All Eight Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses members are now individually named on two New York Child Victims Act case documents

[John Paul]

3 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

AllenSmith was a loon. He may or may not have been a Witness, but he had serious issues of self-control and unrestrained anger, not to mention misperception, I don’t blame @The Librarian a bit. If his congregation elders got reports of his carrying on in field service as he carried on here, they would have very strong counsel for him.

Precisely. Aren't you the same way, isn't AlanF the same way, isn't JTR the same way. If you don't blame the librarian, then you shouldn't complain since everyone here is the same way. That is hypocritical in my opinion. Just because a person makes and effort to expose a wrong perception about an organization in which they serve God under, doesn't give anyone a right to remove someone. Especially being insulting just as you are with the label "loon". What's makes you think, you're not more mentally diseased than that person?

[Anna]

On 11/27/2019 at 2:03 AM, Srecko Sostar said:

are not in position to "know more" if they are out of working range of holy spirit, to understand more about some subjects, if Bible text not explicit say or explain what is what. If it is, as you say, how Bible not give any prove to all of us, that FDS will know more, than what spiritual food they producing?

The spiritual food can only be what is in the Bible. But obviously, this is not what you’re talking about, but rather the interpretation of the Bible. The Bible says it’s good for setting things straight …so man of God is completely equipped for every good work.  This concerns the basic teachings, as you say: "To be good, not lie, love your neighbor, to preach Kingdom, not have idols ....and similar". If that was all there was, then it would be a much thinner book. I don’t know, what percent is here of the basic teachings? I have not looked into that, but let’s say it’s 50% of the Bible. So that leaves the other 50% that concern other things. Should we say that there is no use for that other 50%? What is for example the use of the book of Revelation? It’s a “A revelation by Jesus Christ, which God gave him, to show his slaves the things that must shortly take place”. Would it be of any use unless it was understood? Verse five (of ch1) goes on to say: “Happy is the one who reads aloud and those who hear the words of this prophecy and who observe the things written in it, for the appointed time is near”. You can’t observe it unless you know what you are looking at.  That’s great because not only is it a highly symbolic book, but its chapters and verses are not always in chronological order! It’s a real challenge to interpret the riddles that are in it. Have the JWs done this perfectly. No, I don’t think so. We have changed how we understood a few things already, and some we still don’t understand. Does that mean we should stop trying to understand, and just ignore it? The same goes for the rest of the prophetic Bible books, such as Daniel etc. They are there for a reason. Does it mean JWs didn’t get enough holy spirit if they made mistakes in some interpretations?  Don’t forget the holy spirit does not work on our terms. God is perfectly in control of holy spirit and knows when and how much to give, it’s not up to us to judge. The Bible is full of examples where it appears that God’s servants were not getting help from God. Think about Joseph, all the things he had to go through before finally things worked out for him.

On 11/27/2019 at 2:03 AM, Srecko Sostar said:

Bible not say who is FDS. When and how will come or came. Will they originated from Pennsylvania and then move to Warwick. 

I would not expect it to say that. It would be out of character of all the other scriptures. It stands to reason that there should be a centralized system of direction. As you say, organizationally it’s doing very well, but your problem is with the spiritual aspect. Why should that be a problem though? Jesus said that the shepherds were to feed his sheep spiritually. It started of as one congregation. But now it’s thousands. You just have to look at it that the whole world of JWs is one big congregation, being fed by shepherds that happen to be in Warwick. You are putting too much emphasis on 8 imperfect men, whilst what you should be looking at is the arrangement which has a Biblical basis.  Congregations are not autonomous spiritually. All JWS are one big congregation. What about interpretation? There has to be a centralized tenet of belief. Otherwise no one would be able to identify Jehovah’s Witnesses by their beliefs. Every religion has their doctrine by which they can be identified. Jehovah’s Witnesses hope to have a doctrine based exclusively on the Bible, free of pagan influences, and as close to the 1st. century Christians as possible. As for complicated prophecies, well, that is a work in progress, but that should not be a deterrent. 

[John Paul]

25 minutes ago, Witness said:

Again, "Jerusalem above" is a promise of life. The scriptures I gave, verify it as symbolic.  It is not heavenly Jerusalem.  Does God need a wife to become complete?  

nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all [people] life and breath and all things;  Acts 17:25

I don’t see the difference. It should be clear in ACTS 17, it's referring to Christ not coming to earth to be served, rather than to serve.

I don’t see where that compares to Galatians unless we are willing to accept a heavenly Jerusalem that will soon be in charge of the inhabitants of this world.

Do you believe in Armageddon? Do you think there are at least a few witnesses that believe in judgment day, and the persecution of faithful servants before that? Are there a few witnesses that believe, there is a gray area between tribulation and Armageddon when Jesus will separate the sheep’s from the goats?

However, I was not suggesting you are the only one off topic. I think everyone is, including myself.

[AlanF]

Arauna said:

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    22 hours ago, AlanF said:

    Hitchens almost always came out on top. He mopped the floor with his opponents.

This is cult-like.

 

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.

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When an articulate celebrity goes on stage and his followers are so enamoured of him that they do not even see the flaws in the arguments.

Well by all means, point out the flaws! Otherwise this is just imitating the criminal Donald Trump's shouting "Fake news!"

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I watched several of his debates - even the one against his brother - he is impressively  articulate but that is all.

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

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Yes- I guess I'm a moron ......

Out of the mouth of babes. . .

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so I wonder what that makes you?   Since you have not answered any of the most important points I have raised against your religion,  except raising insults.

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:

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    16 hours ago, AlanF said:

    fact is that a number of fossils over more than 10 million years show the two-joint arrangement,

Evading the real question.

 

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:

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  The cambrian explosion refers to an explosion of so many different kinds of animals in  a short period of time without any hint of " precursors"  found in earlier layers of the earth...........

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.

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and you turn it into an argument of the jawbone during this time - totally missing the point.

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.

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Explain the sudden appearance of wings,

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

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explain the explosion of all the different kinds of mammals without any hint of it in previous layers of the earth.

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".

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The jawbone is a side issue..

Nope. It's central, as shown above.

Arauna said to James Thomas Rook Jr:

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    Evading the real question.  The cambrian explosion refers to an explosion of so many different kinds of animals in  a short period of time without any hint of " precursors"  found in earlier layers of the earth.

Punctuated Creation's hard evidence.

 

Look at the above real information, James.

4 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. and Arauna said:

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    Punctuated Creation's hard evidence

The question is not:  how stable is the structure AFTER  it has formed because we know from obserbation in nature that species can adapt to its environment.  Changes,  such as Darwin's finches, whose beaks changed when the food source changed and then changed back again when the food source changed again.... but never changed Io a different species of bird.....STABILITY OF SPECIES is confirmed.

But the Cambrian explosion was too short  and sudden  to produce / originate such a variety of complex animals..... which  brings us back to the " origin" of all species"    

 

Again ignoring the fact that 20 to 140 million years is not short.
 

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    19 hours ago, AlanF said:

    is just old-time creationism in a tuxedo, as one critic said.

And this is just a punch line.  The proof  is the eating of the pudding...... so solid proof is needed.  

 

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.
 

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    19 hours ago, AlanF said:

    Animals killing animals for food goes back 550 million years. Is that "good"?

I have a problem with their dates......

 

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.

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but this will open up another subject.  So I leave at that.

Go right ahead. If you do -- which I very much doubt -- be prepared to reveal your source references.
 

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    19 hours ago, AlanF said:

    Her reliance on creationist sources

Wrong again!

 

It's clearly evident in your posts. Such as constantly referring to young-earth creationist talking points, and to ID-creationist memes.

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I look at both sides.

I say again: bullpucky! You only read creationist and Watchtower publications. Prove me wrong, if you dare, by naming other sources.

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You assume that all JWs only drink at mommies JWs  breast..... how silly of you. Some of us grow up and mature.

LOL! I don't think so. You're already 40 years out of date.

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On the other hand you only drink from the extremely  deceptive bottle of evolution.. and have scorn for anything that points to anything other than that.......

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.

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now that is NOT smart.........just another religion masquerading as a science.  

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!

 

[TrueTomHarley]

1 hour ago, Witness said:

Okay, it originated with AlanF and Arauna repeated it.  I do not keep up on AlanF and Arauna's involved conversations.   It was Arauna's mention of it, that I remember seeing.  Nonetheless, many, especially elders, have referred to the organization as "mother".  AlanF is not far off base in using it, at all.  

Mother is not inappropriate, for the reasons you say. Old-timers still use it from time to time. AlanF made it Mommy as a deliberate taunt.

1 hour ago, John Paul said:

Just because a person makes and effort to expose a wrong perception about an organization in which they serve God under, doesn't give anyone a right to remove someone. 

It’s a private website. The old hen can remove anyone she pleases.

1 hour ago, John Paul said:

What's makes you think, you're not more mentally diseased than that person?

I don’t know that I have said that I am. But I have so far not outraged her so that she should hurl me into the abyss.

49 minutes ago, AlanF said:

Naturally, we know that Arauna and most of her fellow JWs will never read the book. That's their lookout.

I doubt I will. But I have read one of Sean Carrol’s books and one of Carl Zimmers—I forget the titles just now, but I will look them up should you insist.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

45 minutes ago, AlanF said:

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!

I have read 24 "Jack Reacher" books in the last few years, and they take me about 9 hours each. 

So, I have no trouble reading long tomes that are interesting.

AlanF's messages are long, but they are so filled with hate and vitriol, that I lose interest.  

The good points he makes, and there are many, are dramatically overshadowed by general nastiness and contempt for the readers he is trying to inform.

Perhaps everyone in the Universe named Allen *.*  has this affliction (?).

 

[AlanF]

Witness said:

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    1 hour ago, TrueTomHarley said:

    This is AlanF’s taunt, Witness. He has said it innumerable times and now Arauna has adopted it once or twice in her replies.

Okay, it originated with AlanF and Arauna repeated it. . .  Nonetheless, many, especially elders, have referred to the organization as "mother".  AlanF is not far off base in using it, at all.   

 

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.

[TrueTomHarley]

1 hour ago, John Paul said:

So, if witnesses use that term, I suspect they are referring to the spiritual Jerusalem, not the watchtower.

John is right here, and i misspoke it would be mother in the sense of Jerusalem above. I wouldn’t swear that no one ever said ‘Mother Watchtower,’ but if so, it would be most rare.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

I remember when the Bell Telephone Company was called "Ma Bell".

[TrueTomHarley]

2 minutes ago, AlanF said:

TTH's failure to reveal what he clearly knows is the source is, as usual, thoroughly dishonest.

It’s not dishonest at all. It is a very old expression, seldom heard anymore, and I don’t keep track of minutia. Besides, Jehovah’s organization is known to be heavenly with an earthly component. WT is only the earthly component. It is you who are dishonest.

[Witness]

43 minutes ago, John Paul said:

I don’t see the difference. It should be clear in ACTS 17, it's referring to Christ not coming to earth to be served, rather than to serve.

I don’t see where that compares to Galatians unless we are willing to accept a heavenly Jerusalem that will soon be in charge of the inhabitants of this world.

 

 

Look at Acts 17 again.  I think you'll see that it is speaking not of Christ, but of God.

 "God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. 25 Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. "

God does not need a "wife-like organization" that the WT refers to as "heavenly Jerusalem".  God doesn't need ANYTHING, which I think you'll agree.  

"Jerusalem above" is a "mother"/covenant/promise of life.

but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all. 27 For it is written:

“Rejoice, O barren,
You who do not bear!
Break forth and shout,
You who are not in labor!
For the desolate has many more children
Than she who has a husband.”

28 Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise.  Gal 4:27,28

  The New Covenant promise is fulfilled once the "144,000"/Bride of Christ is sealed in the heavens.  Rom 8:24,25; Rev 12:1,2,5; 2:26,27

Just as the old covenant brought forth a "seed", so too does the New Covenant.  Gal 3:17,14,29; Eph 1:4,5,7-12; Rev 7:4; 14:1

These scripture tells us that "Jerusalem above" or "New Jerusalem" is the sealed Bride in Christ:

Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. 2 Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. 4 And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” Rom 21:1-4

 

 

 

 

[John Paul]

17 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

It’s a private website. The old hen can remove anyone she pleases.

Then why is it in an open forum? This justification makes no sense.