[airspirit]

Jehovah's Witnesses will believe whatever they're told to believe and regurgitate it back for others to have to listen to. Most of what they believe is nutty and indefensible even by a religious person's standards, and that is why they have the most convoluted and nonsensical arguments to defend their stance.

It is no wonder that like many other cults that they are not allowed to do personal research outside of their approved tracts and manuals (the Bible is not one of them ... they can get in trouble for doing unsupervised Bible study), because if they did so for any period of time, there is an increasing likelihood that they'll realize that the events and ideas described in the bible do not jive with what they're being fed down at the Kingdom Hall/Ward, and if they're able to get over the time and personal investment in their religion they'll leave. The leaders of those cults don't want to lose their revenue stream, so they write Big Brother rules that forbids autonomous thought and you end up with people like Cristoff.

Of course, this is assuming that you put any faith in the events and ideas in the Bible. It is interesting to note that most of the miracles described therein either never happened, or was written decades or centuries after the fact. There is no record of a worldwide flood. That is a common myth among cultures in the Nile/Tigris/Euphrates river valleys due to the annual flooding of the rivers. In no place worldwide is there any evidence of a flood. Besides, the idea of holding two of every animal (seven of certain others) and the necessary feed in an area the size of seven basketball courts (assuming no hight restriction) is ludicrous. You couldn't fit two of every type of beetle, let alone anything else. The evidence that the ark was found can be discounted: multiple expeditions leave every year, and almost every one of them finds the ark, though in different places every time. Is it no wonder that you've never heard any reporting of the issue except in the Weekly World News? Even my wife believed it until she realized what the sources for the information was ... and that they run the same story every year but with different people and different places.

Lets take a look at the sun not rising on command. Gee, if the earth suddenly stopped rotating, then inertia would cause the oceans to wash over the continents wiping out all life. That didn't happen, so I guess the Joshua accounts were fudged a bit.

Oh ... and who was the witnessing author for the genesis events? Moses, wasn't it? Didn't he supposedly live over 2000 after the creation events? And he is an authority on these things?

I could eat some psilocybin mushrooms and have a conversation with God, the Devil, and Elvis Presley if I wanted to, but it would be foolish for you guys to take what I learn as scripture. Unfortunately, what you are putting your faith in has about as much basis in fact as what I'd come up with.

Oh ... sorry to disappoint, but most of the gospel stories (MMLJ) were written decades after Jesus's death by people who never met him. They were NOT written by the apostles themselves. Sorry to disappoint. This kind of brings the whole witnesses to miracles idea into doubt, eh? This has been proven by multiple independant historians and scholars, though church sponsored historians tend to disagree. Research must be much easier when you already have the answers in hand ahead of time and you're just trying to prove your point rather than find the truth.