Posts by Island Man

12

Self-righteous Watchtower vs the pagan-inspired New Testament.

by Island Man in

watchtower refuses to translate stauros as cross despite having no evidence to refute the long-standing ancient belief that jesus died on a cross; and in spite of evidence that the romans were in fact using crosses in executions by jesus' day.

they shun the word simply because of the use of crosses in ancient pagan religions.. watchtower refuses to refer to their places of worship with the word church because of the word's supposed pagan origin or past usage to refer to pagan places of worship.. now contrast watchtower's self-righteous attitude of avoiding the use of all words having pagan religious usages, with the new testament verse of 2 peter 2:4:.

certainly god did not refrain from punishing the angels who sinned, but threw them into tarʹta·rus, putting them in chains of dense darkness to be reserved for judgment.. tartarus is a word that had rich pagan mythological meaning when it was written in the nt.

Island Man

Watchtower refuses to translate stauros as cross despite having no evidence to refute the long-standing ancient belief that Jesus died on a cross; and in spite of evidence that the Romans were in fact using crosses in executions by Jesus' day. They shun the word simply because of the use of crosses in ancient pagan religions.

Watchtower refuses to refer to their places of worship with the word church because of the word's supposed pagan origin or past usage to refer to pagan places of worship.

Now contrast Watchtower's self-righteous attitude of avoiding the use of all words having pagan religious usages, with the New Testament verse of 2 Peter 2:4:

Certainly God did not refrain from punishing the angels who sinned, but threw them into Tarʹta·rus, putting them in chains of dense darkness to be reserved for judgment.

Tartarus is a word that had rich pagan mythological meaning when it was written in the NT. The holy, righteous, inspired NT writer chose to use a word that has pagan religious meaning to refer to where God imprisoned the rebellious angels. But wait, there is more. The pagan meaning and usage of Tartarus - an underworld prison of darkness for rebellious gods - also harmonizes perfectly with it's usage in 2 Peter 2:4 in such a manner as to give credence to the pagan myth! Watchtower tries desperately and very transparently, to deny this very obvious and inconvenient fact, when explaining the use of word in this verse.

Doesn't it seem rather strange that the holy and righteous, pagan-shunning (as Watchtower would have us believe), Christian NT writer would choose such a false-religious word in such a manner as to give credence to a pagan myth?

Doesn't it seem rather strange and very revealing that the inspired bible writers are doing exactly what JWs today self-righteously shun as mixing pure worship with false worship?

This bible text exposes the utter self-righteousness of Jehovah's Witnesses in their shunning of the use of words like church and cross.

But it doesn't end there. We also have multiple uses of the pagan word hades which was regarded as the afterlife underworld of the dead where they continued living after death. So the word hades used in the NT has deep associations with the pagan notion of immortality of the soul and an automatic afterlife in the spirit realm. And yet, quite unlike JWs today, the writers of the NT had no puritanical hang-ups about using that word in their writings. Thus the NT reveals the utter self-righteousness of JWs in the way they stigmatize words based on past pagan usage - in a way that the inspired bible writers never did.

And there is more yet! The belief that Jesus was miraculously conceived of a virgin is not prophesied anywhere in the OT. But several pagan myths pre-dating christianity speak of demigods being born of a virgin. Yes, this idea that Jesus was born of a virgin is likely a pagan concept borrowed from other religions of the day.

I think these are good points to mention to JWs when they start with their self-righteous spiel about avoiding pagan influences in teaching and worship and to help them to see that the NT itself - and therefore Christianity - is polluted with pagan influences.

31

Latest Metal Detecting Find

by cofty in

now the harvest is underway up north i can get out for a walk with the metal detector in the evening.

i am lucky to live on a historic rural estate and i have permission from the landowner to detect.. this is a coin that popped up last night.

it was only about 2 inches deep and had been tumbling around in the plough soil for the last 750 years.. it is a silver penny of king henry iii.

Island Man

Wow! The head of the coin actually looks like something you would expect to see carved on a Mayan, Aztec or Inca ruin. lol.

60

The problem of sex (or why I'm not an atheist)

by EdenOne in

as i write this under the shadow of the walls of saint jorge's castle in lisbon, two very bored jws are standing just five metres away from me with a literature cart .... in my journey away from jwism i accepted evolution as a fact.

i also became anti-religion, agnostic and apatheist.

and, while i lean towards the persuasion of the atheist arguments, there are a few reasons that make it difficult for me to completely discard the notion of an intelligent origin of life.

Island Man

The origin of sexual reproduction:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9IeL9lqS7I

60

The problem of sex (or why I'm not an atheist)

by EdenOne in

as i write this under the shadow of the walls of saint jorge's castle in lisbon, two very bored jws are standing just five metres away from me with a literature cart .... in my journey away from jwism i accepted evolution as a fact.

i also became anti-religion, agnostic and apatheist.

and, while i lean towards the persuasion of the atheist arguments, there are a few reasons that make it difficult for me to completely discard the notion of an intelligent origin of life.

Island Man

Sexual reproduction fosters greater genetic diversity in the population. Asexual reproduction tends to be cloning with a lot less diversity. Greater genetic diversity means there's less likelihood that all members of the population would die out in a disease outbreak; less likelihood that all animals would lack the traits needed to survive if the environment changed. So genetic diversity provides a survival and therefore a reproductive advantage to species. Natural selection selects those species for survival while those who reproduce only asexually are prone to dying out unless they have some other survival advantage that counterbalances their disadvantage.

A good way to illustrate this is to think of a diversified economy verses an economy based on one or very few productive sectors. The diversified economy is more robust because if a disaster affects one sector it only affects a small percentage of the economy. But an economy based on only one productive sector is destroyed if that one sector is affected by a disaster.

I don't trust what intelligent design advocates have to say about evolution. They always see problems with evolution based on their prior commitment to creationism; their use of fallacious thinking; selective, out of context quotes and outright lies and deceptions. Watchtower does not have a monopoly when it comes to distorting the facts about evolution.

I skimmed through the article. Nothing about it jumps out at me and says: "aha! sexual reproduction could not have come about without an intelligent designer". Instead the whole article is nothing more than the tired old argument from ignorance fallacy. Not yet having a natural explanation for some biological phenomenon does not mean one will never be found in future and it does not mean that a convoluted explanation involving a magic man in the sky automatically becomes the most viable explanation. One thing that did strike me about the article is the fact that it quotes old sources. Look at the dates of the sources in the end-notes at the end of the article. They're mostly from the 1970's to the 1990's. This leads me to ask the question: what are scientists today, in 2016, saying about the "problem" of explaining the origin of sexual reproduction.

37

Beards mentioned again in magazine!

by neat blue dog in

aaaaaand .

.. it offers absolutely nothing new.. from questions from readers in the december 2016 study edition watchtower:.

"is it proper for a brother todayto have a beard?in some cultures, a neat beardmay be acceptable and may notdetract from the kingdom mes-sage.

Island Man

You know, in ancient Jewish culture is was not considered appropriate for men to converse with women in public. It was also considered as sinful, treacherous behavior for a faithful Jew to dine with tax collectors. But Jesus didn't let these societal prejudices stop him from publicly conversing with a Samaritan woman and dining with tax collectors.

So when Watchtower appeals to local "worldly" view of beards to determine whether or not they should be allowed, are they really following Jesus' example? Aren't they actually being a part of the world by upholding and conforming to, unjust "worldly" stereotypes and prejudices? Shouldn't they be demonstrating that they're no part of the world by refusing to conform to "worldly" prejudices against beards?

They are blind and foolish hypocrites.

27

"If the Earth were just a little bit further from or closer to the Sun, we would all freeze or burn"

by Island Man in

i'm sure we've all heard this argument by theists employing the fine-tuning argument.

are you aware, however, of exactly how much this "little bit" really is?

theists would have us think that the slightest change in the distance would have drastic implications for survivability.

Island Man

Good point, redvip2000. Also, there have been many recent discoveries of planets orbiting stars within the habitable zone. So the Earth is really not that special in this regard.

61

Did the flood happen?

by BlackWolf in

so we were talking about noah for our family worship tonight and it ended with a little debate between me and my parents about how the flood was possible.

you know, where did the water come from, how did all the animals fit, etc.

of course it led nowhere and my parents came up with some strange theories like that there was "an expanse of water in the sky" and that's where all the water came from.

Island Man

I saw a documentary once that spoke about a mega tsunami that devastated the Mediterranean region in late prehistoric times (about 10,000 BC). It is possible that this event led to the development of the global flood legend in later centuries.

27

"If the Earth were just a little bit further from or closer to the Sun, we would all freeze or burn"

by Island Man in

i'm sure we've all heard this argument by theists employing the fine-tuning argument.

are you aware, however, of exactly how much this "little bit" really is?

theists would have us think that the slightest change in the distance would have drastic implications for survivability.

Island Man

I'm sure we've all heard this argument by theists employing the fine-tuning argument. Are you aware, however, of exactly how much this "little bit" really is? Theists would have us think that the slightest change in the distance would have drastic implications for survivability. But that is actually not the case.

We are probably all familiar with the factoid that the Earth is 93 million miles from the Sun. But this is not a fixed distance, but an average distance. The Earth's orbit around the Sun is not perfectly circular but elliptical. Earth's distance from the Sun varies depending on the time of the year. When the Earth is closest to the Sun in early January (at its Perihelion) it is 91.4 million miles away from it. When the Earth is furthest from the Sun in early July (at its Aphelion) it is 94.5 million miles away from it. So during the course of a year, the Earth's distance from the Sun varies by over 3 million miles!

To put that 3 million miles into perspective, the Moon is a little over 238,000 miles away. Now imagine travelling more than 12 times the distance to the Moon. That great distance is the extent to which Earth's distance from the Sun varies - with minimal affects to the temperature on Earth. Mile for mile, the Earth's tilt actually has greater effect on temperature variation than the planet's distance from the Sun. And we can even go into the very important role that Earth's rotation and atmosphere plays in maintaining habitable temperatures.

Of course, the Earth's distance from the Sun is important. My point is that the notion that this distance is perfectly fine tuned and the slightest change would have dire consequences, is simply not true. There would have to be significant change in distance to make life on Earth impossible. The 3 million mile variance does not even represent the full extent of Earth's habitable zone. I'm willing to bet that if the distance were varied by as much as 6 million miles, life on Earth would still be possible although the temperatures would be less comfortable.

44

The Atheist Delusion

by looter in

jw
friends

atheist delusion.

just want to know what the ex jw community thinks about this video and also offer my pov.

the video was actually an advertisement on here.

Island Man

"You must be some type of narcissists to say the things you say and not have no regret whatsoever."

Says someone who worships a very narcissistic fictional character.

31

Ideas to discreetly identify the awoken among us

by Truthexplorer in

jw
friends

ok. i know this has been brought up in the past, but i have often wondered who in our halls are awake (for those of us who attend).

there are some i would consider a 'maybe', but no way of ever really knowing.. so here is my idea.

i hope it doesn't sound too masonic,.

Island Man

Also, you can adverse to awake ones during the meeting by giving comments that would lead to TTATTy thoughts in awake ones. That lets any awake ones in your hall know that you are a possible candidate worth exploring.