AlanF

4Jah2me said: Facts never convince the willfully ignorant.

James Thomas Rook Jr. said: Well -- sometimes. Indeed -- something that high-control-group leaders like the JW Governing Body always forget. They dictate their version of "a good conscience" to the group members and boot out all who disagree. Thus, members either adopt the leaders' conscience, or they shut up.

Srecko Sostar said: To be more precise, interpretations of 'yohm' are such personal interpretations. The translation itself is not much open to discussion, as virtually all Bible translations use "day". Quite so. The original NWT Committee was comprised mostly of gophers like Albert Schroeder who did busy-work like making cross references. A Greek name George Gangas helped a bit with the Greek translation, but he had no education, and his Greek was modern Greek, not 1st century Greek. The only one who more or less knew what he was doing was Fred Franz, who had a year or two of Greek in college before he joined the Bible Students, but had no education at all in Hebrew. He was entirely self-taught in Hebrew. It seems that much of Franz's knowledge of Hebrew came from looking up words in Hebrew-English lexicons and looking at many Bible translations. He also elicited help from a scholarly Jew living in Brooklyn, and from at least one recognized Bible scholar (Goodspeed?) who produced his own partial Bible translation. In 1994 I met one other actual WTS scholar who seemed competent, but of course he had nothing to do with the original New World Translation. He died about 20 years ago. He was a Romanian named John Albu, who immigrated to the U.S. around 1970, and quickly became a JW, and soon an "anointed one". He soon joined Bethel and worked on translation and chronology stuff. He told me that he was educated in Europe in Hebrew, Greek and other languages. Eventually serious health issues forced him out of Bethel, but he continued to work closely with the Writing Staff. He worked as a doorman for a hotel in Manhattan. It's fairly certain that Albu did much of the research that resulted in the infamous chapter 14 of the 1981 WTS book "Let Your Kingdom Come", written by GB member Lloyd Barry. He told me that part of the reason he became a JW was that the NWT was so fabulously accurate. I suspect that Franz and Albu would strongly object to the new NWT. While it's far more readable in many areas, it violates Franz's dictum that the NWT should be literal to a fault, being more of a "dynamic translation" in the spirit of the New International Version. Of course, Freddie always skewed his translations in favor of pre-existing Watchtower doctrine, sometimes stretching Hebrew and Greek meanings to their limits, and occasionally past those limits. My own opinion, for what it's worth, is that on the whole both versions of the NWT are translationally at least as accurate as the best other translations. In a handful of cases I think it's more accurate than most. They all have inaccuracies and various warts, but in different areas. Much of the criticism of the NWT comes from Christian scholars who are obligated by their religions to argue in favor of doctrines like the Trinity, and so often use really bad arguments to criticize the NWT. I think that Fred Franz was a brilliant but insane man who fell into C. T. Russell's cult at an early age and never recovered.

TrueTomHarley said: Um, I was alive for 1975, 2000 and Real Soon Now. My mother was alive for them and 1941. Old Freddie Franz was alive for all of those false predictions. You really have a bad case of pathological lying. The prediction for 2000 was made at various times from the 1970s through 2000 itself. Real Soon Now started about 1914 and continues. HAHAHAHAHAHA! JW rules, not the Bibles'. Ever read Deuteronomy 18? JW leaders have always claimed to speak in God's name and have always made false predictions. Deut. 18 calls such charlatans false prophets. How about Luke 21:7-8? That's explicit not to follow anyone who claims to speak in God's name and says about the time for "the end": "The due time has approached". False. The language in Watchtower publications is explicit. You've obviously read the quotes, so your rationalizing comment is yet another outright lie. Oh? So JWs are supposed to view Watchtower predictions of "the end" as in consequential? I heard several JWs in the 1980s talking about 2000. In online forums in the late 1990s, many JW apologists threatened: "You'll get yours when 2000 rolls around!" And today we see Arauna vaguely warning that Real Soon Now world leaders will do all manner of vile deeds. And of course, the Society itself makes this warning at every District Convention. Not arguable at all. Following Orwellian crimestop principles, you've simply dismissed from your mind what you've read and, on some level, know very well it is what the false prophets known as JW leaders said. For example, the old Aid book and an Awake! article clearly stated Adam and Eve were born in the same year, just months apart. A late 1960s Watchtower had a big spread on 1975 and one article was titled, "Why Are You Looking Forward To 1975?" Do you need a refresher? Well, here are a couple of refreshers: https://critiquesonthewatchtower.org/old-articles/2006/02/part-3-statements-concerning-1918-1925.html https://critiquesonthewatchtower.org/old-articles/2006/02/1975-new-info.html

TrueTomHarley said: Another lie. Plenty of cases have been brought (or would have been brought if not for statutes of limitations) where elders were the molesters. His comments amounts to calling you out on your double standards: You basically say, "We're ok because the world is worse". A deceptive rationalization. It's saying that Christians are above the world. Then explain the Governing Body's actions toward homosexual pedophile Leo Greenlees. LOL at the Orwellian crimestop!

James Thomas Rook Jr. said: The problem is not translation, but original meaning. What did 'ohm' (day) mean to the original writers? Since we can't question them, and since the word has several meanings, we don't know. Young-earth creationists vehemently argue that 'ohm' means 24-hour day. JWs used to claim 7,000 years; now they use the mealy-mouthed term millennia, but the Society actually seems to agree with science that the "geological ages" were hundreds of millions of years long. Old-earth creationists are such for an obvious reason. But that's not the big problem with rationalizing Genesis. The big problem is that, no matter what number of years one allows for the "creative days", the order of creation is mostly wrong according to the timing of the fossil record. Genesis has flying creatures of all sorts -- including birds -- created on the 5th day, but land creatures first created on the 6th day. Yet land creatures appeared long before birds. Land-dwelling insects appeared 400 million years ago; land-dwelling amphibians 365 million; birds (in the form of the primitive intermediate form Archaeopteryx) not later 150 million; all but a handful of modern birds appeared later than 66 million years after the demise of the dinosaurs. Note that the above is true irrespective of the evolution/creation question: I've spoken only of the appearance -- not the evolution or creation -- of creatures in the fossil record. Arguing that the fossil record is wrong is like claiming a flat earth -- which the Bible does in Isaiah 40:22 (pizza pie shape) and indicates in several other places.

TrueTomHarley said: I did. She punted. Let's see: we have 1914, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941, 1975, 2000, and Real Soon Now. That's one alright.

You know that, do you? You're wrong. I told you earlier: Greenlees was a pedophile in 1964 when he was appointed a Director, and before that according to one of his child victims, Mark Palo, who has put his story online. Greenlees was 72 when he was forced off the GB. Pedophiles don't start up at age 72 -- they just keep doing what they've long been doing. And even back in 1984 it was well known that pedophiles are never cured. Furthermore, if holy spirit had anything to do with the Governing Body -- which formed the judicial committee that found Greenlees guilty of child molestation -- it would never have 'directed' Nathan Knorr to appoint Greenlees as Director in the first place, or it would have seen to it that Greenlees was not appointed a GB member in 1971, or that he was removed long before 1984. This all proves that holy spirit has nothing to do with appointing the elders of the Governing Body, and by extension, any other elders.

Your buddy Arauna seems to think it's 6,000 years, being a young-earth creationist.

A very nice example of burying one's head in the sand with regard to religious leaders. Remember that the GB itself excused homosexual pedophile Leo Greenlees. And remember that close to half the country believes the earth is only 6,000 years old.

Isn't there something in the Bible about reaping what you sow?

Way too specific. Real Soon Now or Just Around the Corner are better.

One of my pet expressions. Around 1960, give or take a few years, there was a New York TV comedian named Soupy Sales who used "Holy Moly!" to good effect. I loved that guy!

James Thomas Rook Jr said: Relate that to our discussion here. So? Scientists argue about stuff all the time. At this point it's all theoretical. Not quite, I've demonstrated it. If you designed a similar rube-goldberg system for a college project, and presented it to your class and professor, they'd laugh you out of school. No, it's just evolved. If it works, in evolution it's "good enough for government work". You, with your decades of experience in electrical engineering. You, who can't answer any of my challenge questions. It can only growl. Like I said, "good enough for government work." Which does NOT say it's good enough to be the product of a supremely intelligent designer. I think you should pay me for educating you about capacitance and such. I have a PayPal account. Of course. There's my PayPal account . . .

TrueTomHarley said: Most everyone in the world is familiar with the concept that Trump is a criminally insane, inept, wannabe politician -- even if they don't agree with it. Most everyone knows this, and so it's a fine example to use. Just as they're familiar with the criminality of Richard Nixon -- "I'm not a crook" and all that. Nonsense. I use examples familiar to most people. You don't like it because you're a Trump supporter. Bad, bad boy! As if that's bad. Leftist more or less, but I disagree with a lot of leftist ideology, especially the "woke" movement. And of course, TTH is a dyed-in-the-wool ever-Trumper, despite claiming to be nonpolitical. There's that H word again. Indeed, because I've seen the cultishness he fights for myself. A good example is the small group of truly braindead cultists on this forum, who suffer so blazingly from Orwellian doublethink. Don't know of him. Maybe I should. Yes, kind of like someone stupid enough as a youth to join the JWs, hawking JW literature on the streets. At least Hassan had the smarts to quit, unlike the clowns on this forum. He's exactly right. As time passes, almost all truly intelligent people quit being JWs. That's why JW leaders have always valued loyalty to themselves over competence -- again much like Donald Trump. That's why JWs are, on average, among the least intelligent of religionists and at the bottom of the educational level. JW leaders understand this well, forcing them to dumb down their literature to 3rd-grade reading levels. Hassan is hardly the first to show that JWs are a classic destructive cult. Yep. When you think that half the country has fallen victim to cult influence and mind-control, it is strong evidence that you have drunk too much of the Kool-Aid yourself! Wrong. Look at some of Jay Leno's man-on-the-street interviews with random people. More than half of Americans believe in astrology, conspiracy theories, creationism and all manner of nonsense. As George Carlin once said, consider the average intelligence level of Americans, and then consider that half of them are even dumber than that!

What are the units of holy spirit? Cubic meters? Gallons? What?

For James Thomas Rook Jr: I'm going to presume that your entire post was deliberately farcical, since I understand your curmudgeonly ways. Nevertheless, I'm going to comment partly as if you were serious and partly as if you're funnin' me, because at least a few readers might learn something. No doubt the tongue-in-cheek will be wasted on certain clowns. First, WHY ARE YOU POSTING IN BOLDED CAPS? Don't you know that that's a sign of derangement? To a simplified degree, sure. We consist of an outer pipe and an outer one, with a gazinta at one end and a gazouta at the other. Note that you're talking to a retired electrical engineer who has designed dozens of analog integrated circuits over some 33 years of active employment, has an education in the appropriate fields from MIT, Oregon State University and Oregon Graduate Institute, and has done much design work for Tektronix, Lecroy Corp, National Semiconductor and Allegro Microsystems. You cannot bluff your way through this. Complete gobble-de-goop. Tell me, where in a nerve is its capacitance located? How much capacitance is there? How does it affect the transmission of nerve impulses? How do you even know? Are you not aware that nerve impulses travel not by purely electrical means, but by electrochemical means? What do you mean by "bypass"? A bypass of what? What does "lesser capacitance" for this "bypass" mean for the transmission of nerve signals? The system on the right is physically larger than the one on the left, and EE's know that larger physical systems generally have larger capacitances. Justify your claim by calculating, or at least estimating, the capacitance for each system. Yes, a bigger wiring system has more capacitance per unit length, more resistance and more inductance, making it less efficient than a smaller one. Normally, damage of that extent kills the giraffe. As for a spare already in place, can you not see for yourself that neither nerve system has any spares? The one on the right has a double length loop that doubles back to the larynx, thus making the entire nerve nearly 100 times longer than necessary. And how would your supposed rewiring come about? Magic? But no such thing is there. A non-existent spare is redundant? LOL! Yes, Arauna and I already 'discussed' that. What's your point, Einstein? Wow! Why am I not surprised? But giraffes do growl at lions. No you don't. Your lack of ability to answer any of the questions I've put to you above will prove it. I've shown that I do. Nope. I know virtually nothing about most things, but a lot about a few things. Jack of few trades, master of one. Obviously you know as much about electromagnetics as Donald Trump does about running a country. There! How did I do?

JAMES THOMAS ROOK JR.: I want you to note the rank, self-serving hypocrisy and dishonesty in TrueTomHarley's comments below: TrueTomHarley said: Sin 1: I am in no way "hypersensitive" to disparaging remarks. I've not commented on plenty of such from the clowns. I am sensitive to lies. TTH here uses the euphemism "disagreement" to try to take the bite out of my doing what Arauna said the she, as an African, prefers: calling a spade a spade; hence calling a liar a liar. TTH's doing these things is yet another instance of lying. Here he is also lying by omission, by failing to clearly state what I have repeatedly and clearly said is my beef with these clowns: lies, misrepresentations, failure to respond to crucial points of argument, general hypocrisy, etc. Sin 2. Gracious? A tiny bit sharp? More deceptive euphemisms. Sin 3. Again misrepresenting my beef with this clown. Sin 4. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! The rank hypocrisy is so thick you can't cut it with a chain saw. I am not the one making loud complaints about these clowns. I simply point out in my responses to their lies where they have lied. It is they who make complaints about my forcefully pointing out their lies.

Srecko Sostar said: The Governing Body is assisted in many ways by the "Governing Body Helpers", which in the early 1990s was a newly created 'class' of Christians called the "Nethinim". Yes, there is a Watchtower article on this. These helpers, in reality, run the JW organization, but with input from the actual GB. This notion of "quantity of holy spirit" is completely unscriptural and ridiculous on its face. Many JWs, in public prayer, might say something like, "O Jehovah, please give us a double portion of your holy spirit." What? As if God's holy spirit is quantifiable like measuring water in a cooking pot? Please! Do you see what I mean? "Yesterday Jehovah gave my congregation two liters of holy spirit!" "Well the day before yesterday he gave mine five liters of holy spirit!" Because JHVH spirit can't make such mistakes because of my perception how JHVH spirit is absolute in this context. If i believe in wrong premises than that is my problem :))) This is one place where JWs go royally astray in their thinking.

A few pages back, Arauna challenged my acceptance evolution with the example of the supposed bad routing of a nerve in the giraffe's neck. She complained that Richard Dawkins' demonstration to show why the routing is bad was ridiculous. I answered in some detail, but of course, Arauna completely ignored the facts I presented. The way the argument stands now is shown here: The left hand routing scheme is what a competent Designer would use. The right hand scheme is actually in the giraffe, and in humans, and in all other vertebrates 'higher' than fish. The 15 foot (4.6 meter) loop around the heart blood vessel and back up is why it is called the recurrent laryngeal nerve. Which scheme makes more sense to you? Why? Note that this is one of the nerves that controls the larynx (voicebox).

James Thomas Rook Jr. said: See where failing to read posts gets you? You have no clue what you're talking about. If you read my posts -- as I just suggested and you've refused -- you'll find that I certainly use "reason and logic and common sense", but along with that I use "disparaging personal insults" whenever I find a poster lying, misrepresenting, disparaging, ignoring, or otherwise deliberately trying to throw the discussion off the track. What's wrong with that? Isn't that what Jesus did with the lying Pharisees? "Vipers . . ." Or maybe you don't think Jesus is a good model. Again, do you expect me to be a better Christian than the hypocritical clowns? I always try to destroy the arguments, but when it's called for, the liars, too. Often there's no difference with deliberate liars. Remember, I've been dealing with these types for nearly 30 years, and from experience I know that taking a hard line with liars is the most effective. Sometimes telling them to their face that they're a liar eventually gets them to think, and quit lying.

TrueTomHarley said: Yet another dishonest sidestep, a clumsy red herring. Let's examine the relevant parts of the exchange, shall we? TTH: This is AlanF’s taunt, Witness. He has said it innumerable times and now Arauna has adopted it once or twice in her replies. Now, exactly what in your statement is "a very old expression, seldom heard anymore"? Plain old English? After that I wrote: <<<< The May 1, 1957 Watchtower said (p.274): << If we are to walk in the light of truth we must recognize not only Jehovah God as our Father but his organization as our mother. >> This makes for a truly excellent taunt because the idea expressed is so cultish. TrueTomHarley's comment that this is my taunt is true in the sense that I often use it to taunt braindead JWs, but I've used the quote several times in this thread and many times in old threads. TTH's failure to reveal what he clearly knows is the source is, as usual, thoroughly dishonest. >>>> So, TTH, exactly where in your latest post did you respond rationally to what I actually said? Obviously you did not; hence your red herring response. LOL! One of the JW organization's many myths its leaders promulgate. There are so many disproofs of this myth it's hard to count them.

James Thomas Rook Jr said: You seem to forget that when I use "hate and vitriol" it's always in the spirit of returning like for like. You know very well that I've never been 'nasty' or you or to Anna or certain other posters. Do you know why? On the other hand, TrueTomHarley and Arauna scream bloody murder when I give them back what they first gave me. Do you have different standards for me and them? If you actually wade through my responses to Arauna, you'll not only learn much, but you'll see her lies -- which I don't hesitate to point out -- her misrepresentations, her sidestepping and her hypocrisy. Same for TTH, to the extent that I bother with his overt nonsense any more. It seems to me that you expect me, an atheist, to be a better Christian than these clowns.

The Librarian said to James Thomas Rook: You might look into the BB software that runs on this board: http://www.rationalskepticism.org/

Witness said: Let me clear this up. The first use I'm aware of comes from the Society itself: The May 1, 1957 Watchtower said (p.274): << If we are to walk in the light of truth we must recognize not only Jehovah God as our Father but his organization as our mother. >> This makes for a truly excellent taunt because the idea expressed is so cultish. TrueTomHarley's comment that this is my taunt is true in the sense that I often use it to taunt braindead JWs, but I've used the quote several times in this thread and many times in old threads. TTH's failure to reveal what he clearly knows is the source is, as usual, thoroughly dishonest.