Island Man

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Posts by Island Man

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  180

  Please post new forum feedback or questions here

  by Simon in

  1. forum
  2. tech-support

  well, the switchover happened - there were a couple of things i had to fix which meant the posting was disabled for longer than i planned but it's now enabled and some people have already posted.. if you have any questions about the new format or suggestions on how to improve it, please post them here.. if you are having trouble signing in or posting then you'll need to email me instead.. many thanks to everyone for their patience during the changeover !.

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  Island Man

  Are we going to have a button for emoticons or is that feature gone or do we have to write it out in code form like ;) ?
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  8

  Welcome to the new forum!

  by Simon in

  1. forum
  2. announcements

  if you are reading this then you are on the new site :).

  posting is disabled until i check everything is working correctly.. please standby ....

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  Island Man

  Are we having emoticons or are they gone? 
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  8

  Welcome to the new forum!

  by Simon in

  1. forum
  2. announcements

  if you are reading this then you are on the new site :).

  posting is disabled until i check everything is working correctly.. please standby ....

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  Island Man

  Sweet! 
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  52

  Steve Pinker ... evidence on the surprising decline in violence

  by digderidoo in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this is an interesting lecture.

  one that flies in the face of current jw and i assume most non jw thinking.

  evidence shows that when examining history mankind was more violent over the centuries than they were during the 20th and 21st century.

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  Island Man

  One example of the utterly fallacious reasoning used to prove the inspiration of the bible is the internal harmony of all the books written by different authors. I find it surprising that theists can't see through this ruse. Given that the bible was written by different authors who lived at different times wrote their books years apart isn't it very likely that the authors of later bible books would have had access to and read the earlier bible books? For example, isn't it likely that the author of Revelation would have had access to and read Genesis? And having been educated by what he read in Genesis and believing it to be true, should it be surprising that the author of Revelation would think and write Revelation in a manner consistent with the "education" he received from Genesis and pre-existing bible books? So it's to be expected that each bible writer who would have read and believed what was written in the preceding bible books would have had their minds shaped by that information and would only naturally write their own books in a manner consistent with thinking shaped by preceding books.

  By way of an example, a person who has studied the subject of evolution and believes it, would go on to write a book that is in harmony with current scientific thoughts on the subject of evolution. If you were to pick up that person's book and compare what it says with what is said in other scientific books on the subject of evolution, you would notice harmony. Are you to conclude from that the all those books were inspired by the same divine author because that's the only explanation for the harmony despite there being different writers? Of course not! How ridiculous!

  For the internal harmony argument to have any merit, this is what would have had to have happened: All the bible writers would have had to write their books at the same time in different locations and not being aware of the contents of each other's books at the time of writing their own books. If that were the case then we could give merit to the internal harmony argument being evidence of divine inspiration - but not when writers wrote their books years apart and would have had access to preceding books, so as to make any harmony be explanable by purely natural means.
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  52

  Steve Pinker ... evidence on the surprising decline in violence

  by digderidoo in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this is an interesting lecture.

  one that flies in the face of current jw and i assume most non jw thinking.

  evidence shows that when examining history mankind was more violent over the centuries than they were during the 20th and 21st century.

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  Island Man

  " Island man, you are confusing 'blind faith' with the biblical conception found at Hebrews 11"

  Christianity does rest on blind faith - blind faith in the traditions of men. Christianity is rooted in belief that the bible is the inspired word of God. How does one know that the bible really is the inspired word of God. One doesn't. One accepts it based on handed down tradition. It is traditionally accepted by theologians that the bible is the inspired word of God because earlier theologians from earlier centuries considered it the word of God. The "evidence" for the inspiration of bible books consists simply of earlier writers quoting them and considering them to be inspired and the fact that later books appear to be in harmony with earlier books. It's all based on faith in handed down tradition and fallacious reasoning!
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  52

  Steve Pinker ... evidence on the surprising decline in violence

  by digderidoo in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this is an interesting lecture.

  one that flies in the face of current jw and i assume most non jw thinking.

  evidence shows that when examining history mankind was more violent over the centuries than they were during the 20th and 21st century.

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  Island Man

  " Rather, I'm responding as to why God 'cloaked' (encrypted) this message."

  So God went through the trouble of inspiring the writing an infallible collection of books - the bible - but made sure it's written in a cryptic way that no human can perfectly understand or interpret all of it correctly? What then is the value of it being infallible if no human can benefit from its infallibility by virtue of the fact that no human can perfectly understand all of it? That is not the mark of divine wisdom at all!

  Your God is like a song-writer who goes through the trouble of writing the most beautiful song and musical composition - in a way that no one can fully understand all of it so as to render it perfectly. So the most beautiful song will never be heard despite all meticulous effort that went into creating it. Isn't that a waste? Isn't that foolish?

  I think its more reasonable to believe that the books of the bible were written by imperfect men of long ago and not an all wise God. An all wise God would have not a much better job. This claim that God 'cloaked' or encrypted his message is nothing but a convenient and false excuse to explain away the poor authorship that makes it difficult to understand it all fully.
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  52

  Steve Pinker ... evidence on the surprising decline in violence

  by digderidoo in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this is an interesting lecture.

  one that flies in the face of current jw and i assume most non jw thinking.

  evidence shows that when examining history mankind was more violent over the centuries than they were during the 20th and 21st century.

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  Island Man

  " Faith is NOT a virtue."

  Amen! This is one of the single greatest truths that christians and many other religionists are blind to. Faith is perhaps the greatest false axiom of religion. It only takes a little bit of rational thinking to see that faith really is a bad attribute. No God who is truly wise will value faith as a virtue because faith actually makes one vulnerable to deception. Faith is really just the enobling of credulity; the respectable adult version of 'make believe'. It is because of faith that there are hundreds of conflicting religions and beliefs. Faith is the justification to believe falsehoods without evidence or despite contradicting evidence. Faith is the bait used by religious con men to get you to accept their unproven false claims.

  I am convinced that religionists very early on in human history, having realized that religious beliefs are unproven and can easily be logically debunked, devised the concept of faith to guilt their followers into believing them instead of following rational thought and escaping the delusion. Religionsist did not want to lose their followers and their power so they started saying: "If you don't believe God will be displeased. God wants you to believe even without hard evidence. God hates doubters. Do you want to be punished by God for not believing?"
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  52

  Steve Pinker ... evidence on the surprising decline in violence

  by digderidoo in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this is an interesting lecture.

  one that flies in the face of current jw and i assume most non jw thinking.

  evidence shows that when examining history mankind was more violent over the centuries than they were during the 20th and 21st century.

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  Island Man

  " How can anybody actually read the bible and think that it is worthy of their respect?"

  1. By being indoctriated with the preconceived axiom that the bible is the word of God.

  2. By refusing to do any independent research into the bible from objective, non-theist sources.

  3. By being afraid to doubt the historicity or morality of certain passages that are troubling to the rational mind. It is considered a sin to doubt the bible - lack of faith.

  Thus fundamentalist, bible believing christians are shackled in their thinking, unable to see clearly and rationally, because the very tenets of their faith creates a closed mindset that is geared at preserving the chains shackling the mind. It is like AIDS, where the immune system on its own cannot fight the HIV virus because the virus targets and damages the very said immune system. Similarly fundamentalist christianity targets and demonizes reason, independent research, open-mindedness and doubt - the very attributes needed to see through the errors of the bible.
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  54

  How do you overcome this JW excuse?

  by EdenOne in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  during one of those meetings that took place before my jc, one of the elders, who was a good friend of mine back then and used to come up with a few outlandish personal views about some teachings, attempted to counter one of my arguments like this:.

  eden - "well, if the truth doesn't change, why is it that what we teach as 'truth' has changed over the years (several examples given)?

  how can we dogmatically claim at any given moment that we have 'the truth' if our teachings keep changing?".

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  Island Man

  This is how you counter it. You simply reply:

  "What Orwellian rubbish! I feel like I'm listening to an interrogator from the novel 1984! Are you listening to yourself? You are making a fool of yourself, not me. I don't have to sit here and listen to this stupid, deceitful, reasoning. Good bye!"

  Then you get up from the meeting and take your leave. Don't dignify such stupid reasoning. Let them know in no uncertain terms that such reasoning is stupid and will not be tolerated in any way by you. You might even say something like:

  "What! What did I just hear you say? Am I hearing right? Do you mind repeating that? . . . My God! you actually said that! Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined hearing such a foolishly disingenuous - one might even say facetious - argument coming from the mouth of an elder in Jehovah's organization! Are you joking or are you that desperate?"
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  47

  What is the point of the picture in this weeks study article ?

  by stuckinarut2 in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  i don't understand the relevance of the first picture in this weeks study article?!?!.

  wt week of december 15-21 "cherish your privilege of working with jehovah".

  can someone post the pic?.

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  Island Man

  scary21: Does anyone think it looks like a nice new prison ? It even has a guard tower on the right side.

  OMG! Scary21, you might be on to something. A building that looks like a new prison complete with what looks like a guard tower, and located in the country. We know Watchtower is in to selling branch and other facilities to various organizations. So what if Watchtower already has plans or a deal in the pipeline to sell the new Warwick building to the state of New York in future - say 5 to 10 years down the road - to serve as a state correctional facility?