AlanF

Arauna said: Since when is agreeing with a debater's arguments cult-like? This is yet another example where, rather than stepping up to the plate and providing rational arguments, you can only manage an ad hominem. Well by all means, point out the flaws! Otherwise this is just imitating the criminal Donald Trump's shouting "Fake news!" You're completely biased, and that's what prevents you from acknowledging Hitchens' mopping the floor with his opponents. Much like when a biased ever-Trumper hears Donald Trump still claiming that Barak Obama was not born in the U.S. Here is another challenge: Look at any video of a Christopher Hitchens debate that you choose, and give us three examples where his opponent defeated his arguments in the manner you claim. There are dozens of videos on YouTube with titles such as "Best of Christopher Hitchens . . .". Here's one to get you started: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqjfGFHes0w Out of the mouth of babes. . . Atheism is not a religion, you moron. Now try giving the four examples where I've not "answered any of the most important points" you've raised, as I challenged you in my previous post. When other readers see you refusing to rise to the challenge, they'll know that you're a lying hypocrite. In the material below I refer to the book by paleontologist Donald Prothero, Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters (Columbia University Press, 2nd Ed., 2017). I consider this the best and most comprehensive book for non-experts. Naturally, we know that Arauna and most of her fellow JWs will never read the book. That's their lookout. Arauna said: No, YOU are evading. The so-called "Cambrian explosion" (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion ) is a myth, as I've carefully documented several times in this thread. Depending how paleontologists define the time periods when early life developed, the whole period lasted up to 140 million years, from the beginning of the Ediacaran Period (cf. https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/vendian/ediacaran.php ) to the end of the Cambrian Period (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian ). In some older works, the "Cambrian explosion" was narrowly defined to be the period from about 530 to 500 million years ago, but this is outmoded and the term is only used in non-scientific literature. In most of the Ediacaran the few fossils that have been found were not fossils of bodies but of impressions of bodies in the soft mud of the ocean floor. Apparently virtually all of these were very flat, wide creatures that had no distinct organs. As time passed, more of these creatures appeared that seem to have had actual body plans. There is good evidence that many of the various body plans that developed during the Ediacaran carried over into the Cambrian and, when environmental conditions were right (such as oxygen levels in the atmosphere) began to morph into body plans that had hard parts. This happened at the end of the Ediacaran and beginning of the Cambrian, as evidenced by the appearance of the so-called "Small Shelly Fossils" (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_shelly_fauna ) between about 550 and 520 million years ago. During that time more and more life forms appeared that had more hard parts. Among the earliest were the trilobites, some 520 million years ago. I've posted all of the above in posts responding to various people, including Arauna, almost all of which has been duly ignored. So Arauna has no excuse for making claims like this: Complete nonsense, as I've shown above. Neither 140 million nor 30 million years are "short periods". And precursors have certainly been found in the Ediacaran and early Cambrian periods. Such false claims have been debunked by proper scientists for the past 30 years, as more and more Ediacaran/Cambrian fossils have been found. But because Arauna is basically a young-earth creationist and reads their obsolete literature rather than modern scientific literature, she knows nothing of it. Wrong. YOU have missed the point and set out another straw man. My point about jaw/ear evolution over 10-20 million years is that the fossil record itself documents the gradual appearance and change of even complex features like the jaw/ear system. That was some 350 million years after the first appearance of life with hard parts, and has nothing to do with any 'Cambrian explosion'. Nor does it have anything to do with the origin of life some 3.5+ billion years ago. Not sudden at all. It appears likely that the earliest dinosaur precursors of some 230 million years ago had primitive, hairlike feathers, as well as many other features that are rather birdlike, including the lung system that has air sacs in the bones. Apparently many of the somewhat later true dinosaurs had feathers, as the fossil record increasingly shows. The family of Coelurosaurs ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelurosauria ), small theropod dinosaurs, first appeared about 200 million years ago, and traces of feathers have been found with their fossils. Their skeletons often look so much like those of primitive birds that non-experts have trouble telling them apart. By the mid-Jurassic through the early Cretaceous Periods, about 175-125 million years ago, many small feathered dinosaurs like Sinosauropteryx, Protarchaeopteryx, Sinornithosaurus, Caudipteryx, Mei long and Microraptor had appeared alongside Archaeopteryx and its relatives. The fossil record is relatively sparse, but what there is clearly shows primitive birds living alongside feathered dinosaurs for tens of millions of years. Archaeopteryx ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeopteryx ), usually classified as the earliest known true bird, was a true intermediate between small carnivorous theropod dinosaurs like Compsognathus (the 'compies' of the Jurassic Park movies) and the true birds that appeared some 130 million years ago. Archaeopteryx's skeleton was so dinosaur-like that one early fossil specimen was misidentified as Compsognathus, and another as a pterosaur, and put in museum drawers for a century, only to be properly identified in the 1970s because a paleontologist going through the drawers happened to notice faint feather impressions. For more on this, plus many pictures, see Prothero, chapter 12. Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feather Already done in brief. See page 49 of this thread. For a comprehensive explanation, read Prothero's book. I need not throw more "pearls before swine". Nope. It's central, as shown above. Arauna said to James Thomas Rook Jr: Look at the above real information, James. 4 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. and Arauna said: Again ignoring the fact that 20 to 140 million years is not short. The fact is that most of the junk promulgated by Intelligent Design promoters was long ago promoted by young-earth creationists, including the notion of "intelligent design". ID is just the latest iteration. Of course! You're a young-earth creationist. I've already pointed out that Mommy Watchtower says that YECism is an unscriptural view. So you're an apostate. Go right ahead. If you do -- which I very much doubt -- be prepared to reveal your source references. It's clearly evident in your posts. Such as constantly referring to young-earth creationist talking points, and to ID-creationist memes. I say again: bullpucky! You only read creationist and Watchtower publications. Prove me wrong, if you dare, by naming other sources. LOL! I don't think so. You're already 40 years out of date. I was an ardent creationist as a JW or ex-JW for the first 40 years of my life. I gradually learned that the Watchtower Society was incredibly deceptive about virtually everything connected to the evolution/creation issue. That's because, unlike most JWs, I read extensively from real scientific sources, and learned for myself of the Society's deception. Religion, LOL! Don't you know that religion entails worship of gods? Yet another creationist talking point. Now we can watch Arauna complain that I answered none of her challenges and TrueTomHarley complain that this post is too long for him to read. Such clowns!

You're so dumb that you don't realize that I didn't say those things -- you've been hit by this board's buggy software.

It's painfully clear that Arauna, despite her blustering overconfidence, is an especially unclear thinker. This appears in her posts in many ways, such as responding to things that were never said, all manner of sidestepping and ignoring of arguments, bringing in non sequiturs of various sorts, and even outright lying. Arauna has also complained that I've not answered her challenges, but anyone who reads my careful and detailed responses knows that's not true. True, I've not responded to some posts, but I've usually commented that those are simply too ridiculous to bother with. This post will be a case in point. Arauna will ignore almost all of it. And of course, I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't, with hypocrites like TrueTomHarley complaining that my detailed debunkings are too long, and hypocrites like Arauna complaining that I don't respond at all, with both of them hypocritically failing to respond to most of the content of my posts. One of the clearest proofs of unclear thinking is Arauna's propensity for cutting out important parts of what she responds to, and only commenting on the misrepresentations that are left. Below we'll see several examples. Arauna had said, among other nonsense: I responded, in part: Rather than giving an actual answer, Arauna immediately descends into the ad hominem: But I've given much thought to issues like these. And as I've pointed out before, Arauna really has no idea what atheism entails. She has a grossly skewed view of it, borrowed from her reading of non-JW Christian apologists. To clear that up, note what I told James Thomas Rook on page 50 of this thread: << And while I'm at it, I'll state for the record that almost no religious apologists seem to understand what "atheism" means. While it can mean "belief that no gods exist", most of the time self-described atheists like me mean that "I do not believe in any gods". Do you understand the difference? It's a big difference, because it's not logically possible to know that no "gods" exist in the entire universe, but it's quite reasonable not to believe in any gods, just as it's reasonable not to believe in the Tooth Fairy without being able to prove that it doesn't exist. Remember that most religious people are atheists with respect to all gods but their own. Real atheists just go one god further. For more on that, read Dawkins' The God Delusion, where he proposes a scale of belief from 1 to 7. Total belief in God rates a 1, total disbelief a 7. He and I claim to be about 6.5. >> Of course, if Arauna reads that, her eyes will glaze over and she'll pretend she didn't read it, in line with her usual Orwellian crimestop. Since the most common form of atheism -- non-belief in any gods -- has no precepts about morals or anything else, any more than non-belief in the Tooth Fairy does, statements like "the argument that atheism can provide morals is false" are completely off the beam. It is a complete non sequitur and a straw man, because no atheist claims that his atheism can provide morals. That false claim comes from various Christian apologists who also fail to understand atheism, usually deliberately. It's obviously deliberate because the loudest of them, like William Lane Craig, have all been repeatedly corrected by atheist clear thinkers. But these apologists, like Arauna, are not interested in dealing with facts, but in bashing the critics of Christianity. Arauna has clumsily confused atheism with humanism ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism ) and other philosophies ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_morality ) but these are quite different things. The fact is that most atheists are a good deal more 'moral' in most rational senses than are most Christians. Atheists do not go to war against one another over differences of opinion about atheism, nor do they kill one another. Indeed, some of the most violent wars and acts of aggression in history have been committed by certain Christian groups warring against other Christian groups. And we all know about the Catholic Inquisition against 'heretics'. By the way, don't bother trying to claim that Stalin, Hitler, Mao and others committed their atrocities in the name of atheism; this has been debunked hundreds of times. It's also clear that Jehovah's Witnesses as a group don't morally oppose war and killing. Rather, they oppose taking part in war by anyone besides JWs. The Watchtower Society even argues that JWs are not pacifists, but are neutral in secular affairs. Plenty of JWs would happily take up arms against anyone the Governing Body set them against. I've not dismissed any such "important questions". Rather, I've given detailed explanations on all manner of your false and misrepresentative claims. This is easy to prove: List four examples where I've dismissed "important questions surrounding evolution and atheism". You'll never do this, and you'll have proved my charge: you're a hypocritical liar. On the other hand, I can list dozens of examples where you've ignored or summarily dismissed what I've posted regarding evolution and atheism. LOL! Look at the blatant hypocrisy and lying! Not to irritate, but to goad nearly braindead religionists into thinking for the first time in years. JWs have their own echo chamber and rarely go outside it. So? Conversations evolve, and most of this evolution was started by JW apologists like you bringing in other topics in attempts to bash critics. In most Western lands, of course. Wow! A true statement! False. See above. You're confusing morals in general with Judeo-Christian morals, morals that include genocide against unbelievers. Do you really believe that God-dictated genocide is moral? Ah, another reference to the arguments of young-earth and IDish creationism. Rather than detail the reasons why creationist claims about thermodynamics and evolution are completely wrong, I'll refer you to the article "Creationist Misunderstanding, Misrepresentation, and Misuse of the Second Law of Thermodynamics" here: https://ncse.ngo/creationist-misunderstanding-misrepresentation-and-misuse-second-law-thermodynamics

The following narrative was recently posted to the website of a JW critic. It shows that, in addition to the Governing Body's continued inadequate policies regarding Child Sexual Abuse, it continues to practice Adult Emotional Abuse. << I was brought into the “truth” in 1969. When married & wanted children I was advised by the else’s & others that now (1973) that because we were so near to the end of this system that it was a really bad idea. I was told how hard it would be to care for a child on the lead up & also through Armageddon. I was brow beaten, & bullied by many of the brothers & sisters, all bar one, an elderly sister who had also been told back in the 50’s exactly the same thing. Her son & daughter would never have been born if she’d listened to the elders back then, so her advice was this, if you really want children, you must have the faith that Jehovah will see you through. I went on to have 4 children, who have all left the truth because they were bitterly disappointed in the organisation as a whole. I was a sister for 34 years. I was abused by my husband, witnessed many kinds of terrible things that were covered up, including incest, slander,adultary many forms of dishonesty & thieving . The hypocrisy was rife. One day, sitting in a meeting I looked around me. There was more than 60 witnesses attending. I looked at each in turn & thought of what they were truly like & out of all of them, I knew in my heart that only 4 were truly decent, genuine, honest & loving people. I was just so disgusted that I got up & walked out. I didn’t return for years, then one Sunday, I decided to go to a meeting just to see if anything had changed. After the meeting several sisters gathered around me, telling me how much I’d been missed & how pleased they were to see me because they cared so much. I lived only a few minutes walk from the Kingdom Hall. My street must have been worked many times during those years & yet, not a single member of that congregation, none of those “loving caring sisters” none of the elders, no not a one had ever picked up the phone to talk to me, knocked on my door when they were in the street, NOT A ONE bothered to ask me why I’d left. Bear in mind here that I’d committed no sin, id not been disassociated,, or disfellowshipped. So, total hypocrites forever. This religion is nothing but a brainwashing, hierarchical, cult, for people who get off on having a holier than thou attitude. Their teachings can be pulled apart with ease by anyone with a questioning mind. The trouble is that those within the organisation are not ALLOWED to question, or to have an open mind. MY ADVICE........ STAY WAY, WAY AWAY . I wasted 34 years of life & was treated badly the whole time. I now have bitter regrets that I was ever involved. >>

This guy really does think he's funny and astute!

Yet another boneheaded comment from the reigning local champion of non-sequiturs.

James Thomas Rook Jr. said: I wouldn't know. I wasn't there with my time machine and DSLR. Note that back in the 1830s, most of the roadside litter would have been dead bodies on the "trail of tears". Don't I know it! I've tried many times at MicroCenter. Not really. I think you didn't understand what I said: I accept evolution -- I do not believe in it, because belief by definition is not based on evidence -- and I accept the evidence for "punctuated equilibrium", which is just a part of the whole Theory of Evolution. I understand your idea of "punctuated creation" quite well because I thought of it more than 30 years ago. But I can't accept it as more than a poorly founded speculation, since there is no evidence whatsoever for it. And I have no evidence to completely dismiss it. I've already proved that the Bible God is nonexistent, but accept that perhaps some other creator exists, for which I have yet to see any evidence. Note that "The Argument from Personal Incredulity" is also called "The Argument from Ignorance" and holds almost no water. And while I'm at it, I'll state for the record that almost no religious apologists seem to understand what "atheism" means. While it can mean "belief that no gods exist", most of the time self-described atheists like me mean that "I do not believe in any gods". Do you understand the difference? It's a big difference, because it's not logically possible to know that no "gods" exist in the entire universe, but it's quite reasonable not to believe in any gods, just as it's reasonable not to believe in the Tooth Fairy without being able to prove that it doesn't exist. Remember that most religious people are atheists with respect to all gods but their own. Real atheists just go one god further. For more on that, read Dawkins' The God Delusion, where he proposes a scale of belief from 1 to 7. Total belief in God rates a 1, total disbelief a 7. He and I claim to be about 6.5.

TrueTomHarley said: Somehow you seem to think (if what goes on inside your head can be called that) that's a rational response. What's your point? As you so often do, you're comparing apples with oranges. The fact is that a number of fossils over more than 10 million years show the two-joint arrangement, and since no one was there to observe, over several tens of millions of years, how and why changes occurred from one population of critters to another, no one can truly understand the how and why of the changes. Is that so hard for your little mind to understand? Or perhaps you have a hypothesis about how and why the changes occurred that morphed the early synapsid jaw/ear arrangement into the final mammalian arrangement. Here, I'll help you: Maybe the creator wanted to experiment with new structures in the jaw/ear of a few animals. Why he might do so is not understood. So he got hold of an embryo and tweaked the genes to make some tiny adjustments to the final jaw/ear structure. After a million years or so he did this with another critter, and another and another. After awhile, and several more rounds of genetic tweaking, there existed a bunch of somewhat different critters that were also different from the ones that the creator left alone. All along the way the creator let some groups of critters die out, so that as time progressed, there appeared in the fossil record a series of fossils that look exactly like evolution by natural selection of the original into the final jaw/ear arrangement. Perhaps you can come up with a better scenario. But again, none will be holding their breaths.

I don't normally comment on politics, but . . . James Thomas Rook Jr. said: At being a criminal. Yes indeed. Since Jackson killed thousands of my blood relatives, that's not hard to do. I hope you're being facetious, since Trump filled "the swamp" with even more of his own. I disagree. At least he wasn't an outright criminal. I agree that that's what the job has turned into, especially under Trump, but it seems beyond questioning that if our wise founding fathers could have seen what's happening today, they'd have made drastic changes to the republic's founding documents. I doubt that even the most criminal of politicians today would claim that 250 years has not resulted in massive corruption on all levels of government, especially where religion has stuck in its dirty fingers. And of course, most of the extremely wealthy.

James Thomas Rook Jr. said: Obviously you've never carefully considered scientific discussions. Here's one to get you started: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye You might also read Richard Dawkins' book Climbing Mount Improbable. True, and I suspect you don't know the half of it. A typical bat ear contains a mechanical bandpass filter that rolls off at some 800 decibels per octave. That's astonishing! On the other hand, this earbone/eardrum system evolved over tens of millions of years, as shown by hundreds of fossils from the Triassic and Permian Periods. Early Triassic animals called Synapsids split into many families, one of which evolved into the earliest mammals. The early jaw was comprised of the dentary bone (carries the teeth) and three others. The entire jaw was involved in hearing, and one of the bones was connected to the eardrum. The arrangement gradually morphed, for reasons not understood, into an arrangement where in some animals there were two jaw joints side by side. In some lineages one of the jaw joints gradually disappeared over time, leaving the modern arrangement, where what were once parts of the old jaw now comprise the modern mammalian earbones. Sounds fantastic? It certainly does, but that's what hundreds of fossils show, as does embryology. See https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evograms_05 Correction: you see things that you already know were designed by men like yourself, and which don't reproduce, and are not capable of self-assembly in contrast with simple biological molecules. You don't know that you've seen anything designed by some Supernatural Intelligence -- you mere believe it. When I was about five years old, I said: "Mommy! Please make the trees stop making the wind blow". Small children are extremely prone to seeing agency in things that move and in confusing cause and effect. Eventually they learn better. I don't disagree with that possibility. After all, we don't know enough to know for sure whether some kind of super-intelligence exists outside our ken. And many competent scientists have somewhat similar views. However, as I've shown earlier in this thread, such a super-intelligence cannot be the God of the Bible, because the Bible combined with the fossil record proves that He cannot exist: Bible says Creator God is loving; fossil record says 'Creator' is not loving. Can't have it both ways. How do you know all that? Ever heard of the place in Turkey called Göbekli Tepe? It's a 12,000 year old archaeological site, perhaps a temple of sorts. Apparently it predates farming. In any case, it and hundreds of other ancient sites prove that modern humans, along with all manner of cultural stuff, have existed for hundreds of thousands of years. Grave goods of modern humans and Neanderthals strongly indicate 'spiritual beliefs' of some sort. What I've said above barely scratches the surface. I beg to differ. Animals killing animals for food goes back 550 million years. Is that "good"? No, I have a digital SLR and a time machine.

JW Insider said: If you had done that it would have destroyed all continuity. Yes, because that's the way conversations develop. Without making a roadmap, no one would be able to follow the development. Not necessarily. With continuity of challenge/response maintained, it's more efficient. Long time posters by now should have figured out that keeping a record of their posts and the ones they respond to is necessary to maintain a coherent view of the conversations. I admit I'm getting tired, but I'm not yet done. Just like threads on every board I've seen. A good example of how properly to run a board is this: http://www.rationalskepticism.org/ Nope. TTH's clumsy attempts merely emphasize his incompetence. What you call such are merely the results of my badly tolerating gross foolishness, hypocrisy and blatant dishonesty. The Watchtower Society has used such tactics on those it considers part of "Babylon the Great" and the rest of "Satan's system". There is nothing wrong with calling a spade a spade, and in plain language. As Isaiah 65:20 says: "And the sinner will be cursed, even though he is a hundred years of age." Sins like gross foolishness, hypocrisy and blatant dishonesty need to be pointed out, and their practicers called 'spades'. Do you not agree? Yes, TTH has said that, and I've pointed out why he was wrong. Why have you ignored that? Please point them out. She has only objected, not pointed anything out, so far as I can see. And again, I've responded to every one of Anna's objections that were not trivial. I see no such transition. On the contrary, I see today's Governing Body doubling down on dogmatism. It is also becoming more mealy-mouthed. I see a greater tendency for the GB to talk out of both sides of its mouth, such as Jeffrey Jackson did before the ARC when he denied, without explicitly denying, that the GB claims to be directly guided by God. "Directly" means that God actively changes what the GB members would think if there were no such 'guidance'. That is inspiration. I see what little has been changed as tweaking certain claims in order to emphasize the spiritual authority of the GB. Claims that time and events have proved to be false. With regard to dates, I only see a trivial change with respect to 1919, where the supposed governing body comprised of the Brooklyn leadership is now said to have been appointed as "the faithful slave", as opposed to the entire body of anointed. Do correct me if I'm wrong. ID is just old-time creationism in a tuxedo, as one critic said. Wrong. I've responded to every one of Arauna's rational or semi-rational claims, and thoroughly debunked them. Her reliance on creationist sources goes against explicit Watchtower teaching. And she's mired in the Society's old young-earth creationist teachings that were abandoned 40 years ago. I doubt that you can come up with even a single example where I failed to respond to a rational argument. As for ad hominems, I rarely use a bare one, but usually accompany it with prose that anyone with a brain can see justifies its use. Do you want examples? Just like most JWs. I have, and I know what I'm talking about. You're a master of understatement. You're leaning on a "crushed reed", my friend. Genesis is demonstrably wrong about many supposedly historical things, such as the order of creation of life, and Noah's Flood. Isaiah describes the earth as shaped like a pizza pie. New Testament writers go along with all this nonsense. Note what the Insight book says: << “Reed” is used in the Bible to represent instability and frailty. (1Ki 14:15; Eze 29:6, 7) Egypt was compared to a crushed reed, the sharp, pointed slivers of which would penetrate the palm of anyone leaning upon it. (2Ki 18:21; Isa 36:6) >> Pascal's Wager is a fool's wager, because it assumes that God is too stupid to figure out if the bettor is sincere in his betting on God. Ah yes. That's why the Watchtower Society has set up so many charities to help mankind.

Anna said: Please provide scriptures that say a Christian must defer to false teachings. The New Testament is clear that Christians must not go along with such. In terms of assenting to false teachings? Only in the indirect way of reading and applying what the Bible says. By the same token, no one should criticize any religion that claims to read and apply the Bible. And of course, we know very well that needed changes in Watchtower teaching have not been made since its very beginning. All the teachings about 1914 are a prime example. Not only has that date been proved to be wrong by scriptural refutations, and of no significance by historical measures, but all of the claimed disasters of the so-called "composite sign" have not materialized. If they were creating the worldwide havoc and massive death rate the Society claims, world population would have steadily declined since 1914. But it has grown rapidly from 2 billion to 8 billion. Therefore, the empirical evidence disproves and fundamental JW doctrine. And since the claim of the Governing Body to spiritual authority granted by God and Jesus entirely rests on all this 1914 nonsense, that claim is proved false. No, it's easy to understand. Remember that I myself rejected this concept while I still very much believed in God. Perhaps the best example that falsifies your claim is Raymond Franz. He wrote two books criticizing JW leadership, but retained full belief in the Bible and its God until he died. Why do you break out one bad practice or belief from all the others? No, it belongs under this topic, since you brought it up. Don't make excuses to avoid answering. So? It's already no different to Christendom in all the ways that count. By the way, "Christendom" was an obsolete term even 40 years ago, as pointed out to me when my literature professor critiqued my essay written when I still believed in God. Sure it does. It's quite explicit that true Christians were not to tolerate false teachings promulgated by anyone -- not even those claiming to be leaders. Come on, you know perfectly well that I meant "you failed to respond". Then you should have clearly stated that, both in this thread (since you brought it up here) and in the thread I started at your request. I guarantee that if I had requested that certain other posters here make a separate topic, and I never responded, they'd be screaming "Hypocrite! You never responded!" And they'd be right. Many of the posts here are relatively trivial, being concerned with secondary matters. Primary matters are things like, "Does God exist?", the fact that the realities of the 1914 doctrine disprove the GB's claim to spiritual authority, and "Do JWs really follow Jesus' commands?" in view of Albert Schroeder's claim that "Jesus' words don't apply to Jehovah's Witnesses". If you don't have the fundamentals right, the secondary issues are moot. So don't get sidetracked by them if your time is limited. So? Drop the small stuff and get to the important stuff. I think you understand very well that you'll not be able to deal with such primary stuff, and so you go for the secondary because it's easier. Everything that you say is blatantly off topic has been brought up initially by your fellow JWs. I've merely responded.

It's Hitchens, you moron! You can't even get his name right. Hitchens almost always came out on top. He mopped the floor with his opponents. Most of the time his opponents, as well as their groupies, were too ignorant and/or stubborn to admit it. Like you. LIke ever-Trumpers are about Trump's criminality. You don't even know what atheism is, but presume to criticize something you don't understand.

As usual you're so far off the beam that you're not even wrong. Where do you get all this nonsense? Do you just make it all up? I think you've gone senile. You also read young-earth creationist publications and pick up all manner of nonsense. And of course, your thinking on various things, like the age of the earth, is 40 years out of date by Watchtower standards. And of course, you simply don't learn. Insight is almost identical to the earlier Aid book in content.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! You're killing me!

And you never learned a thing. No surprise.

I submit that TrueTomHarley and his multiple personalities are prima facie evidence of what long years in the JW cult can do to a person.

I find your insanity amusing.

Bugger off, TrueTomHarley.

Anna said: Not a good strategy for life. It means being unable to understand what is really going on. Which means What? in deciphering deliberate ambiguity? Here's a good example for you to decipher. Then answer my questions below. << As for the time of Christ’s second presence, Daniel’s prophecy is again the one that gives the chronology for it. (Dan. 4:16) It was figured out as pointing to A.D. 1914, and The Watchtower called notice to the significance of 1914 in the year 1879. >> -- w52 11/1 p. 658 Exactly when was "Daniel's prophecy" "figured out as pointing to A.D. 1914"? And by whom? And what evidence can you cite for your answer? Did The Watchtower really call to notice "the significance of 1914 in the year 1879"? What exactly did it say, and what evidence can you cite for your answer? Here's another example. << There is no need for any individual to prepare Internet pages about Jehovah’s Witnesses, our activities, or our beliefs. Our official site presents accurate information for any who want it. >> -- Kingdom Ministry, Nov. 1997, p. 3 Would you view this as clear direction that JWs ought not make websites about JW stuff? It can be viewed as just a suggestion, but most JWs view it as a prohibition. That's proved by the fact that many JW websites and mailing lists were quickly shut down after this KM 'suggestion' came out. Noncommittal is one thing. Deliberate deception is what I'm complaining about. Except that in many cases, the Society specifically says to avoid "personal interpretations". Since such warnings are never clearly explained, many JWs err on the side of caution and simply refuse to think about the Bible itself, but strictly stick to Watchtower tradition. Much like how my experience with GB member Albert Schroeder 25 years ago, when his response to my challenge about Luke 21:7-8 was essentially, "The Bible does not apply to Jehovah's Witnesses." Only in one's head. Remember that the April 1, 1986 Watchtower was quite clear that expressing dissent from Watchtower teachings is grounds for disfellowshipping. And more recent literature has expressly stated that "private interpretations" are going against God's will. Yes, it does. But the Society says not to question it, on pain of disfellowshipping. Yet another instance where JW teaching is diametrically opposed to Bible teaching. People do that all the time. In the meantime, those who time proves were right all along have to shut up and defer to the Society's false teachings. Do you really think that's good? What the Society really should do is become more tolerant of dissent. That would make being a JW much more pleasant for intelligent, knowledgeable people.Of course, in my experience the majority of JWs are just sheep who want to be told by some authority--any authority--where to put their feet at each step. Precisely. But I would say exactly the same thing even if I believed in the Bible God. In fact, I would argue that God is not directing anyone, because every group claiming to teach "Bible truths" or religious truth has serious problems in its teaching. Those teachings always contain demonstrable falsehoods. I am not usually the one to bring up scientific topics. Rather, arrogant ignoramuses like Arauna and TrueTomHarley bring up their pseudoscientific nonsense, and I respond with real science. You're not being particularly honest here, because when I brought up the Albert Schroeder / Luke 21:7-8 topic, you suggested making a new topic -- which I did -- and you ignored. Apparently you want to have your cake and eat it, too. Apparently your humor is not very good.

Bugger off, Tom.

Anna said: Yes, I'm 68 years young. I would have thought you could figure that out from comments like, "I dun gradjiated 6th grade in 1963". Apparently so.

TrueTomHarley said: Ooh, TTH is obviously jealous of my knowledge. My "likes" are approximately like saying I like certain comments about witch-doctoring and astrology and Velikovskyism and all manner of goofy, nonsensical belief systems. For example I very much like what a JW-critical author said some 50 years ago: << A long acquaintance with the literature of the Witnesses leads one to the conclusion that they live in the intellectual ‘twilight zone.’ That is, most of their members, even their leaders, are not well educated and not very intelligent. Whenever their literature strays onto the fields of philosophy, academic theology, science or any severe mental discipline their ideas at best mirror popular misconceptions, at worst they are completely nonsensical. >> Posters like TrueTomHarley and Arauna prove these sentiments in most every post. Detriment? LOL! Kind of like skipping eating dog poop would be to my detriment.

Arauna said: Good point. The JW religion indeed has a goodly component of mysticism as well as superstition. I've answered all your challenges. You're just too stupid and dishonest to deal with the answers. And of course, we again see that good old Orwellian doublethink and crimestop in action. YOU spoke of mutations, not me. I said that natural selection weeds out the bad mutations, which you completely ignored. You're so ignorant that you don't even know that natural selection weeding out bad mutations is the basis for some of the Society's arguments against evolution, because it results in the stablility of species over long periods. You keep ignoring my challenge to explain the fact that big cats have been around for 5 million years. You ignore it because of Orwellian crimestop. Um, the number is about 2 million. I see that innumeracy characterizes you, too. LOL! Try dealing with the big cats.

No one can read this. It's way too long and has a "read more" button you have to click on.