Posts by Island Man

35

I almost died laughing at the meeting last night. OMG WTF is going on? Have I been away this long?

by macys in

ok so most of you guys know already that i am going through the reinstatement process for my parents but i do have a partially sinister plan which i will not mention here since someone told me that there are b-lites that read boards like this.

last night and it was the funniest experience i have ever seen.

besides that the brother doing the sound and video screwed up the whole thing when showing the videos and it took 3 brothers to fix it after 10 minutes, the whole thing was a joke.

Island Man

"It is as if Jurassic Park and an airport calypso band made a song together!"

Hey! Don't be dissing my culture!!!

556

The Watchtower are Right About Blood...

by cofty in

... but, they fail to take note of one important detail.. i believe that if we are going to have any chance of reasoning with a jw about blood, this is the place we need to begin.. don't try to convince them that it was only a dietary law.

it wasn't, and they will never go along with it.. don't tell them that saving a life is more important than obeying a law, even a seemingly trivial one.

they take pride in obedience.

Island Man

I understand TD. But I'm sure that the JWs will concede that a person's use of his own blood in his veins is also a legitimate use of blood that does not infringe on the command to abstain from blood. And once that is conceded it can then be shown logically that transfusions involve the use of blood in the same way, with the only difference being the source of the blood - which is irrelevant as demonstrated by the fact that JWs make no distinction between transfusing foreign blood and transfusing your own pre-donated blood.

556

The Watchtower are Right About Blood...

by cofty in

... but, they fail to take note of one important detail.. i believe that if we are going to have any chance of reasoning with a jw about blood, this is the place we need to begin.. don't try to convince them that it was only a dietary law.

it wasn't, and they will never go along with it.. don't tell them that saving a life is more important than obeying a law, even a seemingly trivial one.

they take pride in obedience.

Island Man

3. It was a capital offense to use blood for any purpose other than to offer it as a sacrifice on the altar.

This is actually not entirely correct. You forgot another permissible use of blood outside of the sacrificial process - a use of blood that exposes the JWs' ban on blood transfusions as being illogical. I'm talking about the primary function of blood - the function for which it was created by Jehovah. The prohibition on blood obviously does not apply to our use of our own blood in our veins.

So there are actually two permissible uses of blood: (1) on the altar (explicitly stated in scripture) and (2) in our veins (not explicitly stated in scripture but obviously implied by the fact that the Law did not instruct or require the Israelites to slit their throats and bleed themselves to death).

Do not quickly ignore this second, permissible use of blood because it has a direct bearing on the blood transfusion issue!

Given that using our own blood in our veins does not constitute a violation of the command to abstain from blood; and given further, that the command to abstain from blood says nothing about the source of the blood ("any kind of blood", to wit JWs aren't to be transfused even with their own pre-donated blood); we can logically deduce that using donated blood in our veins would also be permissible.Why?

Transfused blood is used by the body in the same way and for the same purpose as native blood. Thus we can see logically that the command to abstain from blood - really, abstain from the eating of blood - cannot be applied to transfusions since transfusions involve use blood for a permissible purpose - the same purpose we use our own native blood.

Eating blood is different by virtue of the fact that it involves equating the soul with food, which has the effect of undermining blood's spiritual value to atone for the life of the sinner on the altar. For "the soul is worth more than food". (Matthew 6:25b)

20

Really beautiful Watchtower article about truth

by Anders Andersen in

this is the singlemost best watchtower article i have ever read.. it almost brought tears to my eyes (please note the almost ;-)).

"what is truth?

"this question is one which every sincere christian should ask and seek to answer.

Island Man

"I like the quote from CTR that says, "a truth told by Satan himself being just a true as a truth told by God himself".

Huh?, come back with that again."

You know, like when Satan told Jesus that all the kingdoms have been delivered to him and he can give them to whomever he wishes, and the JWs use Satan's words to say he is the ruler of the earth? The JWs obviously accept that truth spoken by Satan, don't they?

So share the old 1879 Watchtower article with JWs and when they protest that they will never accept a truth from Satan or say that Satan can never speak truth, just ask them to explain why they accept Satan's words to Jesus as truth.

38

New Word Coined In April 2016 WT!

by Naoscillator in

and the word is... .

canaanitelike!.

here it is in context, just in case you're curious about how to use this new word.. article: being faithful leads to god's approval.

Island Man

On further thought, why use the word Canaanitelike? The writer could have used the word Canaanite since it is also an adjective. So why did he go out of his way to use Canaanitelike when he could have used the adjective Canaanite? I think it reveals something about this particular writer. Could it be that this particular writer is less of a judgmental zealot and so is reluctant to call people Canaanite and feels compelled to soften it to Canaanitelike? Maybe he was told to use Canaanite and he decided to soften it to Canaanitelike and it was approved.

38

New Word Coined In April 2016 WT!

by Naoscillator in

and the word is... .

canaanitelike!.

here it is in context, just in case you're curious about how to use this new word.. article: being faithful leads to god's approval.

Island Man

Oh come on. There's nothing wrong with the word. You can tack "like" on the end of virtually any noun to coin a new word. It's a legitimate practice. Criticize the Watchtower indoctrination - the Watchcraft - all you want, but the language mechanics is sound. It's valid because Canaanite is a noun. The parody examples such as "parasiticlike" is not comparable because parasitic is already an adjective so it would be wrong - redundant, I think - to tack "like" at the end of it. However, parasitelike should be valid, because parasite is a noun. The only criticism I will make is that perhaps they should have added a hyphen - Canaanite-like.

56

OK friends lets be honest, if a Nuclear Holocaust took place today how many of you would return to the KH?

by James Mixon in

speaking for my self, no way in hell.. this question to see if you really have been deprogramed,.

do you 100% believe it is not the truth.. a fourth of the world hit by a nuclear attack..

Island Man

"I don't worry, because of where i live, it would be vaporized 1st strike"

I don't think there's a better way to go.

20

Jehovahs witnesses fastest growing religion, my ass.

by Crazyguy in

they the wt are always stating this, yet let's look at just one set of figures.

the average birth rate in the world is roughly 18 babies born per thousand.

the catholics have a membership of roughly 1 billion members.

Island Man

I don't believe for a minute that the JWs are the fastest growing religion. But I don't think you are correct to cite the number of babies born to Catholics as being indicative of the rate of growth of the Catholic church. The rate of growth is not about the number of new members. Its about the number of new members compared to the existing membership numbers.

To illustrate my point. Imagine a country - country A - that has 1,000,000 people and another country - country B - that has 100,000,000 people. In 2015, country A has 1,000 new births, while country B has 10,000 new births. Which country grew faster? It was country A - the one with fewer births. How? Because country A had a growth rate of 1,000 / 1,000,000 = 0.1%. But Country B, while having more births, grew by 10,000 / 100,000,000 = 0.01%.

So saying that the Catholic church had 18,000,000 babies born to Catholic parents does not mean that the Catholic religion is growing at a faster rate than the JW religion.

25

Twelve Days of Evolution - A video a Day

by cofty in

from the guys and girls at "it's ok to be smart".. stay curious!.

....

Island Man

"Nothing in Biology makes sense except in the light of evolution"

Know what's very funny and ironic about that quote? It also applies to the JW religion - the very religion that denies evolution is also itself a product of evolution in startling ways that mirror the evolution of life on the planet.

More than 90% of all species that have ever lived have gone extinct. Only those that had the traits or evolved the traits to survive in changing environments have survived. This mirrors JW teachings and publications. More than 90% of all publications ever printed by Watchtower have gone out of print (extinct) because they could not survive the changing environments or times which destroyed their credibility.

An intelligent designer would not have made such a wide variety of species only to have them go extinct. Likewise if the Watchtower organization was truly spirit directed then God would not have directed the organization to print so much publications only to have the vast majority of them discarded as old light with the passage of time.

So just as nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution, in the same way nothing in the history of JWs makes any logical sense in the context of a spirit directed organization; but it all makes perfect sense in the light of the evolution of fallible human ideas.

25

Twelve Days of Evolution - A video a Day

by cofty in

from the guys and girls at "it's ok to be smart".. stay curious!.

....

Island Man

JW response: "Oh but it's still a mosquito - it's still the same kind. It's micro-evolution not macro-evolution. Show me a mosquito evolving into a bird or a cat then I'll listen."