the chronological order of the account and what we would expect to read if this story was simply a product of ancient man, and not of a divine revelation.
It's important to know that Genesis 1:1 doesn't actually say "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth", as Bibles traditionally render it. The word for "beginning" here is not a noun intended to stand alone, but rather to modify a verb, like "create". A better translation is found in Young's Literal: "In the beginning of God’s preparing the heavens and the earth --". This verse is describing the beginning of an act, not the beginning of the universe. This is crucial to understanding what the ancient writer really meant.
(Before I continue, I want to point out that our NWT used to read this way: "In [the] beginning God created the heavens and the earth." The use of brackets was the Society's way of acknowledging the fact that the Hebrew didn't seem to be talking about a Beginning Of The Universe, but simply the beginning of God's actions upon the watery deep. The revised NWT has removed the brackets, leaving the traditional inaccurate rendering "In the beginning...".)
So, why does this matter? Because Genesis 1:1 does not have God creating anything. Rather it is saying, loosely, "This is the beginning of the story of creation", which begins in 1:2. And verse 2 clarifies that the "earth" at this time is actually still a formless waste; it is only named "earth" after it is separated from the waters and dried out, in verse 10. Anyway, in verse 3, God creates light, and in verse 6, he creates a division in the watery deep, but notice that he didn't make the waters -- they were already there. He just parted them in order to reveal dry land*. The God depicted here is one who conquers chaos, not one who can make matter from nothing, which is a concept that would simply not have made sense to ancient man.
The story of Genesis 1 in fact closely parallels other stories from the Ancient Near East, including the Babylonian Enuma Elish. If you really want the proof for the assertions in this post, Leolaia details the scholarly evidence here. Once you realize how close this story is to the stories of the neighboring cultures, you can see why I was surprised that the Society would directly mention the Babylonian creation account as something that supposedly differs from the Jewish account in Genesis 1. In fact it's more likely that the Hebrew people inherited the myth from Babylon or maybe Egypt.
*If this sounds familiar, it's because the Crossing of the Red Sea was intended to harken back to this account.
-
9
Went to a non-Witness memorial service
by CaptainSchmideo inthis was a service at a southern baptist church for the father of a teacher at my son's school.
we had developed a friendship with her over the past few years, and i had met her father, knew about his terminal illness, and i wanted to pay my respects.. i have to tell you, it was a better show than the average jw "ceremony".first, lots of personal tributes about the man they were memorializing.
uplifting stories, funny stories, serious stories, describing a real life individual that many in that room knew and were going to dearly miss.. lots of singing!
-
-
-
102
Bill Cosby - too much smoke for no fire?
by Simon init seems like the list of people who are accusing him of rape and sexual assault is growing every day.
i'm skeptical of single accusations but the number of people and the similar stories seem overwhelming now.. it's not a conviction but to the court of public opinion ... guilty?.
.
-
-
Apognophos
Reading about this a bit more, it seems that Spanish fly was supposed to be something more like an aphrodisiac than a sedative. I feel like the joke makes a lot more sense with that definition because I couldn't understand Cosby joking about knocking out girls and getting lots of laughs. Plus, he was always supposed to be a family-friendly comedian AFAIK. Nowadays this would be considered politically incorrect but I can see it passing muster a few decades ago.
-
29
So its the Elders School this Weekend.......
by Slidin Fast inwhat is the focus for this one.
is it "well lads ring the legal department but if anything goes wrong, you are on your own.
the cs deals with all that".
-
-
Apognophos
(is it normal to have comfy chairs like you'd find in a living room for the reader to sit on?)
Of course, what do you guys use? Most halls want the stage to look nice, so some of them even deck out a corner of the stage with a small table and lamp so the reader's chair looks like part of a living room.
NPGs (non practicing gays - I'd never heard the term before) were condemned - have to be transformed not just wear a mask.
Wow. They really just don't get it, do they? They think sexuality can be rewired through willpower. This is as absurd as teaching that black people can become white (oops, sorry, old Society writers). This is potentially really damaging to gay brothers because it's telling them that it's not enough to bottle up their feelings, but that they have to stop even having those feelings. This is one of the best ways to cause someone to become suicidal.
-
102
Bill Cosby - too much smoke for no fire?
by Simon init seems like the list of people who are accusing him of rape and sexual assault is growing every day.
i'm skeptical of single accusations but the number of people and the similar stories seem overwhelming now.. it's not a conviction but to the court of public opinion ... guilty?.
.
-
-
Apognophos
I'm rather shocked by that joke Terry posted. Is Cosby joking about using a rape drug? I didn't think he did material like that. I can't help but feel it's telling that he would joke about something like that. Certainly the juxtaposition of the current situation with that joke, that album cover and that album name is incredibly unfortunate.
-
-
-
Apognophos
again how do i get content from my laptop to tv?
Your laptop's video output. I used HDMI, personally.
-
116
Creationist Should Dismiss Genesis Quickly
by Coded Logic inchris tann,.
in your earlier post you seemed to be under the impression that genesis and science were somehow compatible .
however, the truth is the two are not reconcilable at all.
-
-
Apognophos
If you want to say your god is utterly unfalsifiable that is fine by me, I thought that anyway.
He's not "my" god, but I think we're otherwise in agreement.
-
37
How did you feel when you got baptised? Seriously....
by stuckinarut2 inso recently, several over-righteous ones in the cong were discussing "how amazing it felt when they got baptised".
statements like "how awesome did it feel as you got raised back out of the water?!".
or the classic "i felt so close to jehovah as i came out of the pool"!.
-
-
Apognophos
Wet. I was really hoping to feel something, as I got baptized in order to receive more holy spirit to help me fight temptation, but instead I felt nothing.