Mephis

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Posts by Mephis

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  101

  HELP needed from folks in UK, esp. in Scotland!

  by WTS Archive in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  tl;dr: if you live either in scotland or in other parts of uk and you don't mind traveling, you might be able to help a fellow ex-jw by being present during a courtcase where she alone has to face more than two dozens of jws who have ruined their business.

  please contact me directly for details on when and where the court case will be held (i will know these details in few days probably).

  ps.

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  Mephis

  If it's been in the local newspaper, any link to, or image of, the story they printed?
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  9

  Speculation? What would Watchtower be now if it had fully embraced the internet / technology 20 years ago

  by joe134cd in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  this has probably been discussed before so please feel free to include links as well.

  so what would wt be now if it had encouraged it's members to use the internet or technology for spreading the good news.

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  Mephis

  One of the reasons for them initially trying to stamp out internet use was that initial surge of JWs online leading some to getting non-approved information and then asking awkward questions. (I remember the various bits about it in the 90s in their publications - "would you invite an apostate into your home?"). At the time, digital media was limited by access and cost (metered connections at 56k!) so it wasn't even a way for them to reliably distribute the WT as a text document.
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  8

  Watchtower Study Article 23/10/16 from August edition

  by BluesBrother in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  https://www.jw.org/en/publications/magazines/watchtower-study-august-2016/do-you-see-the-need-to-train-others/.

  much of the article is the usual thoughtless mush that we have come to expect these days.

  the rank and file bros. are urged to reach out to train the new ones... .

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  Mephis

  What I got from that is that they know that they're not converting people on the doorstep, and the little paragraph at the end there about perseverance hints at far more than just 'new ones' feeling it's all a bit pointless. The problem with the men who stay inside really not wanting to climb the WBTS leadership ladder is making them increasingly shrill about it. Probably is not helped by them trying to guilt elders into doing even more.
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  61

  Trump supporters want to repeal 19th amendment

  by keyser soze in

  1. social
  2. current

  seriously, you can't make this shit up.

  and these same people will accuse hillary of rigging the election after she wins:.

  http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/trump-supporters-repeal-19th-amendment-article-1.2828571.

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  Mephis

  I'm glad it only sounded like you were conflating the two things LoveUni. :)
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  61

  Trump supporters want to repeal 19th amendment

  by keyser soze in

  1. social
  2. current

  seriously, you can't make this shit up.

  and these same people will accuse hillary of rigging the election after she wins:.

  http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/trump-supporters-repeal-19th-amendment-article-1.2828571.

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  Mephis

  Would that be the reason you'd move out of the USA LoveUniHateExams? I'd suggest that people politically opposed to Trump would be more focused on the angry authoritarian oompa loompa's basic disregard of all social and democratic norms of behaviour, not to mention his curious desire to cause economic chaos.
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  46

  FYI, Eloise Dupuis, 27, a JW, died last Wednesday in a Quebec hospital because she refused a blood transfusion

  by AndersonsInfo in

  1. watchtower
  2. medical

  i just received the following message from a friend this morning.. barbara.

  eloise dupuis, 27 years old, died at the hotel dieu hospital in lévis, quebec, canada, wednesday, october 12th.

  she died because of her religious principles.

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  Mephis

  So sad.
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  16

  Biblical Scholar Claims The Story Of Jesus Christ Was A HOAX Designed To Control The People

  by anointed1 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  here is something i found interesting:.

  biblical scholar claims the story of jesus christ was a hoax designed to control the people.

  http://simplecapacity.com/2016/10/biblical-scholar-claims-story-jesus-christ-hoax-designed-control-people/.

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  Mephis

  If the gospels aren't historically accurate documents then everything which Jesus is recorded as saying needs to be seen more as which words each writer wanted him to say. Think you have to split the biblical Jesus from a historical Jesus. The biblical Jesus may or may not bear some or any relationship to the historical Jesus. The biblical Jesus is, very arguably, a construction of decades later - which is where mythicist ideas tend to mesh with the scholarly consensus. eg the development of ideas about the nature of divinity.

  So not sure a biblical Jesus sounding eerily similar to a Jewish Rabbi writing in Babylon either proves or disproves a historical Jesus. Where it gets interesting is whether the person writing down the sermon on the mount knew of that Rabbi's thoughts. There's a similar argument around the writer of Luke/Acts and Josephus. Atwill gets it backwards. The argument runs that it's not Josephus writing Luke/Acts but that portions of Luke/Acts seem to indicate its writer had read Josephus - and was in fact copying parts of Josephus and making factual errors based on Josephus' works. It's all interesting for the origins of Christianity and of the writings of early Christianities. But not so much useful for saying whether there was a bloke who did walk around first century Palestine claiming to be a messiah (or not?) and ended up having followers who, after he had been executed/died, thought he was God.
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  16

  Biblical Scholar Claims The Story Of Jesus Christ Was A HOAX Designed To Control The People

  by anointed1 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  here is something i found interesting:.

  biblical scholar claims the story of jesus christ was a hoax designed to control the people.

  http://simplecapacity.com/2016/10/biblical-scholar-claims-story-jesus-christ-hoax-designed-control-people/.

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  Mephis

  Robert Price and Bart Ehrman are debating the 'did he exist?' question in a week or so's time. Sure it'll end up on Youtube. Personally, I lean towards a historical Yeshua Ben Yosef - who may or may not have had much in common with the Jesus of the Gospels. Regardless of that though, Atwill writes absolute tosh. It's about as useful as using von Daniken to understand pre-Columbian South American civilisations. It's not even wrong.
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  16

  Biblical Scholar Claims The Story Of Jesus Christ Was A HOAX Designed To Control The People

  by anointed1 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  here is something i found interesting:.

  biblical scholar claims the story of jesus christ was a hoax designed to control the people.

  http://simplecapacity.com/2016/10/biblical-scholar-claims-story-jesus-christ-hoax-designed-control-people/.

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  Mephis

  Atwill said that Jesus is, “the only fictional character in literature whose entire life story can be traced to other sources”. I agree with him and probably so would Robert M Price.

  The purpose of citing Price was because of his mythicist beliefs. Carrier's also debunked Atwill. Neither are in the scholarly consensus on mythicism. But it's irrelevant to Atwill's ideas. There are easier routes to a mythicist position than to fantasise Josephus writing the gospels for the Flavians.
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  16

  Biblical Scholar Claims The Story Of Jesus Christ Was A HOAX Designed To Control The People

  by anointed1 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  here is something i found interesting:.

  biblical scholar claims the story of jesus christ was a hoax designed to control the people.

  http://simplecapacity.com/2016/10/biblical-scholar-claims-story-jesus-christ-hoax-designed-control-people/.

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  Mephis

  Atwill's been peddling this for a long time. Has he qualified in anything since first publishing? I'm behind on my pseudo-history stuff. But, anyway, this 'theory' has been debunked pretty thoroughly. It's a fun idea to turn the gospels into a first century Da Vinci Code, but it's not something which stands up to serious scrutiny.

  Robert Price's debunking is fairly thorough: http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/rev_atwill.htm