Mephis

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Posts by Mephis

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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
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  47

  Does becoming (or remaining) one of Jehovah's Witnesses result in Poverty? Pew Research results differ from Watchtower claims.

  by Balaamsass2 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  "raised in the truth" during the 50s, 60s,and 70s i repeatedly read and heard from the platform how reading the magazines weekly "was the equivalent of a college education" and how many had turned their family economic situation around by being "trustworthy" and giving up expensive bad habits most "worldly people" had.

  sounded good.. what is the reality?

  how does avoiding higher education, and then spending up to 20 hours a week getting ready for, commuting, and then participating in meetings and field service affect family finances?.

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  Mephis

  With the smaller percentages sample size becomes a big problem with JWs. Wouldn't take too much note of increase in college degrees, and the question which indicates some JWs are 'living in sin' would suggest a very broad sample base to say the least.

  The broader trends are interesting. It's a religion which actively sets out to guilt trip people over having a well paid job and for being financially secure - while offering televised productions of the perfect family, in the perfect home, living on whatever income a couple of pioneers can scrape together.
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  15

  WOW - 18 Elders in ONE congregation!!!

  by The Searcher in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  hazel grove congregation in stockport, cheshire, u.k.. not only is the congregation saturated with elders, it is/was pretty well saturated with cash - according to its 2014 financial statement to the charities commission.

  http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/accounts/ends82/0001066282_ac_20140331_e_c.pdf.

  its elders are listed as frank broadhurst, nick ashton, nigel bailey, noel crossley, peter davies.

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  Mephis

  They definitely all elders? Wasn't uncommon for Ministerial Servants to be listed as trustees too, but that may have changed over the years.
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  4

  Britain Press told by EU not to reveal if terror attacks are carried out by 'muslims'

  by EndofMysteries in

  1. social
  2. current

  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3823706/european-human-rights-chiefs-orders-british-press-not-reveal-terrorists-muslims.html.

  "european human rights chiefs have told the british press it must not report when terrorists are muslim.

  thank goodness they are getting out of the eu, before like sweden even people in uk can get arrested for posting on social media posting any facts and problems the immigrants/muslims/or refugees are causing.

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  Mephis

  It's the Daily Mail. Even their own quotes don't support the headline they use. It's the Daily Mail. Hurrah for fascism Daily Mail. Here's a song about it.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI
  
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  11

  The Jewish Temple(s) In Egypt. (Circa 5th Century BCE)

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the web address on the above sketch is misleading as the sketch (it seems) was included originally, in a article in a peer reviewed archaeological journal by a stephen rosenberg.. there is little doubt that the temple was genuine and it demonstrates that the ot stories about the role of egypt in the formation of judaism do not tell the truth about the complete relationship between israel and the egyptian empire.. we know that this temple on elephantine island was genuine.

  some papyrus correspondence has survived .

  there is also another (claimed) jewish temple that an archaelogical team explored last century, but the precise location has been lost.. more on the above temple tomorrow..

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  Mephis

  I'm referring to this temple in Egypt. It was destroyed in 410 BC and the Jewish community there requested it be rebuilt. In that letter they state that the temple pre-dates the Persian takeover of Egypt as it was spared by Cambyses even though he destroyed Egyptian temples. This is supported by a 2nd century BC document which claims that there were multiple waves of Jewish emigres into Egypt, beginning in 650 BC in support of the Egyptians campaign against Nubia (Elephantine Island is a fort on that border) but also those which are mentioned in the OT such as after the Babylonian invasions of Palestine. Hence the dating of the site is pre-Persian at the moment and requires evidence of it not being so to date it solely to the Persian period.

  (the essay linked as a reference earlier in the thread covers most of this).