Annanias

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Posts by Annanias

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  22

  The End

  by Annanias in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

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  Annanias
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  11

  Why I left.

  by larc in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i was just read an email about me and the writer had several questions that i would like to address.

  as he knows, i am 63 and left 40 years ago.

  his first question was why did i leave?

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  Annanias

  larc, I'm trying not to be nosey, but the impulse is hard to overcome. The doctrine issue(s), was it more the questions, or the answers that did it for you?
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  9

  incidence of certain syndromes or diseases?

  by kgfreeperson in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i have seen the study on an unusual percentage of schizophrenia cases coming to emergency rooms being jehovahs witnesses, but i wonder if there have been other studies on what diseases/syndromes jehovahs witnesses tend to have.

  i'm noticing, for example, a lot of fibromyalgia and depression, but i wonder if anyone has actually studied if the incidence is actually higher among jws than in the general population.

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  Annanias

  These are intense facts that you've brought up here. Schizophrenia is being traced more and more to physical sources. They have actually traced OCD in a group of children to their having contracted strep throat. Can you give us the sources of these observations, or are they personal noticies? Wow, that is both cool and chilling in it's implications.
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  4

  The Complex Consumes the Simple - Evolution?

  by Satanus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  an interesting analysis.

  whatchoo think?.

  copyright (c) jan m. cox, 1988.

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  Annanias

  Terry, the guy who wrote that article, was he a mormon? The reason I ask is that it's been a while since I've ran across something quite so wordy. But I guess succint is next to sutoilet.

  I never saw the Spainish conquering the Incas and Aztecs because they were complex. I always thought they conquered S. America because they were resilliant to smallpox. The spanish could have been armed with slingshots. Are you more complex because you are immune to smallpox?

  "Here's another one to Consider in light of this rule: the reformed drunk. First he's a drunk, then he's a reformed drunk. It's just him again, without the booze. There's no real change. " Oh, really? And how many AA meetings has this guy been to I wonder?

  All "gods" were always terrifyingly complex. Excuse me? I'm sorry, but the appeal of JC is his absolute simplicity, not his complexity. We can address Buddah, Confuscious, and the Dali Lama later.

  "A person cannot possibly be your hero if you imagine they're simpler that you are. Have you ever had a hero and believed his or her life was duller than yours? That's not mathematically feasible. " Oh really? How does this guy know who my heros are. By his own definition(s), my hero would have to be from my future, because everything in my past has to be "simpler" than I am now. Does that mean that I don't get to have a hero? And what the f*ck does mathematics have to do with what constitues a hero?

  Terry, do you find, say DaVinci being "simpler" than Warhol? Plato "simpler" than Adam Smith? Aristotle "simpler" than John Maynard Keynes?

  The complex consumes the simple, eh? I bet this guy never saw "12 Monkeys".
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  27

  The Loss of Innocence.....and Recovering

  by Frannie Banannie in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  in mulling over the almost 6 decades of my life, almost two decades of which were spent being enamored of just one more false religion, then spending the following decade discovering all of its deceptions, i feel a tremendous loss of innocence.

  as though i were a victim of sexual assault, i don?t now believe that i will ever recover an ability to believe or trust in anyone where religion or blind faith in anything is concerned again in this lifetime.

  because, to me......that?s what faith is.....blindness.

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  Annanias

  An interesting note as to aging and it's effect on our values. I saw a Frontline a couple of months ago that dealt with Pronography in America. One of the "new" pornographers (introduced as the guy who did the "Buttman series". They are serialized?) was really chewing on Larry Flynt because he felt that Flynt and Hustler had become "fat and soft"!
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  14

  For Those Of you Who Still Believe That the Bible Is A Rational Work

  by Joe Bloggs in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  for those of you who still believe that the bible is a rational work.

  just reading the bible as well as other religion's epic writings shows how fantasy, that is converted to myth, and mistaken as history, has done that perfectly.

  the lack of knowledge of science, physics, and human nature shows the stories to be of pure myth time and time again.

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  Annanias

  Okay, so let me get this straight, because you consider the Syrian steam engine a "toy" that discounts it? And because somebody can find a publisher to print his theory on the pyramids, that makes it right? I see. You didn't answer the question guys, which part of the Bible did you find as being out of tune with physics? How id Machu Pichu get built? Stonehenge?

  Quotes - you might study a bit on the progrssion of science and acientific thought. Archimedes did some fairly interesting stuff, but since Setmor Cray hadn't been born yet I guess that makes it all just fun and games. Let's see, the Egyptians have batteries, the Chinese have batteries, but because they didn't invent Las Vegas, they were just messing around?

  Panda - Is Carl Sagan the best you can come up with? "I see that by your premise you are part of the anti-Enlightenment culture which is sending us back to the Dark Ages (not a nice time for educated folk)." Which "premise" might that be? You might try reading a bit of history yourself, if you can managed to overcome your "enlightened" conceit, you might find it helpful. To which "Dark Ages" do you refer? To which "educated folk" are you referring?

  Your original premise was that because "modern" science (which isn't really all that modern) can tell us with some degree of accuracy (but by no mean definitively) a little more about our universe than we knew yesterday. Because we've managed to bend some of this understanding into neat shapes and things (some of which may kill us in a flash) that proves the Bible is an irrational collection of fables and stories that only children would listen to. One does not follow the other. You are bending reality and logic into as unreasonable a conjecture as you ever cackled the Bible to be doing. And that is going to bring about your boogieman "Dark Ages" faster than 1000 JW's knocking on your door.
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  27

  The Loss of Innocence.....and Recovering

  by Frannie Banannie in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  in mulling over the almost 6 decades of my life, almost two decades of which were spent being enamored of just one more false religion, then spending the following decade discovering all of its deceptions, i feel a tremendous loss of innocence.

  as though i were a victim of sexual assault, i don?t now believe that i will ever recover an ability to believe or trust in anyone where religion or blind faith in anything is concerned again in this lifetime.

  because, to me......that?s what faith is.....blindness.

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  Annanias

  Frannjie, yes, youth is wasted on the young. Maybe that's why grandchildren have the hypnotic effect that they do, grandparents are trying for one more taste of that innocence, even if vicarious. Being There's point about the brain's wiring is an excellent point as well. Is it the fact that we lose our innocence, or the depth to which we lose it? When I read Jack London, Dickens, goodness, even Dashell Hammit, I can't help but come away with a sense of innocence in their air. It's like comparing "The Maltese Falcon", with it's intrigue and danger as a result of man's greed, to Hannibal Lecter; comparing Beaver Cleaver to John Connor, or Scarlett O'Hara to Madonna. I think our loss of innocence has become a collective thing.
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  6

  "Waiting on Jehovah" - A NEW WAY of looking at it.

  by Confucious in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  so my ex-j dub girfriend just emailed me asking me why i haven't been to the meetings.

  this really got my blood going.

  se if you can see how i applied the "wait on jehovah" line.

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  Annanias

  Is it just me, or is the human race losing the ability to communicate via the written word?
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  213

  WHAT IF WE DIDN'T POISON CHILDREN'S MINDS WITH FANTASY?

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  every baby born seems to have a giant helping of fairy stories, talking animals, outrageous exaggerations parading as "fact" and an endless stream of cartoons, science fiction and make-believe.

  the laws of nature and physics are violated every few seconds in film and tv!

  is it surprising that children are not only ignorant of how things really work-but, they don't have patience and an appetite for fact when they get to the schoolroom.

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  Annanias

  Terry, your question begins with an incorrect assumption. You apparently believe that fantasy is something that is put into a person's mind. This is simply not true. Fantasy, along with imagination, curiosity, language come pre-wired into the human brain. And apparently, fantasy is an extremely powerful portion of the mind. Thus the human capacity and need for dreaming. All humans dream, and apparently, our minds require a fixed amount of dreaming. If we loose dream time tonight, we will make up for it by dreaming more the next night. Unless, curiously enough, we are schizophrenic.
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  14

  For Those Of you Who Still Believe That the Bible Is A Rational Work

  by Joe Bloggs in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  for those of you who still believe that the bible is a rational work.

  just reading the bible as well as other religion's epic writings shows how fantasy, that is converted to myth, and mistaken as history, has done that perfectly.

  the lack of knowledge of science, physics, and human nature shows the stories to be of pure myth time and time again.

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  Annanias

  "Just reading the bible as well as other religion's epic writings shows how fantasy, that is converted to myth, and mistaken as history, has done that perfectly. The lack of knowledge of science, physics, and human nature shows the stories to be of pure myth time and time again."

  This is a rather broad statement, and one that is going to be terribly hard to substantiate. The lack of exactly who's "knowledge of science, physics, and human nature" do you refer? The writers of the Bible? Which particular scripture(s) do you refer to as being out of accord with known physics? I don't recall much of the Bible being based upon a hell of a lot of physics, but maybe I missed that part. Please define "epic". If you mean epic as a literary genre, I'm sorry, that's a 20th century Hollywood term and hardly applicable to the Bible, or any of it's characters.

  It always makes me chuckle when I hear some pseudo-wise guy make off hand remarks about the ignorance of those poor stupid people way back when. When our "modern" science can give me a reasonable answer as to how the Incas built Machu Pichu, the Druids managed Stonehenge, and the ancient Egyptians could end up with cocaine in their system, then you can start a "reasonable" discussion of the "myths" of the Bible or any other religion.

  Think of this, during Europe's Age of Reason, electricity was considered magic, while the Syrians had already invented a steam engine during the time of Alex the Great.