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AlanF

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  1. AlanF
    Arauna said: No you wouldn't. You don't accept what people far more intelligent than I say about most aspects of science. I'm trying to correct your thinking! Your mind contains so much Watchtower junk that you've got a huge amount of work to do. And of course, you're here engaging in yet another sidestep, this time of the fact that Watchtower teaching on the "expanse" is dead wrong. HAHAHAHAHA!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! I've read dozens. All are mostly nonsense based on biblical literalism or deliberate rejection of solid science. Most are also based on what has been called The Argument From Personal Incredulity -- "I just can't believe it, so it can't be so." Presumably you mean Darwin. Another instance of not knowing what you're talking about. Debunking is hardly the right term. "Ignorant ranting" is more like it. And of course, most of such come from Young-Earth Creationists who propose a 6,000-year-old universe. Do you really think such morons deserve a hearing? Wrong. Read the book. Read the link I gave you. Are you afraid? It's based on a pretty good sized chunk of geological evidence, you moron. Wrong. The Ediacaran Period and related ancient times contain hundreds of fossils of soft-bodied organisms. These go back some 630 million years. Roughly 540 million years ago some hard parts begin to appear in the fossil record, which are bits of shells and teeth. A few million years later complete organisms with shells and teeth start to show up. The entire period of the "explosion" lasted 13 to 40 million years, depending on definitions and interpretations. You're a complete moron, because you don't comprehend what you read. I said nothing about when the 'creative' period began. Rather, I spoke about THE CREATION OF LIFE. When does Genesis say plant life was created? THE 4TH DAY. The Watchtower Society rejected such thinking decades ago. All of which has nothing to do with our topic or reality. Any supplementary material I supply IS evidence. You just stupidly reject it out of hand because you don't know enough to properly evaluate it.
  2. AlanF
    Arauna said: Because there is no evidence whatsoever that the Bible writers knew a thing about Einstein's equation. But not vice versa. You're committing a gross fallacy of logic. You've got that backwards: it is YOU and Mommy Watchtower who have done that. Fact: the Hebrew word chuwg used in Isaiah 40 is properly translated "circle" -- not "ball". Thus the claim that Isaiah said the earth is a sphere is demonstrably false. Oh the irony!
  3. AlanF
    Arauna said: Which is again irrelevant to showing that Isaiah's words refer to E=mc^2. Again completely irrelevant. You really have brothers who are scientists? What happened to you?
  4. AlanF
    Srecko sostar said: JWs have never believed that -- it's a Young Earth Creationist belief. You're not remembering correctly. The 7,000-year creative day doctrine has never been rescinded. All that the Watchtower Society has done is to begin, in the mid-1980s, to sometimes refer to the length of the creative days as "millennia long". How long is that? Could be 7,000 years. Could be 100 million. Since they never rescinded the belief, the explicit teaching of 7,000-year creative days remains official Watchtower doctrine. Now, why do you suppose the JW organization switched from "7,000 years" to "millennia"? Well that's a bit confused. The fact is that belief in magical 1,000 and 7,000 year periods goes back at least to 1,000 BCE, to the ancient Persian Zoroastrian religion. Such ideas were later adopted into Judaism during the period of Persian rule. Eventually the notion that the last creative day was 7,000 years long was adopted by Jewish Apocalypticism, and later by Christians. The apocryphal book The Epistle of Barnabas (ca. 100 CE) set all this out explicitly: 6,000 years of human toil in a sinful world, following by 1,000 years of peace in Christ's millennial reign. C. T. Russell was familiar with all this, including the pagan roots of the belief, but he adopted it for Bible Student doctrine anyway. Yes, these references show how the doctrine was emasculated in the 1980s. Good luck getting JWs to do that.
  5. AlanF
    Arauna said: The fact that he is a JW is the reason he laughs. Most proper scientists have no issues with the many dating methods for ancient stuff. The fact that you call them "the dating methods of evolution" again proves your overriding ignorance. Such methods were not invented, nor are they used, merely for the purpose of proving evolution. They were invented to understand the timing of ancient events. Once the methods became available and generally reliable, biologists used them to date events in the evolution of life. Your comments here are absolute stereotypes of Young-Earth Creationist writings. Furthermore, dating methods are cross-checked with other methods. When two or more give the same answers, we can be sure that they're both good. When there are discrepancies, investigation is done, and one or both methods are not used until the discrepancies are resolved. For example, radiocarbon dating has undergone extensive cross-checking with archaeological dating and other methods. The most useful is tree-ring dating -- dendrochronology. This has resulted in a table of corrections to radiocarbon dates for the last 10,000 years, so that there are "radiocarbon years" and "actual years". People use such charts to apply a correction factor to radiocarbon dates. Cross-checking is also done by methods like the count of varves in old freshwater lakes, and the count of ice layers in the ice of Greenland and Antarctica. And of course, these guys have written papers debunking dating methods like radiocarbon. So what? There are Young-Earth Creationists with Ph.D. degrees who reject science in favor of literal biblical interpretation. Sure -- Young-Earth Creationists all. All of their "interpretations" -- which are really nothing more than rationalizations about why their Young-Earth views are right -- are seen to be complete nonsense when careful, non-braindead scientists examine them. "Teutonic plates"??? I love it! Sure. And such ones believe nonsense like a 6,000-year-old universe.
  6. AlanF
    Arauna said: Of course, and I make every attempt to do that. What you seem to forget -- really, you deliberately ignore -- is that you and most of your fellow JWs make little or no attempt to understand what I and other science expositors say, but only look for ways to sidestep, ignore or forget what is said. Your refusal to look up the material I supplied you days ago on the Cambrian Explosion proves my point.
  7. AlanF
    Arauna said: JWs mostly are idiots like you. And again you prove this by having no idea what you're talking about. And you can barely read with comprehension. Do JWs believe the entire universe was created 6,000 years ago? NO! It is a fact that something like 40% of Americans -- not just fundamentalists and evangelicals, but AMERICANS -- believe in Young-Earth Creationism, i.e., that the entire universe was created by fiat some 6,000 years ago. As for JW beliefs, I grew up as a JW on the notion of "7,000-year creative days", which meant that life began to be created some 27,000 years ago. That doctrine has never been rescinded; therefore it is current JW doctrine. You don't think so? Then tell us, please, where in Watchtower literature the "7,000-year" notion was rescinded. How do you think Fred Franz concluded that 1975 was to be the end of 6,000 years of human history? Which is why Young-Earth creationists are among the most stupid people today. Or more correctly, brainwashed by their literal-minded religious leaders, just like JWs are misled about all sorts of things. Yes, and those "epochs" were exactly 7,000 years long. That's why it's easy to prove that JWs believe life was created beginning 27,000 years ago. Go backwards from today: 6,000 years of the 7th day; 7,000 years each for days 6, 5 and 4; that adds up to 27,000 (of course, the "6,000" figure is approximate). I'll warrant you don't even know how that 7,000-year figure was originally calculated by Russell and later by Fred Franz. Nonsense. The fact is that you've refused to acknowledge the debunkings. You've merely dismissed the debunkings without comment, or by sidestepping what I actually said. Proof? You can point to no post debunking my debunking. and much more insults any very little science coming from you! You know almost nothing of science. "Watchtower science" is NOT science. And in case you missed it, when I insult people who deserve to be insulted, I almost always accompany the insults with provable exposition. Of course I did. Must I supply you with the page number of the thread? That, all by itself, proves that you don't even know what you're arguing against. Where do you get the notion that there is one such layer? It requires a book-length treatment. I already gave you the title of best book I'm aware of on this: The Cambrian Explosion: The Construction of Animal Biodiversity, by Douglas Erwin and James Valentine, 2013. Available on Amazon. You'll have to read the book; I can't do it in a forum like this, as it takes hundreds of pages that include charts and pictures. In the meantime you can learn something from the Wikipedia link I already gave you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion#:~:text=The Cambrian explosion or Cambrian,of most modern metazoan phyla. Nonsense. I often give comprehensive answers that include supplementary material germane to the discussion. The fact that ignorant JWs like you don't recognize supplementary material is immaterial. So what? It still has nothing to do with Isaiah. You know that how? Certainly not from Watchtower speculations going back to C. T. Russell. You obviously don't even know what the "expanse" was supposed to be. Again, Watchtower speculations are demonstrably wrong. Look up the definition of "expanse" in a decent Hebrew-English lexicon. You'll find that it comes from the Hebrew raqia, which basically means "something beaten out flat", like a bronze shield that a metal worker beats out to make it flat. The usage in Genesis refers to the sky, which certainly looks to an observer on the ground like a huge blue shield -- something beaten out flat. Raqia does NOT refer to a three dimensional structure like the atmosphere.
  8. AlanF
    Whatever. Still has nothing to do with what the Bible says: "power, strength" in the sense of The Incredible Hulk, NOT "dynamic energy" in the sense of E=mc^2.
  9. AlanF
    Nothing but already-debunked lies and zero content here; no evidence presented, none needed to dismiss.
  10. AlanF
    Nothing but already-debunked lies and zero content here; no evidence presented, none needed to dismiss.
  11. AlanF
    Nothing but already-debunked lies and zero content here; no evidence presented, none needed to dismiss.
  12. AlanF
    Nothing but already-debunked lies and zero content here; no evidence presented, none needed to dismiss.
  13. AlanF
    ScholarJW Pretendus Braindeadus Maximus said: But Providence gets it right! The Watchtower has never gotten anything of significance right. And invisible 'events' don't count. For the millionth time, see above.
  14. AlanF
    ScholarJW Pretendus HeadInAssus Maximus said: LOL! After several hundred years of solid scholarship by professional scholars, you think that telling little old me that I don't make original contributions to such is an argument? You've gone completely off the deep end. On the other hand, you cannot even manage to quote the Bible, much less tell truthfully what it says. Nor can you truthfully summarize the findings of professional scholars. All you can do is parrot the squawks of Mommy Watchtower. You think that is an argument? LOLOLOL!!!
  15. AlanF
    ScholarJW Pretenshus Assholius Maximus said: Already done a few thousand times now. Yet more gibberish English. Already done a few thousand times now. Not an observable event. Wrong. Watchtower writings on chronology are in no way "scholarship". Nor is the nonsense you peddle. What was OBSERVABLE about "the Gentile Times"? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. And again, every other observable thing that Russell predicted did not happen. Now you've descended to the despicable but standard technique of the charlatan -- accusing your opponents of your own sins. You fool no one, Neil.
  16. AlanF
    ScholarJW Pretendus Braindeadus Bulshittus Maximus said: Which I and others have answered several dozen times now. You're lying because you know perfectly well that I most certain can answer your questions, but until a few posts ago have refused to play your game. Big difference between "can't" and "won't". Such a complete dipshit! Answered yet again in a post above. Another lie: all I do is tell what scholars say. Nisan 1 (March 24), 538 BCE through Addaru 29/30 (March 11), 537 BCE, according to Parker & Dubberstein. Now you look up the Julian to Gregorian converter website I told you about and see if you can plug in the numbers and find your Gregorian date. If you dare. Which you won't. As I thought: you can't do it. Any more than you can quote Scripture. "No" what? you moron. Again proving that "providence" had nothing to do with the mistakes, and the Revelation Climax book, and other WTS publications, lied about it. Wrong again. Russell used 536. Prove it. Cite at least two examples of those "many". Exactly what I said, you moron. Again proving that the Revelation Climax book lied. Yes, but what is essentially modern chronology was in place not later than about 1910. This is even reflected in Watchtower literature beginning in the 1940s. Nope. Standard Neo-Babylonian chronology is accepted by virtually all modern scholars. The crackpots like Watchtower writers don't count. By that stupid 'reasoning' you can rationalize anything. So you think that God caused Bowen/Barbour/Russell to come up with wrong dates! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! Your gibberish was not a typo. Too many misplaced words. Perhaps your mushy brain thinks in typos. Done a few hundred times now.
  17. AlanF
    Point being: if the uninspired J. A. Brown got it right, then the "providentially" inspired Bowen/Barbour/Russell people ought to have gotten it right. The fact that they got it wrong proves that "providence" had nothing to do with their mistakes. And Russell, having claimed to speak for God (he was God's mouthpiece, he said), proved himself a false prophet not only by making false predictions in God's name, but by proclaiming false teachings in God's name, including his claim to speak for God.
  18. AlanF
    That's the point, you moron! Actually it's a rehash of current scholarship, just as COJ's writings are. Both COJ and I personally are irrelevant to that large body of competent scholarship. You, like your Mommy, are quite incapable of arguing against some scholarly stance without ridiculous ad hominems. You've learned well. And we all know how passionately you lie about virtually everything. See above.
  19. AlanF
    Perhaps, but it would be better than being like you -- a pathological liar who falsely claims to stand for God's standards of Truth, Justice and The American Way. Wrong. One only has to read his works and compare them to real history and events to see this. And every prediction for the events leading up to 1914 was dead wrong. Everything observable failed. I've produced a fairly comprehensive list of Russell's failed predictions and prognostications here: https://critiquesonthewatchtower.org/old-articles/2006/02/part-1-jws-beliefs-about-chronology-in.html Ah, yes: the fact that current incompetent Watchtower "scholars" continue with Russell's incompetence proves that Russell was a brilliant scholar. LOL! Wrong. Everything observable that he predicted for that nonsense failed. Everything! A completely invisible "end of Gentile times" is in no way a fulfillment of a prediction. Should I quote Carl Sagan on that again? See above. And of course, your game is simple-mindedly transparent. All you're doing is trying to create irrelevant side issues in your silly attempt to sidetrack the theme of this thread.
  20. AlanF
    Still can't write non-gibberish English. Perhaps using Grammarly or Microsoft Word would help. Of course, since you can't even work the copy/paste buttons on your keyboard, this would be rather difficult for you. As for your lie that I cannot give such a "calendation", that's nonsense. I repeat: I'm not playing your games. The date is given in Julian years in almost all sources, of which you're well aware. Conversion from Julian to Gregorian dates is trivially accomplished by various means, the simplest being to find a website that does it. There are dozens. Here: https://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1227757509 Bullshit. See if you can do it in your own words. Oh yeah. You're too stupid to know how to quote even the Bible, much less summarize this rocket-science material. There's that gibberish English again. Don't they speak English in Australia? And of course, it's immaterial whether works on Chronology available in Russell's day made errors. The most important for our thread, based on quite understandable historical errors, was that most writers dated the fall of Babylon to 538 BCE rather than 539, and certainly not 536. The 538 date seems to have gone back at least as far as Bishop Ussher and Isaac Newton. I don't know where the 536 date came from, although Russell always claimed it was firmly established. But in no case I'm aware of did any of these, aside from the demonstrably incompetent Nelson Barbour and those from whom he borrowed the 1914 chronology, neglect the "zero year" consideration. An examination of scholarly works available in the latter half of the nineteenth century proves Barbour and Russell's claim that their dates were firmly established is not true. Virtually every reference work used a slightly different set of dates for key events in the Neo-Babylonian period, but they generally differed by only one to three years. The following table shows three sets of dates for important events from this period, from reference works available in the period in which Barbour and Russell, and later Russell alone, wrote. These are: McClintock and Strong's Cyclopaedia, 1871; Smith's Bible Dictionary, William Smith, 1864; Encyclopaedia Biblica, Cheyne and Black, 1899. Compare these with the currently accepted dates, which are also listed. See also Babylonian Chronology 626 B.C.-A.D. 75, R. A. Parker and W. H. Dubberstein, Brown University Press, Providence, 1956. Event McClintock Smith's Bible Encyclopaedia Current & Strong's Dictionary Biblica Nebuchadnezzar's accession 606 605 605 605 Jehoiachin's deportation 598 597 597 597 Jerusalem's destruction 588 586 586 587/6 Babylon's fall 538 539 538 539 Cyrus' 1st year 538 538 538 538 Return of Jewish exiles 536 536 538 537/8 And of course, as usual you miss the most important point of all: far from being "providential" (which means "according to God's will") Russell's errors were purely human errors. So the Revelation Climax book and other lying publications actually blamed the Watchtower's God Jehovah for the Watchtower Society's chronological errors. There's that gibberish English again. Don't they speak English in Australia?
  21. AlanF
    English, please! Nonsense. I covered this in an essay written in 1992: https://critiquesonthewatchtower.org/old-articles/2006/02/part-3-scriptural-arguments.html . The subject is covered elsewhere in that series as well. And of course, I've covered it in numerous online forums since then. Since you can neither read nor write intelligible English, you have no business commenting on rocket-science matters like these.
  22. AlanF
    All of this proves what we already know -- Russell was incompetent as a commentator on chronological matters. From his earliest days he used 1914, not 1915, as the end of the Gentile times. The March, 1880 Watch Tower, on page 2, said: << "The Times of the gentiles" extend to 1914, and the heavenly kingdom will not have full sway till then, but as a "Stone" the kingdom of God is set up "in the days of these (ten gentile) kings," and by consuming them it becomes a universal kingdom -- a "great mountain and fills the whole Earth." >> It was only after about 1904, when many of the dire events Russell had predicted had not materialized, that he began waffling about 1914/1915. For a comprehensive look at Russell's dates, see the articles beginning here: https://critiquesonthewatchtower.org/old-articles/2006/02/part-1-jws-beliefs-about-chronology-in.html
  23. AlanF
    JW Insider said: Yes, of course. The information was designed to say as little as possible about those changes, and to give a completely false impression of the reasons for them. Of course. That brings up an amusing memory: Back around 1993 I was reading various JW-critical books, one of which pointed to the 1973 ka book and its admission that, until 1943, whatever is now taught about 1914 had been claimed for 1874. I mentioned this to my then-wife, who said, "That's not true!" I handed her her own copy of the book, the one she had studied and underlined for the Book Study, and opened to the appropriate page. She refused to look at it. That solidly exemplified the attitude of most JWs toward learning anything about how stupidly the Watchtower has buggered things. Yes, the 606 date was used until about the middle of the book. When I first looked into this back around 1993, I was astonished at the level of stupidity, but more so at the level of deception. It was obvious that the author, Fred Franz, had zero respect for the intelligence and honesty of his readers. Over the next few years I accumulated non-English versions, and was again astonished that these were all published as if they were straight translations from the original English, but uniformly substituted 607 for 606. It was all too clear that the Writing Dept., under Freddie's direction, had systematically lied about the entire matter. I just love that sentence beginning "Inasmuch as". It's a perfect example of the deliberate deception practiced by Watchtower leaders like Fred Franz and by many members of the Writing Department. Yes, but the real source for modern JWs is this deceptive story reproduced in somewhat different form in a box on page 105 of the 1988 book Revelation -- Its Grand Climax At Hand. One footnote is priceless: << Providentially, those Bible Students had not realized that there is no zero year between “B.C.” and “A.D.” Later, when research made it necessary to adjust B.C. 606 to 607 B.C.E., the zero year was also eliminated, so that the prediction held good at “A.D. 1914.”—See “The Truth Shall Make You Free,” published by Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1943, page 239. >> Providentially? LOL! This footnote is pure deception from beginning to end. I've probably seen this, but can you supply the reference?
  24. AlanF
    The change of date from 606 to 607 is one of the best examples of the Watchtower's scholastic malfeasance. Russell knew that the 'correct' date was 607 as early as about 1909, because a couple of British Bible Students, the brothers Morton and John Edgar, had informed him. They used 607 in the two editions of their Great Pyramid Passages. But Russell was more interested in peddling his ideas on 1914 as the destruction of world governments. So when he had new editions of his Studies in the Scriptures published from 1910 through 1916, he left the old and wrong chronological calculations intact. Even in 1917, The Finished Mystery used 607 rather than 606 -- without comment. So both Rutherford and his retinue knew the 'correct' date. But because so much had been said about 606, and the "Millions" campaign was promoting 1925 as the date for Armageddon, no WTS official wanted to rock the boat because it all hinged on the 606 chronology -- which Rutherford was promoting as divinely inspired chronology. Even as late as the mid-1930s there were hints that WTS officials knew better. The Golden Age used the 607 date more than once. After the unlamented Rutherford died in 1942 and Fred Franz became, in effect, the head theologian of the Watchtower Society, Franz decided to "correct" the date from 606 to 607. As part of that effort he changed 536/538 to 539 for the fall of Babylon. Then in the 1943 book The Truth Shall Make You Free Franz, smack in the middle of the book, argued that the date for the beginning of the Gentile times was "really" 607 not 606. But he forgot to change the date of Jerusalem's destruction to 607. So by the end of the book we had the amusingly inconsistent position that Jerusalem was destroyed some 10 months after "the Gentile times" had begun in 607 BCE. By 1944 and the publishing of The Kingdom Is At Hand, someone realized that the arguments were self-inconsistent, and in a chart of dates Franz showed 607 as the date of Jerusalem's destruction. But as per the usual Watchtower methodology, no arguments were given for the change. In fact, a footnote mentioning the change falsely claimed that the 1943 book had changed the date from 606 to 607 -- a flat-out lie. When editions of The Truth Shall Make You Free were published after 1944 and in languages other than English, all references to 606 were changed to 607, which made the 'argumentation' for changing "the Gentile times" to 607 unintelligible. But Watchtower adherents being what they are, no one complained, even if they noticed. You can read about the gory details of this Watchtower deception in my article "The Evolution of 606 to 607 B.C.E. in Watchtower Chronology" here: https://critiquesonthewatchtower.org/old-articles/2006/02/evolution-of-606-to-607-bce-in.html .
  25. AlanF
    A finer example of circular reasoning can hardly be found. Of exactly the same sort employed by "ScholarJW Pretendus Bullshittus Maximus".
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