donkey

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Posts by donkey

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  85

  DNA - belief destuction

  by donkey in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the single largest reason to decimate my belief in jw?s and all biblical faith occurred when i discovered some facts about our cells.

  specifically a part of the cell called mitochondria.

  mitochondria are sometimes described as "cellular power plants" because their primary purpose is to manufacture adenosine triphosphate (atp), which is used as a source of energy that the cell uses.. as humans one inherits one?s mitochondria only from one's mother, this finding implies that all living humans have a female line of descent from a woman whom researchers have dubbed mitochondrial eve.

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  donkey

  A Christian,

  So God went to all the trouble of "creating" Adam and Eve, but already knew he was building a failure? If you know up front that you are building a house that has a fatal flaw - how are you not responsible for the outcome?

  If god knowingly constructed a flawed human society then he would be at fault. You cannot have it both ways.

  Another question: All these folk that lived before or parallel to adam and eve, did they benefit from Jesus? Those who died before Adam - did they have sin? What code was used to measure the sin?

  From what I am seeing you are trying to think out side the box but staying firmly in the box.
• 
  85

  DNA - belief destuction

  by donkey in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the single largest reason to decimate my belief in jw?s and all biblical faith occurred when i discovered some facts about our cells.

  specifically a part of the cell called mitochondria.

  mitochondria are sometimes described as "cellular power plants" because their primary purpose is to manufacture adenosine triphosphate (atp), which is used as a source of energy that the cell uses.. as humans one inherits one?s mitochondria only from one's mother, this finding implies that all living humans have a female line of descent from a woman whom researchers have dubbed mitochondrial eve.

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  donkey

  This is one of the imminent problems that arise when the Bible is taken as a literal truth. Sure, some events did happen as corroborated by other historical sources, but when it goes into the paranormal, it is best to read it in the spirit in which it was written: Parables and metaphores to ilustrate concepts .

  So when it is proven wrong it becomes a parable?

  Is there no absolute truth to the bible? If not then how can it be authoritative? How can you have faith in a parable or fable? How can a parable or fable govern your whole life?

  The more I observe people ignoring true reality and hard evidence because it compromises their ?faith? the more I regress to my former statements that the religious ones are mentally ill. I mean that in the sincerest sense and in no way as an insult. If we took a person and observed him behaving, speaking to and governing his life by some other book or thing we would all agree the person was mentally ill.

  For instance, let?s say that Englishman believed that there was a saskquatch that visited him and he had a document written (supposedly by his hairy friend) we would all examine the document and any protestation by Englishman that his Sasquatch Bible was a mixture of truth and parable would meet with derision by all of us. We would surely say Englishman had been bitten by one too many fleas or choked on his soup. However, this is entirely what we are expected to do for God and believers in him. Englishman can probably find more evidence of the existence of a sasquatch than you can find evidence of God. But because it?s ?god? the believers get a pass.

  BTW: Englishman really does believe in the supremacy of a sasquatch.
• 
  85

  DNA - belief destuction

  by donkey in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the single largest reason to decimate my belief in jw?s and all biblical faith occurred when i discovered some facts about our cells.

  specifically a part of the cell called mitochondria.

  mitochondria are sometimes described as "cellular power plants" because their primary purpose is to manufacture adenosine triphosphate (atp), which is used as a source of energy that the cell uses.. as humans one inherits one?s mitochondria only from one's mother, this finding implies that all living humans have a female line of descent from a woman whom researchers have dubbed mitochondrial eve.

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  donkey

  By that I take it that you mean you realize that an intelligent, well informed person is not going to buy into uninformed Bible bashing

  Since you don't believe the bible and what it says there is just no point talking about it with you.

  According to your version (I am sure you will wordsmith me up the wazoo here):

  • Adam was not the first man.
  • Jesus came for some unknown reason - since he did not come to redeem man from Adamic sin.
  • The earth was not flooded.
  • We need to understand the meaning of obscure words in foreign languages to understand the bible - but you don't understand the foreign language either yet are going to counsel us to learn a word here and there.
  • You do not believe in the fall of man.
  • If Adam had not sinned he still would have died.
  • You and the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate are pals
  • Other people existed before and while Adam and Eve existed, yet Eve was still created.
  • Men were split into language groups at the tower of Babel.

  By the way, I was complimenting you when I called you intelligent. I also happen to know many Islamic folk possibly much more intelligent than yourself and their belief system is also screwy so please don't take my words to mean anything other than a simple compliment as you tried to do. So to put it more bluntly: I don't see any need to waste my time on someone who doesn't believe the bible but claims to believe it. Good luck.
• 
  85

  DNA - belief destuction

  by donkey in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the single largest reason to decimate my belief in jw?s and all biblical faith occurred when i discovered some facts about our cells.

  specifically a part of the cell called mitochondria.

  mitochondria are sometimes described as "cellular power plants" because their primary purpose is to manufacture adenosine triphosphate (atp), which is used as a source of energy that the cell uses.. as humans one inherits one?s mitochondria only from one's mother, this finding implies that all living humans have a female line of descent from a woman whom researchers have dubbed mitochondrial eve.

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  donkey

  A Christian,

  I cannot help you. Your beliefs require even more faith than people who follow the English Bible. You are polite and intelligent but I can see we won't get anywhere. I suggest you look at the situation and ask yourself why God made it so difficult to follow him since we cannot even take his holy book at face value.
• 
  85

  DNA - belief destuction

  by donkey in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the single largest reason to decimate my belief in jw?s and all biblical faith occurred when i discovered some facts about our cells.

  specifically a part of the cell called mitochondria.

  mitochondria are sometimes described as "cellular power plants" because their primary purpose is to manufacture adenosine triphosphate (atp), which is used as a source of energy that the cell uses.. as humans one inherits one?s mitochondria only from one's mother, this finding implies that all living humans have a female line of descent from a woman whom researchers have dubbed mitochondrial eve.

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  donkey

  God made Adam on the 6th day, but it says nowhere in the bible how long such a day might have been. For all whe know a biblical "day" comprised of thousands, maybe millions of years. In that context (which is the right one imo) it is very likely that Adam and Eve existed longer then 6k years.

  So you disagree then with the bible which states that Adam lived for 930 years? It is the ages, deaths and births of the bible that allow believers to establish their timeline of circa 4000 BC as the time when adam and Eve were created. Do you agree with the Bible or don't you?

  I am always amused at how believers when cornered have to suddenly dig in and refer to the "original Greek" or "original Aramaic" or "original Hebrew" words. If the English bible is unreliable then unless you understand Greek/Hebrew/whatever fluently you are clutching at straws. Further you require even larger amounts of faith to believe the stuff you do because then it becomes full of contradictions due to translation. If you have to refer to some other language to explain stuff, then I ask you please to ignore the man behind the curtain since you have no solid basis for the beliefs. How can you prove that your understanding of Ancient Hebrew is correct? If you cannot then the approach is flawed and you are left with the English translation. Whatever it is it seems as if God has done everything to make it difficult for the common man to believe in him and what he supposedly said through the Bible.

  Regarding the tower of Babel, do we have a clearer date as to when this occurred? According to bible chronology the flood occured circa 2,200 BC. This means people had to disperse from the tower of Babel to remote regions, learn to write their different langueages using different character sets and record information AFTER the tower of Babel. How long after the flood did the tower of Babel happen? This further shortens the time since there were many people affected by the Tower of Babel (not just a remote family)? Please look at ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Bushman and Chinese writing and ask yourself how these written words could have preceded the Tower of Babel.....there is evidence to support them being between 5,000 - 10,000 years old. This creates another dilemna for believers.

  By the way, at the time of the global flood in the Bible we have Noah's 3 sons. Asking the next question we can look at the Y-chromosome. Only males have Y-chromosomes and we must therefore have inherited them from Noah according to the Bible. If we look at a cross section of males across regional/racial groups we not diversity among their y-chromosomes due to mutation of the chromosomes. This mutation (genetic drift) can be studied using a fairly well established rate of change and we find Chromosonal Adam to have lived over 60,000 years ago. That is a factor of 15 or more greater than what believers claim.
• 
  85

  DNA - belief destuction

  by donkey in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the single largest reason to decimate my belief in jw?s and all biblical faith occurred when i discovered some facts about our cells.

  specifically a part of the cell called mitochondria.

  mitochondria are sometimes described as "cellular power plants" because their primary purpose is to manufacture adenosine triphosphate (atp), which is used as a source of energy that the cell uses.. as humans one inherits one?s mitochondria only from one's mother, this finding implies that all living humans have a female line of descent from a woman whom researchers have dubbed mitochondrial eve.

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  donkey

  As far as our ancestors coming from Africa, a clearer analysis is possible using chromosomal DNA, some highly variable segments of which are far more variable than mitochondrial DNA, so providing more "markers" to compare.

  In 1996, a large team of geneticists from six countries reported the results of a comprehensive nuclear DNA study. The team analyzed, in human populations all over the world, two variable parts of the CD4 gene (the cell surface receptor on white blood cells that recognizes the AIDS-causing HIV virus) located on human chromosome 12. They examined 1,600 individuals in forty-two populations. A total of 24 different versions of the two segments were found. Fully 21 of them were present in human populations in Africa, while three were found in Europeans and only two in Asians and in Americans.

  This argues forcefully that chromosome 12 has existed in African humans far longer than in non-African humans. Together with fossils of early H. sapiens from Africa and Israel, these results strongly support an Out-of-Africa model of human origins. Thus, while still hotly debated, it appears likely that H. sapiens evolved once in Africa, then migrated out of Africa to Europe and Asia.
• 
  85

  DNA - belief destuction

  by donkey in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the single largest reason to decimate my belief in jw?s and all biblical faith occurred when i discovered some facts about our cells.

  specifically a part of the cell called mitochondria.

  mitochondria are sometimes described as "cellular power plants" because their primary purpose is to manufacture adenosine triphosphate (atp), which is used as a source of energy that the cell uses.. as humans one inherits one?s mitochondria only from one's mother, this finding implies that all living humans have a female line of descent from a woman whom researchers have dubbed mitochondrial eve.

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  donkey

  Another point on your logic: Is sin inherited? If not then all new born babies are perfect - correct? If that is true is a deformed newborn perfect? Is an aborted fetus perfect? If so then according to your logic they don't need to rely on Jesus sacrifice for their sins...and then one can ask how it is possible for a perfect person to die.

  If on the other hand they are born sinless and mortal, its a silly arrangement because God then stacked the deck.

  There is further no point at all in the Genesis account is there?
• 
  85

  DNA - belief destuction

  by donkey in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the single largest reason to decimate my belief in jw?s and all biblical faith occurred when i discovered some facts about our cells.

  specifically a part of the cell called mitochondria.

  mitochondria are sometimes described as "cellular power plants" because their primary purpose is to manufacture adenosine triphosphate (atp), which is used as a source of energy that the cell uses.. as humans one inherits one?s mitochondria only from one's mother, this finding implies that all living humans have a female line of descent from a woman whom researchers have dubbed mitochondrial eve.

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  donkey

  believe this seeming conflict between Bible chronology and well established human history is easily resolved by understanding that the Bible does not tell us that Adam was, in an absolute chronological sense, "the first man". Rather, Adam and Eve were created by God and placed in Eden, a garden in the middle of an already widely populated world, to illustrate some very important lessons. Among them, the fact that none of us is deserving of eternal life. (By the way This understanding also answers the often asked questions, "Where did Cain get his wife?" and "Who were the people Cain was afraid might kill him?")

  You choose to disbelieve a lot of stuff in the Bible then. For instance, the bible says God mad Eve from Adam's rib. Following your arguments this would not be true - so the bible must then be inaccurate.

  The Bible clearly says that through ONE man, Adam, sin entered the world and thus we are all born with sin.

  I could easily say I only belive in the book of Jude and the rest of the bible is misunderstood but the Bible is true nonetheless. It takes massive amounts of faith to belive in the Bible and what it says; does it take even more faith to believe in only a piece here and there? I would think so...
• 
  85

  DNA - belief destuction

  by donkey in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the single largest reason to decimate my belief in jw?s and all biblical faith occurred when i discovered some facts about our cells.

  specifically a part of the cell called mitochondria.

  mitochondria are sometimes described as "cellular power plants" because their primary purpose is to manufacture adenosine triphosphate (atp), which is used as a source of energy that the cell uses.. as humans one inherits one?s mitochondria only from one's mother, this finding implies that all living humans have a female line of descent from a woman whom researchers have dubbed mitochondrial eve.

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• 

  donkey

  The single largest reason to decimate my belief in JW?s and all biblical faith occurred when I discovered some facts about our cells. Specifically a part of the cell called Mitochondria.

  Mitochondria are sometimes described as "cellular power plants" because their primary purpose is to manufacture adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is used as a source of energy that the cell uses.

  As humans one inherits one?s mitochondria only from one's mother, this finding implies that all living humans have a female line of descent from a woman whom researchers have dubbed Mitochondrial Eve. We do NOT inherit our Mitochondria from our fathers.

  Since we are all humans one might expect us all to have identical Mitochondria. Not so. If we look at the spectrum of humanity geographically and racially we discover that different groups have mitochondria with sufficient differences and we can investigate the mitochondrial differences of the human groups and plot all living humans today back to single woman ? known as the ?Mitochondrial Eve?.

  Biblical creationists might at this juncture point out that this is consistent with the Bible story of the first woman. Not so fast Batman!! If we believe the Bible we are left with a date of Eve?s existence being around 6,000 years ago. However, we can look at the different mitochondrial DNA of humans and examine them based on the molecular clock technique of correlating elapsed time with observed genetic drift. Using this technique we can clearly see that Mitochondrial Eve lived over 150,000 years ago, likely over 200,000 years ago.

  This calls into question Bible Chronology in tracing the lineage of humans back to the supposed Adam and Eve of the Bible ? else the hard evidence would support a mitochondrial drift dating back only 6,000 years but as I showed above the date if off by a factor of greater than 30. So where does this leave us? If the reason for a Messiah was to save us from Adamic sin and yet we cannot even closely correlate an Adam back to the Mitochondrial Eve (certainly not using the Bible explanation) then the whole concept of Adamic Sin falls flat and thus the need for Jesus to save us from Adamic sin. Without Adam and Jesus the Bible becomes largely pointless except to be a book of wisdom like so many other books.

  How can anyone learn about:

  • Mitochondria, how we inherit it from our mothers;
  • see the differences in the mitochondria of others;
  • and very obviously observe that the common ancestor of humanity lived way before Biblical explanation by a factor of 30

  and then still believe the rest of the Bible?

  While many believers will play ostrich with the blatant evidence and bury their heads in the sand they will look at my argument and say ?see we did have a beginning just like the Bible says?, I suggest they look into the matter intelligently. Reasoning on just this revelation and the implications thereof can change your life.

  For further reading I suggest these links:

  http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/mitoeve.html

  http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A703199
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  105

  I'm a Neutral Jehovah's Witness

  by Martini in

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  2. friends

  dear brothers and sisters,.

  i martini, will confide in you that i have become a neutral jehovah's witness.

  i wonder if i'm not coining a new phrase here!.

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  donkey

  In that case ignore my post Martini.

  WTF - damn I am fucking stupid. Here i was making an exception to post here cause I thought I might help someone.