1 Tim. 3: 16 says "He who was manifested in the flesh" according to translations made from older manuscripts than those used by the translators of the KJV. The RV, ASV, RSV, and NRSV all say "He who was manifested in the flesh".
Disillusioned JW
JoinedPosts by Disillusioned JW
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24
Two Bible teachings JW's DON'T know about....
by BoogerMan in....but the november 2022 study watchtower will definitely instruct them.. 1) god's name is jehovah!.
2) jehovah is using an earthly organization to do his will - not jesus!.
in study article 45, 'jehovah' is mentioned at least 60 times.
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Disillusioned JW
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99
If not the WT/JW relgion where else are 'we' to go? Why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism?
by Disillusioned JW insometimes jws wonder if the wt/jw is not the truth, 'then where else are we to go?
' i say 'why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism and why not a secular philosophy which teaches a way of life?
' what do you folks say?.
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Disillusioned JW
I don't see many people commenting in this topic during the past one year. I wonder why. Since there are atheists who post elsewhere on this web site I would think that more of them would be commenting on this topic. Perhaps it is largely due to the wording of title of this topic thread.
Scientific naturalism explains so much about our universe, including life itself. That makes it very fascinating to me and to at least some others.
Use of scientific knowledge can even greatly help us remain healthy for much longer than would otherwise be case. Furthermore it can help us to live longer than would otherwise be the case. For example, consider what https://novoslabs.com/reversing-aging-how-to-reverse-aging/ says. It has a fascinating article from August 25, 2022 called "How To Reverse Aging in Humans". [However that article says that drinking milk accelerates ages, but that claim might only be partially correct. I recently read an article which says drinking milk which has no more than 1% milk fat results in less biological aging than drinking no milk, and that it results in less biological aging than drinking whole milk and than drinking milk with 2% milk fat.]
Knowledge of scientific naturalism can help us in so many ways that supernatualistic minded religious teachings can not. So, why not use a scientific naturalist approach to improve your life?
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If not the WT/JW relgion where else are 'we' to go? Why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism?
by Disillusioned JW insometimes jws wonder if the wt/jw is not the truth, 'then where else are we to go?
' i say 'why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism and why not a secular philosophy which teaches a way of life?
' what do you folks say?.
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Disillusioned JW
A discovery was reported in April 2013 about how prebiotic "amino acids believed to exist on Earth around 4 billion years ago were capable of forming foldable proteins in a high-salt (halophile) environment. Such proteins would have been capable of providing metabolic activity for the first living organisms to emerge on the planet between 3.5 and 3.9 billion years ago." Besides the words quoted above the article says the following.
"Today the human body uses 20 common amino acids to make all its proteins. Ten of those emerged through biosynthetic pathways—the way living systems evolve. Ten—the prebiotic set—can be made by chemical reactions without requiring any living system or biosynthetic pathway.
... Using a technique called top-down symmetric deconstruction, Blaber's lab has been able to identify small peptide building blocks capable of spontaneous assembly into specific and complex protein architectures. His recent work explored whether such building blocks can be comprised of only the 10 prebiotic amino acids and still fold.
His team has achieved foldability in proteins down to 12 amino acids—about 80 percent of the way to proving his hypothesis."
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Two Bible teachings JW's DON'T know about....
by BoogerMan in....but the november 2022 study watchtower will definitely instruct them.. 1) god's name is jehovah!.
2) jehovah is using an earthly organization to do his will - not jesus!.
in study article 45, 'jehovah' is mentioned at least 60 times.
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Disillusioned JW
Regarding the Letter of Polycarp to the Philippians http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/info/polycarp.html says the Roberts-Donaldson Introduction to the the Roberts-Donaldson translation of that letter says in part the following.
"The Epistle before us is not perfect in any of the Greek mss. which contain it. But the chapters wanting in Greek are contained in an ancient Latin version. While there is no ground for supposing, as some have done, that the whole Epistle is spurious, there seems considerable force in the arguments by which many others have sought to prove chap. xiii. to be an interpolation." Notice that for the translation of much of it scholars have to rely upon Latin manuscripts in place of Greek manuscripts.
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If not the WT/JW relgion where else are 'we' to go? Why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism?
by Disillusioned JW insometimes jws wonder if the wt/jw is not the truth, 'then where else are we to go?
' i say 'why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism and why not a secular philosophy which teaches a way of life?
' what do you folks say?.
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Disillusioned JW
How did life get started by naturalistic means? Well scientists are getting closer to learning how it got started, or at leaning more steps of some ways it might have got started. (Though could be many naturalistic ways for life to get started, and as a result any individual specific way might not have been the precise way it got started the first time. Earth might not have even started on Earth, but instead might have come to Earth. I also might have got started in multiple places each at a different time and even by somewhat different methods.)
It looks like cyanide might have played a key role on how life got started. There is an article from July 28, 2022 about this located at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/07/220728112005.htm and there is an article about from February 3, 2022 at https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/cyanide-may-have-played-a-key-role-in-the-origin-of-life-on-earth-and-could-help-us-find-et/ .
The article from February says in part the following.
'Though perhaps better known as the lethal substance taken in pill form by captured spies in cheesy thriller movies, cyanide may have helped life to evolve on Earth.
... The team have shown that the chemical compound, which contains a carbon atom bonded to a nitrogen atom, could have enabled some of the first metabolic reactions on Earth that created carbon-based compounds from carbon dioxide. Metabolic reactions are reactions that create energy out of food and are essential for sustaining life.
... As they already knew that cyanide was present in the atmosphere back then, they mapped out a set of reactions that could potentially use cyanide to produce more complex organic molecules from carbon dioxide and then tested them in the lab.
“It was scary how simple it was,” said Krishnamurthy. “We really didn’t have to do anything special, we mixed together these molecules, waited and the reaction happened spontaneously.”
The article from July says in part the following.
' "We've come up with a new paradigm to explain this shift from prebiotic to biotic chemistry," says Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, PhD, an associate professor of chemistry at Scripps Research, and lead author of the new paper, published July 28, 2022 in the journal Nature Chemistry. "We think the kind of reactions we've described are probably what could have happened on early earth."
... After their success using cyanide to drive other chemical reactions, Krishnamurthy and his colleagues suspected that cyanide, even without enzymes, might also help turn α-keto acids into amino acids. Because they knew nitrogen would be required in some form, they added ammonia -- a form of nitrogen that would have been present on the early earth. Then, through trial and error, they discovered a third key ingredient: carbon dioxide. With this mixture, they quickly started seeing amino acids form.
.. Because the new reaction is relatively similar to what occurs today inside cells -- except for being driven by cyanide instead of a protein -- it seems more likely to be the source of early life, rather than drastically different reactions, the researchers say. The research also helps bring together two sides of a long-standing debate about the importance of carbon dioxide to early life, concluding that carbon dioxide was key, but only in combination with other molecules.
In the process of studying their chemical soup, Krishnamurthy's group discovered that a byproduct of the same reaction is orotate, a precursor to nucleotides that make up DNA and RNA. This suggests that the same primordial soup, under the right conditions, could have given rise to a large number of the molecules that are required for the key elements of life.'
There is also an article from July 29, 2022 located at https://interestingengineering.com/science/discovery-may-explain-origin-life . It says that the experiment "... provides the simplest hypothesis yet for the chemical reactions that sparked life on Earth." That article in part says the following.
"The new discovery brings us a step closer to understanding how life flourished in the ancient past. It adds a new, strong hypothesis for the origin of life on Earth, detailing the materials and reactions that may have taken place long ago.
... Now, the Scripps scientists developed their own version of the primordial soup based on materials that were thought to be abundant in the early stages of life on Earth. They discovered a new set of chemical reactions using relatively simple ingredients that could have led to the first life on Earth.
... Alpha-keto acids are used by living cells today to make amino acids. Ammonia provides nitrogen, which is required for the conversion process. The cyanide enables the conversion, while the carbon dioxide speeds up the whole process.
... The scientists believe that, as their process is simpler than other hypotheses, it is more likely to have occurred during the earliest stages of life formation on our planet."
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A look at Robert Alter’s translation: The Hebrew Bible
by Wonderment ina look at robert alter’s translation: the hebrew biblethree volumes labeled as, "the five books of moses"; "the writings"; and "prophets.
"verse numbers appear in the margins.
my take: some view this as a plus, since this allows for continuous, undistracted reading.
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Disillusioned JW
I am really hoping that Wonderment will answer my question about biblical Hebrew. That is because I think Wonderment (who get the impression is Jewish culturally) knows how to read biblical Hebrew, and I really want an answer from a Jewish person who knows how to read it.
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Two Bible teachings JW's DON'T know about....
by BoogerMan in....but the november 2022 study watchtower will definitely instruct them.. 1) god's name is jehovah!.
2) jehovah is using an earthly organization to do his will - not jesus!.
in study article 45, 'jehovah' is mentioned at least 60 times.
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Disillusioned JW
Correction: While editing my prior post a major typo entered into it. The last sentence of the second paragraph of my prior post should have said the following.
"While the first two do say "Lord and God Jesus Christ" (which I think is very strange wording and I think the word "God" was added into that phrase and thus corrupted it) the third translation says "Lord Jesus Christ" instead! Notice that it says the following (in chapter 12)."
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Two Bible teachings JW's DON'T know about....
by BoogerMan in....but the november 2022 study watchtower will definitely instruct them.. 1) god's name is jehovah!.
2) jehovah is using an earthly organization to do his will - not jesus!.
in study article 45, 'jehovah' is mentioned at least 60 times.
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Disillusioned JW
About 15 year ago I owned all the volumes, except for one, of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. The edition I had said in the introduction that when one reads the writings one will notice they do not teach certain doctrines which the churches (or Roman Church or Church?) now teach as main doctrines. I bought those volumes in order to check the claims the WT about what the "Church Fathers" said about Jesus, primarily to see if they taught he was God (in the full sense) or not. I noticed that almost none of the authentic writings (ones which scholars said were not forgeries) in the volumes of the earliest writers made any claim of Jesus being God, other than sometimes to the extent that the NT Bible appears (at least to some people) to claim Jesus is God. What I read in the books confirmed the message I had read in the WT's literature on the subject of claims of Jesus being God or not!
In a number of manuscripts of the writing of the "Church Fathers' there are likely variant readings (including added words which deify Jesus), like in the NT manuscripts. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/polycarp.html lists three translations of Polycarps' Letter to the Philippians. While the first two do say "Lord and God Jesus Christ" (which I think is very strange wording and I think ) the third tanslation says "Lord Jesus Christ" instead! Notice that it says the following (in chapter 12).
"But may the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ Himself, who is the Son of God, and our everlasting High Priest, build you up in faith and truth, and in all meekness, gentleness, patience, long-suffering, forbearance, and purity; and may He bestow on you a lot and portion among His saints, and on us with you, and on all that are under heaven, who shall believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, and in His Father, who "raised Him from the dead. Pray for all the saints."
I own a copy of the book called "The Lost Books Of The Bible ..." and that edition is copyright 1979.The main text is a reprint of the 1926 edition which is based upon an edition from 1820 called The Apocryphal New Testament (I once saw a copy of that very old edition). The 1979 edition I have has a different chapter and verse numbering than the one quoted above from http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/polycarp-roberts.html . In this edition (the one from 1979) the chapters are much longer, with a total of four chapters. Chapter IV verses 10 and 11 correspond to the quote above. The book says the translation contained within it (for The Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians) is by Archbishop Wake. Verse 11 says the following.
"And grant unto you a lot and portion among his saints; and us with you, and to all that are under the heavens, who shall believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, and in his Father who raised hm from the dead."
I once owned (but no longer own) the edition called The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden (and before that I owned a different copy of the same edition of The Lost Books Of The Bible which I now have). That edition includes some Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Books_of_the_Bible_and_the_Forgotten_Books_of_Eden ). Some of the books included in the Forgotten Books of Eden teach NT Christian doctrines, so much so that critical scholars say the Christian sounding portions are insertions by Christians into books which were originally pre-Christian Jewish books. But some scholars think that those books (thought to have been originally written before 1 CE) actually were teaching those doctrines which we find in the NT as Christian doctrines.
Some years after I had studied The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden, but probably before I became an atheist, I sold that book. But now that I am an atheist I wish I still had that book since it can be used to dispute some of the claims of trinitarians about what the "Church Fathers" said and to show that a number of doctrines attributed as being of Jesus might have actually predated the first century CE, or if not that, that it can be shown that Christians more than 1,000 years ago tampered with some Jewish books by inserting Christian teachings into them. That is one reason why I purchased my current copy of The Lost Books of the Bible when I found it at Friends of the Library book sale in 2019 for a very low price.
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Two Bible teachings JW's DON'T know about....
by BoogerMan in....but the november 2022 study watchtower will definitely instruct them.. 1) god's name is jehovah!.
2) jehovah is using an earthly organization to do his will - not jesus!.
in study article 45, 'jehovah' is mentioned at least 60 times.
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Disillusioned JW
A moment ago I learned of Kermit Zarley who is a retired professional golfer and now is an author of books on biblical studies. He apparently is a progressive Christian who no longer believes in the trinity doctrine and apparently is now a unitarian in regards to his concept of the biblical God (see https://21stcr.org/author/kermit-zarley/ ). Though he believes "that Jesus never thought he was God or claimed to be God", he nonetheless disagrees with a number of Bart Ehrman's ideas. He also believes some things about Jesus which the WT also believes. At https://www.patheos.com/blogs/kermitzarleyblog/author/kermitzarleyblog/ Zarley says the following.
"Ehrman begins his Introduction by saying (p. 3), “The idea that Jesus is God … was the view of the very earliest Christians soon after Jesus’s death.” I strongly disagree. I show in 322 pages in my RJC book that nowhere does the NT declare that Jesus is God, and I treat the critical biblical texts in depth. Ehrman further surmises (p. 6) “how Jesus came to be considered God. The short answer is that it all had to do with his follower’s belief that he had been raised from the dead.” WOW!
This is the thesis of Ehrman’s book, How Jesus Became God. Some Christians have also believed this. But it is irrational and antithetical to Judaism. Thus, it is highly unlikely that the early Jewish Christians believed that. Tom (N.T.) Wright and other leading NT scholars have convincingly refuted this argument. Most Jews during Jesus’ time, including him and his contemporaries, the Pharisees and Essenes, believed in the future resurrection of God’s people, and they certainly did not think that would make them gods.
... Ehrman ... takes the typical position of historical-critical scholars about Jesus and the NT gospels. They correctly state that, according to the synoptic gospels, Jesus did not believe he was God or say he was God, and his early disciples didn’t believe he was God either. But Ehrman errs in saying the Gospel of John identifies Jesus as God. (See pp. 124-25, 248). About Ehrmans’ quotes of Jesus in John 8.58, Jesus therein didn’t mean he preexisted but that he was superior to Abraham. The prior context of John 10.30 shows that Jesus meant he and the Father work together in unity as “one,” not that they are one in essence as some church fathers asserted. (Cf. “one” in John 17.11, 22-23). And Jesus saying, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14.9), does not mean he is God or the Father since he then explained it to mean, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (v. 11; cf. 10.38). Scholars call this the Mutual Indwellling, and many people have confused it with Jesus being identified as God. Yet Ehrman is right in saying that if Jesus publicly said he was God, Matthew, Mark, and Luke would have mentioned it in their gospels. Moreover, Jews would have argued with him about it far more than that he was the Messiah. Ehrman rightly says later that being a Jew (p. 98), “Jesus would have believed that there was one true God.”
... As stated above, Ehrman says that right after Jesus’ death, the early Jewish Christians began to believe that Jesus was God. On the contrary, I maintain that the NT does not say Jesus was God, so that it was not until the second century, after the apostolic era and the writing of the NT, that some Christians began to say Jesus was/is God. But for the next two centuries they said his divinity/deity was less than that of the Father, making Jesus essentially subordinate to God. It was not until the Nicene Creed, in 325, that Christians declared Jesus is God just as much as the Father is. And only in the latter half of the fourth century did Catholic Church officials construct the doctrine of the Trinity that we know about today.
... In Chapter 2, Ehrman says again of early Christians (p. 49-50), “How could they say that Jesus was God and still claim that there was only one God. If God was God and Jesus was God, doesn’t that make two Gods?” Indeed. And I am surprised Ehrman fails to mention that both the Ebonite and Nazarene sects of early Jewish Christians lodged this argument. It was Gentile Christians in the next century, such as Ignatius, who started saying Jesus is God. When they did, critics accused them of believing in two gods. But Ehrman says (p. 49) that he was enlightened to learn that “Christians were calling Jesus God” in “competition” with “the Romans calling the emperor God.” Maybe in the second century, but not the first century as Ehrman claims.
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Did the Watchtower Society ban Vaccinations and Organ Transplants?
by Vanderhoven7 inan avid wts supporter writes:.
re: vaccinations: vaccinations have never been banned.
if they were, then no representative of the wts would have been allowed to travel overseas when vaccines were compulsory around 1920 when vaccines was regularly in the news, there was both positive and negative information printed in the golden age (forerunner of the awake) but not from the staff writers, but from out side sources of article by medical doctors at the time and others that responded to those articles.. re: organ transplants: organ transplants were never forbidden by the society.
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Disillusioned JW
I think (based upon my recollections of quotes of WT literature) that initially WT literature said that organ translates were fine, that later for a short period of time the WT condemned them (and I think they banned them), but that even later once again they did not ban them.