I'm glad to hear this update. It's natural that he will be conflicted over his pending reinstatement, but even if he decides to immediately start fading, at least he'll have some freedom from shunning. It seems like he knows too much now to be reindoctrinated by the meetings, esp. since I assume he has already been attending all this time in order to be reinstated, and it clearly hasn't taken his critical thinking from him.
Apognophos
JoinedPosts by Apognophos
-
127
I'm sitting here listening to a JW try to recruit somebody
by Terry ini'm at starbucks .
just outside in the courtyard.. i'm trembling.
my hands are shaking.. wow!.
-
-
-
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
My personal stance is that I cannot conceive of how a God could come into being on its own, and I cannot conceive of how a universe can come into existence on its own. Talking about zero-sum energy fields is not satisfying to me because the theory still posits that something very potent existed from the very beginning and something caused a disturbance in that field.
Therefore our existence is, according to our current knowledge, inexplicable. Without enough data, we have no right at this time to say which of those two causes, God or random energy fluctuations, is more likely, nor whether there might be additional options besides those two that we haven't thought of yet.
Occam's Razor is not useful in a situation where we lack so little knowledge. Besides that, if a god exists, then the universe's degree of complexity simply is a result of the pre-existing complexity in his mind, and therefore the sum complexity of god+universe is not greater.
-
23
Separation of the sheep and goats
by RULES & REGULATIONS inseparating of the sheep and the goats you can live forever in paradise on earth, 1982, p 183, states: since christ returned and sat down on his heavenly throne, all humankind has been on judgment... during the presentjudgment people are being separated as goats to christs left hand or as sheep to his right.. the wt of jan. 1, 1988, p 16, confirmed this: yes, all mankind is being scrutinized to see who are sheep and who are goats.... the messages are broadcast by human mouthpieces under angelic direction.
a person is identified as a sheep or as a goat by the way he responds to the angelic messages.
during this 20 th century, only jehovahs witnesses have cooperated with the angels in this vital work.. .
-
-
Apognophos
Wow, I didn't know this change was a flip-flop.
-
9
Lightbulbs
by PhilJonesIII inim sure someone must have posted this before but here goes.. q: how many jws does it take to change a lightbulb?.
a : jws are not allowed to change lightbulbs.
anyone attempting to introduce new light gets disfellowshipped.. .
-
-
Apognophos
All of them. Seven to convince everyone that they changed the bulb, while standing in the middle of a dark room, and the rest of the JWs to agree that it's much brighter now.
-
50
My friends don't believe dinosaurs existed ....
by wannabefree ini just found this out last night.
(preface: this is a husband and wife that i have come to be friends with after leaving the borg, they are christians).
we were sitting around visiting last night and having a good time when my friend starts in on illegal immigration and politics and starts throwing out his hate speech which eventually turns to homosexuals.
-
-
Apognophos
What is crazy is that dinosaurs don't even disconfirm JW beliefs in the first place since they don't teach a 6,000 year old earth. So I don't even know what's going through the head of a JW who denies dinosaurs.
-
4
Washington Post: Convicted sex offenders, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the First Amendment
by AndersonsInfo inhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/11/19/convicted-sex-offenders-jehovahs-witnesses-and-the-first-amendment/.
convicted sex offenders, jehovahas witnesses, and the first amendment.
comments 16 by david post november 19. beginning in the 1930s, shortly after the supreme court had aincorporateda the first amendment into the due process clause (thereby making it an enforceable constraint not only on the federal government ["congress shall make no law .
-
-
Apognophos
Like certain other groups that take up unpopular causes (such as the ACLU, in some people's eyes), we can at least give credit to the JWs for their contributions to free speech. It usually takes people who are somewhat extreme-minded or irrationally focused on one specific issue in order to spur the kinds of discussions that lead to a healthy, balanced society for regular people.
-
112
Scientists Should Not Dismiss Genesis So Quickly
by Chris Tann innasa discovery proves the bible scientifically accurate.
the debate.
for decades there has been a long standing debate between science and religion as to the validity of the biblical genesis account of creation.
-
-
Apognophos
I would like to refer you to my comments on this post before you make such a BOLD statement:
Oh, wow, I completely forgot about that thread. What happened to my brain? I posted there three months ago, and I was sufficiently interested in your point about the footnote, sparky1, that I had gone and looked up that verse in my old Reference Bible. I must be losing it.
Leolaia's post in that thread really closes the case. Basically, it seems to be the case that fundamentalists write that the word means sphere because they read it somewhere, but it was probably something written by a previous fundamentalist, who cited a previous fundamentalist, and so on. Maybe if we go far enough back, an apologist has actually advanced some argument as to why chug can mean sphere, but I haven't seen it yet and it doesn't seem to be supported by the Bible texts where it was used.
-
20
Elders: Born-Ins vs Recruits
by breakfast of champions inthis is an unofficial survey.. was curious as to the number of currently serving elders who were born-in and/or raised as jw versus those who were "recruited"( i.e, not born in or raised as jw.).
for instance, right now in the hall i am assigned to:.
2 elders were born-in and/or raised as jws.. 5 were not (recruited as adults).
-
-
Apognophos
That could be true.
-
20
Elders: Born-Ins vs Recruits
by breakfast of champions inthis is an unofficial survey.. was curious as to the number of currently serving elders who were born-in and/or raised as jw versus those who were "recruited"( i.e, not born in or raised as jw.).
for instance, right now in the hall i am assigned to:.
2 elders were born-in and/or raised as jws.. 5 were not (recruited as adults).
-
-
Apognophos
I don't think we should expect the ratio among elders to deviate from the general ratio among Witnesses. If 66% of Witnesses are born-ins (to make up a number), then 66% of elders should be born-ins. The way the religion works on the mind, a convert can be just as much a captive of the concept as a born-in.
-
112
Scientists Should Not Dismiss Genesis So Quickly
by Chris Tann innasa discovery proves the bible scientifically accurate.
the debate.
for decades there has been a long standing debate between science and religion as to the validity of the biblical genesis account of creation.
-
-
Apognophos
Actually, what I've read about the "circle of the earth" in Isaiah 40:22 is that chug does mean a circle. Looking at the word's entry on BibleHub, you can see that the concordances give the definitions "circle", "horizon", and "vault". It would be nice if there were more usages from which to get a sense of the word, but there's only three. As you can see, the second is in Prov. 8:27: "when he inscribed a circle on the face of the deep". Both the Isaiah and Proverbs verses would make sense if referring to an Earth that is flat and round.
The other usage is in Job 22:14, where it refers to God walking on the vaulted ceiling of the sky. This complicates the definition a bit and I'm not clear on why chug can mean both "circle" and "vault". Perhaps the three-dimensional nature of a vaulted ceiling is why some claim that chug can mean circle, but all it tells us is that God is dwelling above some kind of round structure, which could also refer to the firmament as a sort of hemisphere.
If you look at the page I linked to on Contradictions in the Bible, there's illustrations (approximate ones) which show a literal interpretation of the Bible's word-picture. Part of that word-picture is given in Genesis 1 when God hammered out an inverted bowl shape (raqia, the firmament) in order to create a space for life in the formless waste. The reasoning for calling the raqia a bowl shape is given in footnote #1 in the Contradictions article. You can see the same definition of raqia if you look at the Brown-Driver-Briggs entry for the word on BibleHub.
As for the scripture about hanging the earth upon nothing, the verse takes on a different sense if you focus on the word "hanging" rather than "nothing". The writer is not necessarily saying that the earth is in the middle of an empty place like outer space; he is simply saying that it's not hung from anything. That's because the Bible speaks of the earth resting on foundations (Prov. 8:29). Contributing to the idea of a flat earth (more accurately, a flat land) are scriptures like Isaiah 41:5, 9 which refer to the "extremities" of the earth (a sphere has no extremities, right?).
The fundamentalist argument is that this sort of phrasing is poetic language, and certainly that's what I believed as a Witness. It was a striking thing when I first contemplated that these verses might have been meant literally at the time they were written (similar to how the Bible refers to the heart as a place where thoughts occur, which is taken poetically now but was meant literally at the time).
This post may not be as coherent as I would like because of my tiredness, but hopefully you get what I'm trying to say.