Posts by Disillusioned JW

7

What it’s like to leave the Jehovah’s Witnesses

by AndersonsInfo in

https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/05/19/felt-end-review-daniel-cox/.

what it’s like to leave the jehovah’s witnesses.

in ‘i felt the end before it came: memoirs of a queer ex-jehovah’s witness,’ daniel allen cox reflects on losing his faith after spending his early years waiting for armageddon.

Disillusioned JW

Beth Sarim, I never thought of fitness centers as being social centers, or as an effective way to make new friends. Please tell me more about that. Maybe I should try that.

Regarding your comment of "Just do everything opposite the Borg preaches" that could be understood in a very different way than you likely mean it. For example, it could mean the following.

- Smoke cigars, cigarettes, marijuana, and elicit drugs. Get drunk often from drinking alcohol. Chew tobacco. Inject yourself with crack cocaine. Get high - as often as possible. Buy the elicit drugs illegally - from street vendors.

- Engage in promiscuous sex, with multiple partners (without protection), and start doing it before age 15 - even as soon as you enter puberty. Become a prostitute and/or a porn star.

- Engage in homosexual (whether gay or lesbian) sex, even become a bisexual.

- Join a youth gang (or become a gangster). Rob stores. Rob banks. Shoot people with guns. Bully people. Harass people.

- Practice the occult; get heavily involved with spiritism. Worship Satan the Devil.

- Drop out of high school. Don't work to get good grades in school. Don't even try to learn at school.

- Deliberately harm your own body.

- Engage in arson. Heavily pollute the environment. Torture animals, including people's pets.

- Etc.

23

Link between relationships and health/happiness

by ExBethelitenowPIMA in

even though i’m agnostic so will not commit to either intelligent design or chance, i love being part of the congregation for the close personal relationships.. there is such a great atmosphere inside the congregation it really is like a family and you don’t get this anywhere else.. a real friend is someone you can rely on when you are in need.

if things go wrong for you and you are going through a hard time you know real friends will be there for you.

as long as you didn’t bring it on yourself by going against gods law then you have to prove you are repentant first of course.. there is a lot of research now saying that good friends is essential for healthy and happiness.

Disillusioned JW

From my reading of science literature promoting evolution, I think that humans did evolve from apes (heck, now evolutionary biologists say modern humans are apes themselves) - but not from any of the now existing species nonhuman apes. The evolutionary books from the 1970s mention fossils of some extinct species of apes (namely, species which the books say were apes) and in the case of some of those extinct species, the books say that those were some of humans ancestors. I also think that maybe even much further back in time an early nonhuman ancestral species of humans evolved from an monkey (a species of monkey which went extinct many tens of millions of years ago). Some of those books even referred to an extinct species which was said to be an apelike monkey (or maybe a monkey-like ape) and a distant ancestor of humans.

As for skulls which are half nonhuman ape and half human, a number of the skulls of some australopithicines appear to be such to me, since they have some human features and some nonhuman ape features. What would be your description of specific features of a skull which is half nonhuman ape and half human? Do you expect that in such a skull every part of the skull must be looking half nonhuman ape and half human? If so, then you won't find such a skull since human evolution didn't work that way. Instead the various parts of the skull evolved human features at different times. For example, The teeth and some aspects of the jaws (such as a 'U" like dental arch versus a "V" like arch or a rectangular arch) evolved human features before the craniums evolved human size proportions. Mosaic evolution is involved.

33

Does the Governing Body already know that Jehovah (the name) came from Babylon the Great?

by Chevelle in

i'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).

Disillusioned JW

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.

33

Does the Governing Body already know that Jehovah (the name) came from Babylon the Great?

by Chevelle in

i'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).

Disillusioned JW

Beth Sarim, the WT Society includes the text of the Aid to Bible Understanding in the WT's online library.

100

American Healthcare: How your system works

by Diogenesister in

canada has universal healthcare.

the consensus is that america never will.

can anyone explain why, please?

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.

78

Top AI inventor Geoffrey Hinton reluctantly concluded that AI will probably humanity fairly soon

by slimboyfat in

geoffrey 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.

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."

53

New World Translation is not much different other translations

by Abraham1 in

key 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.

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.

63

Evolution is a Fact #27 - Monkeys, Typewriters, Shakespeare, 747s etc.

by cofty in

most 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.

Disillusioned JW

I didn't know that any monkeys perform mathematical functions. Please provide a source for information about monkeys doing math.

63

Evolution is a Fact #27 - Monkeys, Typewriters, Shakespeare, 747s etc.

by cofty in

most 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.

Disillusioned JW

Update: It looks like there are no food sources and no minerals which emit UV rays.

78

Top AI inventor Geoffrey Hinton reluctantly concluded that AI will probably humanity fairly soon

by slimboyfat in

geoffrey 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.

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.