Posts by TD

38

Do jw's believe dinosaurs existed?

by farmer in

jw
friends

?

and what do they believe or not about evolution?

TD

My observation is in line with Patio's comment.

Although the JW's do acknowledge the existence of the dinosaurs, it is a subject they will address only in the most cursorial manner because of the literal/inerrant view of Gen 1:30 they still seem to hold. Even if we ignore the overwhelming evidence of predator/prey relationships manifest in the many attack and defense mechanisms of the dinosaurs, this view still makes for all sort of problems.

Aside from the obvious, (An herbivore must be able to internally synthesize taurine, an essential amino acid not found in plant material. However no member of the cat family can do this.) most seem to miss the fact that whereas man is given the seeds and fruits of plants in verse 29, the animals are relegated to eating only the foilage in verse 30.

Even among herbivorous animal species, there are relatively few that truly fit this mold. Almost all herbivores much prefer the seeds and fruit of plants when they can get them.

11

Mr. T, Stephen King, and the WTS

by Dan-O in

on another thread wherein mt.

t saves los angeles from the wts, the following comment was made:and for our next attraction, 'escape from the watchtower' .

which reminds me ... anyone else get the heebie jeebies when reading books from stephen king's the dark tower series?

TD

I haven't read the Dark Tower series, but I've heard that some of the characters and events tie into other books like The Stand for example.

Anyhow, Randall Flag, the walkin' dude did give me that creepy feeling. I think it was the fact that he carried Watchtowers in his pocket that did it.

19

Mussings on Society

by Yerusalyim in

opening myself up to a lot of criticism...but here goes.. i guess i'm getting more cynical...and losing hope in society in general...here's what bothers me.. when i was a kid back in the 1970's i could walk out the door in the morning...and not come home until supper...and i was safe.

those days are long gone.

as i've stated before...society has become oversexualized...and has lost it's moral compass.

TD

You see guns and banks and guns and schools just don't mix.

In today's society, guns and schools certainly don't mix. You're absolutely right. But things were very different back when the book From Paradise Lost To Paradise Regained was capable of scaring the living tar out of a child.

19

Mussings on Society

by Yerusalyim in

opening myself up to a lot of criticism...but here goes.. i guess i'm getting more cynical...and losing hope in society in general...here's what bothers me.. when i was a kid back in the 1970's i could walk out the door in the morning...and not come home until supper...and i was safe.

those days are long gone.

as i've stated before...society has become oversexualized...and has lost it's moral compass.

TD

I agree with much of what you've said Yeru. I don't think it's just a manifestation of the "things were better in our day" type of nostalgia either.

I suppose it would be fair to say that some of it could be ascribed to fear. In line with your opening statement, I certainly fear for the safety of my child in a way that my parents never did. However I don't see this particular fear as a liberal vs. conservative issue because I believe that in truth, both sides have legitimate fears.

As an example, I remember being on the high school rifle team. This was only about 35 years ago. When I took an advanced woodworking class the same year, at least half the students, myself included, made rifle stocks as our project. When it came time to fit the stock and bed the barrel, the instructer, who was an accomplished gunsmith himself, let the students actually bring the rifles (sans bolts) into class. Nobody gave it a second thought. The idea that a student would go on a rampage was far from everyone's mind including the students themselves.

Today, even in the most rural areas, school rifle teams are a distant memory, a teacher that allows a student to bring any part of a firearm whatsoever to school would be fired in a heartbeat and a student that so much as brings an empty, decapped shellcasing into class is liable to be expelled. Who's afraid here?

I'd say both liberals and conservatives are rightly afraid and that their fears dovetail. As a conservative I am more afraid of the changes in society that I believe contribute to the reality of events like the Columbine massacre than I am of inanimate objects themselves. To me, motive and its associative causes are far more to be feared than means.

At the same time though, I understand that one may see it differently, even when this perspective manifests itself irrationally as a fear of an empty, harmless piece of brass. If our children are going to school with souless cold-blooded killers with no respect for life, then naturally we would want to do what we can to deprive them of any means to carry out their desires. No one after all, regardless of whether they are liberal or conservative wants to see their children come to harm.

63

PLEASE HELP! Assist in 1914 Rebuttal...

by Jared in

ok, so i'm trying to just plant a tiny seed of doubt somewhere in the cracks of my mothers mind, but that woman has 'jehovah' tattooed on her chest!

anyway, i would not only like help for her benefit but also for my benefit.

so it all started when i questioned her about 1914.... i wrote to her: 'as you had suggested i wanted to do some research.

TD

By following such a method, the many calendrical problems raised by Jonsson are solved as one sees the relevance of biblical chronology fulfilled in prophecy namely the Gentile Times ending in 1914. This is hardly wild prophectic speculation as this prophecy has attracted the attention of Bible Students for centuries.

In other words, despite the fact that the Gentile nations are still very much in power nearly a century later, their lease of power was invisibly cancelled by the invisible King, Christ Jesus who unbeknownst to anyone at the time, began ruling invisibly from the heavens in 1914.

This in turn establishes the validity of the selective combination of elements of Nebuchadnezzer's tree dream with John's vision of the woman, manchild and dragon to transform 7 times into a figure of 2520 lunar years.

Subsequently counting back 2520 solar years from 1914 to a point temporally anterior to the tree dream itself then establishes the validity of 607 BC.

As a natural corollary, the establishment of the validity of 607 BC vinidcates the approach of Jehovah's Witnesses to ancient calendaring and so the inherent difficulties therein become irrelevant.

Anyone acknowledging those difficulties can then be dismissed out of hand.

No, this doesn't sound like wild prophetic speculation to me......

17

Refuting Awake: Suitcase Bombs

by metatron in

recently, the awake magazine raised the issue of old soviet briefcase bombs in terrorist hands.. the san francisco chronicle quoted russian and outside experts on why this is very unlikely:.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/03/23/mng8d5pm7l1.dtl.

admittedly, they could still create a simple 'dirty' bomb but the russians say these small units have a limited shelf life.

TD

In a multi-stage device, the "trigger" is simply the first stage ---a fission device.

As Abaddon correctly states, a sufficiently violent fission reaction can be acheived both with highly enriched uranium and weapons grade plutonium.

(Of the two, the latter is more preferable because it can be produced in any quantity desired in a breeder reactor, but this only applies to nations that are already recognized nuclear powers. Nations that cannot openly operate a reactor of any type (e.g. Iran, Libya) must try to take the uranium route.)

Typically, the energy released by the trigger slams into a mantle of heavy water producing a secondary fusion reaction. The fusion reaction releases an extremely dense flux of neutrons that can in turn be harnessed to produce a tertiary fission reaction even in unenriched uranium.

63

PLEASE HELP! Assist in 1914 Rebuttal...

by Jared in

ok, so i'm trying to just plant a tiny seed of doubt somewhere in the cracks of my mothers mind, but that woman has 'jehovah' tattooed on her chest!

anyway, i would not only like help for her benefit but also for my benefit.

so it all started when i questioned her about 1914.... i wrote to her: 'as you had suggested i wanted to do some research.

TD

But the year 607 is counted back 70 years from the pivotal date of 539 when historians and Biblical history pinpoint Cyrus' destruction of Babylon.

Wrong -- counting 70 years back from 539 BC brings you to 609 BC. Her math is 2 years off. The JW's resolve this discrepancy (and preserve the 1914 date) by assuming that it would have taken the Jews two years to travel back to their homeland. Thus they really count back 70 years from the assumed date of 537, not the "pivotal" date of 539. This also requires further contortions to explain how the king of Babylon was "punished" in what was actually the 68th year of the desolation when the Bible clearly says that he would be punished only after the 70 years have been accomplished. You might want to see what her explanation is for the following verse: "And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, [that] I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith the LORD, for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans, and will make it perpetual desolations." Jer 25:12

11

I remember my first pc .... how about you?

by talesin in

jw
friends

i remember the olden days of pcs and word processors, back in the late 70's, early 80's .... there was a xerox wp machine i worked on that had a 6"x4" screen, you could only see about 3 lines of type at a time ... i kid you not!

after 3 hours of working on that, my eyes were buggy !!

one of my first pcs was the apple 2c, what a b*tch that was!!

TD

I've had many PC's, but what I remember as a first wasn't mine at all; it belonged to my younger brother. It was a Cosmac Elf. (Similar to the Rockwell AIM64) No screen, no keyboard, no drives of any kind, not even a floppy. This was mid-70's and "Personal Computing" at the time was strictly for hardcore hobbyists. These computers did not even arrive assembled, they had to be built.

It had a Hex keypad, a two digit hex display plus an 8 LED processor status display. (A visual representation of the 8-bit flags register) It was built around an early Rockwell 6502 chip, and had a whopping 2K of memory (Slightly faster versions of this CPU were later used in the Apple I, II, & II+, the Franklin Ace, (A shameless knockoff) the Atari 400/800, the Commodore 64 and most of the early console gaming systems)

Watching my brother build and tinker with this thing, helping him enter programs, (which were lost as soon as you turned it off) is what got me interested in computing enough to purchase a used Apple II.

2

Life in LA...the series

by Oroborus21 in

jw
friends

howdy folks,.

for a long time now i have been writing this think i call "life in la" and emailing it to friends and family every month or so.

well it occurred to me that maybe some folks here might get a hoot out of the last installment.

TD

And by the way, December 21 is also the Winter Solstice. That is when there is equal time of daylight and darkness and the beginning of the lengthening of the day. (The beginning of Saturnalia, the festival of the ?Unconquered Sun? aka Christmas.)

The winter solstice is the southernmost point of the ecliptic. The day when this occurs is the shortest day of the year.

26

JW Blood Doctrine Dismembered

by AlanF in

i thought some people might like to see a strictly bible-based dismemberment of the jw blood doctrine.

for some introductory material, see the thread:.

http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/7/67949/4.ashx.

TD

Hi Earnest,

Thanks for your comments, they are insightful and thought provoking.

There are only two types of aliens under Torah:

1: Necharim (Heathens Foreigners)

A Nechar could be a temporary visitor, such as a traveller, a temporary foreign worker or merchant. Whatever the case, he did not settle down and become part of bnei Yisrael, he did not claim citizenship, nor did he embrace the Torah

2: Gerim (Guests, Sojourners)

A Ger was a resident alien. He had voluntarily chosen to settle and make his home among the Jews, and embrace the Torah. Accordingly, Parasha Devarim requires that he enjoy the rights and privileges of a natural born ben Yisrael, receiving the exact same justice and judgement.

While Deuteronomy 14:21 uses both of these terms. Leviticus 17:15-16 uses only the latter of the two.

In comparing the scriptures, I think the distinction Calvin (and yourself) perhaps sought to draw is that between the ger sedeq (lit. stranger of righteousness -- full proselyte) and the ger toshav (lit. stranger of the gate ? limited proselyte)

The ger sedeq was for all intents and purposes, a Jew in everything but birth. Today, he or she must abide by Rambam?s 613 Mitzvot the same as any practicing natural Jew.

The ger toshav could eat tref (nonkosher) but nevertheless still had to abide by the seven universal Noachide laws. After he was circumcised, (he had twelve months according to the Babylonian Talmud) he could partake of the Passover sacrifice.

On this basis, I don?t believe that Calvin was entirely wrong, but neither do I believe he was correct either. Like most Christians, it seems Calvin was interested in the Law, but not enough to recognize its different divisions and their respective purposes as the Jews do.

As you may have gathered, I still completely disagree with the idea that the ?stranger of the gate? was exempt from law.

Tom