Posts by Miles3

40

Should I help my wife get the kids ready?

by dazed but not confused in

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should i help my wife get the kids ready for meetings, service and assemblies?

Miles3

In a few month, your oldest kid will have figured out that his dad is going to die soon at Har-Maguedon, unless he returns to the KH and start worshipping Jehovah again. The meetings will tell him so, his mom will tell him so, and his social circle will tell him so. Heck, the Bible will tell him so!

He'll also know that his dad's doubts are from Satan, and that if he wants to save his dad he should not listen to the critics his dad tells him about Jehovah and his organisation. He'll know he has to try his best to please Jehovah and give his best witness to his dad by his actions. Even if he'll find the meetings a bore, he'll want to chose them over any fun activity his dad wants to entice him away from Jehovah with. And he'll do that for you.

You're in it for the long run, 20+ years at least. You can make them happy and fulfilling years for you and them, or you can risk having to dread every minute of them for the aggravation both your wife and your kids will give you. Having your wife look you as dead is an ordeal, wanna guess how it feels when it's your kids?

Steve Hassan's Releasing the Bonds or his most recent book, Freedom of Mind, should be on your priority list. And maybe a book about teaching your kids critical thinking skills - they'll grow faster than you'll have time to think about it, and JW fear indoctrination doesn't wait for them to enter primary school. It's probably already started, what would any good JW mother tell her kid when he asks why dad doesn't come to meetings?

109

Early Civilizations and Bible Chronology

by xelder in

Miles3

Just by deduction alone, it stands to reason that if the Earth once enjoyed a fairly tropical climate (evidenced by the vegetation found near the Arctic Circle), when it got cold and areas started to freeze, it was because prior to that some protective canopy kept the heat in. One of the possibilities may be somewhat like the conditions we have today; a condition of global warming existed because of excess CO 2 .

Perhaps instead, a global vapor cloud-cover created the warm conditions that existed. - Etude

Can I ask you your source for the water canopy explanation?

109

Early Civilizations and Bible Chronology

by xelder in

Miles3

Etude, thing is you're talking about the fossilisation process, and C14 dating isn't used in those cases. Unless you believe that everything pre-6000 years ago was created the same week (including fossils), I don't have any idea why you mix the two. C14 dating just isn't used for specimens more than 60000 years old.

Even if it were (it's not), most fossils are remineralised with silica, not a carbon compound (that happens in swamps IIRC, but 1. it's not that common to find remains in swamps and 2. when you find remains in a swamp, you know where you've found it). How you can think that this would influence the C14 dating (which, again, isn't used for the ranges of times involved) is beyond me.

For making the difference between a specimen that has been perminaralised and one that hasn't, try burning fossilised wood. Or looking at the cells with a microscope. Scientists have reconstituted the DNA of Neanderthals, how do you do it when the cell is permineralised? They didn't reconstitute the DNA of dinosaurs for a reason (but then again, nobody uses C14 to date fossils).

As far as diferent C14 levels at different parts of the globe go, it doesn't work like that. Athmosphere is global, you don't have invisible walls concentrating C14 in a place and leaving the other with less of it, whatever the temperature of those places. So I still don't understand why C14 levels ajusted for date in history at one or more places would not work.

And you still haven't addressed how hundreds of remains from the same species all over the world would have recieved the same contamination in the exact same proportions so they'd all give the same "wrong" reading. I think that's an even bigger issue, because if you condone that idea (which you seem to be doing, since all your arguments depends on it being true) not much discussion is possible. Yes, God or Satan could have messed up the data on all those findings, but then you can throw logic out of the window.

The conditions for it and how that process happens depends on many factors that are not uniform throughout times and locations.

I understand your position even less. If you indeed agree there's no uniform tampering from a miraculous cause, why question the validity of the datation of hundreds of different specimens around the world that all but a few outliers (and those while considered "outliers" are not of the order of magnitude to reconcile anything with the creation account) converge towards the same dates? I would like to understand the logic behind that.

Let's say you go and weight yourself on a couple hundred different scales, all give you a weight of 75kg, except for 5 of them that gives reading of 75.4, 74.3, 76 and 74.9. Yet you assert that those 5 outliers prove that all those mesurements must be questionned, and are adamant that you believe your real weight to be 6 kg.

375

The Governing Body intends to announce significant changes in academic literature (DOCTRINES) - Brazil

by Dogpatch in

jw
friends

dear randall.

good morning!.

here is the daniel of brazil (former bethel).. this week at the forum of former jehovah's witnesses had an interesting news!

Miles3

If this is something these idiots really plan on doing then they might try to gather up df members who are still believers and grow internally rather than from recruits as the field is drying due to available information out there. They definitely can spin this new approach that the field has been completed and this is the last chance for the df/da member before the imminent end ;) - diamondiiz

This. The past few years, they've been inviting disfelowshipped ones to come back, something that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. They can do the math, 6 to 10 thousand hours preaching for a new convert, vs a couple saturdays visiting a few ex-members probably resulting in at least one or more coming back. And the ones that come back are grateful for it, feel they have to prove themselves by their actions > more zeal and bigger offerings.

As for knowing how much disfelowshipping costs them financially, that's not hard to get. CO just need to take note when looking at a congregation's accounts (mandatory during each visit), and connect it to some mass disfellowshipping (gross fornication, apostasy...) occuring at the time. Then you get an average per disfelowshipped. The WT already knows on average how much money each single publisher gives to both the congregation and the company, probably down to the cent, so the CO input isn't even necessary. It doesn't need to be accurate on a publisher level, when your branch deals with dozens or hundred thousands of publishers, averages gives a really precise result for your bottom line. If they're run like any decent business, they already know how much money a new book brings, a brochure, a DVD, a new talk about offerings during the Service meeting, one more reading of the expenses at an assembly, etc...

34

Is Wikipedia turning pro-Watchtower?

by cedars in

i was doing some research and stumbled upon the following two wikipedia articles, both of which (at first glance) appear to be mostly pro-watchtower.. take a look for yourself.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/persecution_of_jehovah%27s_witnesses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/jehovah%27s_witnesses%27_handling_of_child_sex_abuse.

the persecution article seemingly attempts to portray jws as unfairly persecuted.

Miles3

Thanks for the clarification Jeffro. When I investigated a bit why some of the english Wikipedia articles (not the main one about JW, but sub articles) had so few critical information, I remember seing in the pages' history that links were removed, on the ground that the information was on a site from an ex-jw, thus labelled as "opposers" by some Wikipedians.

I do not agree that sites like Barbara Anderson's site or JWFact do not comply with Wikipedia policy. Apart for the personal experiences parts (and even there you'll find non-JW Wikipedia articles where biographical information comes in part from a personnal site or a company's site), their articles are built on cited research and can be checked for accuracy. For example, Barbara Anderson's articles about pedophilia treatment by the WT are backed up by a wealth of court documents, including incriminating letters from WT Legal.

109

Early Civilizations and Bible Chronology

by xelder in

Miles3

Nevertheless, it seems to me that the very idea of petrifaction, especially via permineralization, can substantially alter a specimen (ironically preserving its cellular structure) to include all kinds of components that were never part of the specimen (which contradicts Miles3's last assertion).

Etude, a specimen that has been remineralised shows signs of it, and preserving the "cellular structure" is not the same as preserving the molecules that form the cell. While I realise that if you're a 6 day creationist or, while not necessarily being a 6 days creationist, only really read litterature produced by them, then not much of what I'll say here will make sense, but else I hope you'll understand that you can't compare the situation between specimens only a few thousand years old and fossils that are millions years old. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_%28tree%29 is an example that hardly be considered having been fossilised.

34

Is Wikipedia turning pro-Watchtower?

by cedars in

i was doing some research and stumbled upon the following two wikipedia articles, both of which (at first glance) appear to be mostly pro-watchtower.. take a look for yourself.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/persecution_of_jehovah%27s_witnesses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/jehovah%27s_witnesses%27_handling_of_child_sex_abuse.

the persecution article seemingly attempts to portray jws as unfairly persecuted.

Miles3

You just need one of the wikipedia people responsibles for managing the page (don't know how they are named) being favorable to JW (because they're a witness, have been raised in a JW familly, or have had a good relationship with some witness colleague or friend) to make sure the most disfavorable information gets labelled as comming from disgruntled ex-members, or as having unsufficient sources, and it would get repeatedly removed from the page.

The French version of Wikipedia is far more honnest about the JW.

I suggest trying to edit the most obvious stuff and rewriting it in a neutral manner, and adding the missing information - though only when you can find links from web newspapers and court documents that are hosted on a neutral platform (the newspaper official site, state court websites, etc...) A link to Barbara Anderson's site, Freemind, JWFacts, would be automatically removed on grounds of being "opposers", even though they have no qualms linking to the WT official sites...

109

Early Civilizations and Bible Chronology

by xelder in

Miles3

Etude, living organisms build their cells creating new molecules with carbon when they're alive, when the organism dies no new molecules are produced, and thus the carbon atoms that constitute them can not be carbon added later. One atom of carbon doesn't magically decide to leave the dead organism's molecule to be replaced by another "contaminating" carbon atom.

And we find human remains everywhere, not just conveniently in parts where we wouldn't have mapped the climate.

109

Early Civilizations and Bible Chronology

by xelder in

Miles3

I mentioned my concern about how the carbon got into the specimen in the first place, especially in formerly living organisms (not just layers of rock). I asked how we were able to determine if the C14 being measured was the C14 absorbed while the tree was alive or if the C14 seeped into the tree years later after it fell and was inundated with water and C14-laden air or was deposited along with other minerals in some dinosaur bone before either was petrified.

The good thing about living organisms is that the carbon that makes up the organism is all assimilated while the organism is alive. When the organism is dead, the body doesn't build any new elements, and thus all the C14 used in the body structure dates from the time the organism was alive.

Your archeologist answered that way because you do not need to specialise in C14 theory to be an archeologist, the same way you do not need to study quantum physics to operate a laser device. The fact she didn't study that aspect doesn't mean the explanation is not there (and constantly invesigated). It's better she's a good specialist in her narrow field of archeology, that being a generalist that knows a bit of everything but don't specialise enough to contribute. And to be frank, except for a small group of JW and fundamentalists, C14 datation is trivial and not something she'll ever use. The science is solid and has been confirmed by many other datation methods.

As far as the cloud cover, there's no trace of that for the period covered by C14 (up to 60000 years ago IIRC, something really really not ancient compared to the age of the earth). Some fundamentalists pick up citations of scientists that mention is for a period far more remote, and neglect to mention the period in question. Then we end up with people mislead to think that such a cloud cover would mess with C14 datation, when it doesn't because C14 isn't used for the periods concerned (hundreds of millions of years ago, if not billions). We also have records of the climate going back for the whole period of homo sapiens, thanks to south pole ice cores, other ice cores from glaciers, cores from swamps, and tree trunks.

Knowing the global temperatures, being able to check the C14 rates through multiple methods, and comparing C14 results with other datation methods independent from C14 (some have been cited) let us have a very strong confidence on C14 dates. It doesn't mean there won't be isolated cases where the C14 content has been altered, but when you collect hundreds of human remains from hundreds of different places around the world, and asides from a few isolated ones they tell you the same dates, that are consistent with other datation methods, you can't explain it away.

127

Introducing Mrs Cedars...

by cedars in

jw
friends

i just thought you should know that mrs cedars has finally taken the plunge and joined the forum.

she was able to log on for the first time yesterday.. though we both "awakened" at different stages, mrs cedars was very supportive and non-judgmental when i first began exploring my beliefs from a critical standpoint.

she is currently in the process of reading crisis of conscience and aquainting herself with some of the facts of witness history that were hitherto unknown.

Miles3

Welcome to the free world Mrs Cedar!