AlanF

2 hours ago, Ann O'Maly said:

th study 8 Illustrations That Teach p. 11

HOW TO DO IT:

Make sure that the features of your illustration really apply to the lesson you are teaching so that your listeners are not distracted by mismatched elements.

😉😁

TTH hasn't the mental horsepower to do that.

3 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

You shouldn’t just dissolve into a mass of hurling insults, Alan. I actually take pleasure when you do that. It means I’ve “won” and like Cool Hand Luke you keep coming when you have nothing.

LOL! Trying to reason with you is like trying to pick up mercury with your fingers. So I don't try anymore.

3 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

It’s like watching those old Donald Duck cartoons when a thoroughly frustrated Donald goes ballistic. I love that part.

Not hardly. Did you watch the Dunning-Kruger cartoon I linked to? Probably not -- it's too complicated for you.

57 minutes ago, scholar JW said:

Alan de Fool

You are the self-declared atheist so any view of the Bible rates zero credibility. Go and plat with your crystal set.

scholar JW

Here's an excellent video, just for you. It's got cartoons, so even you ought to understand it:

2 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

You also didn’t answer my question, you blowhard.

Sure I did. You're just too dumb to understand.

2 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

If, as you say, the Watchtower dumped him the moment they learned he basically believes in evolution,

I didn't say that, you moron.

2 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

only allowing for its “edge,” why did they publish their interview with him, in which he is quite open as to how he thinks?

If you think he was truly open, then quote him about that.

Of course, you won't.

2 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Fortunately, that is not a liability when speaking with you.

Here's a good video for you. It's animated, so you should be able to understand it:

5 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Did he force them to publish the interview, too, which plainly shows what he believes?

Yeah, he pulled a gun on the Writing Department.

Give it up, TTH. You're nowhere near as clever as you think.

23 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Don’t you have any sense of metaphor at all? Are you nothing more than an insulting tabulation machine....or a tabulating insult machine?

They don’t survive, is the point—just as the beneficial mutation (my solved rattle) does not survive the hundreds of deleterious mutations (my towed-away car).

I know you think you're clever enough to formulate sensible metaphors, but you're far from it. More like a small petulant child.

6 hours ago, Arauna said:

I speak 6 languages-  and you?  Tech tonic. .... you focus on words or spelling mistakes when you cannot answer ..... is that  a "scholarly"  tactic? 

Complete nonsense. The fact is that you ignore nearly all answers, and then claim no answers were given. Like your partner in intellectual crime ScholarJW Pretendus, you're a pathological liar. Nothing new here; most JW apologists do exactly the same.

I've given you explanations about Plate Tectonics as well as a link to a Wikipedia article. The fact that you managed to get "Teutonic" out of "Tectonic" proves that you never read or absorbed the material. Perhaps you skimmed it, looking for something you could use against science. Yet you think to make pronouncements upon the science. Such a fake!

1 hour ago, Arauna said:

Evolution is more like a " religious doctrine "  than science.  Scarce evidence is provided  for the "miraculous" claims and when one scrutinizes it closely one sees all the deep flaws. These flaws usually have been accepted by peer review because some person thought up another highly unlikely theory to explain gross inconsistencies ...... and then  it is accepted by the high priest. Its foundation and subsequent bricks is like a clump of sand. 

The biological mathematics are so messed up.  Ie. The rate of mutations ........ one can take the flu of the great war WW1. This virus has already gone extinct. Due to the number of mutations it has not survived. 

If humans are as old as they say we are, our own mutations would already have made us go extinct.  Mutations are destructive - rarely has a beneficial outcome.

But we know why mutations occur from the bible ..... and we know there is a God who will rectify  this soon. 

As physicist Wolfgang Pauli once said: "It's not even wrong!"

20 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

That may be, but when I drive my car into a tree, it hardly matters that I have solved the rattle behind the glovebox. Nor does the solved rattle somehow stop the car from being wrecked.

Again descending into gibberish.

8 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

 

I read two or three articles you wrote this morning. Great. If such enormous amount of water stayed at earth surface in liquid state than nothing could be frozen, neither plants nor animals nor people. If they found few frozen animals, why they didn't find frozen people that died in Flood?

Exactly. Up to about 1980, WTS writers were parroting Young-Earth Creationist writings including their so-called Flood Geology. These included the crackpot SDA writer George McCready Price and the founder of modern "Scientific Creationism" Henry Morris. Another interesting crackpot they used was Ivan Sanderson, who was one of their main sources of nonsense about "frozen mammoths" and such. Another was Henry Howorth, a mostly crackpot armchair explorer of the late 19th century who wrote the book "The Mammoth and the Flood", as well as other ridiculous works.

8 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

According to Genesis book Noah's ark floated on the water for months. So nothing was frozen , neither at the time of the outbreak of the Flood nor months later. "Sudden freezing" did not occur. How law temperature is required and how much time is needed for so much water to be frozen in minutes??

 

A temperature of several hundred degrees below zero would have been required. Ivan Sanderson wrote about such nonsense in an early 1960s Saturday Evening Post article, which WTS writers quickly picked up on.

All of this garbage is contradicted by actual discoveries of frozen animals, which were NOT "quick frozen". A 1970s discovery in Alaska permafrost was of an extinct bison that was killed and partly eaten by lions. One lion broke off a piece of molar in the frozen flesh.

Recent discoveries in Siberia show how the freezing process worked: the summer sun melted potholes in the permafrost, leaving holes filled with cold water and mud, and often covered by thin vegetation. An animal would step on the surface, plunge into the mud/water, get stuck, then die and eventually freeze. Nothing particularly surprising.

The famous Berezovka mammoth excavated by Russian scientists in the early 1900s is a good case in point: its remains indicated that it fell and broke a leg, then drowned, and gradually froze. WTS writers largely ignored the details and then used it as a prime example of "quick freezing".

8 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

 

Law temperature will cause health problem for people and animals in Ark. They would not be able to survive because all would be frozen, not just few animals (found in, imagine, Siberia...., and not in Africa or some other area !!??)

Good points!

8 hours ago, JW Insider said:

Of course, I'm sure you already knew both of these attempts were failures before you even provided them.

Of course he did. That's why so many of his debate opponents call him a fake, a charlatan and a liar.

What ScholarJW Pretendus does is as Mommy Watchtower does -- use references to real scholars dishonestly to pretend that they support the Writer's claims.

3 hours ago, Ann O'Maly said:

Thank you. Yes it was, and this is what I, AlanF, and JW Insider have been trying to get into Neil's stubborn skull. 

Arauna, as usual, is clueless, but from time to time, like a stopped clock, accidentally gets something right.

11 hours ago, scholar JW said:

Alan de Fool

Really!! You have matters arse about. The 70 years ends then Babylon, its Kingship, Nation and Land proceeds into oblivion

Desolation is what Jer.25:12 is all about you idiot!

scholar JW

More nonsense.

11 hours ago, scholar JW said:

Alan F

Well at least unlike you I believe the Bible is God's inspired Word.

scholar JW

You obviously believe that God is the ultimate generator of nonsense. Like father, like son.

1 hour ago, scholar JW said:

Nonsense. The Bible does not give a specific event or timing for the desolation of Babylon as described in Jer.25:12  but according to Jeremiah and as quoted by the Chronicler the focus of Babylon's judgement occurred only after the Return.The judgement involved the Kingship, the Nation and the land which would all become desolate, extinguished.

Yes, we're well aware that you think the Bible is nonsense. That's why you can't make sense of it.

1 hour ago, scholar JW said:

Jer. 25:12 is quite explicit as to its meaning and timing

Indeed: FIRST the 70 years ends, THEN Babylon falls. In practice, the two were virtually simultaneous. Read Daniel 5.

1 hour ago, scholar JW said:

so just read the entire verse and not that desolation was its fate not just a mere eclipsing by another World power.

Desolation was its ultimate fate, irrespective of whether the 70 years ended in 539 or 538 or 537, you idiot.

1 hour ago, scholar JW said:

Jer. 25:12 is quite clear that this is the judgement on Babylon that came into effect only after the 70 years had expired according to the Chronicler  was not at Babylon's Fall in 539 BCE but after the Return with the 'first year of Cyrus' and was characterized not by the overthrow of a city but the entire nation and land would become desolated.

I hereby name you Wrongway Corrigan.

1 hour ago, scholar JW said:

Chronology, you ignoramus is about counting backwards.and as long as you have two key events in place one can go back or forward depending on one's pleasure.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Tell that to Russell and company.

1 hour ago, TrueTomHarley said:

You’re a real piece of work, aren’t you? Of course it isn’t. 

Of course it is. Absent explicit removal, doctrines remain in place.

1 hour ago, TrueTomHarley said:

 
If you got in trouble with any elders over this, it is because you carried on there as you do here. It has little to do with whatever question began the discussion.

Nonsense. I always approached such subjects with kid gloves. As usual you have no clue what you're talking about. I had discussions with elders, a circuit overseer and GB member Albert Schroeder without any problems, aside from the generalized implied threat of disfellowshipping if I did not finally assent to their view.

True Tom Harley said:

Quote

 

54 minutes ago, AlanF said:
Nonsense. Tell us please: in what publication did the Society announce that it was abandoning

  5 hours ago, AlanF said:
These topics are rarely discussed by JWs today,

 

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You just answered your own question.

Nonsense.

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Such things don’t have to be formally repealed since they were never law to begin with.

Of course they were. Any JW who dared to dispute these "never laws" would have been disfellowshipped. I know, because I was threatened with that when I brought up such things with elders. "Apostasy!" they said.

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If it hasn’t been mentioned in 50 years, it probably is not a big deal any more. 

But it's still on the books. Therefore, it's still "present truth".

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Recall that the Awake interviewed Michael Behe, who accepts evolution in the main but simply argues that it has limits. They would not have done that if the two hated each others guts.

Ah, Behe. The Society used him as an authority until it figured out that Behe actually accepts evolution -- but a divinely guided sort.

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They point is that they are not dogmatic.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

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They are open to things that does not trash God. They are not dogmatic.

Complete nonsense. The God-guided sort of evolution of Behe and many other Christians is anathema to Watchtower leaders. They've expressly rejected such ideas in several publications.

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You are the dogmatic one—you who huff and puff your “righteous anger” to whoever does not yield to your bullying.

LOL! Bullying? What do you think disfellowshipping for simply disagreeing with WTS leaders is? Hypocrite!

By your 'logic' Jesus was a bully.

True Tom Harley said:
 

Quote

35 minutes ago, AlanF said:
You should call up Fred Franz on the earth-heaven phone and instruct him that the dozens of books and magazines that discussed them at length should never have been published.

Quote

 

Yeah, they changed those things.

They are very open about it.

 

Nonsense. Tell us please: in what publication did the Society announce that it was abandoning Flood Geology? Or the ridiculous notion of a "vapor canopy"? Or admit that the "7,000-year creative days" were actually several hundred million years long (of course, the Genesis days are entirely out of sync with the fossil evidence, so the notion of a "creative day" is completely wrongheaded). Where did they openly explain why they changed "7,000 years" to "millennia" in some publications after 1985?

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It is called the “light getting brighter” and/or “tacking.”

A total misapplication of Proverbs. The passage has nothing to do with increasing "spiritual light". I doubt you're even aware that it was the Adventist community that first began misapplying Proverbs to excuse the failed predictions of William Miller.

As for "tacking", it was GB member Karl Klein who originated the concept in a mid-1980s Watchtower article. Many Bethelites actually laughed at him.

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There is no mystery about such changes. They do it all the time.

Of course -- which proves that God has nothing to do with them. At least, no more than with the Pope.

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The only ones who go apoplectic about it are iconoclasts like you, furious with anyone who does not give due respect to mommy science.

Wrong. Critics like me are concerned with truth. We tend to get bent out of shape at anyone who falsely claims divine guidance, divine knowledge, and so forth. It's called "righteous anger", something that Jesus is said to have displayed toward similar charlatans two thousand years ago.

28 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Someone named RR(?) was selling a book on eBay while making a claim it came from Tom Cabeen, implying it might have been printed on WT materials. I thought it was nearly impossible, having been there from 76 to 82. I got Cabeen's number through contact with his son (who went to college with my son).  He had never seen the book before.

Anyway, I asked Cabeen if he knew how COJ was doing healthwise. Cabeen didn't know for sure, but told me how sad it was that COJ only tried to do the right thing when one of his Bible Study "RV's" asked him about why the WTS uses this special chronology. COJ was sure it could be defended and did his best, but, of course, discovered what anyone would discover if they were being honest and thorough. I told Cabeen that when I was tagging along with Brother Schroeder's "entourage" for an International Convention tour in 1978 that I had to stay in Athens for some extra time while Bert Schroeder went to Wiesbaden. When I was supposed to catch up with him in Wiesbaden, I was told he had alread gone to Hamburg/Copenhagen/Stockholm for some meetings (no conventions) and without any of his small entourage. The rumor was that this was about the COJ manuscript, although I couldn't know absolutely for sure. We caught up again when he came back to Hamburg then on back to London and Brooklyn. 

I told Cabeen this, and he already knew about part of it. I understand Cabeen might be biased, but he said that Schroeder had already determined to get COJ disfellowshiped several months before that convention trip. So I can believe that something like this happened with Gerard Gertoux. Gertoux seemed willing to discuss anything except 587 BCE, which made him suddenly clam up. 

Someone told me many years ago (Randall Watters?) that Schroeder let COJ's thesis sit on his desk for about three years, not knowing what to do with it. He received it around 1978. After that, there was the apostasy furor over Ray Franz and company. I'm guessing that Schroeder was spurred on to go after COJ by that whole scenario. Of course, the Society's attacking COJ, understandably, made him all the more determined to publish his material, which he did in book form in 1983 as The Gentile Times Reconsidered.

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

I'll look for an older post. I think it was in another topic, but I recall AlanF seemed to have brought this up out of nowhere somewhere else recently. If that's older than yours, the problem is resolved. AlanF deserves this one anyway. I don't think he can go 20 posts without changing to one of these subjects, even if it's just as simple/banal as: "You're as moronic as a flat earth creationist."

[Edited to add: Looks like your off the hook. Arauna appears to have the oldest post here, but I'll still be on the lookout for one from AlanF that pins this whole offshoot on him.]

When I write something on these topics, it most certainly has relevance to the thread. Especially when ignorant people like Arauna challenge me with crap like "you believe in the religion of evolution, so what do you know?"

The very first post you moved to this new thread proves my point.

True Tom Harley said:

Quote

3 hours ago, AlanF said:
These topics are rarely discussed by JWs today

Quote

That’s because they are Bible teachers. Let scientists be scientists and Bible teachers be Bible teachers.

You should call up Fred Franz on the earth-heaven phone and instruct him that the dozens of books and magazines that discussed them at length should never have been published.

The Publications Indexes contain dozens of references, such as "confirmation", which purport to use science to support the idea of an earthwide Flood. For example: w68 7/15 "Was There an Earthwide Flood?"

For a thorough disproof of the Flood, and copious references to Watchtower material, see https://critiquesonthewatchtower.org/old-articles/2006/02/part-1-general-description-of-flood.html

By your 'logic', Watchtower writers were not Bible teachers until about 1980. 
 

Ann O'Maly said:

Quote

3 hours ago, AlanF said:
Arauna appears stuck in the pre-1980 Watchtower world

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Nearer to 1950s and '60s Watchtower- and fringe-ideas-world.

To a certain extent, yes, but before about 1965 most Watchtower comments tended to follow Isaac Newton Vail's so-called Annular Theory of the Flood, Velikovsky, Ivan Sanderson, George McCready Price, and a few other crackpots.

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To be fair, 'The Genesis Flood' was written before the mechanics of crustal plate movement were fully known and published.

It was published in 1961 and to a large extent followed the ideas of George McCready Price, a Seventh-Day Adventist whose main purpose in life, since about 1900, was to defend the young-earth creationism of SDA founder Ellen White. Apparently the Watchtower (I'm guessing Fred Franz) got hold of the book and ran with it in terms of publishing defenses of the Flood. The Society even quoted from it as if it were a real science textbook. The main author, Henry Morris, went on to found the Institute for Creation Research, which published dozens of books and other materials advocating Morris' version of YECism, including Flood Geology and so-called "Scientific Creationism". Later, that spun off Answers in Genesis and other crackpot outfits such as Walter Brown's Center for Scientific Creation. Brown is so far out in left field that the other YECs will have nothing to do with him. These are Arauna's sources.

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And then there's Velikovsky ... 🤨

One critical author called him "the very model of a crank".

8 minutes ago, Ann O'Maly said:

I meant read proper science books. 🙄

Arauna appears stuck in the pre-1980 Watchtower world, when the Society was promoting its version of Young-Earth Creationism (more properly, bits of normal YECism mixed with Russellism) and YEC Flood Geology. About 1980 the Writing Dept. abandoned much of this nonsense and mostly quit trying to justify Noah's Flood, and gradually began referring to the "creative days" as being "millennia long" rather than 7,000 years. Stuck-in-the-mud JWs like Arauna never noticed -- which was exactly why the Society never announced these changes. It would have been a bit too much for the old ones to give up on a century of Russell's nonsense.

These topics are rarely discussed by JWs today, to the extent that ones under about 45 usually know nothing about the 7,000 years nonsense, much less Watchtowerish Flood Geology. Most of the younger JWs have no problem accepting normal geological dating, such as 66 million years ago for the Cretaceous Extinction of the dinosaurs. Only dinosaurs like Arauna have trouble with such dating.