ThomasMore, the fact the Biblical Hebrew name of God is excluded in so many translations of the Bible (despite the Hebrew Scriptures stressing the importance of that name) is one the reasons why I ceased believing in the existence of the biblical god. That is because surely if that God/god really existed he would seen to it that his name would have been preserved in the translations and that knowledge of the correct pronunciation of it would been preserved.
Disillusioned JW
JoinedPosts by Disillusioned JW
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Does the Governing Body already know that Jehovah (the name) came from Babylon the Great?
by Chevelle ini'll start by stating the obvious... according to the watchtower, the catholic church is a huge part of babylon the great which is led by satan and his demons.
raymundus martini, a catholic monk (who "represents" babylon the great to some extent), woke up one day in the 13th century and decided to alter yhwh so it can be easily pronounced.
hence the spanish-ish version of yhwh was created... jehova... (sounds something like this in spanish: heh-o-va).
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Disillusioned JW
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Does the Governing Body already know that Jehovah (the name) came from Babylon the Great?
by Chevelle ini'll start by stating the obvious... according to the watchtower, the catholic church is a huge part of babylon the great which is led by satan and his demons.
raymundus martini, a catholic monk (who "represents" babylon the great to some extent), woke up one day in the 13th century and decided to alter yhwh so it can be easily pronounced.
hence the spanish-ish version of yhwh was created... jehova... (sounds something like this in spanish: heh-o-va).
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Disillusioned JW
Beth Sarim, the WT Society includes the text of the Aid to Bible Understanding in the WT's online library.
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American Healthcare: How your system works
by Diogenesister incanada has universal healthcare.
the consensus is that america never will.
can anyone explain why, please?
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Disillusioned JW
Regarding the requirement to have health insurance in the USA (at least one with really low level coverage which covers preventative care, such as getting free vaccinations and certain free health screenings), when Donald Trump was president the Republicans in congress passed legislation which removed the penalty for not having health insurance (though technically the law still requires people to have at least very minimal health insurance coverage).
I agree with SydBarrett that the really bad thing about employer provided health insurance is the situation of when a person becomes unemployed. That is why I want the USA federal government to provide single payer universal health insurance (but with the option for people to choose a non-government health insurance plan if they prefer). I have been unemployed a number of times and thus without health insurance a number of times, until my very liberal state government passed a state law providing a free insurance plan (like medicaid, or as an extension of medicaid) to very low income people (and to those with no income at all, including to the homeless). For a while I was covered by that state health insurance plan at no charge to me (but each month I had I to inform the state government what my income was for the month). My state recently (by way of a ballot measure which the voters passed) amended the state constitution to declare that everyone in the state is entitled to access to affordable health care.
Fortunately currently I am employed (for six years now with the same company) with a really great medical insurance plan (with really low deductibles) in which my employer pays 90% of the premium costs (otherwise the premium I would have to pay would be way too expensive for me). In the plan my out of pocket maximum (including deductibles and co-pays) is only $650/year when I go to an in-network provider.
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Top AI inventor Geoffrey Hinton reluctantly concluded that AI will probably humanity fairly soon
by slimboyfat ingeoffrey hinton, major inventor of artificial intelligence: .
“if you take the existential risk seriously, as i now do—i used to think it was way off, but now i think it’s serious, and fairly close—it might be quite sensible to just stop developing these things any further, but i think it’s completely naïve to think that would happen.
there’s no way to make that happen.
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Disillusioned JW
To this discussion there is a relevant portion of an article at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/18/world/asia/g7-ukraine-artificial-intelligence.html called "Ukraine and China Will Dominate G7 Summit, but a New Threat Lurks: A.I. - The leaders are expected to hold their first talks on a common regulatory approach to generative artificial intelligence." It says in part the following.
"But at some point over three days of discussions, the G7 leaders are also expected to venture into new territory: the first conversations among the world’s largest democratic economies about a common approach to regulating the use of generative artificial intelligence programs like GPT-4.
... But as the new artificial intelligence language model from OpenAI made nations around the world focus for the first time on the possibilities for disinformation, chaos and the physical destruction of critical infrastructure, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, began calling counterparts to seek a common discussion.
... American officials say that in the case of chatbots, even a vague foundational discussion may help in establishing some shared principles: that the corporations that bring products using the large-language models will be primarily responsible for their safety, and that there must be transparency rules that make it clear what kind of data each system was trained on. That will enable lower-level aides to discuss details of what those first regulations would look like, the officials said."
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New World Translation is not much different other translations
by Abraham1 inkey scripture 2 timothy 3:16 should have been translated as “every scripture inspired of god is also profitable for teaching” like many other serious translations (such as american standard version ; douay-rheims bible etc) as it is what the greek text says.. this is in harmony with the contents of bible and also with the writer paul himself who knew after his departure ‘even from his own number men will arise and distort the truth.’ (acts 20:29-30) for example, verses such as romans 7:19 is such distortion.
such verses cannot originate from real paul who was “holy, righteous and blameless.” (1 thessalonians 2:10) hence paul had the freeness of speech to tell others to be “blameless” like him (1 thessalonians 5:19-23; ephesians 5:24) there are many things in the scriptures which are not inspired such as words of satan, words of job’s wife and his false friends, words of judas, lot’s daughters …etc.
apostle peter never disowned jesus because if he had done so, his contemporaries would have interrupted him when he rebuked jews, saying: “you disowned the holy and righteous one and asked that a murderer be released to you.“ (acts 3:14) his listeners would have asked him “what right do you have to reprove us for ‘disowning jesus” when you yourself have done it first?” all such verses or accounts were later adoptions.
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Disillusioned JW
Actually the Wescott Hort text wasn't pro0duced till decades after the first edition of the Emphatic Diaglott. They both made use of some of the same Greek manuscripts, but the Greek texts they publish are not exactly the same. In the early 1900s Russell made use of a critical text by Tischendorf, in based upon that text the WT's Berean KJV Bible editions recommended readers to cross out various verses (and parts of verses) from their copies of the Berean KJV Bible.
Wescott and Hort did not provide a literal translation in the publication of their Greek text. The interlinear English translation in the WT's Kingdom Interlinear Transaltion was was translated by the WT.
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Evolution is a Fact #27 - Monkeys, Typewriters, Shakespeare, 747s etc.
by cofty inmost creationist arguments can be summarised as "complexity, complexity, complexity - therefore god".
we have all heard the illustrations about the odds of (insert favourite example) evolving, being less than 10,000 monkeys typing macbeth by pure chance.
evolution is not like that.
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Disillusioned JW
I didn't know that any monkeys perform mathematical functions. Please provide a source for information about monkeys doing math.
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Evolution is a Fact #27 - Monkeys, Typewriters, Shakespeare, 747s etc.
by cofty inmost creationist arguments can be summarised as "complexity, complexity, complexity - therefore god".
we have all heard the illustrations about the odds of (insert favourite example) evolving, being less than 10,000 monkeys typing macbeth by pure chance.
evolution is not like that.
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Disillusioned JW
Update: It looks like there are no food sources and no minerals which emit UV rays.
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Top AI inventor Geoffrey Hinton reluctantly concluded that AI will probably humanity fairly soon
by slimboyfat ingeoffrey hinton, major inventor of artificial intelligence: .
“if you take the existential risk seriously, as i now do—i used to think it was way off, but now i think it’s serious, and fairly close—it might be quite sensible to just stop developing these things any further, but i think it’s completely naïve to think that would happen.
there’s no way to make that happen.
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Disillusioned JW
slimboyfat your title for this topic seems to be missing a word in between the words "probably" and "humanity". Did you intend your title to say "... probably kill humanity ..." or ".... probably destroy humanity ..."? If not, what did you intend to say in between the words "probably" and "humanity"?
It is possible that AI could eventually kill many humans within 10 years. It is also possible that some human (or group of humans) might specifically program AI to do such (such as for militaristic purposes or for terrorism purposes). The human (or humans) might do so on a targeted basis, and later the human (or humans) might loose control of the AI. That would especially be the case if the AI has a computer virus component to enable it to rapidly replicate, mutate, and spread by evolution (though a non-biological evolution) under the mechanism of natural selection.
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Top AI inventor Geoffrey Hinton reluctantly concluded that AI will probably humanity fairly soon
by slimboyfat ingeoffrey hinton, major inventor of artificial intelligence: .
“if you take the existential risk seriously, as i now do—i used to think it was way off, but now i think it’s serious, and fairly close—it might be quite sensible to just stop developing these things any further, but i think it’s completely naïve to think that would happen.
there’s no way to make that happen.
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Disillusioned JW
LV101 go ahead and fantasize all you want of the conspiracy claims you mentioned. But as for me, I don't believe those particular conspiracy theories at all.
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Evolution is a Fact #27 - Monkeys, Typewriters, Shakespeare, 747s etc.
by cofty inmost creationist arguments can be summarised as "complexity, complexity, complexity - therefore god".
we have all heard the illustrations about the odds of (insert favourite example) evolving, being less than 10,000 monkeys typing macbeth by pure chance.
evolution is not like that.
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Disillusioned JW
Note also that https://ehs.lbl.gov/resource/documents/radiation-protection/non-ionizing-radiation/ultraviolet-radiation/ says the following.
"UV-A (315–400 nm)
...The most significant adverse health effects have been reported at wavelengths below 315 nm, known collectively as actinic ultraviolet."
Evolution thus protects our retinas from most of the dangers of UV ways while providing us humans the ability to see from a small portion of the UV spectrum of the sun's light. Now isn't evolution truly amazing!