i have been online looking for actual images of the hoofed toes of early whales.. there is no lack of articles that say "such and such" had hooves on their toes, like their land dwelling ancestors.. i want images pictures of the relevant fossils.. all these references to hooves alone is like the self referencing of the wt with no actual tangible proof.. i am sick to death of looking at drawings that dont really prove anything....
Also the way whales and dolphins swim (they flex their spines up and down) as opposed to the way fish swim (flex spines side to side) Watch a video of whales swimming and you'll see what I mean.
Indicates they used to be land dwelling creatures.
Not to mention the fact that these supposedly fully marine creatures still breathe air. That should be a big clue right there that they had a non-marine, fully terrestrial past.
when i was a kid, it seemed like not a meeting went by when you didn't hear about jonah or sampson and other tall tales from the bible.. now though, they seem to have been sidelined.
i guess the rest of the world caught on to the fact that these stories couldn't possibly be true and were so far fetched (yeah, even by bible standards) that they are just treated as 'stories' like aesop's fables.
saying that you believe in them as genuine accounts just makes you look like a crazy zealot.. but the wts is different.
Want to hear something really ironic, Simon? when I was a young kid I actually thought that bible stories like Samson and Jonah were nothing more than stories used to teach certain lessons. I honestly didn't think they were actual real life historical figures and events that actually happened. They seemed to me to be just as impossible as other non-religious children's stories that I'd heard; and having these stories in the children's My Book of Bible Stories publication only served to reinforce in my mind that they were just stories.
As I got older, however, I realized that the adults at the Kingdom Hall actually believed these stories are real history. Only then did I start to seriously consider them as history. I succumbed to a kind of bandwagon and authority effect. I figured if all these adults believed these stories to be real history then maybe they are, because all these adults who are more knowledgeable than me can't be wrong; surely they're too smart to believe made up stories.
I'm sure I'm not the first kid who initially saw bible stories as just stories but later came to view them as real history because of the sincere belief of adults. Children, in their innocence and humility, see things as they honestly are. But as they grow older, the desire to fit in and other pressures and insecurities can cause them to lie to themselves and adopt a dishonest world-view.
stop and think.
peter and john were "unlearned and ignorant men" without training in any ecclesiastical rabbinical school of their day.. acts 4:13. new king james version (nkjv).
13 now when they saw the boldness of peter and john, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled.
Are you say[ing] any of the Bible can be substantiated?
I'm just saying if we use the bible as the standard for what christians and JWs ought to teach and believe, then the common claim of Noah being commissioned to preach to the people about the coming flood is unsubstantiated. It's a common tradition that has no firm basis in scripture.
jehovah's witnesses teach that holy spirit acts as a remembrancer, enabling a person to remember things he studied in the past on the spur of the moment when he needs it.
jehovah's witnesses pray for holy spirit to direct their meetings and believe that there is holy spirit in operation during their meetings.. but have you noticed how, during a question and answer discussion, the brother on the platform would sometimes forget the names of persons in the audience - persons he knows very well?
you would think that holy spirit would at least enable them to remember the name of someone they have seen and spoken to every week at the meeting for years!.
Jehovah's Witnesses teach that holy spirit acts as a remembrancer, enabling a person to remember things he studied in the past on the spur of the moment when he needs it. Jehovah's Witnesses pray for holy spirit to direct their meetings and believe that there is holy spirit in operation during their meetings.
But have you noticed how, during a question and answer discussion, the brother on the platform would sometimes forget the names of persons in the audience - persons he knows very well? You would think that holy spirit would at least enable them to remember the name of someone they have seen and spoken to every week at the meeting for years!
The reason they forget the names of persons they know very well when on the platform, is that their mental attention and memory resources are so taxed with dealing with the assignment at hand, that the brain sometimes lapses in recalling other very simple but unrelated information - sometimes something as simple as the name of someone in the audience that they actually know very well.
If they truly had the help of holy spirit the brain would be helped and such lapses wouldn't occur. It's all human efforts.
i know this was noted earlier:.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/266186/3/the-big-announcement-this-week#.uoaoe_yo5dg.
but it was officially announced today that the school for couples and the school for single brothers were being combined with the new twist that single sisters would be allowed also.
So they've merged the BS for Single Brothers with the BS for Couples to create a new all-inclusive BS for everyone. But isn't it still BS?
while visiting our neighbors across the pond, i visited a butcher store to rustle up something for supper.
that was the first time i had ever seen blood sausage.
we just never see it over here in the states.. when a witness leaves the organization over there, do they all eat blood sausage once again?
Chicken giblet stew, with hearts, livers and gizzards, on toast for breakfast, is a real treat.
i work in the medical field and every 2 years i need 24 hours if continuing education to stay licensed.
my deadline is coming up and i am taking the classes this week and next week.
heres the thing, i scheduled them both on sundays and ive procrastinated over this two year renewal period.
The organization has cultivated a fanatically extreme view of meeting attendance. "Not forsaking the gathering of ourselves together as some have the custom" translates to "Do not to miss a single meeting or assembly for absolutely any reason other than illness!"
Published experiences of Witnesses putting their jobs on the line or braving alligator infested rivers to get to their convention, do much to promote the fanatical obsession with not missing a single meeting. Such experiences make Witnesses feel guilty about missing a single meeting for an important reason such as you mention.
Did Paul really have in mind such extremism? Or was he simply discouraging absentism for trivial reasons or as a custom? Are two single meetings discussing material you've already heard before, more important than keeping your job so that you can continue to provide for your household? Does Hebrews 10:25 trump 1 Timothy 5:8?
section 3 first!.
how was bible truth rediscovered?.
it goes in to the section and explains that false teachers were foretold to arise after jesus died (and the apostles died according to one conment).
What I found utterly hypocritical is that while these sincere bible students "rediscovered" bible truth through their independent bible study group, the JW organization today discourages JWs from having such independent bible study groups. Hypocrisy at its finest.
I was also wondering to myself if studying the bible in a topical manner is actually the best way. I mean, shouldn't the bible be studied in the way it's written - in context. If you're just going to come up with an arbitrary topic and scan the bible for phrases on that specific topic, wouldn't you be looking at the bible with a kind of tunnel vision that can cause you to be misled about a what a particular verse actually means because of your not considering the particular wider context in which it's used? Sometimes the immediate, local meaning of a verse or phrase is limited and peculiar to the surrounding context. If you're searching the bible in "topic tunnel mode" you could land on that verse and accept the local, limited meaning as being absolute and universal and come away with the wrong idea. "Topic tunnel mode" of study leaves you more open to taking things out of context. It's better to carefully read the bible book by book, carefully following the flow of thought of the writer.
stop and think.
peter and john were "unlearned and ignorant men" without training in any ecclesiastical rabbinical school of their day.. acts 4:13. new king james version (nkjv).
13 now when they saw the boldness of peter and john, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled.
Take the example of Noah preaching for 120 years in warning of the Flood coming.
Terry, without wishing to sound like I'm negatively picking on you, I think the above is an unprovable claim. It's a claim that JWs and many other christians make but is actually unsubstantiated in the bible.
When one reads the Genesis account there is absolutely no mention of Noah being told to preach to the people, warning them of an impending flood. One would think that such an important detail would not have been left out if it was part of the instructions given to Noah. Also, when you think of the fact that God gave Noah specific, fixed dimensions for the ark, how likely is it that there would still be room available for an unknown number of people joining them in the ark, as a result of a preaching effort? It seems more likely that by the time Noah set about building the ark, God had already pronounced his final verdict of death on all but Noah and his family.
While there is a reference to Noah being "a preacher of righteousness" somewhere in the NT, that passage clearly says he was . . . "a preacher of righteousness" - not "a preacher of impending destruction". And there is nothing that says this preaching of righteousness necessarily took place during the time that he was building the ark. It is very possible that Noah, moved by the wickedness around him, took the initiative to preach righeousness in his early life beforebeing warned about the flood and given instructions to build the ark. I can't imagine him, after being commissioned, taking time out the work he was specifically told to do - build the ark - to do another work he was not instructed to do - preach to the people about a coming flood.
This assumption that Noah purposefully preached, warning the people of the coming flood, has influenced, in a negative way, the translation of Matthew 24:39 in the NWT. Most JWs read that verse and see it as implying that the people "took no note" of the warning message that Noah preached. However, when one looks at the actual Greek text and the context of the verse, an different understanding emerges. I tackle the NWT's poor translation of Matthew 24:39 here:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130615122630AASKBWi
hi friends.
i would like to know your opinion on the following:.
situation:.
The mother gets to share JW crapaganda with the child; the father gets to share TTATT with the child; and the child gets to make his own informed decision when he is of age.
