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

Therefore, water can either orbit the earth (something like the ice rings of Saturn)

Yep, that's what I was getting at. Evermore has posted the standard argument that if the canopy was high enough to be ice, it would have raised the temperature considerably when it fell. I'm honestly not sure anyone has actually proven that rigorously, but it seems believable given that we are talking about 40 continuous days of rainfall.

And the argument that, in any form, that much water would have obscured the sun, moon and stars seems pretty irrefutable. Even as ice the canopy would probably be so thick that it would block or distort the light.

As for the effect on carbon dating - I’m going to have to re-think that… my head hurts.

Okay, so I'm sorry for wasting your time with that, just forget you read it :-| I did some reading on C14 dating, and it turns out I didn't understand the process. I thought the breakdown of C14 came from atmospheric radiation, but that's what produces C14. C14 just naturally decays at the same rate no matter what, which I should have known.

So actually I guess creationists can suggest that, since the canopy lowered the radiation reaching our atmosphere, that would mean less C14 was produced. So that would mean that a pre-Flood sample would contain a lower ratio of C14 to C12 at a given age than scientists would expect. In other words, they would overestimate the age of the sample because they would think it must have been around a lot longer to have decayed down to that ratio.

This is what I get for not reading about dating methods since I stopped being a believing Witness. I guess I still have a lot of self-education to do.

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

Evermore, thanks, but the creation of Earth (and the stars, including the Sun) is considered by the Society to be covered by Genesis 1:1 and thus not part of the creative days. The question is whether the creative days where light was "made" and then the plants, animals, etc. are considered to be successive periods of 7,000 years -- after the Earth was made "billions of years" ago. If Hotdogs is right, the Watchtower stance is really a bizarre mix of old- and young-earth creationism.

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

In reading your Sky Ocean article, I want to note a few things that aren't simple typos, and may warrant discussion:

1. I am not a physicist, but I am dubious of the traditional disproof of the water canopy that "all that water would have crushed everything". The weight the water would impose on our atmosphere would surely depend on how far it was from Earth's center. If the water were high enough, it wouldn't weigh anything at all (it would also be frozen, but I don't think that is problematic since the Bible doesn't say it wasn't).

2. If the water canopy affected radiocarbon dating, we would not expect to see an "offset" or gap in the ages of objects. Rather we would see a change in the rate of frequency of different ages found through this dating method because the rate of radiation entering the atmosphere had changed. Only a sudden, massive spike in radiation would cause a gap in the ages found.

Thus objects would still be found that dated to right before the Flood, but pre-Flood ages would stretch out in time, having wider spaces in-between them, because they actually represented a smaller range of time than thought, like 2,000 years, being assigned to a range of 200,000 years -- if in fact the pre-Flood objects were being overestimated in their age by scientists. However...

3. Offset or no offset, I believe that the water canopy excuse actually hurts the case of creationists rather than helping it. If there was less radiation before the Flood because of all that water absorbing the rays from space, then that means C14 would decay more slowly. That means that an object that we think is X years old would actually be, say, 10X years old because we were severely underestimating how long an object would have to be exposed to atmospheric radiation in order for the C14 to decay that far. So C14-dated objects would actually be far older than scientists thought.

The Society has written their statements in what seems like a deliberately vague way, such as "any change in radiation would have altered the rate of formation of radioactive carbon-14 to such an extent as to invalidate all radiocarbon dates prior to the Flood", rather than stating which way the dating would be swung, because somehow C14 would have to be decaying faster pre-Flood in order to support a creationist timeline, and I think they are aware of 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

If JWs mean to indicate that the creative “days” were "thousands of thousands" of years long, they surely do not mean the same for “day” seven. This would indicate that the “days” of the creative week are not the same length! Now, JWs have never said that, have they?

Hmm, interesting point. You have me re-thinking my opinion of their beliefs. Now I'm wondering if they really are hiding a continuing belief in 7,000 year "days". It's all so silly because there's no reason at all why, if the days are not literal, they have to be the same length. They could have their cake and eat it too by making some days millions of years and leaving the 7th day as 7,000 years.

That being said, I do think you underestimate the Society's willingness to use weasel words when you point out that "thousands" is not "millions". It's well within their known record of distorting word definitions to use "thousands" to allow for the possibility of "thousands of thousands".

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?