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It basically says: 1. It took statements out of context 2. Some of the people who were quoted also had some weird ideas 3. Having thus demonstrated this, we don't have to go any further, dear reader.

You must like pizza.

W/o abiogenesis, there's nothing to work with.

I must have missed that verse. Mmmmm pizza!

My greatest fear is that most people are too stupid to understand how brilliant I am. I remember years ago I had a call w/a professor of anthropology. He of course was a proponent of evolution. I played the "I'm stupid game" with him and asked him to do me a favor and mark in the book "Life How Did It get Here - By Evolution, or Creation" where the authors got it wrong. I submitted that I was stumped, but certainly since my knowledge was a subset of his he would be in a good position to point out the errors. So he took the book, and then oddly, stopped answering the door when I came back. So I changed the time of day and came back at 8 pm. He made the mistake of answering, and then w/o a word, just got the book and handed it back. I said "But what am I to do? Won't you help me? You said you would." Then he muttered something I forget and shut the door.

I'm sure you're right, but I lack the intellectual capacity to understand these arguments. I have to content myself with eking out whatever little I understand with what Jehovah has given me.

Alan...If you're satisfied you understand the field and that Dr. Tour has it all wrong, then you can rejoice in your superior knowledge. Perhaps you could write a book outlining his many failed arguments. Be sure to dumb it down for the rest of us, though. Include a lot of pictures and use short sentences and short monosyllabic words.

Interesting, I'll have to look up some of this. Ultimately any real power comes down to force. A lot of people will go along w/something if it suits them, but when you see what happens w/corrupt governments is that the people increasingly view government as an occupying force and the only way you can keep it going is through brute force. In Stalin's world, people got sent off to gulags, but the top-down system of economic control always fails. It can never succeed and it never does. They stretch too far and they collapse. People remain people. It doesn't matter if they lived in the 1st century or the 21st century - they have the same motivating and demotivating factors. Perhaps the elimination of babylon the great is elimination in the same sense as the inhabitants in Canaan were eliminated (they weren't, but were in the sense of losing any real power). Too, Jesus also said the system of things would be going on as usual, that it would be like the days of Noah, people buying, people selling and they took no note.

I don't know, sometimes the explanations seem forced, like some soft-headed new-agers looking for signed and reading into things, stuff that's not there.(at least not yet) Exegesis over Eisegesis. So I'm not making an argument, that all that's wrong,(an I'm sure a lot of it's right) but I am saying that when you find yourself living in an information bubble, you can get to thinking you've got it all figured out. I don't think anyone I've read so far has it all figured out. JW's seem really close, but there are places which seem wishy-washy. Take the 8th king, that springs from the seven. The image of the wild beast. Perfectly fits the idea of the UN. It's a reflection. But the actual power of the UN is the US at this point, but more and more it's China. That all the governments will give their power to the UN seems a way off. I see it as the CNN of government at this point. The UN is supposed to hate the harlot of false religion and do away w/her completely, but that seems like it would be really hard to do. And why would they do it, since so many give way to whomever happens to be in power? The pope sounds like a socialist. Would it be the tide of Islam? A nuclear exchange in the middle east via Iran? Seems to me that a lot of things are brewing, but nothing has gelled to the point where you can draw a straight line from (to phrase an old pub "Kurukshetra to Armageddon") Along other lines I've been considering...Is God waiting to cash in the value of the ransom at the most opportune moment? When might that be? Moreover, it's clear that none of us know how much knowledge/and/or obedience is required of one at the point of finding onesself at "the plain of decision". Take the Sentinilese. These people probably have IQ's of 60 at best. They don't even know how to make fire. They can't read, and they are probably animists of some kind. I have a hard time imagining Jehovah will simply wipe out these ignorant, backward people simply for not having the good sense not to be born a Sentinilese. I can see wiping the slate as it were at Armageddon, letting some survive and gradually bringing back these kinds of people to see how these react, but simply not being a baptized card-carrying member of the community of true Christians at Armageddon doesn't seem to be a great argument as to deciding on their ultimate fate. I had one sister once say "I don't care as long as I'm there." ... That struck me as honest, but also evidence of moral defect. I know, like Paul said that in me, there dwells nothing good. It's not false humility on my part to acknowledge that there are a lot of non JW's who are way better than me. I used to say to people "I'm not better THAN anyone, but better OFF for trying at least to stay in line w/the bible."

Well the first part up to chapter six makes sense, but there are parts which seem forced. (I need to go back and read again, but like the first book we had on Daniel that Franz wrote, it seems windy w/words. To me, you read a verse and if you know what it means you say "this verse means this", but if you have too many paragraphs w/too much talking, I begin to get the idea that maybe you're straying into imagination-land - which I can understand doing, but that's not the way I like it.) Anyway....You see I have a wife who has spent thousands of hours studying celestial weather and some of that in chapter six seems like it could be literal. Now even if there are arguments about dating and the like, it appears that there was an event at the close of the ice age where there was something akin to a mini nova event involving the sun. Geologists are debating about this, some thinking one thing, some thinking another. Robert Schoch has some ideas. https://www.robertschoch.com/plasma_iceage.html and others have other ideas. (Schoch is a geologist at Boston U, but is a little out there) Another is https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Did_A_Massive_Solar_Proton_Event_Fry_The_Earth_999.html So when the Revelation Climax books says this (below), it seems to me more and more that some of these things are actually literal.(hence future) "What a striking phenomenon! Can you imagine the frightening darkness that would result if the prophecy were fulfilled literally? No more warm, comforting sunlight by day! No more friendly, silvery moonlight by night! And the myriad stars would no longer twinkle against the velvety backdrop of the sky. Instead, there would be cold, relentless blackness." - from the Rev. book. When I read "mountains cover us" I can imagine that people would definitely try to hide in the mountains and caves. The Bible does say there will be signs in sun and moon and stars....

I've been searching, but I haven't found much in the way of updates.

I'm not sure what anyone would expect in Russia. Their government strikes me as nothing more than a criminal enterprise. A thugocracy.

Just arrived, and saw this thread. You might find this lecture by James Tour of interest.