Hi Slim,
I've read that book, this article is basically a short version of the book:
http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2008/05/tsunami-and-theodicy
Posts by Laika
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2596The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday
by cofty inyesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.
we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.
they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.
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Laika
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Richard Dawkins has had a Stroke
by cofty inhe is back home and making god progress.. he has issued an audio statement here....
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Laika
Was sorry to read this but seems likely to make a full recovery which is good news. I still think it would be better for him to stay off twitter and maybe even out of the limelight generally, but not better off dead of course.
I see the church of England got criticised for offering to pray for him, but I doubt Dawkins was bothered by it.
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Evolution is a Fact - Index for Numbers 1 - 20
by cofty in#1 protein functional redundancycomparing the sequences of amino acids in ubiquitous proteins confirms the relationship between all living things.. #2 dna functional redundancycomparison of the dna that codes for the amino acids of ubiquitous proteins predicts the tree of life with an astonishing degree of accuracy.. #3 ervsendogenous retroviruses that infected our ancestors are found in the same place of the genome of our closest primate cousins.
#4 smelly geneshundreds of broken genes that used to code for olfactory receptors in our ancestors are still found in our genome.. #5 vitamin cwhy humans can no longer make their own vitamin c and what that tells us about our species' history.. #6 human chromosome 2our second biggest chromosome is made up of two of our ancestors' genes stuck end-to-end.. #7 human egg yolk genehumans and our primate cousins have the genes for making vitellogenin and they are all broken in the same way.
#8 jumping genesbits of parasitic code called alu elements prove our common ancestry with primates.
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Laika
Oh, good news! Thank you for taking the time to write these threads, it's very kind. -
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Evolution is a Fact - Index for Numbers 1 - 20
by cofty in#1 protein functional redundancycomparing the sequences of amino acids in ubiquitous proteins confirms the relationship between all living things.. #2 dna functional redundancycomparison of the dna that codes for the amino acids of ubiquitous proteins predicts the tree of life with an astonishing degree of accuracy.. #3 ervsendogenous retroviruses that infected our ancestors are found in the same place of the genome of our closest primate cousins.
#4 smelly geneshundreds of broken genes that used to code for olfactory receptors in our ancestors are still found in our genome.. #5 vitamin cwhy humans can no longer make their own vitamin c and what that tells us about our species' history.. #6 human chromosome 2our second biggest chromosome is made up of two of our ancestors' genes stuck end-to-end.. #7 human egg yolk genehumans and our primate cousins have the genes for making vitellogenin and they are all broken in the same way.
#8 jumping genesbits of parasitic code called alu elements prove our common ancestry with primates.
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Laika
Does this mean you've finished? :( -
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how do most of you now feel about the military?
by sowhatnow inwas not sure where to post this, but i was curious, how do some of you now feel about the military?
would any of you let your children enlist, or would you yourselves join any military field?
how do you feel about the idea of women in the military?
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Laika
I don't like our aggressive foreign policy or the way our culture glorifies violence, having said that I hope I don't feel the same moralistic disdain for soldiers as I used to. -
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Laika
New living translation -
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Is the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses really an inferior form of Christianity?
by nicolaou inseems to be quite a few posters recently pulling down the beliefs of jw's as not biblical or truly christian.
maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong, i really don't care.. in some important ways though mainstream christians often behave better than jehovah's witnesses; most don't practice shunning or impose lethal medical prohibitions on their members.
many are far more tolerant of the lgbt community and a few even make the awkward attempt to square the fact of evolution with their faith.. please note that i'm saying some, not all.. so i suppose it's fair to say that differing forms of christianity can be better or worse for individuals, families and the wider community.
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Laika
In James Fowler's book 'Stages of Faith' he describes spiritual development in a set of 6 stages.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stages_of_faith_development
JWs are required to get stuck at somewhere around stage 2 and 3, accepting 'us vs them' paradigms and avoiding paradox. Maturing beyond that is seen as 'falling away' or worse 'apostasy'. This is of course very common in many religious institutions, but there is, I believe, a more mature way to practice Christian faith, away from the dogmatism and dualism of JWism and similar churches towards contemplation and compassion. -
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Who is your favourite thinker?
by The Rebel inhaving recently read orwells 1984, i was impressed with how he understood that both politicians and people abuse language.
this further confirmed to me how the w.t had deceived me by using words to distort reality.
the book 1984, also contains many other great thoughts of george orwell.. of course there have been many other great thinkers, buddah, darwin, freud, einstein and marx come to mind.
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Laika
Rene Girard
Richard Rohr
Stanley Hauerwas
St. Paul
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91
Is the Watchtower organisation facing the biggest crisis of its history?
by slimboyfat inrecent developments make me think they might be.
the problems they are facing are not just lack of funds but also draining authority, and the two could be a heady and explosive mix.
one of the best analyses ever written of the watchtower was a book called "trumpet of prophecy" by sociologist james beckford in the 1970s.
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Laika
Hi Phizzy: "In my day we used to pay, via the Worldwide Work box, as JW's, for all Literature we gave away, has something changed?"
This would be done at a JWs discretion, and in my experience as accounts servant most JWs don't put in enough to cover the costs. I doubt they would have reduced the size of the magazines if they were contributing enough. -
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Is the Watchtower organisation facing the biggest crisis of its history?
by slimboyfat inrecent developments make me think they might be.
the problems they are facing are not just lack of funds but also draining authority, and the two could be a heady and explosive mix.
one of the best analyses ever written of the watchtower was a book called "trumpet of prophecy" by sociologist james beckford in the 1970s.
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Laika
They have some interesting challenges for sure. The preaching work must be a major drain on their resources, since it involves giving away a huge amount of free literature, but any attempts to scale that down would cause far more doubts then 100 changes to the generation doctrine.
I've also read on here that there are concerns about them finding enough 'appointed men' to run their congregations, if this becomes a big problem they might have to scale back on activity but constant activity is an important part of keeping JWs going.