Posts by Qcmbr

491

What is your opinion of the news media?

by minimus in

to me they have an agenda and they really don't care about professional journalism.

most are untrustworthy and that's a shame.

Qcmbr

My opinion of the media is that there's become too much choice. Everything is so quick now that even if a journalist is attempting to have any integrity the delay in verifying and fact gathering means they are sitting on yesterday's forgotten news. Now it's about speed, clicks and ad revenue. News has been utterly subverted into a means to attract advertising. The closest we have to real information is the twitter style live reports and they are hard to sort.

I do think modern media has lost any ultimate drive for impartiality and trustworthiness and is much more akin to a sports team, every different media source has a pronounced bias as it seeks to attract fickle, niche consumers. We really are living in a 1984 scenario where , depending on which spin is being added you can read whether we are in fact fighting Eastasia or Eurasia.

236

What did President Trump say about Sweden?

by kpop in

this you will never see on the mainstream media.

before you comment watch the whole video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqaigeqxqgi.

Qcmbr

Bugbear

Fact is, that crime rates are in Sweden declining. Numbers of prisoners are reduced. Some crimes such as raping have increased. This due to the fact that gov. has reduced the proof burden for the victims.

I did have a poke around to see what the stats say regarding crime in Sweden (not certain how reliable this site is) http://www.prisonstudies.org/country/sweden and its interesting to see the % of foreigners in the Swedish jails. Their crime rates are decreasing over a short reporting period but there could be many reasons for that - worst case scenario things like these https://youtu.be/4QMe0Wou5HI don't end up in arrests because the police are neutered - best case Sweden is doing a brilliant job of stopping crime - I suspect the former.

This article made for interesting reading - http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/09/how-sweden-became-an-example-of-how-not-to-handle-immigration/ and it seems to echo many concerns I have over uncontrolled immigration.

Where are immigrants being housed in Sweden during its housing shortage? - http://www.thelocal.se/20170209/inside-swedens-housing-crisis-when-renovation-means-eviction
How are the number of immigrant children affecting the local schools? http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/education/2016/06/why-sweden-s-free-schools-are-failing
Are the immigrants getting jobs and integrating? http://www.thelocal.se/20160531/fewer-than-500-of-163000-asylum-seekers-found-jobs
How does Sweden's very generous welfare system cope with a large influx of non-contributing people? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-31/here-s-how-the-refugee-crisis-may-reshape-sweden-s-social-model

While right now the number of absolute crimes may be low there must be some recognition that change is coming - pressure is building. If you have plenty of space and capacity in your system then you can afford to take in people, invest in bringing them up to speed and letting them have the dignity to contribute. When you open your doors but are actually very close to structural capacity it doesn't take much to create a crisis. Sweden is very rich and may be able to rapidly stave off the social disaster of pockets of poverty but if it doesn't it's attempt to help ends up condemning immigrants/refugees/local unemployed citizens to a very bad situation. Mix in a radical ideology and liberal , free Sweden ends up being the exact opposite.

I look at the housing crisis in the UK - an entirely lamentable situation created by years of political ineptitude - but it actually means the UK shouldn't be importing 300k people into the UK (no matter if they are doctors, surgeons, rocket scientists or whatever) until we've sorted out a place for them to stay.We can't offer homes and welfare to others when we can't provide it equitably for our own.

236

What did President Trump say about Sweden?

by kpop in

this you will never see on the mainstream media.

before you comment watch the whole video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqaigeqxqgi.

Qcmbr

In the West imo:

The rise of feminism, gay rights and racial equality while broadly useful and necessary in promoting an equal playing field in a modern society are uniquely unqualified to stand as the dominant culture - which they have become. The conservative, traditional culture to which it was once the counter culture has largely been nibbled away such that our media, politics and prevailing zeitgeist is socialist, virtuous and emasculated (masculinity outside of the cinema is largely frowned upon.) Europe is at the forefront of this thinking and has seen - in the form of the EU - a homogenizing force that has removed travel barriers, reduced military commitments and has enforced multi cultural acceptance. In demolishing the traditional structures of society to create a new, freer one, it has let its guard down. When you remove your immune system to combat leukemia you also must isolate yourself. Europe allowed the rise of equal rights to wipe its traditional immune system. It then naively forgot to isolate itself - it opened its internal border without enforcing its external one.

“Thomas More: ...And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned around on you--where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast--man's laws, not God's--and if you cut them down...d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.” - A Man for All Seasons.

Islamic culture, especially from the Arab world and East has not made any such compromises. It is militaristic, violent, masculine, politically rapacious and has a fundamental raison d'être - to act as a cuckoo culture and remove/subsume all other cultures. Sweden, as an example, is experiencing the effects of a viral infection at the exact moment it has removed its ability to cope with this attack - because to cope you MUST use a measure of inequality (you must privilege your culture over the dangerous one, you must privilege your citizens over immigrants, you must be willing to do hard nasty things to stop nasty incoming pathogens.)

Sweden is so excited by its feminist , socialist outlook that its actually privileging the incoming culture over the Swedes (immigrants are trusted on their age claims, are given preferential legal status and are given free housing, food and money, claiming the status of 'refugee' has become a magic password that bypasses all internal systems) Sweden has forgotten that a nation state's primary purpose is to look after its own people and only then to look out for neighbours - you never grab a drowning swimmer. Legal, orderly, planned immigration is a great benefit to all - disorderly, naive, virtuous open doors ruins it for everyone - just the same way we lock our own homes' doors and vet those we allow in - not because we 'hate' others or are 'racist' but because we understand that bad apples ruin entire barrels. Sweden and its legal, hard working migrants will be suffering the effects of impotent social policies for many years.

Political Islam is at war with the West and we aren't allowed to recognise it - it's not PC. Currently political Islam is killing mainly Muslims in the Muslim heartlands but given enough time we shall see more and more attacks on the West spawned from the Islamic toeholds in the towns and cities of Europe. Its written in their Koranic manifesto.

The most ardent SJWs (especially the Hollywood types) are so intent on being 'right' that they are actively sabotaging our defences, opening the castle gates and demolishing curtain walls and then retreating to their own gated enclosures oblivious to the damages done to the unprotected normal people. Political Islam is a poisonous snake and you can't let it loose in your house and wonder why it keeps biting you nor blaming those bitten for being so judgmental.

The important thing was not that Trump naively used a rubbish Fox report BUT that too many people would rather focus on the easy virtuous hatred of Trump than actually confronting the dreadful consequences of inviting in an abhorrent religious culture.

75

The Trump Era commences

by ZAPPA-ESQUE in

jw
friends

.

Qcmbr

tl:dr Risky change gets my vote over current state of play (which isn't solving big issues). Also public SJW language crippling needed discourse.

Helmet on, cautious step over parapet.

I really like Trump - not the person (and I'm sad I have to say in order for anyone to even consider what I'm about to post ) - the opportunity.

I believe over the last few years we've invented a language to excuse ourselves , a language of constricted PC phrases and acceptable utterances through which we have face a non-PC world. You can't , for example, discuss immigration, legal or illegal, without someone deciding that anything other than extreme-white-male-self-hatred-apologising-give-everything-to-the-less-fortunate-yay-feminism type statements are allowed. In short, having gained equal rights - in most cases- the militant cause seekers have decided to keep the ball rolling and argue for the complete negation of national, western, christian(!) identity. This is a new 'religion' and its as insidious as JWs but much more powerful as its co-opted liberalism, socialism and the equal rights movement - and most of the media both social and traditional - and has created a tremendous zeitgeist where all that is needed to solve the world problems is to be more offended and outraged (on behalf of someone else normally) as possible.

Huge amounts of national dialogue navel gaze about xenophobia and how terrible and bleak everything is (the massive amount of casual hate about Trump and his skin color is astounding - imagine running some 'fun' roasts about Obama and his skin color...) It all boils down to a few easy to understand reasons to my old cycnical eye.

Whinging is much easier than confronting. In a world of mind boggling evil in the form of Isis and environmental destruction it is oppressing to realise you are helpless. The lure of virtue signalling is that you can imagine that if you write just the right pithy protest banner or the most cutting facebook post (the more hateful and nasty the better , especially if you can link it to right wing Nazi tropes) you can save the world. Utter bollocks.

A grown up approach to life , discourse and change is to throw yourself into the problem to build by example, to listen and try to understand without resorting to ridicule or bullying and to face horrific choices (e.g. do we declare war on Isis knowing the cost of war) knowing that at some point action is needed , however distasteful, and that consequences should be accepted and owned.

Trump isn't an answer to all of the above but he's a start. Smooth talking , peer checked statement wielding 'actors' are much more dangerous than a man who shoots his mouth off every few seconds and potentially retracts it in the next tweet. A man has just exited the White House who was at war for the entirety of his office and he carries away the world's highest peace award. This is how we get played. This is how we get robbed. This is how the trick is done. Trump isn't coming from that same corrupt place. He's independently wealthy. Sure he's corrupt and shady BUT he's not Washington corrupt and shady (not yet) he's not been bought and had to trade his soul on the way up.

Sometimes you need a b*st*rd to sort out the corruption that power causes. The UK got one in the shape of Churchill - a man with disastrous and nasty views on common people and non-whites - but a man who could lead at a crucial time and place. I see in Trump one of the last chances to shake the tree of Washington and to replace a dialogue of virtuous avoidance with straight talk (even if its crap from your POV at any one time.)

With a Trump I can start to ask why's again (Why keep antagonizing Russia? Why support a cold war NATO while Europe neglects its defense? Why is it wrong to feel national pride? etc.) Without having to wade through the mini PC language I've talked about above. Legitimate fears about rolling back social rights, undoing climate change initiatives, discriminating against legal migrants and so on should absolutely be raised and discussed but not to a backdrop of car burning, social media bullying and naive virtue signalling. I'd have higher faith in an honest discussion with a Trump than a Clinton (or an Obama!)- every single time. We know the guy's got the social skills of a spoilt, narcissistic, misogynist BUT he he owns that crap and when he speaks/tweets he genuinely believes it (you can mediate and discuss a statement made with integrity) - compare an (unproven?) example that illustrates the really dangerous alternative - http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/8/hillary-clinton-says-she-has-both-public-and-priva/.

Discourse is needed between all sides, integrity is needed in thought, a strong sense of identity and respect is needed by those who need to act and discuss. Fuzzy ideas of a social utopia cannot keep superseding (I so wanted to say 'trumping'!) the hard dialogue and choices needed to deal with an often violent, amoral and brutal world.

Trump the opportunity shouldn't keep getting overshadowed by 'The end is nigh' he's Hitler2.0 let's burn a limo sh*t. Let's wait and see what happens and put away the hyperbole for a little bit. After all we're all still friends generally united by common ideals..aren't we?

114

Jehovah's Witnesses ARE Christians, why do so many ex JW's deny this?

by nicolaou in

jehovah's witnesses accept jesus as christ, the son of god.

they try, in their own way, to live by his teachings and imitate him.

they pray, read the bible and meet together regularly for worship.. i won't minimise any of the harm and damage they cause but for the life of me, i can't see how anyone can credibly deny that they are christians.. why do so many former jws have a problem with this?

Qcmbr

It's all about branding. Whoever is perceived as owning the brand gets to socially trade on preferential terms. Just as no-one likes to allow others to brand them (when negative) they want to brand themselves. Whoever gets to claim to be the true 'christian' gets to exert authority. To this end all sects of Christianity attempt to downplay all other sects and claim the trademark.

Since the value of that particular label is currently low and diminishing and anyone who could have authentically claimed it got curb stomped by Rome 2 millennia ago I'm more than happy to allow them to claim a stake in it.

84

Why are the atheists on this site so hateful?

by HopeEverLasting in

jw
friends

all us creationists try to do is offer true evidence that the one and only god is out there watching and looking down on us.

we present that certain scientists know the truth about god and that he is everything that we see from trees, life, weather, the air we breath, and even the most simple molecules.

but of course you atheists reject it because it is your nature to not be humble and see god because you want to rule your own life.

Qcmbr

OP:

Atheists is the wrong category - lots of atheists on this site don't comment on faith-based threads or choose to practice online tolerance of diverse ideas. The category you are attacking (?) is the anti-theists (and of them it is a subset of the verbal ones that you are offended by.)

'Hateful' is an interesting description and I'm not certain if your distaste is based upon substance (they are rude to you, disrespect your cherished beliefs or mock a divinity you hold dear to you) or style (the words are harsh, the arguments brutal and the tone is disrespectful.) When I first joined this site I was staunch LDS and I too found the anti-theists quick to demolish my posts and almost impossible to have a reasoned discussion with. I almost left.

I prayed to understand how I could best present the truths I knew and best defend God amongst this pack of wolves. While pondering I realised some things that changed how I engaged and responded to these often hurtful debates:

When someone responds - no matter how ferociously or mockingly - they are showing a kind of respect, they are spending time to signal that not only is your idea interesting but it evokes a reply. Real disrespect is to be totally ignored.
I had no right to expect politeness when my posts came from a position of extreme judgment (non-believers are lost / punishable / wicked / unhappy and they have no hope in this life or the next unless they accept our Saviour.) It was I who was being presumptuous and was posting from a position of threat (God was on my side and they would be lost if they didn't listen) and hubris (no matter what they said or how cleverly stated, in the big picture they were either supporting God or Satan and I knew who I served).
I could be wrong.

Lots of love - an anti-theist

p.s. losing religion is very liberating

95

slimboyfat joins the Mormons!

by slimboyfat in

i know that some people on the board have experience of being mormons, so i would be interested in your feedback.

at church this afternoon it was an uncanny experience.

in the past i've read a lot about mormons, so i thought i was prepared in general for what it would be like.

Qcmbr

You missed the time when being a Mormon was great. The chapels and stakehouses once buzzed with activity and most families had their entire social life there. Now they are fading badly in the West, especially Europe. Generally the people are genuine and lovely but you can see in their eyes now just how utterly boring Mormonism is. Once it really believed in itself but now all its energy is spent trying to face one fact checking problem after another. They are on the wrong side of social justice and are tied by core doctrine to binary gender definitions and a patriarchal hierarchy.

Hope you enjoyed the people, sorry you had to smell the foisty, damp smell and genuine sympathy that you had to sit through a whole set of meetings.

41

One Thing I Don't Get About Brexit

by JW_Rogue in

how did such a weighty decision get put directly in the hands on the average citizen?

and with only a simple majority required?

in the usa the biggest thing that people vote on directly is city building projects or infrastructure.

Qcmbr

Unbelievable. This is what democracy is. It isn't about neat boxes or always overwhelming majorities. It isn't about 'clever' v 'thick' or rich v poor. It is one person one vote and then we have the emotional maturity to accept the result. There was a referendum because that was part of the manifesto the Conservatives where elected on. They put that in their manifesto because a large number of people expressed their dissatisfaction with Europe (lots of votes for UKIP for example.) Just because you happen to disagree vehemently with an important decision doesn't mean that you can question the very basis of democracy and stand like immature idiots cheering every misfortune and difficulty that follows. Mature people use this rare, beautiful, empowering solution to social organisation and campaign for change through hard work, reasoned debate and voting - everyone else turns into keyboard warriors and butt hurt whiners who demand to be told how basic rights work and questioning everyone but themselves.

Take responsibility. If you were in the UK and didn't vote - you voted for the outcome (whichever way it had gone) in absentia - if you spent the time campaigning by telling people they were racists/bigots/fools/idiots then reap the rewards of negative condescension but if you genuinely voted with thought and research and have the maturity to accept the will of the people then 'respect '- you did all that can be asked of you whichever way you voted. There will be more votes, there will be more opportunities to contribute and take responsibility for the outcomes. This story is far from over and nobody in the UK gets to wash their hands of the job in hand.

3

England out of the Eu and now Euro 2016

by Slidin Fast in

iceland, i mean iceland.

outplayed us in every department.

this country is not a great place to be at present..

Qcmbr

...too many people not playing as a united team.

375

This thread is for proof that God exists

by juandefiero in

jw
friends

however, i haven't found any evidence to support that belief.. have you?

if so please, show me the evidence that god exists, and i will believe along with you.. criteria:.

(1) you must specify which god you are talking about;.

Qcmbr

I disagree talesin - Fish strikes me as a talking like a politician who says little with lots of posture to avoid being pinned to something specific and testable. Let's examine the logical flaws:

Proof that God exists does not depend upon the evidence, but on the rules of evidence, and ultimately upon who is trying the case -who has the final say.

Let's work this backwards. Let's use something to represent an essential truth - let's say a naked monarch parading down a high street under the misapprehension that they are wearing clothing that has a magical property. Can any nominated judge (be it a group or a person or a talking donkey) anywhere change one iota of the actual reality? Can such a judge actually, simply by their judgment actually create as much as a single pair of magically infused undercrackers? No of course not. It is a sleight of hand to postulate some vapourware judge to argue over the facts on the ground.

'Rules of evidence'. Once again a completely cooked notion. Are there any rules of evidence that again can change the reality? No of course not - there are only tangles twists and attempts to misdirect the gaze from the monarchs jewels.

The question about what types of evidence would be useful does have use when confusion or a lack of clarity exists. Does it here? I suspect not, this isn't a legal matter or a debate on whether Monopoly fines end up in Free Parking, and there isn't a need to pretend to some statement or list since they are implicit in our shared human existence. We are talking about the material world we exist in and the shared phenomenon we experience. You see when a child can innocently point out the truth without recourse to special rules and only the lie teller requires the magical rules of exception (only the stupid cannot see the beautiful fabric) then you know what the 'rules' are for.

Finally to claim on one hand a familiarity with the word 'proof' and then to spend the remainder of the sentence producing a new version of proof tied to an imaginary judge and a set of special rules that, let us be well aware will always favour the tailor who made the 'clothes' that the ruler now wears,it is just a politician's ruse, a con, a trick to avoid the simple statement - the King is naked.

When I fully believed I genuinely sought out opportunities to test the 'truth' I believed (and still believe) in 'the refiner's fire' the concept that testing, trying and examining a truth will leave it shorn of all untruths. As a believer I was under the mistaken impression that such things as the Book of Mormon, the global flood and the age of the earth were all accurately described by and encapsulated in the LDS version of Jehovah. It wasn't until I was about 30 that I first started to be met by serious , factual rebuttal (a lot of it here!) that I couldn't square anymore. Before that point I hadn't engaged anyone in conversation educated enough or willing to exhaustively challenge and deconstruct the truths I held dear and i hadn't done enough of my own research to know what I didn't know. This increased my belief that they were not just subjectively true but also objectively true. Only when hard facts and an unyielding discussion occurred could I see the mistakes in my position. The subjective experiences I had had were not (initially) challenged - I had to do that myself later. The key to unlocking the worldview was to look at the objective things and apply logic and the scientific method to test them.

If the only evidence brought to the table is subjective then one argues for a God who has no material impact on the universe except in the chemistry of human brains. If that really is it then that's fine - its a strange God but they are welcome to it since no one else can verify it nor claim that its the same one in everyone's mind. If however, believers are arguing for some supreme being who impacts and is the cause of pretty much everything then let's not play semantics. They can just point at the evidence and we can discuss it - shouldn't be hard ,it should be all around.