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Four letters published in Investigator: WEBSITES OF INTEREST (Investigator 74, 2000 September)
www.geocities.com/Athens/5195/bible.html www.infidels.org/library/modern/farrell_till/ http://members.aol.com/ckbloomfld/index.html http://earth.ics.uci.edu/faqs/faq-meritt/flood.html http://members.aol.com/jalw/joseph_alward.html www.magi.com/~oblio/jesus/home.htm Burjin J. Kotwall – NSW THE BIBLE "INCREDIBLY ACCURATE" BUT MISUSED (Investigator 76, 2001 January)
Thanks to Mr Kotwall for
his advice
to use the web. (No. 74 p. 4) I’ve started doing that and got more
detail
for my article The Bible on Slavery.
The websites Mr Kotwall calls a "bitter pill to swallow" are not much different to mistaken skeptical material available in books. Mr Kotwall should not just "swallow" this skeptical "pill" but be skeptical of it! Why? Because The Bible is incredibly accurate, up-to-date and still coming up trumps in point after point. Mr Kotwall
should not judge the
Bible by the silly things the sect he studies, the JWs, falsely claim
to
get from it.
Anonymous AN ILL-FOUNDED CONJECTURE (Investigator 77, 2001 March)
Anonymous, after
conveying a backhanded
thanks to me for providing URLs of some Internet sites critical of the
Bible, turns around and promptly critcizes me for judging the Bible
based
on "the silly things" the Jehovah’s Witnesses teach! (No. 76)
I simply have no idea how Anonymous gets this fallacious impression. None of my numerous articles in the Investigator have reflected this ill-founded conjecture of Anonymous. If anything I have sometimes criticised the Watchtower Society for misusing Bible verses (eg. See Investigator No. 44 for misuse of Proverbs 4:18 and Psalm 97: 11) Some one not knowing my proclivity, would think, after reading the last sentence in Anonymous' letter that I am an ardent follower of the JWs! Anonymous’ last sentence reads: "Mr Kotwall should not judge the Bible by the silly things the sect he studies, the JWs, falsely claim to get from it." B.J. Kotwall NSW FALLACY CAUTIONED AGAINST (Investigator 78, 2001 May)
I did NOT criticize Mr
Kotwall "for
judging the Bible based on the silly things the Jehovah’s Witnesses
teach"
(#77 p. 5) – I merely cautioned him against doing so.
I met an
ex JW who reasoned: "The
JWs are the closest religion to the Bible; but they teach false
prophecy
and other silly things; therefore these silly things are in the Bible
and
the Bible is therefore wrong."
No
religion proclaims its own rightness
and unbiased acceptance of the Bible as repetitively as the JWs. If one
accepts their self-praise of their own rightness at face value the
above
fallacy – of thinking the Bible wrong because the JWs are wrong – would
be easy to fall into.
The Bible too warns against this fallacy by warning that there are people who: "accumulate teachers for themselves to have their ears tickled." (2 Timothy 4:3) Mr Kotwall
does a great job in refuting
the JWs. In Investigator 35 p. 37 he predicted that their
doctrine
about the 1914 generation would soon be revised (which it was one year
later) and he suggested (accurately) what that revision would be! He
really
understands his subject!
Anonymous – South Australia
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