fodeja

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Posts by fodeja

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  9

  Germany, the "truth" is worth lying...

  by Norm in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the multinational printing empire and con operation in brooklyn better known as the watchtower society is in a desperate struggle to appear mainstream and normal to the general public all over the world.

  after over 100 years of publishing the most insane drivel and countless failed predictions this is of course an uphill struggle.. what makes it even harder is that they merely want to foster the illusion that the watchtower society is mainstream.

  they have no wish for it to actually be mainstream.

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  fodeja

  In response to a so-called Enquete Commission hearing the Watchtower Society has made a 7 page document which among other things state:

  It should probably be noted that this hearing was *not* connected to the WTS per se, or their attempts to be recognized as a church. The hearing was initiated by some sort of parliamentary commission on the future of voluntary social work (or whatever else "bürgerschaftliches Engagement" is supposed to mean).

  I guess the WTS just saw a chance to be heard - and since they weren't under an oath of any sort, they could lie as much as they wanted ;-)

  f.
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  9

  Germany, the "truth" is worth lying...

  by Norm in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the multinational printing empire and con operation in brooklyn better known as the watchtower society is in a desperate struggle to appear mainstream and normal to the general public all over the world.

  after over 100 years of publishing the most insane drivel and countless failed predictions this is of course an uphill struggle.. what makes it even harder is that they merely want to foster the illusion that the watchtower society is mainstream.

  they have no wish for it to actually be mainstream.

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  fodeja

  You said the WTS wants recognition in Germany? Why is this an issue? Don't they have the freedom to preach?

  Of course they have that freedom. Possible reasons:

  1) Money: recognized churches enjoy a number of additional tax benefits.
  2) Official recognition is hoped to remove that sticky "cult" stigma.
  3) Money.
  4) Attention: nobody gives a damn about the JWs nowadays. I bet quite a good percentage of people don't even know they exist. Their legal struggles, however, earn them at least a little bit of attention in the media.
  5) Money.
  6) Distraction: membership is on a slow but steady decline, baptismal figures are falling and falling and falling. The WTS's adventures in the legal world may distract the R&F from that for a while.

  Did I mention "money"?

  f.

  edited: 5)
  edited again because I can't count
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  2

  Please, I need a translation...

  by sf in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  babelfish cannot do it.

  what language is this?

  and where else might i go for translation?.

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  fodeja

  What language is this?

  Indonesian ("Baha Indonesia"), If I'm not mistaken.

  f.
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  28

  Pasted from a jw board!

  by claudia in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  oh im going to puke, i did a copy and paste from aisnes db, all real jws.

  the part where she says the awake and wt mags surpass a college education really sent me over the edge!.

  "i have 5 children.

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  fodeja

  <i>Many witnesses say that reading the Awake gives one the equivalent of a college education.</i>

  Sure, just like I'll get my Masters from glancing through a couple of old Reader's Digest copies in my doctor's waiting room.

  This attitude simply reflects the fact that the concept of "studying" has been re-defined and narrowed down to "memorizing rather simple, one-dimensional stuff without a hint of critical analysis" in the JW world. It's that desparate programme of forcefully simplifying a world that seems just way too complicated to grasp. That's why so many JWs seem to believe they "know how the world works". Yes, their model of the world: good vs. evil, black vs. white, God vs. Satan. Hey, the world is so simple, why even finish high school? What could we possibly learn from such an "advanced education"?!

  Poor kids.

  f.
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  18

  Funny grammatical errors by foreigners......

  by LDH in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  as you may know, i will laugh at you if you confuse:.

  hear and here.

  too and to.. i will also, laugh at syntax errors.

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  fodeja

  "its" vs. "it's"

  "phenomenon" (singular) vs. "phenomena" (plural) - why does NOBODY get this right?!

  "compatabile" (compatible)

  "per say" (one of my favourites! - oh, Maximus already listed that one)

  And lots of others that don't come to my mind right now.

  Seems to me that non-native speakers (like me :-)) usually get the spelling right, but have trouble with grammar and common phrases. Sometimes grammar mistakes can indicate where the person is coming from: Scandinavians tend to make a lot of singular/plural related errors, for instance "Many people gets annoyed". Those from German speaking countries like to use "the" too often and concatenate words: english-lecture, spellingmistake.

  f.
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  10

  The Good, The Bad and Evolution

  by Defender in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  in the bible account of genesis, there we were told that adam and eve ate from the forbidden tree of knowledge of good and bad and thus, like god, they started to know good and bad.

  these few words and actions apparently changed the course of humanity.

  even if we assume that this account is just a fable and did not actually happen, a number of questions and issues come up namely;.

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  fodeja

  joel,

  Morality basically comes down to an ESS (evolutionary survival strategy) that keeps us from conflict with fellow humans ...

  That should read "evolutionary _stable_ strategy", I think? I wouldn't overrate game theoretic approaches as an explanation of phenomena on all levels - it seems quite a bit too mechanistic to explain the unique things that make us human. But I agree that game theory is a very powerful scientific approach to the understanding of interaction between entities of all kinds: from biology to economics.

  One of the first things you learn from game theory is that it's NOT always the most aggressive strategy that dominates all others (given a sufficiently non-trivial model). As a matter of fact, strictly dominating strategies are rare in such models, but Nash equilibriums (basically, stable situations in which no participant has any reason to deviate from his particular strategy or mix of strategies) can always be derived. In these situations, a variety of strategies prevail. Things aren't as easy as "the baddest guy wins", and game theory shows us why without having to resort to fuzzy moral principles and other subjective valuations. Which may be surprising to many people who believe that co-operation makes no sense without a supernatural explanation.

  f.
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  37

  The secret of SUE revealed

  by Sue in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  ok, now i reveal the truth about sue.

  1/ i am a woman.. 2/ i am german.

  3/ i am disfellowshipped.

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  fodeja

  The "questions" in German:

  Hast du auf der Grundlage des Opfers Jesu Christi deine Sünden bereut und dich Jehova hingegeben, um seinen Willen zu tun?

  Bist du dir darüber im klaren, daß du dich durch deine Hingabe und Taufe als ein Zeuge Jehovas zu erkennen gibst, der mit der vom Geist geleiteten Organisation Gottes verbunden ist?

  Which is, of course, very much a literal translation of the English original. (Hey, we all know that the WTS translators in Selters do not hesitate to bend and break all laws, rules, and style conventions of the German language just to keep their translations as literal as possible. Nicht wahr?)

  See also: http://www.bechhaus.de/zjtaufe.html
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  7

  Jehovah is Going to Kill Your Babysitter

  by metatron in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this is such a useful quote, it needs to be repeated.

  and recopied everywhere.. sept.2000 kingdom ministry article entitled.

  "lives are at stake!.

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  fodeja

  Is there a scanned copy of this article available somewhere?

  Would be nice to have this in hardcopy when (if) the dubs ever show up again at my door: "No, we don't believe that everyone except us is going to be slaughtered really soon now...we don't judge...only apostates would say so, haha!". Grrr...

  f.
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  13

  Branch Office Report

  by Dogpatch in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  http://thetruthhurts.freeservers.com/report.htm

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  fodeja

  Villages are far off from cemeteries. Chief asked, `Why do you want the KingHall next to the cemetery?' Bros. replied: `Because Jeh has promised to resurrect the dead. We do not want them to have far to go.' What faith in Jeh's promises!

  Hmmm....makes you wonder why the JWs didn't like Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video, then? ;)

  f.
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  11

  new assembly procedure?

  by wheelwithinwheel in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  a brother just told me about a new assembly procedure.

  during the program at his d.c. this past week-end (cornwall, ontario) the chairman asked everyone to pick up their belongings and leave the stadium immediately.

  everyone gathered in a nearby park.

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  fodeja

  The circulating rumor (damage control ?) was that the city wanted to test evacuation procedures for the stadium and thought the J.W assembly would be the best to test with, they being so organized.

  This reminds me of an interview with two JWs in a regional newspaper in Germany. Asked about the reasons for keeping track of field service time, placed magazines etc., they actually claimed that it is a requirement of the tax authority!

  f.

  link to the interview (German language): http://infolink-net.de/docs/news/presse050.htm