You can fool some of the people some of the time... um... but... you didn't fool me before. However now... well...uuuuhhh... maybe. I have no idea what your Gravatar is.
Posts by Heaven
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15New Avatar, Same Old Me
by Simon insomeone decided to make their avatar almost identical to my old one so i changed mine to avoid any confusion.. <- so lookout for this anytime you want to read some "amazing words of wisdom" from now on :d.
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Heaven
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8
Attention all leaders of corporate organisations under threat!
by Half banana inimagine you are on the governing board of a religious organisation with around eight million subscribers and an annual income of approximately a $billion (well it used to be!).
you are about to be handed a mass of legal cases against you for concealing your negligent practice of concealing paedophiles in your congregations---followed by the prospect of a cascade of damning publicity?
do you admit you were wrong and apologise unreservedly?.
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Heaven
Anyone remember the Ford 'Pinto'? It's all about market competition and the money. The Pinto is the reason I will never buy a Ford product.
Case: The Ford Pinto - Business Ethics
Excerpt from article: "Ford knew that the Pinto represented a serious fire hazard when struck from the rear, even in low-speed collisions. Ford officials faced a decision. Should they go ahead with the existing design, thereby meeting the production timetable but possibly jeopardizing consumer safety? Or should they delay production of the Pinto by redesigning the gas tank to make it safer and thus concede another year of subcompact dominance to foreign companies? Ford not only pushed ahead with the original design but stuck to it for the next six years.
How exactly did Ford reach that conclusion? We don’t know for sure, but an internal report, “Fatalities Associated with Crash-Induced Fuel Leakage and Fires,” reveals the cost-benefit reasoning that the company used in cases like this. This report was not written with the pinto in mind; rather, it concerns fuel leakage in rollover accidents (not rear-end collisions), and its computations applied to all Ford vehicles, not just the Pinto. Nevertheless, it illustrates the type of reasoning that was probably used in the Pinto case."
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13
The rich will not inherit the Kingdom of God—Did Jesus really say this?
by anointed1 init is our experience that love of money brings action towards accumulating abundance of wealth which ultimately convinces the owner that “i was wasting my time” which in turn motivates him to turn into philanthropy (like bill gates and co did).
this is a perfect design (designed to work independently of god) like a journey of which the first half is wasteful and the second half is fruitful, and it is to be viewed as a whole.
hence it is unlikely that jesus would say: “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of god.” (mathew 19:24) verse is obviously attributed to jesus by later writers.. this means question of morality is not complicated if viewed as a whole process.
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Heaven
never a jw, just FYI... while oppostate's Gravatar is similar in colour to Simon's, it is not the same picture.
Simon's Gravatar =
oppostate's Gravatar =
As to the OP, Jesus wrote nothing down, the Jesus myth was verbally/orally passed down over decades and centuries before being committed in writing, the actual authors of the Gospels never met Jesus, and these 4 books contradict each other leads one to the only conclusion that what is claimed to be a quote from Jesus is highly suspect and quite likely someone else's statement.
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210
Morality Without Deity
by cofty inone of the most persistent arguments for belief in god centres on the necessity of an ultimate law-giver and epitome of goodness.. a softer version is seen in the genuine concern that a loss of faith will result in a corresponding loss of a moral compass - a more strident argument links the existence of good and evil with proof of the reality of god.
it is often asserted that without god, moral decisions degenerate to nothing more than personal preferences and the victory of "might is right".. i want to succinctly lay out my response as an atheist, and show that a supreme being is not required for objective morality.. it is helpful to distinguish between absolute morality, objective morality and subjective morality.
christian apologists frequently conflate the first two, and secular debaters often fail to point out the difference.. theists who disagree on everything else, are unanimous that god is perfectly good.
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Heaven
There are many examples, past and present, where religion fails the morality test. Most believers are ignorant and have no idea of the ugliness within their own religions until they experience it for themselves. Catholics, in particular, have an enormous blood trail legacy their religion has caused (examples include the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, and Witch Burnings just to name a few. I could go on but I leave it up to the individual to do their own research). Even when stories come out, those unaffected make up excuses such as "well it was only one case" kind of bull shite - as if this makes it ok.
One only has to look to the Catholic and Jehovah's Witnesses religions, to name just 2, where we find a mountain of immorality in their many pedophilia cases being just one example. And these cases, among other abuses, continue to occur. If religion was truly moral, these things would not be happening.
I am not sure why Christian believers take offense when their very own foundational holy book speaks to where evil comes from at Isaiah 45:7: I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. - KJV Note: I find it interesting that certain translations have altered the word 'evil' to be 'calamity' or 'disaster'. It strikes me as an attempt at softening the gravity of the word without actually being successful. Just one more example of the disingenuousness of religion
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36
How do JW's determine a person is anointed?
by thinker11 ini've always wondered about this.
when a person believes they made a spiritual connection with god and proclaims themselves as anointed, how do they determine whether this person is anointed or not.
does a group of elders look at the person's spiritual resume and check off the person's pioneer stats, bible knowledge, attendance, work ethic, personality, etc and then believe in the person if they have a good track record?
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Heaven
Like zeb said, when I asked this question I was told "You just know. A feeling comes over you and... you just know."
Uh huh. So like everything related to religion, it's hocus pocus, vapourware, smoke and mirrors, presto chango.
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36
Why does God allow animals to suffer? Does God care about animals? What does the Watchtower teach about this?
by defender of truth inthe following article will address these questions, and attempt to answer them.. after helping jwfacts with his page on animal suffering, i decided to write this article.. it is mainly aimed at helping jehovahs witnesses and other believers in god to think about the issue, as well as the apparent contradictions in watchtower teaching.. thanks must go to jwfacts for the encouragement, and giving me permission to use an image from his page and to use some of the quotes.. also, thankyou to cofty for general moral support.. please let me know what you think everybody, and feel free to reproduce any part or all of the article on any other website, just post and let me know that you've used it on your site please.. (i'd appreciate it if anyone could post to tell me they found a point in here useful, it would encourage me to keep going).. okay, here it is:.
why does god allow animal suffering?.
does it trouble you to see animals in pain?.
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Heaven
"Why does God allow animals to suffer?"
My Dad was a JW MS. I asked him a few years back why God allows animals to suffer and die. The Bible and Religion talk sin/the fall as the reasons humans suffer and die (which in my mind nullifies the ransom sacrifice of Jesus but I didn't get into that discussion with him). What had the animals done to deserve this same punishment?
He could not answer me.
All my life, JWs have never been able to answer my questions.
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I am a Living Time Machine
by TerryWalstrom inwhich world is this?_________________when the doctor pulled my screaming body out of mom all those 7 decades ago, i landed in a post-wwii world.it was--compared to today's world--an alien planet.. the world i live in today has nothing in common with the world in which i grew up.. there were no cell phones back then--there were black telephones with a dial-tone and an operator who placed your call.
everywhere you found telephone booths!
a call was a nickle.where did all those telephone booths go?i dunno.where did my whole world go?i dunno.. tv sets were huge boxes with tubes and small screens.
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Heaven
Finkelstein... my grandparents had a wringer washer very similar to that.
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9
Evolution is a Fact Series Index So Far.
by cofty ini will resume this series soon.. #1 protein functional redundancy comparing the sequences of amino acids in ubiquitous proteins confirms the relationship between all living things..
#2 dna functional redundancy comparison of the dna that codes for the amino acids of ubiquitous proteins predicts the tree of life with an astonishing degree of accuracy..
#3 ervs endogenous retroviruses that infected our ancestors are found in the same place of the genome of our closest primate cousins..
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Heaven
And hopefully by 'soon' you don't mean Botchtower's 'Armageddon soon' because we all know what THAT means (aka never).
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How can the WTS call themselves Christians when they have no Christian church?
by TTWSYF inso was jesus a fool or a liar?
he said that his church would last all ages, didn't he?.
math 16:8and i say to thee: that thou art peter; and upon this rock i will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
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Heaven
Christians forget that Jesus was Jewish.
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Why does God allow animals to suffer? Does God care about animals? What does the Watchtower teach about this?
by defender of truth inthe following article will address these questions, and attempt to answer them.. after helping jwfacts with his page on animal suffering, i decided to write this article.. it is mainly aimed at helping jehovahs witnesses and other believers in god to think about the issue, as well as the apparent contradictions in watchtower teaching.. thanks must go to jwfacts for the encouragement, and giving me permission to use an image from his page and to use some of the quotes.. also, thankyou to cofty for general moral support.. please let me know what you think everybody, and feel free to reproduce any part or all of the article on any other website, just post and let me know that you've used it on your site please.. (i'd appreciate it if anyone could post to tell me they found a point in here useful, it would encourage me to keep going).. okay, here it is:.
why does god allow animal suffering?.
does it trouble you to see animals in pain?.
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Heaven
Only Goddesses care about animals. Epona is one example. Dump the Gods, and come to the Goddess side.