Posts by besty

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

besty

Oh really, so you beleive in God now???????????????

this is just facile Kate - it makes debating with you tedious.

cofty lacks belief in any definition of god - to qualify all of his own comments with that would make for tiresome repetition.

6

NEW NAME FOR THE WT MAGAZINE!

by The Searcher in

in the uk, there was a popular t.v.

show called the only way is essex - a documentary type programme about that area which is close to london.

the programme's name got abbreviated to its initials - towie, and that is how it is now named.. since the org's uk branch is moving to essex, perhaps the uk version of the magazine will be renamed, the watchtowie..

besty

towie is alright as long as you understand your own reasons for watching it...

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

besty

lucid ˈluːsɪd adjective

1. expressed clearly; easy to understand. "a lucid account"
synonyms: intelligible, comprehensible, understandable, cogent, coherent,communicative, articulate, eloquent;

@kate - ok - 1st believer has declined the challenge. No I don;t view you all as crazies - pls stop speculating on what I think - it doesn;t add anything to your position.

I don't think cofty would have an issue with a lucid rebuttal. Its the pages of preaching that are obfuscatory.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

besty

excellent summary of both sides cofty

I'd like to see a lucid believer take your summary and do a point by point rebuttal.

6

NEW NAME FOR THE WT MAGAZINE!

by The Searcher in

in the uk, there was a popular t.v.

show called the only way is essex - a documentary type programme about that area which is close to london.

the programme's name got abbreviated to its initials - towie, and that is how it is now named.. since the org's uk branch is moving to essex, perhaps the uk version of the magazine will be renamed, the watchtowie..

besty

lol - very dry :-)

78

Can you prove Jesus existed outside of Bible (so called) evidence?

by punkofnice in

i thought i'd done a thread on this before but can't find it.. so.

did jesus actually exist?.

without using the bible i'd like to see obvious proof..

besty

I asked Leolaia this question a while ago via PM: (she also went into some detail on the thread linked below) - skip to the last 4 words of her reply for the executive summary :-)

Was just reading http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/148754/1/Jesus-Yeshua-Joshua-paralleled-with-Horus-my-final-link-here-on-XMas#.UtjlimR_t90 and wondered if you had made any posts on the historicity or otherwise of Jesus.

Her reply:

I don't think I have posted any detailed threads for or against the existence of a historical Jesus; I am somewhat agnostic on the subject, although I lean towards Wells' assessment (against the mythicists) that while the gospels are literary compositions with the bulk of their narrative content being "fiction" (informed to some extent by mythic tropes and to a greater extent through haggadaic OT exegesis), there probably was a historical figure named Jesus who was crucified in Jerusalem at the time of Pontius Pilate's tenure.

The synoptic sayings tradition in particular cannot be reduced to the mythicist schemes (what does the ethical/moral teaching have to do with the Hellenistic "savior god" mysteries?) and Paul shows some close familiarity with this sayings tradition. I think the best explanation for this is that the teaching has nothing to do with the "gospel of the cross", preceding it as a reflection of the teaching of a historical Jesus and with the kergyma of Jesus as "savior" arising after his death (in part through an exegesis of the Suffering Servant songs in Deutero-Isaiah) as a rationalization of the unexpected execution of the apostles' teacher.

The gospels (aside from the Gospel of Thomas) represent a latter stage when the teaching (variously interpreted and modified by the different evangelists) has combined with the "gospel of the cross", especially prominent in the western Pauline branch of Christianity (where the ethical teaching has receded dramatically in the face of the personal role of Jesus as Lord and savior). The Jewish-Christian branch in the east, particularly represented by Peter and James (and reflected in such first-century writings as MATTHEW and the DIDACHE and such second-century writings as the ASCENTS OF JAMES and the KERGYMA PETROU), continued to stress the moral/ethical teaching and its halakhic value. The early gnostic branch of the south (particularly in Samaria and Egypt, but also in Syria), on the other hand, made Jesus a Savior by virtue of his teaching, i.e. esoteric gnosis.

I have some threads I have done in the past on the historicity of the gospel narratives (such as on the stories of Jesus' nativity, the 40-days temptation in the wilderness, the stories about Judas Iscariot, the trial scene with Pontius Pilate, etc.), but I'm not sure if that is what you meant. In short, the bulk of the stories are composed out of material from the OT, or turn parables (with their latent hyperbole) into miracle stories, or represent theological reworkings of possible historical stories. In general, the appearance seems to be that Jesus' later followers knew very little about Jesus' birth and childhood and very little about his trial and execution. This actually is to be expected since these followers were not around when Jesus was born and according to the gospels themselves, they all fled when Jesus was arrested. On the other hand, they seem to be very familiar with the teaching and that is what made the impression. What I should point out however is that I believe that many scholars' attempts to reconstruct who the historical Jesus "really was" and what he believed are illusory. Each scholar constructs a Jesus in his own image.

I have my own thoughts on what might be more probable than other schemes (such as I favor a more apocalyptic Jesus than JD Crossan allows), but in the end it is all speculation.

21

The dangers of atheism

by konceptual99 in

jw
friends

religious intolerance to a level only dreamed of by the gb.... .

http://t.co/qu2cp3zikd.

.

besty

thanks for getting back to me, I thought so.

21

The dangers of atheism

by konceptual99 in

jw
friends

religious intolerance to a level only dreamed of by the gb.... .

http://t.co/qu2cp3zikd.

.

besty

Atheists don't have an overarching moral system to guide them, so I'd be rather concerned about what they had personally decided was acceptable or not to do to another person.

Have you always been an idiot, or is this a recent development?

21