Posts by Apognophos

7

How to traumatize your kids while baking cookies

by rebel8 in

http://cultprevention.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-novel-way-to-traumatize-your-children.html.

well dubs may corner the market on messing with children's heads, but there are other contenders.. .

local needs "are you spiritually grown up?"

by sylvlef in

yesterday local needs was this theme.

are you spiritually grown up.. summary: if you are between 18-35 and not ms or elder, you lazy idiot are like a child.

at this age, especially if you grew up in "da trooooth" you have no issue with jw.org doctrine right (how do you know...?

Xanthippe, your post really resonates with me. It's the small-mindedness that I can't stand. It's largely what started me on my way out of the org. These people have no ambition for personal achievements or self-expression, no desire to contribute to society. They're just culture-less bumps on a log.

15

My difficulties in writing academic essays, contrasted with the same difficulties by NK elites

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

i struggle to write good academic essays.

i'm never happy with the result of my labours.

i've had a few hds, but still feel they lack something.. for some months, i have been pondering why i have this problem, and the realisation is becoming clear that my problem is the result of having my brain washed clean by jesus for 40 years (my period of enslavement to the wt cause).

Apognophos

I want to know what an HD is too, besides a hard drive. But the article was very interesting. Scary to think that a country could be so fully in control of the information its citizens are raised on (cue the conspiracist posts saying "And you don't think that happens IN AMERIKA?!?").

70

DINOSAURS - What do Jehovah's Witnesses Believe?

by Bloody Hotdogs! in

as part of my deconversion catharsis, i have been building a(nother) website to highlight some of the more ridiculous jw beliefs.

im a looong way from done, but i wanted some early feedback on one article: dinosaurs.

http://www.jwbeliefs.com/dinosaurs/.

Apognophos

Wow, that change in the Enjoy Life brochure is remarkable. I would have expected to see the dinosaurs being removed from '78 to '82, not added! I'm really just amazed right now.

70

DINOSAURS - What do Jehovah's Witnesses Believe?

by Bloody Hotdogs! in

as part of my deconversion catharsis, i have been building a(nother) website to highlight some of the more ridiculous jw beliefs.

im a looong way from done, but i wanted some early feedback on one article: dinosaurs.

http://www.jwbeliefs.com/dinosaurs/.

Apognophos

Therefore, water can either orbit the earth (something like the ice rings of Saturn)

Yep, that's what I was getting at. Evermore has posted the standard argument that if the canopy was high enough to be ice, it would have raised the temperature considerably when it fell. I'm honestly not sure anyone has actually proven that rigorously, but it seems believable given that we are talking about 40 continuous days of rainfall.

And the argument that, in any form, that much water would have obscured the sun, moon and stars seems pretty irrefutable. Even as ice the canopy would probably be so thick that it would block or distort the light.

As for the effect on carbon dating - I’m going to have to re-think that… my head hurts.

Okay, so I'm sorry for wasting your time with that, just forget you read it :-| I did some reading on C14 dating, and it turns out I didn't understand the process. I thought the breakdown of C14 came from atmospheric radiation, but that's what produces C14. C14 just naturally decays at the same rate no matter what, which I should have known.

So actually I guess creationists can suggest that, since the canopy lowered the radiation reaching our atmosphere, that would mean less C14 was produced. So that would mean that a pre-Flood sample would contain a lower ratio of C14 to C12 at a given age than scientists would expect. In other words, they would overestimate the age of the sample because they would think it must have been around a lot longer to have decayed down to that ratio.

This is what I get for not reading about dating methods since I stopped being a believing Witness. I guess I still have a lot of self-education to do.

70

DINOSAURS - What do Jehovah's Witnesses Believe?

by Bloody Hotdogs! in

as part of my deconversion catharsis, i have been building a(nother) website to highlight some of the more ridiculous jw beliefs.

im a looong way from done, but i wanted some early feedback on one article: dinosaurs.

http://www.jwbeliefs.com/dinosaurs/.

Apognophos

Evermore, thanks, but the creation of Earth (and the stars, including the Sun) is considered by the Society to be covered by Genesis 1:1 and thus not part of the creative days. The question is whether the creative days where light was "made" and then the plants, animals, etc. are considered to be successive periods of 7,000 years -- after the Earth was made "billions of years" ago. If Hotdogs is right, the Watchtower stance is really a bizarre mix of old- and young-earth creationism.

70

DINOSAURS - What do Jehovah's Witnesses Believe?

by Bloody Hotdogs! in

as part of my deconversion catharsis, i have been building a(nother) website to highlight some of the more ridiculous jw beliefs.

im a looong way from done, but i wanted some early feedback on one article: dinosaurs.

http://www.jwbeliefs.com/dinosaurs/.

Apognophos

In reading your Sky Ocean article, I want to note a few things that aren't simple typos, and may warrant discussion:

1. I am not a physicist, but I am dubious of the traditional disproof of the water canopy that "all that water would have crushed everything". The weight the water would impose on our atmosphere would surely depend on how far it was from Earth's center. If the water were high enough, it wouldn't weigh anything at all (it would also be frozen, but I don't think that is problematic since the Bible doesn't say it wasn't).

2. If the water canopy affected radiocarbon dating, we would not expect to see an "offset" or gap in the ages of objects. Rather we would see a change in the rate of frequency of different ages found through this dating method because the rate of radiation entering the atmosphere had changed. Only a sudden, massive spike in radiation would cause a gap in the ages found.

Thus objects would still be found that dated to right before the Flood, but pre-Flood ages would stretch out in time, having wider spaces in-between them, because they actually represented a smaller range of time than thought, like 2,000 years, being assigned to a range of 200,000 years -- if in fact the pre-Flood objects were being overestimated in their age by scientists. However...

3. Offset or no offset, I believe that the water canopy excuse actually hurts the case of creationists rather than helping it. If there was less radiation before the Flood because of all that water absorbing the rays from space, then that means C14 would decay more slowly. That means that an object that we think is X years old would actually be, say, 10X years old because we were severely underestimating how long an object would have to be exposed to atmospheric radiation in order for the C14 to decay that far. So C14-dated objects would actually be far older than scientists thought.

The Society has written their statements in what seems like a deliberately vague way, such as "any change in radiation would have altered the rate of formation of radioactive carbon-14 to such an extent as to invalidate all radiocarbon dates prior to the Flood", rather than stating which way the dating would be swung, because somehow C14 would have to be decaying faster pre-Flood in order to support a creationist timeline, and I think they are aware of that.

70

DINOSAURS - What do Jehovah's Witnesses Believe?

by Bloody Hotdogs! in

as part of my deconversion catharsis, i have been building a(nother) website to highlight some of the more ridiculous jw beliefs.

im a looong way from done, but i wanted some early feedback on one article: dinosaurs.

http://www.jwbeliefs.com/dinosaurs/.

Apognophos

If JWs mean to indicate that the creative “days” were "thousands of thousands" of years long, they surely do not mean the same for “day” seven. This would indicate that the “days” of the creative week are not the same length! Now, JWs have never said that, have they?

Hmm, interesting point. You have me re-thinking my opinion of their beliefs. Now I'm wondering if they really are hiding a continuing belief in 7,000 year "days". It's all so silly because there's no reason at all why, if the days are not literal, they have to be the same length. They could have their cake and eat it too by making some days millions of years and leaving the 7th day as 7,000 years.

That being said, I do think you underestimate the Society's willingness to use weasel words when you point out that "thousands" is not "millions". It's well within their known record of distorting word definitions to use "thousands" to allow for the possibility of "thousands of thousands".

70

DINOSAURS - What do Jehovah's Witnesses Believe?

by Bloody Hotdogs! in

as part of my deconversion catharsis, i have been building a(nother) website to highlight some of the more ridiculous jw beliefs.

im a looong way from done, but i wanted some early feedback on one article: dinosaurs.

http://www.jwbeliefs.com/dinosaurs/.

Apognophos

they always clearly differentiate between the millions/billions of years before creation and the "days" of creation.

You might well be right. It could be that there are some old-timers at HQ who won't let the 7,000-year thing go, or that they internally see some reason why it needs to be true in order to support their beliefs. It's probably just tied to their intense desire to see the end come in their lives.

Personally I don't know where the 7,000 years came from. We had a discussion on this a few months ago that basically concluded "*shrug*". This old, more careful discussion also concluded "*shrug*". I suppose it was just too convenient for people who wanted to believe they were in the end times, as you said. This isn't just a notion of the Witnesses; this specific formulation of "six thousand years and then the Thousand Year Reign" probably started in the Second Adventist movement. In the 1800s, Russell taught that the 6,000 years ended in 1872, I believe. In the second link I just provided, interestingly enough, it seems that people were suggesting "six thousand years of man's existence" 2,000 years ago!

I feel like that ought to be allowed, even if it isn't technically…

Of course people post the Society's stuff here all the time, so you may feel that there is precedent. I think one is legally supposed to be able to post excerpts from their writings, so maybe video stills will be allowed under that same principle. But lawful or not, they can probably issue a takedown notice on the basis of copyright, so one day you may find that your host has shut down your site. You might be able to get it back up again by simply removing those images, but I just thought I would give you fair warning.

15

A Religious Quest

by ReligiousQuest in

jw
friends

my name is louie and i'm seeking some help regarding a paper i need to write for a class.

it is meant to be an individual study project regarding a faith that is different from your own and intrigues you.

what i am asking is for someone who is willing to answer 10-15 questions regarding their faith.

Apognophos

So, uh, ReligiousQuest, you should be aware that this is a forum populated 99% by former or non-believing Witnesses. You're not going to get many people willing to advocate for the religion. You'll probably get honest answers to your questions, albeit with a heavy tinge of bitterness, but if you're looking for active, believing Witnesses then you will have a hard time finding them there.