AlanF

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Posts by AlanF

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  4

  To Carmel

  by jurs in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  hi carmel, i read that there is an apostafest in montana.

  i was born and raised in butte, montana.

  i live now in colorado but i go every year to visit family.

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  AlanF

  Howdy!

  Whereabouts in Colorado are you? We're in Fort Collins.

  AlanF
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  25

  WERE ANIMALS MEANT TO BE VEGGYS?

  by uncle_onion in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i would be very interested in any creationalists response to genesis 1:30 where the bible tells us that all animals wre originallly vegetarians.. why aren't they vegetarians now?

  what about gnats who only live on blood?.

  this to me brings up a lot of issues that can not be answered.

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  AlanF

  aChristian said approximately:

  Genesis 1:29 and 30 have been widely translated from their original Hebrew as follows:
  29 Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; 30 and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, {I have given} every green plant for food''; and it was so.

  I am now in contact with a Hebrew scholar who tells me that he believes these verses are widely mistranslated. He says he believes they should be translated as follows:

  29 Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; 30 and (to) every beast of the earth and (to) every bird of the sky and (to) every thing that moves on the earth which has life, {I have given you, just as} every green plant, for food''; and it was so.

  If his translation of these verses is correct, then Genesis 1:30 does not refer to the diet of animals at all, and in fact actually teaches that God created mankind as omnivores.

  That's an interesting speculation that covers one problem, but opens up another can of worms.

  For one thing, it's a stretch to claim that the word "to" (which I have bolded and put in parentheses in the speculative translation) should not be there. In the original Hebrew, the phrase "and to every" is written as a compound word something like "wu-le-kol": "and-to-every". The conjunction "wu" simply means "and". The preposition "le" means "to, for, at, in regard to, with reference to". The adjective "kol" means "every, all". There are dozens of examples in the Bible where "kol" alone is properly translated as "every" or "all". There are dozens of examples where "le-kol" is properly translated as "to every" or "to all". Claiming that when the phrase "to every" occurs in particular instances, it really means just "every" -- as if the Bible writer didn't know the difference between "every" and "to every" -- requires extremely strong grammatical justification.

  For example, speaking of contributions made by the Israelites to the Levites, 2 Chronicles 31:19 illustrates the usage (NLT): "... men were appointed to distribute portions to every (le-kol) male among the priests and to all (wu-le-kol) the Levites." The passage is rendered insensible by dropping the "to".

  Other passages where the context obviously requires something like "to all" rather than just "all" are:

  Deuteronomy 27:14
  Ecclesiastes 8:9
  Jeremiah 49:32
  Ezekiel 5:10, 12; 12:14; 16:25; 17:21

  For another thing there is the matter of complete context of Genesis 1:29, 30. From The NIV Interlinear Hebrew-English Old Testament (Kohlenberger) we have the literal word-for-word rendering:

  (29) then-he-said God see! I-give to-you *** every-of plant seed-bearing seed which on face-of whole-of the-earth and every-of the-tree which in-it fruit-of tree seeding seed for-you he-will-be for-food (30) and-to-every-of beast-of the-earth and-to-every-of bird-of the-air and-to-every-of crawling-one on the-ground which in-him breath-of life *** every-of green plant for-food and-he-was so

  Each of the above bolded uses of "kol" has "-of" tacked on the end, but that's irrelevant to our discussion.

  You can see for yourself that in verse 29, "every" lacks the preposition "to", where God is giving "every" plant and tree on the "whole" earth to mankind. This giving is indicated by the "***" symbol ("'et"), which in Hebrew is the "direct object indicator" and normally precedes the direct object, and which is normally left untranslated since it is not needed in English. Now, a direct object is a word representing a person or thing upon which the action of a verb is performed. Thus in verse 29, "I give" is the verb and "every plant ..." is the direct object. Thus the structure of verse 29 is like this: "I give to you 'this, that and then some'; for you it will be for food".

  Now look at verse 30. It starts off another thought with the conjunction "And": "And to every ..." It continues this way: "And to every 'this' and to every 'that' and to every 'then some'". Then comes the "direct object indicator" "'et", which separates in this case, not a verb per se, but a clause that continues the "I give" in verse 29, from the intervening list of plants to eat in verse 29. In other words, there is a direct object indicator that is not directly preceded by a verb, but by a clause that is itself preceded by a direct object indicator and a verb. Thus, verses 29 and 30 combine to give something like this: "I give to you 'various plants for food'; and 'to all the animals' ('I give' is implied) every gree plant for food."

  Thus we can see that verses 29 and 30 are not only intermingled, but are parallels of one another, and that just as God gave plants to man for food, he gave plants to animals for food.

  It would be instructive to see what comments your scholar can make concerning the above.

  The can of worms opened by your speculative translation was touched on by another poster: If God had already given to mankind "all flesh" as food, then the statements in Genesis 9:2-4 are pointless.

  These verses present a good counterpoint to your scholar's speculation as well, since here God gives "every" -- not "to every" -- living thing to mankind for food. In context, the implication is extremely clear and is as the NIV puts it in verse 3: "Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything." Why contrast "as green plants" with "everything" unless "everything" was a new thing?

  AlanF
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  25

  Are 'we' Rubbing the dubs?

  by philo in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  has anybody considered the possibility that the internet community may be making life worse for dubs, as a whole, rather than better?.

  i recently had a medical scare, went through testing, and scans.

  a doctor even called round my house uninvited to give me a hospital appointment!

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  AlanF

  Hey Thirdson!

  You bought a color TV with your siblings? Cool! Wish I could have gotten rid of my little brother so easily. But maybe I could have gotten only a black and white.

  AlanF
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  6

  Alan F: Dateline TV Show?

  by patio34 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  alanf,.

  in the thread on greenlees, you mentioned an upcoming dateline tv show on jws handling of molesters.

  could you please post the time, etc.?.

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  AlanF

  To patio34:

  Wish I could tell you for sure. Not earlier than June is about the best I can say. Ongoing developments make it difficult to predict.

  When the date becomes known for certain, there will be plenty of advance publicity.

  AlanF
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  46

  Leo Greenlees,

  by Kiwi in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i seem to remember something on the board about leo greenlees being removed from bethel & the gb.

  can anyone give me information about this.

  is he still allive and where?

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  AlanF

  To Had Enough:

  My information came from former Bethelites who were positions to know about this stuff. It isn't generally known among rank & file Bethelites. That's all I can reveal.

  AlanF
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  46

  Leo Greenlees,

  by Kiwi in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i seem to remember something on the board about leo greenlees being removed from bethel & the gb.

  can anyone give me information about this.

  is he still allive and where?

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  AlanF

  Leo Greenlees was forced out of Bethel in 1984 for practicing pedophilia. Seems he was fooling around with a ten year old boy, got caught, and the parents complained to the Society. After a Governing Body session, Greenlees was told to get out. He ended up in some congregation and died a few years later, sometime in the late 1980s.

  Ironically, the molested boy applied for Bethel service in the early 1990s, but was turned down because certain officials thought that he'd be too much of a source of information about Greenlees' perversion. No sense taking a chance on digging up that can of worms, eh?

  The situation begs for clarification. Clearly, if Greenlees was caught molesting a young boy once, he must have done it before and must have molested plenty of other young boys over the years, because that's how molesters operate. The questions proliferate. Why didn't parents come forward before 1984? Why didn't elders who must have known something come forward and protect these children? Why did the GB not disfellowship Greenlees instead of simply removing him to some local congregation where he lived out his days unknown as a pervert? Clearly, Greenlees had committed fornication, so how did he get out of punishment for that?

  These questions are extremely relevant to the current situation where the Society has been accused by William Bowen and plenty of victims of gross negligence and mishandling of child molestation. Is their negligence traceable simply to being overly focused on their 'preaching work'? Or does it have more sinister implications, such as a desire to cover up gross sexual immorality on the part of other Watchtower officials? I have little doubt that the coming Dateline TV program on JWs' mishandling of child molestation will provoke enough action by interested parties to shed more light on Greenlees and related things.

  AlanF
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  122

  Suzi Mayhem Outdoes John Cleese

  by AlanF in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  a critique of suzi mayhem's theory of god .

  i thought, when suzi first posted this, that it was a joke something like john cleese's classic "brontosaurus theory" skit in a monty python episode.

  but mr. "dark clouds" has sort of asked me to critique it as if it were a serious theory, so here goes.. i'll address this to suzi, but suzi dear, don't take this too seriously.

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  AlanF

  Howdy JAVA

  : Guess I better stop using the term "law of gravity." Old habits or old sayings are hard to break. Now when I slip and say the "law of gravity" I'll need to stop and correct myself and give a little dissertation.

  I should say so! Otherwise the thought police will get you!

  Seriously, these kinds of terms are perfectly fine as long as people know their limitations. It's like talking about "sunrise" -- perfectly fine as long as a person doesn't try to use the term itself as proof that the sun goes around the earth. Since I can't tell if BugEye is being serious or facetious, I figured I'd give a response that can equally be taken either way.

  AlanF
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  122

  Suzi Mayhem Outdoes John Cleese

  by AlanF in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  a critique of suzi mayhem's theory of god .

  i thought, when suzi first posted this, that it was a joke something like john cleese's classic "brontosaurus theory" skit in a monty python episode.

  but mr. "dark clouds" has sort of asked me to critique it as if it were a serious theory, so here goes.. i'll address this to suzi, but suzi dear, don't take this too seriously.

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  AlanF

  To larc:

  Thanks for the book suggestion. What's the book?

  As for the questions that you and Focus have been discussing, I would need a lot more information about the subject you're dealing with, to comment effectively. I'd need concise definitions of the terms you're using, along with examples, since I'm quite unfamiliar with math as applied to psychology.

  However, I can comment in a general sense. From your example of rating the 51 college students, it seems to me that things are not very clearly defined. Let me give you an example to illustrate my misgivings. Suppose you were asked to evaluate the responses of 1000 people who were asked to rate the color value of 100 color samples of carpet on a scale of zero to nine. From the responses you could form a 1000 X 1000 reliability matrix, from which you might try to say something about each person's reliability. But given the above, would you have any idea what I was talking about? I would hope not. Similarly, need a lot more information to understand the problem you're posing enough to comment.

  One problem I see is to establish quantitatvely what is meant by a "rating scale", so that both the investigator and the subjects know exactly what they're being asked to do. Another is to precisely define what is meant by "correlation coefficient", since this means different things in different contexts. For example, if you're trying to fit data to an equation, you can define a correlation coefficient that is a measure of how well the equation fits the data. If you're trying to correlate some sort of semi-periodic, noisy data stream with another stream or with itself, to get an idea of periodicity or whatever, the definition of "correlation coefficient" would be somewhat different.

  My impression is that in a "soft science" such as psychology, practioners don't know enough to be nearly as precise about definitions and such as in the "hard" sciences, so to be on the same wavelength practioners have to be particularly careful about definitions.

  AlanF
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  122

  Suzi Mayhem Outdoes John Cleese

  by AlanF in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  a critique of suzi mayhem's theory of god .

  i thought, when suzi first posted this, that it was a joke something like john cleese's classic "brontosaurus theory" skit in a monty python episode.

  but mr. "dark clouds" has sort of asked me to critique it as if it were a serious theory, so here goes.. i'll address this to suzi, but suzi dear, don't take this too seriously.

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  AlanF

  To BugEye:

  You can't disobey a "Law of Physics". Therefore there are no penalties.

  In fact there is no such thing as a "law of physics" in the sense of "law" being a behest from some authority that you obey the authority. The universe is built in such a way that physical objects behave in certain ways, and our overall observations of how objects behave are distilled into succint statements that we mis-term "physical laws". This mis-terminology is left over from earlier centuries where "philosophers of science" thought that things behaved the way they did because they followed certain laws that were behests from God. People who think that there are actually such physical behests don't know what science is all about.

  AlanF
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  122

  Suzi Mayhem Outdoes John Cleese

  by AlanF in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  a critique of suzi mayhem's theory of god .

  i thought, when suzi first posted this, that it was a joke something like john cleese's classic "brontosaurus theory" skit in a monty python episode.

  but mr. "dark clouds" has sort of asked me to critique it as if it were a serious theory, so here goes.. i'll address this to suzi, but suzi dear, don't take this too seriously.

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  AlanF

  To darkmind

  It's truly amazing that someone can read words on a page and yet so completely misunderstand them. As a famous physicist told a colleague, "you're not even wrong".

  You're even more completely in the dark than assAtlast, and there's no use trying to correct you.

  AlanF