A rudimentary comprehension of statistics and probability, particularly a Gaussian normal distribution with its sigma or standard deviation, is probably tantamount to apostate thinking. It would be apostate because WTS is crafting a mode of high significance from an outlier of low significance. But in the real world, like say science, you frequently have to 'sigma clip', or disregard outliers above a pre-selected sigma. What is more, for equal populations of good and bad people, statistically equivalent numbers of 'acts of god' will occur to each. Does the WTS mention the apostate who accidentally came by an extra $66? Did Jehovah let that slip? Was it part of Jehovah's active, mindful, purposeful plan? If it was not, and Jehovah simply allows (sort of like an ambivalent or groovy Deist deity) a normalized Gaussian distribution of $66 dollars to be awarded to a random sampling of good and bad people, why does WTS treat it as special?
Posts by rmt1
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10God's good for "$66 dollars"
by Separation of Powers inlast week's watchtower study related an experience of a sister who prayed that god would help her with her rent.
she needed $66 dollars.
she went to her waitressing job on an off night and would you believe?
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rmt1
I cannot think of a pressure of the world that the JWs have not converted into a reverse pressure of twice the magnitude.
The pressure of conformity would be sustainable if you had excellent arguments for it.
The pressure of maintaining physical endurance in the face of adversity, ditto.
The pressure of hourly active self-denial, or anti-disillusionment, or enduring cognitive dissonance, when you don't have excellent arguments for it is probably worse than anything physical.
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Interesting experience while protesting at district conventions
by theron ware infor three weekends this summer, a friend and i protested outside district assemblies being held in the tucson convention center.
our approach was very low key and completely non-confrontational: we just held our posters and smiled.
this was our experience at the first two assemblies (for the third assembly, see the next paragraph).
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rmt1
I just realized you said Tucson. I've lived in Tucson for 12 years now. Moved in from Central PA, HBG/Dauphin/Middletown/Swatara congs. Even had the notion to go see how JWs do things here. I'm going to suppose this was a heavily Latino crowd, and a lot less uptight than crowds of the northeast.
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Interesting experience while protesting at district conventions
by theron ware infor three weekends this summer, a friend and i protested outside district assemblies being held in the tucson convention center.
our approach was very low key and completely non-confrontational: we just held our posters and smiled.
this was our experience at the first two assemblies (for the third assembly, see the next paragraph).
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rmt1
Actual JWs stopped to argue with apostates in front of the DC venue? That's a huge crack in the firmament right there. When I was in/kid/teen, apostates at the DC were bitter, angry, unattractive, dog meat that you would calmly pretend was not there. You were permitted to acknowledge the physical existence of such a one only if it was immediately followed up by some kind of JW-language warding spell, genuflection, abjectification, or purification rite, usually accomplished in a pithy derisive quip.
Good job!
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Would You Shun Your Own Son or Daughter For A Million Dollars for the rest of your life??
by Narcissistic Supply insimply for the money..
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rmt1
http://www.babycenter.com/cost-of-raising-child-calculator
We probably need a shunning calculator to make the most pragmatic and informed choice. I bet you TWS has one. It incorporates the formula, "How much additional guilt contributions, activity, involvement, human life-years, etc, can we extract from remaining family members after one is ejected? Solve for x."
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To the young JW visitors....
by snare&racket intruth does not need protecting, it can protect itself.
no knowledge is dangerous to what is true as what is true can never be proven otherwise.. .
ask questions, trust yourself, trust your motives as you will never know anothers, trust your reading and research.
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rmt1
OP: Nowhere close to trillions of humans who have ever lived, although there is a character Trillian in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. "Billions", like Carl Sagan.
A sound mind does not interpret all available evidence as supporting JWs being anything but a publishing company fronted by a cult which the publishing company would have you believe is a bona fide religion (whatever that is). Don't think of them as a cult fronted by a legitimate publishing company of trash cartoons on cheap paper. Nope. Money is what makes the world go round (aside from classical angular momentum), and money is the primordial, fundamental truth to the whole JW enterprise. Has nothing to do with some wrinkled farts really betting their lives, fortunes and sacred honor that they have a red phone to god. They're betting YOUR lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. The truth about The Truth is money. The pursuit of money requires all number of coercions, threats, hostage-taking, emotional terrorism, information control, brainwashing, duckspeak, doublespeak, denial, inhumanely unnecessary long-suffering and endurance, hypocrisy, unaccountability, guilt, costly signalling, false hope, false prophesy, you can add more of your own observations <here>. Money is the root cause of all these symptoms. Money is something you can research. There are plenty of numbers to look up and think about quantitatively. The correct conclusion, or arriving at the truth about The Truth, can occur just by following the money.
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If Watchtower was a country
by zound inif the watchtower society was the leadership of a state or country, and jehovah's witnesses were the citizens of said state or country.
which do you think current or imaginary regime or country would that be likened too?.
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rmt1
But if it is a publishing corporation with a board of directors... an oligarchy?
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Regrets for knowing the TATT? Strange feeling overcoming...
by BluePill2 intoday is a strange day.. i have been out of the borg for a while now.
some years have passed and i thoroughly enjoy the freedom, not having to bend my mind and rape my soul to force myself to do and say things that i don't feel or believe.
i started my own business, got a wonderful girlfriend and made some friends (that are not monsters like the wt$ likes to portray others).. my parents, siblings, brothers-in-law, cousins, aunts, uncles, ex-wife, "friends" and my daughter, have cut their contact to me.
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rmt1
When I left I was cut off from all biological family. I took my time to carefully pick a girlfriend/wife, one that had a tight nuclear family and large extended family. Two other small criteria, but the family was the primary. I've been as adopted as adopted gets, they get the whole story, I don't miss the biological family in any way because the substitutes are better in mental, psychological, psychiatric, spiritual ways.
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If you're happy and THEY know it all HELL breaks loose!!!!!
by SophieG inhi guys...is it me...i am beginning to wonder: is a happy ex-jw a target?
i have had a few run ins this week on fb with random jws trying to check me for things that have absolutely nothing to do with the org.
(please dont ask me why they have not un-friended me!
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rmt1
Apostles of Denial. Book title! No one should hide this gleaming gem of coinage under a basket. It deserves a wider circulation. They really do actually _preach_ the active, knowing, deliberate, premeditated denial of facts that conflict with their changing stream of narrative. Could be widely-accepted interpretations of data via the scientific method, could be an event they witnessed with their own eyes of JW behavior, or non-JW behavior, that contradict JW doctrine or JW absolutes or JW dichotomies. They do actually preach denial. If I'm not mistaken, that's actually the main thing they preach. Cartoons of lions and sheep?
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If you're happy and THEY know it all HELL breaks loose!!!!!
by SophieG inhi guys...is it me...i am beginning to wonder: is a happy ex-jw a target?
i have had a few run ins this week on fb with random jws trying to check me for things that have absolutely nothing to do with the org.
(please dont ask me why they have not un-friended me!
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rmt1
Narcissistic Supply, it's frightening how close you are to a cogent argument. I have to say that I am gleaning a ton of useful new concepts for how to digest and interpret the JW heritage I carry around. So, to be blunt, are JWs mentally disabled? It's a rough job distinguishing between what a JW can do for themselves to get out, and what they are incapable of doing, as a social animal bound with evolutionary dependence to a social group, to get out.