a discussion of this talk on friday morning deserves its own thread.
as i said elsewhere, it was a remarkable one.
the speaker was manfred vencebi (google him - he's a bethel bigwig) and some of his remarks are real gems.
"We have our own Bible."
No. WT corporation took the Catholic Bible (including the fabricated word "Jehovah" that a monk came up with centuries ago) and doctored up their own translation (by unnamed and unqualified "scholars") to favor the WT version of deceptive teachings and false prophecies.
i am not talking about posters here on this board ( otherwise i wouldn't be here would i) but in general.. si i am talking those ex j.ws in my community and we just dont get on.
well ok its a bit of an exaggeration to say i don't get on with them, we just dont associate.
this botherd me at first as i thought we would have much in common, but it wasn't so, and it's just the way it is.
Loving every other exJW isn't a mandatory requirement to be an exJW.
That was one of the things I hated about being a JW. It was a requirement that you had to love, even be willing to die for every a$sh*ole of a brother. It was even worse in bethel.
Other than that, there are plenty of exJWs in my life and on the forum here to address that aspect of my life. But I don't feel the need for it to be the only aspect of my life, or force myself to have a close relationship with exJWs I just don't click with. It causes me particular pain when I see someone make the smart move to leave the JWs, but then go on to make a lot of terrible choices in their lives. The more I move on with my life, the more I feel like this is an important abuse recovery network. Consequently, I don't want to immerse myself in the exJW world because it will always remind me of the pain, deception, and wasted years.
hey everyone,.
thanks qcf and nugget for starting threads.
thanks cofty for wondering where i was.
Have a fantastic holiday with your daughter!
when i found out "ttat" i felt like muhammad ali when joe frazer knocked him down in their first fight in the 15th round.
the ref came over grab my gloves and looked me in the eyes and asked me "are you ok, can you continue" and then gave me the standing 8 count.
no it didn't knock me out but it staggered me.
Welcome! Thanks for joining us on here and sharing your story.
the weekly tms bible reading assignment is not read, or not carefully read, by most of the sheeples.
it doesn't really matter, because the consideration of the bible reading material is one of the shortest parts on the meeting with a limited number of comments, and those comments are restricted to less than 30 seconds or you will get counselled.
over and over, the dubs are told to read the bible, yet the organization gives no real encouragement to read the bible by keeping everyone busy in the recruiting work and using relatively few scriptures in their "talks".. why?
In the rate of growth you're using, the numbers are not sustainable. I don't exactly understand your math, but I tried to use your population basis out to 50 years as a sample. I used years and each generation. By year 50 the population profile (adults are over 16, children under 16) would be:
Generation 1: 6 adults
Generation 2: 102 adults 18 children
Generation 3: 270 adults 690 children
Generation 4: 3 adults 987 children
Generation 5: 6 children
This gives you a population profile of about 381 adults to 1698 children. 4.5:1 ratio of kids to adults. So the agressive population approach you've used does have a steep increase; however, that population growth strongly favors the infants. At this point, granny of generation 1 is still dealing with her own 10 year-old 40th child, so don't expect her to help with your 16 kids between the ages of 16 to newborn. She spent her first 40 years popping out a baby every year, so she's already sick of looking at kids. Just imagine the first 8 adults (if we include Mr. and Mrs. Noah) living in the post-flood wasteland with 48 kids age 16 to infant. In a world of this kind of population growth, dad isn't going to have time to get together with the guys to build a tower.
That was why WT set a Towertime population of over 4,000 adult males.
I think I mentioned it earlier in this thread, but the bible doesn't really support aggressive population growth. Where families are named, only 4 or 5 sons are mentioned. Maybe there really were 20 sons for each instead of just the few? That's not what the bible says. It would have been easy to name the prominent ones and say "18 other sons". Instead, the bible sounds rather clear that it was naming them all. From the account, it sounds like Noah left the ark with some few remarks afterward about the few kids/grandkids. Then the story picks up shortly later with the world completely repopulated seemingly to pre-flood levels. Even the Nephilim are spoken of in Numbers. When you look at the example of Abraham and Isaac, fertility wasn't high. Jacob had a large brood... which was 12 sons... by 4 different women.
Sure, math can be used to propose a huge population. But it doesn't fit with the story. Similarly, as mentioned in this thread, the account of the Hebrew population growth in Egypt doesn't work. Conversely, in the story of Solomon's Temple, it goes to the other extreme. Where the Tower of Babel says nothing of the numbers involved and the math comes up small, the account of the temple uses astronomically large numbers for the amount of gold, number of cattle and sheep slaughtered, etc. Just evaluating the number of cattle compared to the small size of Jerusalem, and you realize... that's a lot of bull$h!t.
But I've gotten off-topic of my own thread. For more interesting analysis, read The Atheists Book of Bible Stories. If you don't have your copy, hopefully the link on this thread is working.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/bible/154236/4/The-Atheists-Book-of-Bible-Stories#.U7CSG7HDuSo
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are there any more examples like this?
pictures changed because a person was disfellowshipped?.
"Do the models ever get "famous" in JW circles?"
It's a category of JW fame.
I know that WT has gotten letters from the lovelorn wanting to meet some of the good-looking picture dwellers.
I didn't get all the details and I was deep 'in' so would have tried to forget the matter, but WT got a lot of letters because of one cover, I think of an Awake! that had a beautiful woman and a baby. A fantastic picture... that WT had purchased rights to use, rather than it being their own. Again, I'm not sure but I think the picture was already know in some areas for another advertisement. It must have been something, because the response caused quite a stir.
so, how did the kangaroos get from noah's ark to australia?
i'd never found any references in watchtower litteratrash, until i stumbled upon this farticle "from noah's ark to australia" in the 1969 awake bound volume.
most of it is wordy and rather pointless, so i only typed two middle subheadings for consideration:.
This instructional video is very informative:
the weekly tms bible reading assignment is not read, or not carefully read, by most of the sheeples.
it doesn't really matter, because the consideration of the bible reading material is one of the shortest parts on the meeting with a limited number of comments, and those comments are restricted to less than 30 seconds or you will get counselled.
over and over, the dubs are told to read the bible, yet the organization gives no real encouragement to read the bible by keeping everyone busy in the recruiting work and using relatively few scriptures in their "talks".. why?
I found this instructional video very insightful on this biblical subject:
incredible.
absolutely incredible.
so i asked, " isn't it 100 years since 1914 ?
That was a fantasitic anti-Witness!
"but you know the elders are imperfect and they make mistakes, Jehovah uses imperfect men."
That's the excuse every church uses. JWs really are no better than the rest of the pack. It's the old, "We're imperfect and get caught sinning and lying, but you better treat us like we're divine prophets and the only way to salvation.
so one of my in-laws, a born in dub, started asking me questions about the issues i am having with the religion.
so i told her, rather carefully, how i discovered all the child pedophile cases, went over some of the case details, explained it is occurring all over the world, so isn't just some random misunderstanding, but is widespread hiding of child sex u all abuse.
she was horrified.
"I am an unbaptized publisher."
This puts the elders in a tight spot. They can't disfellowship you, but they can try to pin the "apostate" label on you.
"She suggested I talk to the elders, I told her I was not comfortable doing that."
I'd suggest going to the elders and telling them that this in-law has serious concerns about things she'd heard about the WT pedo cases and that she's very disturbed about the new donation arrangement. Perhaps say that you really didn't want to be involved with this, but she was very insistant on talking to you about it and then suggested that you talk to the elders about it for her.
Man, that would make a sticky mess. I understand if you didn't do it, but it's interesting to wonder how it would play out.
