Posts by Trilobite

22

Are ex-dubs still in denial?

by Rex B13 in

jw
friends

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010729/wl/israel_palestinians.html .

divine prophecy fullfilled on a daily basis.

ex jdubs in denial on a daily basis.. rex

Trilobite

: I see you are not using vulgarities as frequently.

When have I ever used vulgarities, Rexy? I suggest that you apologize for your smear tactics, lies really, and address the substantive arguments against your positions which are regularly presented on this board. As things stand you are giving even Fundies a bad name. Or is it acceptable for a devoted follow of Our Lord to launch unsubstantiated allegations against his fellow posters?

I find it amusing that you are unable to distinguish between my writing style and that of AlanF. Like many uneducated and uneducatable religious fanatics you observe intellect as a worm eyeing the stars on dark night. They all look the same to it, and it couldn't really care less about it either, but it is nevertheless fascinated by it all.

As for God, as I stated, unless one makes the mistake of following a religion, and in particular an ipse-dixit-rex'll-twist-it quasi-religion like fundamentalism, then belief or non belief in God has no detectable consequences. By the way, I thought you had it in for Ros because she somehow isn't the good Christian that you are? So why do you cite her now?

I know Ros, she's a friend of mine (although she may not know it) and you, Sir, are no Ros.

T.

22

Are ex-dubs still in denial?

by Rex B13 in

jw
friends

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010729/wl/israel_palestinians.html .

divine prophecy fullfilled on a daily basis.

ex jdubs in denial on a daily basis.. rex

Trilobite

: Divine prophecy fullfilled on a daily basis. Ex Jdubs in denial on a daily basis.

I take it you mean yourself. You sound just like the Russellites and the Rutherfordites and Dubs in general. There's war! Well, Praise the Lord! It's the fulfilment of Divine prophecy. There's peace! Hurrah! Praise the Lord. It's the fulfilment of Divine prophecy! And, when all else fails it's the invisible fulfilment of Divine prophecy. Hold the presses, the Ayatollah just got bitten by a brown recluse spider. Guess what? It's the fulfilment of Divine prophecy!

You'd think that all this fulfiilling of Divine Prophecy would have some sort of culmination after all these years. Or is it the Divine Prophecy that God created all of his creatures to suffer miserably and that this would continue interminably, only to be spiced up now and then by a little religious intolerance, just to make people truly unhappy.

I used to think that WW was a mite saner than You Know, but you have clearly fallen off the edge of the Earth, Rex. That is possible, you know, because the Bible declares the Earth to be a circle, shaped rather like a pizza pie. You are obviously outta the cheese regions at this point.

T.

31

No Moral Absolutes?

by Rex B13 in

jw
friends

hi gang,.

those who claim that morality is subjective have painted themselves into a corner.

how about this, kent, big jim, seeker, a.f., j.h., troglodyte trilobyte, hippo the dippo, lisa baby, mulan, ldh, boynenko, et al?.

Trilobite

If something is an absolute then obviously it cannot change. So if moral absolutes actually exist one would expect that humanity would have a consistent set of ideals or standards that not only would not vary from society to society but which also would not change over time. That is clearly not the case. Concepts of morality vary considerably between different societies and cultures and between different time periods.

The moral standards set out in the Bible also varied over time; in certain periods polygamy was acceptable or even required. One might think that the prohibition on murder is a moral absolute. It clearly isn't since what constitutes murder depends on what the law happens to be. When Phinehas so kindly ran the Israelite chieftan and the Midianite woman through the genitals with his sword he was zealously protecting the moral standards of Israel, not committing murder, right? The Israelites were quite happy to slaughter thousands of women and children when they moved into the Promised land. Today much of what they did would be called war crimes but they didn't consider it to be murder since they were acting on God's behalf.

The notion that Dispensational Periods existed further demonstrates that moral standards are far from absolute since God has held mankind to different standards at different times. After all, Lot, who slept with his own daughters was, to God, a righteous man. Even if he hadn't realized that they were his daughters because he was so drunk this righteous man was clearly not a subscriber to Fundie sexual mores.

As usual, Rex, you demonstrate your inability to think straight, if at all. As societies and humanity in general have evolved moral standards have changed and have generally moved towards protection of the individual rather than enforcing arbitrary religious rules. A lot of this has to do with the recognition of the importance of individual rights. For example, apart from the Fundies, most people now recognize that women are not property which has led to vastly enlightened standards.

T.

63

GB Admits It Has No Answers, Blood

by Maximus in

jw
friends

"in contrast with humans, who have a limited life span, jehovah never feels pressured by time to reveal his secrets prematurely.

this fact should prevent us from becoming impatient when certain bible questions cannot presently be explained to our satisfaction.

"modesty on the part of the faithful and discreet slave class, commissioned to provide the christian household with food at the proper time, prevents it from presumptuously running ahead and wildly speculating about things that are still unclear.

Trilobite

Maximus,

Excellent points.

"Then again, the FDS has much to be modest about."

Poor Clement, unlike the FDS, was a sheep in sheep's clothing. The FDS is now in a situation more comparable to Chamberlain; "He was given the choice between dishonour and war. He chose dishonour and will have war anyway."

T.

46

For Maximus: I'll ignore everyone else

by Rex B13 in

jw
friends

maximus,.

you seem like a smart fellow but you have jw rationalism imbedded in your brain.

you asked for an explanation and here it is:.

Trilobite

Skeptic,

It is an interesting exercise to compare Maximus' question with Rex's answer. I think you'll find that Rex yet again avoided the issue. Essentially his answer amounts to "I don't know and can't explain but you better believe me because I believe I'm right."
T.

11

The dishonesty of a JW poster

by Seeker in

jw
friends

in the "what's wrong w/jw's" thread, godrules is trying to defend the wts.

when godrules asked for "facts" that show jws are wrong, among the respondants was alanf.

alanf linked to his essay showing the dishonest way the creation book quotes evolutionists.

Trilobite

Seeker,

You were absolutely correct to call GodRules to task in the way you did. While it is clear that there remained the possibility that he/she/it had actually read AlanF's essay, it was his/her/its responsibility to demonstrate that that was the case in its post. Since it merely stated, without supporting evidence, that the essay was "opinion" then it was perfectly logical to conclude that it had either not read the essay or it had not understood it. Thus, by not mentioning the possibility that GodRules had read the essay you were actually doing this creature a favor. Why? Because if GR had read the essay, as it now maintains, then, based on its original response, one can only conclude that GR is either a liar or an idiot.

The argument that, somehow, documented facts are subject to interpretation or can be dismissed as "opinion" is a favorite tactic of many JWs and also fundies like Rex. This fuzzy view of the world perhaps allows them to comfort themselves in their intellectual abyss, but it, nevertheless, amounts to rank dishonesty especially with themselves.

T.

23

Flood and bristlecone pine

by Moxy in

jw
friends

i mentioned that the dc in our area featured a talk where the speaker, as an illustration of endurance, mentioned methusaleh, the bristlecone pine that had lived for 4700+ years.

i asked here for some possible explanations of this that allow for the wt flood dating.

i had assumed that the standard response would be that the dating of the tree was wrong, that the rings had gotten doubled a few times or something.

Trilobite

waiting,

I think those plants died out with the trilobites! However, to be consistent with Genesis the special creation of all plants must have occurred on the same Creative Day, right?

I seem to recall that the Society once proposed that maybe plants used hydrogen for phtosynthesis instead of sunlight. I can't recall the exact reference but I do remember (as an early teenager) putting a plant in a bell jar with an atmosphere of hydrogen in a dark cupboard to see if it would work. The poor thing was dead in days. That experience put me off biology and my then dream of becoming a veterinarian: it was bad enough killing plants let alone rats and cats and things. I'll not get into how I got out of the JW ban on going to college here.

The WTS has pulled the ususal stunt with the length of Creative Days. It has simply stopped mentioning the number 7000. To long time Dubs when they see the WTS saying that a Creative Day was "thousands" of years long they just think, if they notice it at all, that the Society is just making a general point and that actually, they really mean 7000 years exactly. New Dubs tend to think that the length of a Creative Day is flexible and very many thousands of years long. Thus, two "thoughts" now co-exist in the organization on this issue and most JWs probably don't even realize it.

The thing to do is to get some "innocent" dub to ask at a book study exactly how long a Creative Day is. That would generate some fireworks. Indeed, since the 7000 year number is still official dogma, i.e., never having being formally revoked it is still "current truth," I wonder how much trouble a JW could get into by explicitly teaching the 7000 year long Creative Day on every possible occasion. I wonder if one could get oneself DFed for promoting divisions even though one was teaching "current truth." That is Orwellian indeed.

T.

23

Flood and bristlecone pine

by Moxy in

jw
friends

i mentioned that the dc in our area featured a talk where the speaker, as an illustration of endurance, mentioned methusaleh, the bristlecone pine that had lived for 4700+ years.

i asked here for some possible explanations of this that allow for the wt flood dating.

i had assumed that the standard response would be that the dating of the tree was wrong, that the rings had gotten doubled a few times or something.

Trilobite

Moxy,

Plants need both oxygen gas (for respiration) and carbon dioxide gas (for photosynthesis). Most plants die if submerged for any length of time because they are not adapted to extract these gases from water, only from the atmosphere. In principle it's a bit like the difference between mammalalian lungs and fish's gills, although the details are very different. On eproblem is that CO2 levels in water are rather low. Thus, many underwater plants (e.g., pondweeds) are adapted to extract CO_2 from bicarbonate ions which may be present in slightly alkaline water. It isn't obvious that the concentration of bicarbonate ion or CO_2 would be high enough even for initially aquatic plants to survive a deluge of fresh water of such magnitude. Certainly, enormous ionic imbalances would be created.

Bristlecone pines live in very dry mountainous regions; if one was to survive the flood then, over the course of about a year it had to first make the transition from warm, moist pre-flood "greenhouse conditions" to living entirely underwater for a year and then emerge into hot desert like conditions where water was extremely sparse.

It seems extremely unlikely that a plant could not only endure these changes but also adapt to its new environment essentially instantly. A tree tells much about its life through its rings; periods of drought, for example, can be detected. It is unreasonable to expect that, not only would a bristelcone pine survive and adapt to the flood, but, further would not even "notice" this trauma it in its rings.

Other problems include: the severe mechanical damage that would be expected from a global deluge that was supposed to raise up mountains and the reduction in sunlight that plants which were deeply submerged would experience. I'd imagien that the waters would be extremely murky based on the force with which they would have hit the earth and the resulting turbulence. This would further diminish the amount of sunlight getting through. Then again, according to Genesis, plants lived for a Creative Day or so before the earth was exposed to sunlight so maybe that wouldn't have been an issue :-).

T.

46

For Maximus: I'll ignore everyone else

by Rex B13 in

jw
friends

maximus,.

you seem like a smart fellow but you have jw rationalism imbedded in your brain.

you asked for an explanation and here it is:.

Trilobite

"You cannot have all of the answers to Biblical theology. "

Do you know what theology is? If you did then you would realize that this statement foundational statement in your response to Maximus is nonsense.

T.

19

Alan Does the Twist

by Rex B13 in

jw
friends

it never ceases to amaze me seeing how alan's various toadies here fawn over his posts and kiss his behind up to the brown spot.

evidence of this is in the responses to his post about ot & nt morality.. alan uses his own lack of context to twist scripture as well as any jw writer.

a case in point is his notion that adultery and fornication are primarily related to an economic loss (with a woman as property) and not a violation of a clear moral code.

Trilobite

Maximus,

Excellent points! All of them!

T.