Posts by Saintbertholdt

the so-called 10 commandments are a post-biblical construct.... there is an elohist list at exodus 20 and a yahwist one at exodus 34 that contains such gems as "you shall not cook a kid in its mother’s milk.".

any intelligent adult could create a more useful list of ethical precepts before the end of a coffee break.. it is interesting to compare the satanic temple's seven tenets.

i think you might agree that it makes yahweh's rules look like they were written by a bronze age power-hungry, misogynistic priest.

Saintbertholdt

Still waiting for an explanation of how a good god can advocate slavery...

Its just a highly efficient form of the division of labor. I'm sure the slaves didn't mind at all. In modern times Jehovah still has a special slave, the Faithful and discreet slave. And the helper slaves are just as eager to please. No no, its positively a blessing and I'm sure in the new system we'll still all be Jehovah's eager slaves. For ever and ever and ever.

49

"If I wasn't born a JW, I would never have become one."

by OneEyedJoe in

i've seen it mentioned by a few on the forum that at some point there was a realization that had they not been born a jw, they never would've converted no matter how many times the jws tried to study with them.

this was my experience too, and i'm wondering how universal it is for those that were born-in but eventually left.

i think i started having this thought (more specifically that if i were not born a jw, i would surely have become an atheist by now) in my late teens.

Saintbertholdt

I can't imagine that I would have fallen for it... then again I seriously looked into Scientology at one point...and I also thought that Enron was a financial juggernaut.

I'll stop now.

65

JW Expressions We Hate

by Socrateswannabe in

jw
friends

i was browsing through stuff on jw.org recently and ran across some expressions that really grate on my nerves: loyal love, loving-care, and loving-kindness, as in: "please exercise loving-kindness toward your servant.

" who talks like that?

they must be relics of the fred franz era.

Saintbertholdt

Just trust in Jehovah, he'll sort it out.

Oh I haven't seen brother such and such because he's been inactive for x months now.

But it always comes down to: Who then is the faithful and discreet slave?

...the loving provisions from Jehovah.

46

Evolution a Fact - Agreed but So What?

by LAWHFol in

in many debates between believers and non believers (nb), the nb uses evolution as some sort of proof to support the non existence of god.. i agree that evolution is a fact, however i feel that evolution is proof of some sort of benevolent original cause.. if i were to create an a.i.

, i would program into it the ability to self-refactor and evolve.. i would also randomly inject viruses into the program (evil) where the a.i.

would be forced to stretch its current capabilities & modify it's operating functions in order to get through the random virus, and continue living.. with a steady flow of different viruses, the a.i.

Saintbertholdt

Evolution matches perfectly with the concept of a Designed Universe. IMO

Who knows. The whole thing might actually mean something.

Perhaps we should try to find out.

28

Satanic Temple’s Seven Tenets - Makes 10 Commandments Sound Facile

by cofty in

the so-called 10 commandments are a post-biblical construct.... there is an elohist list at exodus 20 and a yahwist one at exodus 34 that contains such gems as "you shall not cook a kid in its mother’s milk.".

any intelligent adult could create a more useful list of ethical precepts before the end of a coffee break.. it is interesting to compare the satanic temple's seven tenets.

i think you might agree that it makes yahweh's rules look like they were written by a bronze age power-hungry, misogynistic priest.

Saintbertholdt

Clambake you wrote: I use to have an interest in the Occult and from my research this so called Satanism it was just an extreme form of atheism which seemed more interested in pissing people off than being an actual religion.

Oh its an actual religion all right.

A lot of the so called rituals were actually just developed as a mockery of Christianity. Goats instead of sheep, Drinking blood as oppose to kosor diet, inverted cross, etc etc.

Clambake that is Devil worship or in other words Inverse Christianity, not Satanism.

Historically the well known religions that demanded blood sacrifices were the Abrahamic religions. Today those blood sacrifices are mostly performed by 16 year old kids who think they are doing the will of the Devil by killing a cat. Their background is Christianity, which they think is true and that's why they do idiotic things as an act of rebellion. They get their ideas from the OT.

46

Starlight in a Young Universe

by Perry in

the scientific method begins with a faith statement called a hypothesis, and then goes on to look for evidence, for or against support of the faith statement.. secular materialists often change their ideas on exactly how things have made themselves, but never whether they did.. the manifesto for this self imposed mental ban seems to be summed up by geneticist richard lewontin:.

‘our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural.

we take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.. it is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.

Saintbertholdt

Hi there Perry,
Ignore the previous post as it was incomplete. Omissions are marked in red.
You quoted an article called: DNA in Dinosaur Bones from the Institute for Creation Research. Early on in the article the author/s wrote: "Fossil experts have studied original dinosaur tissues and biochemicals for a long time. When tyrannosaur and hadrosaur bones from Montana were viewed under a microscope, they were found to harbor fresh-looking bone cells called osteocytes. Researchers even verified original—not mineralized—dinosaur proteins called collagen and elastin in 2009." The researcher principally responsible for this discovery was Mary Schweitzer. She acted upon a suggestion by her mentor Jack Horner after a serendipitous discovery. I assume you accept her findings as her papers were referenced multiple times in the above quoted article.

In 2014 she co-authored a paper called: Synchrotron Chemical and Structural Analysis of Tyrannosaurus rex Blood Vessels: The Contribution of Collagen Hypercrosslinking to Tissue Longevity

In the paper the researchers came to the following conclusions:

T-Rex tasted just like chicken. The collagen corresponded to the type found in chickens and so it strengthens the hypothesis that the therapod dinosaurs were the ancestors of birds.
They also concluded that what was thought initially to be red blood vessels turned out to be an Iron mineral (goethite).
Lastly this mineral was possibly responsible for the preservation of the collagen in the first place through two possible chemical pathways.

Footnote: Mary Schweitzer is an evangelical Christian.

Also see: God of the gaps

46

Starlight in a Young Universe

by Perry in

the scientific method begins with a faith statement called a hypothesis, and then goes on to look for evidence, for or against support of the faith statement.. secular materialists often change their ideas on exactly how things have made themselves, but never whether they did.. the manifesto for this self imposed mental ban seems to be summed up by geneticist richard lewontin:.

‘our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural.

we take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.. it is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.

Saintbertholdt

Hi there Perry,

You quoted an article called: DNA in Dinosaur Bones from the Institute for Creation Research. Early on in the article the author/s wrote: "Fossil experts have studied original dinosaur tissues and biochemicals for a long time. When tyrannosaur and hadrosaur bones from Montana were viewed under a microscope, they were found to harbor fresh-looking bone cells called osteocytes. Researchers even verified original—not mineralized—dinosaur proteins called collagen and elastin in 2009."

In 2014 she co-authored a paper called: Synchrotron Chemical and Structural Analysis of Tyrannosaurus rex Blood Vessels: The Contribution of Collagen Hypercrosslinking to Tissue Longevity

In the paper the researchers came to the following conclusions:

T-Rex tasted just like chicken. The collagen corresponded to the type found in chickens and so it strengthens the hypothesis that the therapod dinosaurs were the ancestors of birds.
They also concluded that what was thought initially to be red blood vessels turned out to be an Iron mineral (goethite).
Lastly this mineral was possibly responsible for the preservation of the collagen in the first place through two possible chemical pathways.

Footnote: Mary Schweitzer is an evangelical Christian.

Also see: God of the gaps

44

Proof the earth can be flat

by slimboyfat in

"our perception of reality has more to do with what is going on in here (our brain) than what's going on out there (in the world).".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03g221y.

is it a dark square or a light square?

Saintbertholdt

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick