Posts by Apognophos

70

DINOSAURS - What do Jehovah's Witnesses Believe?

by Bloody Hotdogs! in

as part of my deconversion catharsis, i have been building a(nother) website to highlight some of the more ridiculous jw beliefs.

im a looong way from done, but i wanted some early feedback on one article: dinosaurs.

http://www.jwbeliefs.com/dinosaurs/.

Apognophos

they always clearly differentiate between the millions/billions of years before creation and the "days" of creation.

You might well be right. It could be that there are some old-timers at HQ who won't let the 7,000-year thing go, or that they internally see some reason why it needs to be true in order to support their beliefs. It's probably just tied to their intense desire to see the end come in their lives.

Personally I don't know where the 7,000 years came from. We had a discussion on this a few months ago that basically concluded "*shrug*". This old, more careful discussion also concluded "*shrug*". I suppose it was just too convenient for people who wanted to believe they were in the end times, as you said. This isn't just a notion of the Witnesses; this specific formulation of "six thousand years and then the Thousand Year Reign" probably started in the Second Adventist movement. In the 1800s, Russell taught that the 6,000 years ended in 1872, I believe. In the second link I just provided, interestingly enough, it seems that people were suggesting "six thousand years of man's existence" 2,000 years ago!

I feel like that ought to be allowed, even if it isn't technically…

Of course people post the Society's stuff here all the time, so you may feel that there is precedent. I think one is legally supposed to be able to post excerpts from their writings, so maybe video stills will be allowed under that same principle. But lawful or not, they can probably issue a takedown notice on the basis of copyright, so one day you may find that your host has shut down your site. You might be able to get it back up again by simply removing those images, but I just thought I would give you fair warning.

15

A Religious Quest

by ReligiousQuest in

jw
friends

my name is louie and i'm seeking some help regarding a paper i need to write for a class.

it is meant to be an individual study project regarding a faith that is different from your own and intrigues you.

what i am asking is for someone who is willing to answer 10-15 questions regarding their faith.

Apognophos

So, uh, ReligiousQuest, you should be aware that this is a forum populated 99% by former or non-believing Witnesses. You're not going to get many people willing to advocate for the religion. You'll probably get honest answers to your questions, albeit with a heavy tinge of bitterness, but if you're looking for active, believing Witnesses then you will have a hard time finding them there.

37

Why is it wrong for Christians to celebrate Christmas?

by james_woods in

jw
friends

this was inspired by terry's thread.... it is something that raises many questions about the jw belief system.. .

for one thing - the bible certainly explains all the details of the christ birth.

it certainly does not tell people to avoid celebrating it with feasts, customs, etc.

Apognophos

The Great Disappointment only disappointed his fellow nutjobs. The rest of the maybe-yes, maybe-no followers simply went back to church!

So what?

So, even though Miller's computations were DEAD WRONG (proving himself a False Prophet) enough nut-jobs hung around for a second disappointment.

And a 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc.

[...]

Miller begat the 2nd Advent sect.

The 2nd Advent sect begat the Bible Students.

I was just reading some old Watchtower material (1800s, I think) that actually claimed that 1844 was part of the Bible's numerological timeline too, that is, you could derive it from Bible numbers just like with 1914. Even though 1844 was called a "great disappointment" in the article, it stated that the divine purpose of 1844 was to get people paying attention and looking for the correct time of the end.

I wonder if people here have seen this quote or I should post it. It's interesting because they were using the "eager mistake that served a purpose" rationale even back then, and for someone who wasn't even a part of Russell's movement!

70

DINOSAURS - What do Jehovah's Witnesses Believe?

by Bloody Hotdogs! in

as part of my deconversion catharsis, i have been building a(nother) website to highlight some of the more ridiculous jw beliefs.

im a looong way from done, but i wanted some early feedback on one article: dinosaurs.

http://www.jwbeliefs.com/dinosaurs/.

Apognophos

Not that I expect you to go through that much trouble

Naw, it doesn't take long to make a list as I'm reading through an article. I won't do them all at once though :-) But keep an eye out for PMs in the days to come.

I do want to touch on the subject of the length of the creative days, because I see that you are putting a lot of emphasis on it. On the Dinosaurs page you say flat-out that the days are believed to be 7,000 years long, but on the Creative Days page you acknowledge that the Society is currently being vague about the length. Are they simply trying to hide their 7,000-year stance?

It's been suggested by someone here that when they say "thousands of years" in more recent writings, they are trying to avoid stumbling the older JWs who remember 7000-year days, while not directly contradicting the "millions of years" stated by science (after all, millions are thousands of thousands).

So we can't really nail them down as believing in 7000-year days when they won't come out and say it anymore. That's why I think I'd recommend not leaning so heavily on that point. If the last time they said "7,000" was in 1980, then they have not said it in the lifetime of young JWs, and if a JW doesn't think this is what their beliefs say, they will feel that all your arguments which are based on 7000 years are invalid criticism.

P.S.: I have a feeling you're going to get in trouble for the use of Society art, but it's your decision whether to worry about that.

70

DINOSAURS - What do Jehovah's Witnesses Believe?

by Bloody Hotdogs! in

as part of my deconversion catharsis, i have been building a(nother) website to highlight some of the more ridiculous jw beliefs.

im a looong way from done, but i wanted some early feedback on one article: dinosaurs.

http://www.jwbeliefs.com/dinosaurs/.

Apognophos

Tell me why are the stones bogus?

1. One red flag is that they are depicting the sort of "ABC" dinosaurs that we all learned about as kids -- tyrannosaurs, brontosaurs, triceratops, and stegosaurs, which is awfully convenient. It's a cornucopia of dinosaurs packed into one little space.

2. They are a bit too "orthodox" -- one would expect some surprises in their appearance since we really only know the skeletal structure and can guess at musculature. There is no indication of feathers or cartilage structures that we don't know about today but it's theorized might have existed. Also, the T-rex is standing upright, which is a discredited posture. They had a massive tail that was used to counter-balance them as they bent over parallel to the ground.

3. They lived in two totally different eras, the Cretaceous and the Jurassic, about 90 millions years apart. One would have to have very good reason to call into question the dating methods used to determine this.

4. A massive conspiracy theory would be required to prevent people from having heard about these.

70

DINOSAURS - What do Jehovah's Witnesses Believe?

by Bloody Hotdogs! in

as part of my deconversion catharsis, i have been building a(nother) website to highlight some of the more ridiculous jw beliefs.

im a looong way from done, but i wanted some early feedback on one article: dinosaurs.

http://www.jwbeliefs.com/dinosaurs/.

Apognophos

Hotdogs, I like your site. You've put a lot of care into writing these pages. I don't see any clear errors yet in your statements on JW doctrine. I do, however, notice a number of typos, some of which will trip up the reader. Would you be interested in seeing a list of typos for each page, in order to fix those?

70

DINOSAURS - What do Jehovah's Witnesses Believe?

by Bloody Hotdogs! in

as part of my deconversion catharsis, i have been building a(nother) website to highlight some of the more ridiculous jw beliefs.

im a looong way from done, but i wanted some early feedback on one article: dinosaurs.

http://www.jwbeliefs.com/dinosaurs/.

Apognophos

Me have drawn pictures on stones with them.

I don't really know what that sentence means, but if you're saying those stones are authentic ancient drawings, then I'm sorry, they're totally bogus.

12

Taking the Bible "too" literally

by Coded Logic in

i once heard it said that the only people who care about what the bible says are the village priest and the village atheist.

it seems to me most believers only care about "god's word" in very general terms and think it's all up to interpitation (religion a la carte ).. it the watchtower especially good at making agnostics and atheists because of their fundamentalism or is this true of many ex-religious groups?.

.

Apognophos

Yes, well said, PSacramento. If someone is trying to reconcile scientific knowledge with the Genesis account, they are not reading the account literally at all. When people study the Bible in an academic setting and learn the original languages, they read the Bible literally. People who only read the Bible with a filter over their eyes that was installed by their upbringing are not actually reading the Bible literally, even if they say they are.

6

Spiritually Dead Children

by suavojr in

jw
friends

this is a gem... charles sinutko had great skills at parenting.

you can download from here, http://da.getmyip.com/.

the pale horse of death had just ridden again.

Apognophos

Wow, that's a heaping helping of guilt, isn't it?

You hear stories of the mafia on how these lads grew up in the mafia, did all sorts of awful things but they never wanted mother to know, or father....why? They cared for their mother and father. We have children who go out and do things and just fling it in our face and not even care.....either like it or don’t like it. Do you feel that’s a good boy, that’s a good girl?

[...]

Some of you boys here, you sons, you can hardly know how you’ve cut your mother to the heart by your apathy, your indifference, your lack of excitement over the truth, how her nights have been sleepless over you because you have not loved her God. You should be able to tell; just look at her sunken eyes and her fleeting youth. And daughters, can you not know the stabbing pain in the heart of your father who once viewed you as a beautiful and untarnished virgin and hoping you are going to stay the same?

Parents are always inclined to worry about their kids out there in the big wide world; many already have trouble accepting that their kids are going to grow up and lose their innocence. A talk like this just makes it worse.

Also, how dare these kids think for themselves and lead their own lives unashamed? Granted, some JW kids do simply rebel for the sake of rebelling, but Sunutko was not exactly giving anyone the benefit of the doubt. He paints everyone with the same broad brush.

I think what bothers me is that, if the kids know they have good reasons to leave, they won't be bothered to hear something like this, but it makes the burden on the parents far worse. How many parents of children who left must have been in tears throughout the talk?

13

Billion + believe in Satan. Should all schools be mandated to teach Creationism?

by Gnostic Bishop in

billion + believe in satan.

should all schools be mandated to teach creationism?.

we must save our children from foolish belief in the supernatural.. .

Apognophos

I don't know, I think this could serve as a kind of innoculation if they taught the Bible story besides other culture's creation myths. Otherwise what happens is that (as all of us born-ins experienced) we are taught one set of things at home and then the teachers tell us another set of things, and where they conflict, we accept what our parents taught us.

I remember feeling like my elementary school science teacher was my enemy because she taught evolution. Maybe if they had acknowledged and discussed religious beliefs in school I wouldn't have felt like it was school/science vs. home/religion and would have been able to see how other religions had similar stories to the Bible.

However, one big problem is that the creation story, actually "stories", found in Genesis are not told accurately, but have been been touched up and modernized to accomodate our modern view of the universe. So if they teach the modern version of the story and compare it to stories from ancient cultures like Babylon which have not carried down to this day, those stories will look primitive and the Genesis account will seem more credible.

If the Genesis accounts were taught accurately, as I've discussed in places like this and this, it would not only be in line with the scholarship but it would give kids an alternate view of what their Christian parents were feeding them which would probably help them see how the Bible's primitive stories are subject to re-interpretation.

However I can't imagine Christian parents allowing this kind of education in school because it would seem like an attack on their faith. Teachers are going to have to just continue to encourage critical thinking without actually telling students what it is they need to be critical about.