slimboyfat

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Posts by slimboyfat

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  41

  Cambridge professor just went full retard ...

  by LoveUniHateExams in

  1. social
  2. current

  ever heard of david runciman?.

  he's a professor of politics at the university of cambridge, no less.. he's also a complete retard, for want of a better word.

  according to prof. runciman, six year old children should get the vote, so as to counteract britain's aging population.

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  slimboyfat

  Children pay taxes if they earn money, as far as I am aware, such as is the case with child actors and so on.

  It was you who first wrote:

  on the basis that children (in this case 6 year olds) aren't legally responsible for what they say or do

  The age is 10 in England according to government website.

  https://www.gov.uk/age-of-criminal-responsibility
  

  Why should minors not be allowed to vote? My best reasons are that 1) generally they are not interested voting 2) if they did vote they would just do what others suggest and 3) they don’t understand many of the issues.

  On the other hand you could say much the same about many adults. So are they good enough reasons? Or are there better reasons? I don’t know but I think it’s an interesting idea, without needing to call anyone regard.
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  61

  2018 Service Year Report - Released on jw.org

  by Drearyweather in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  2018 service year report of jehovah’s witnesses worldwide.

  see details of the global preaching work of jehovah’s witnesses from september 2017 to august 2018.. https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/2018-service-year-report/.

  average publishers preaching each month: 8,360,594 (2017 - 8,248,982).

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  slimboyfat

  It’s annoying not to have to average publisher number for historical comparison, but the peak figure it still useful. It is more volatile than the average figure, but in the long term it evens out. So for any given year the average figure would be more acccurate to have, but in the long term the peak figure reveals the same trend.

  To be clear JWs are doing much better than most churches. The latest Church of Scotland Yearbook has just been published for example. Get a load of this. Their latest membership figure is 337,000, which is down from 661,000 in 1997.

  By contrast Jehovah’s Witnesses in Britain grew from 132,000 in 1997 to 139,000 in 2017.

  So while the Church of Scotland declined by 49%(!) JWs continued to grow modestly and added 5%.

  I don’t know of any other significant Christian denomination in the UK (apart from churches that comprise mostly immigrants) that has grown at all over the last 20 years.

  I suspect that JWs will begin to decline in the UK, indeed the number of congregations has already begun to decline. But the fact remains that JWs have done incredibly well to defy the trend of secularisation in the UK up to now.
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  61

  2018 Service Year Report - Released on jw.org

  by Drearyweather in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  2018 service year report of jehovah’s witnesses worldwide.

  see details of the global preaching work of jehovah’s witnesses from september 2017 to august 2018.. https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/2018-service-year-report/.

  average publishers preaching each month: 8,360,594 (2017 - 8,248,982).

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  slimboyfat

  It’s still worth noting that, compared with most other religions, JWs are doing pretty well.

  Take Britain for example where JWs are still managing to grow a little. This is pretty remarkable in a broader religious perspective when you consider that practically every other denomination is in decline: Anglicans, Church of Scotland, Catholics, Methodists, Mormons, Salvation Army, Brethren, Baptists, Christadelphians, Unitarians. Many denominations are in freefall, having lost 2% or more every singe year for decades. Some are talking about folding their churches as a whole within the next few decades. (The only churches that are growing in Britain are churches that comprise immigrants who have newly arrived from other countries.)

  In that context the fact that JWs have managed to grow at all in the last few years is pretty amazing. How much longer can they defy the gravity of general religious decline? On top of general religious decline, they have many internal problems. Who can say what the future holds, but my best guess has to be that they cannot defy gravity much longer. And the signs of decline are already beginning to appear: declining congregation numbers, relying on immigrant groups for growth, cutbacks and branch downscaled, general rhetoric of decline.
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  61

  2018 Service Year Report - Released on jw.org

  by Drearyweather in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  2018 service year report of jehovah’s witnesses worldwide.

  see details of the global preaching work of jehovah’s witnesses from september 2017 to august 2018.. https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/2018-service-year-report/.

  average publishers preaching each month: 8,360,594 (2017 - 8,248,982).

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  slimboyfat

  It’s bizarre that they calculate the percentage increase for each country using a the average publisher number when that figure is not given. Is this just a weird blip, or is there method to their madness?
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  61

  2018 Service Year Report - Released on jw.org

  by Drearyweather in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  2018 service year report of jehovah’s witnesses worldwide.

  see details of the global preaching work of jehovah’s witnesses from september 2017 to august 2018.. https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/2018-service-year-report/.

  average publishers preaching each month: 8,360,594 (2017 - 8,248,982).

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  slimboyfat

  Wow the full numbers are up. Some fascinating developments!
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  61

  2018 Service Year Report - Released on jw.org

  by Drearyweather in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  2018 service year report of jehovah’s witnesses worldwide.

  see details of the global preaching work of jehovah’s witnesses from september 2017 to august 2018.. https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/2018-service-year-report/.

  average publishers preaching each month: 8,360,594 (2017 - 8,248,982).

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  slimboyfat

  Both average and peak number seem to be up on these figures, no?

  By the way, have they really published the average figure this year after dropping it last year? That’s a big improvement, if true.

  I hope we still get the country breakdown in due course.
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  14

  A Message For JWAnswers

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  hi jwa.

  i want to encourage you to engage in some genuine conversation.. i appreciate what you are trying to do.

  you clearly have a passion for your subject — you must have invested countless hours in your series of videos.

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  slimboyfat

  You are projecting your own beliefs and assuming most people agree with you.

  I don’t think it’s a given that people here necessarily agree in their opinions about the Watchtower organisation. There is a whole range of views on that topic, as on many others, which may only be obscured somewhat by the fact that a small number of posters are loud about expressing their views, while many others, particularly those with views that are in the minority, don’t bother expressing views that will simply be shouted down anyway. I know of posters who believe in God and some who believe JW beliefs to varying degrees, but are not interested in entering the type of combative discussion this forum tends to offer on these topics.
  

  Plus there are people arriving on this forum fresh from the KH every day. So to suggest that everyone here already agrees that Watchtower is wrong, and the only thing left worth discussing is whether the Bible is true and God even exists - is wide of the mark.
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  61

  2018 Service Year Report - Released on jw.org

  by Drearyweather in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  2018 service year report of jehovah’s witnesses worldwide.

  see details of the global preaching work of jehovah’s witnesses from september 2017 to august 2018.. https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/2018-service-year-report/.

  average publishers preaching each month: 8,360,594 (2017 - 8,248,982).

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  slimboyfat

  Wow number of congregations is down. I may be wrong but I think that’s the first time ever that the number of congregations has gone down. (Even following 1975 the number of congregations didn’t actually decrease, I don’t think) This is the most telling statistic.

  Other figures can be fudged. People can inflate hours, roll over reports and increase the peak number, count people on the phone link for the memorial when they were not counted before, and so on. But you can’t inflate or exaggerate a congregation. It either exists, holds meetings, and pays its bills, or it doesn’t.

  So the most verifiable statistic of JW growth, the number of congregations, is now in decline.
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  5

  Population growth and demographics

  by dropoffyourkeylee in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  some recent news articles stated that japan's low birth rates are related to their population decline, and gave a link to the following article which i find interesting.. https://www.thoughtco.com/age-sex-pyramids-and-population-pyramids-1435272.

  the age-sex pyramid graph is enlightening.

  it makes me wonder what the age-sex pyramid for jws looks like and how it compares to the population as a whole.

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  slimboyfat

  Thanks shepherdess. I don’t know if I made the comment before, but obviously the Australian JW population graph would be more meaningful if it could be compared side by side with a graph for the Australian population as a whole. Are JWs aging more rapidly than the general population? I suspect so, but it would be interesting to see it visually.
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  5

  Population growth and demographics

  by dropoffyourkeylee in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  some recent news articles stated that japan's low birth rates are related to their population decline, and gave a link to the following article which i find interesting.. https://www.thoughtco.com/age-sex-pyramids-and-population-pyramids-1435272.

  the age-sex pyramid graph is enlightening.

  it makes me wonder what the age-sex pyramid for jws looks like and how it compares to the population as a whole.

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  slimboyfat

  I think shepherdless posted some graphs for the age profile of JWs in Australia and New Zealand. Also diachronic analyses that show the average age of JWs is increasing rapidly.