the royal commission hearing starting on monday, july 27, 2015 - australian day and date - (and it could go on until august 7th depending on how many witnesses testify) regarding jehovah's witnesses handling of child abuse is supposed to be streamed.. it could be that the hearing will only be audio not video although we were informed it will be streamed.
we'll find out in a few hours.. i live in the central time zone of the us and right now here it is sunday, 3: 45 pm.
in sydney, australia, it is 15 hours ahead of us.
Max Horley just reconfirmed the 2 witness rule. No judicial committee unless 2 witnesses. He said the solution was to ask the accused to confess.
He was asked if he understood that sexual assault would not generally be witnessed - answered yes.
Admitted that it's a 'very sad situation' for the one making the accusation.
Again referred to calling the 'branch' or the 'society'.
the royal commission hearing starting on monday, july 27, 2015 - australian day and date - (and it could go on until august 7th depending on how many witnesses testify) regarding jehovah's witnesses handling of child abuse is supposed to be streamed.. it could be that the hearing will only be audio not video although we were informed it will be streamed.
we'll find out in a few hours.. i live in the central time zone of the us and right now here it is sunday, 3: 45 pm.
in sydney, australia, it is 15 hours ahead of us.
i'm just curious about something & wonder if the experts could help.. basically i am documenting all of the main lines of evidence for the jws being the one & then investigating each claim systematically.. i have now reached the dreaded november 1st, 2011 watchtower & am sitting in front of a copy of cartes du ciel and a babylonian calendar converter i found at http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~gent0113/babylon/babycal_converter.htm.
i realise these claims have been challenged and documented in depth elsewhere, but i'm keen to do my own research rather than copy & paste.
my question is regarding date conversion - when inputting the gregorian dates as given at the bottom of the tablet's translation i found at http://www.caeno.org/pdf/f019_translation.pdf then the lunar positions all seemed pretty close (visually, i wasn't dealing with exact degrees here).
Hi
The VAT 4956 observations were well explained in this post:
The observations much better match 568/7 BC rather than Furali's (WT) dating to 588/7 BC.
The lunar three observations which were disregarded by the 2011 WT article as 'not reliable', exclude the possibility of the WT dating to 588/7 BC.
that's' the headline of an article in the sydney morning herald.
my jw family are sharing it with glee on facebook right now.
here's the link; .
Hi Umberto
The story broke in May 2014 as reported in the Sunday Times. The thread at the time was:
The Shannon Farmer referred to in the article is something of a bloodless surgery celebrity in JW world. He wrote this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Your-Body-Choice-Shannon-Farmer/dp/981041708X
The double standard is that the author - a former CO and elder - when dealing with a dieing Witness needing a transfusion, would push the doctrine of abstaining from blood (well, of course there's fractions ...), but are being paid to promote a program that only seeks to restrict the use of blood to one unit at a time.
A bit like abstaining from fornication - unless it's once 'unit' at a time.
Hope this helps
Regards to Adso
Pants
so, unfortunately, i'm still on the tms and had a talk tonight (in front of a co, no less) and the talk was on the subject of adultery.
in the source material there's reference to "spiritual adultery" i.e.
idolotry or when israel had alliances with pagan nations.
I had a bit of fun with some of my final 'talks'. In one I read the quote from the WT that said something to the effect that 'only JW's have a scriptual hope of surviving the end of the world'. A concerned sister asked me for the reference to the article afterwards.
i have learned a great deal from some of the very erudite posters on this site (thank you).. for many years i've been interested in the history of the development of christianity, not only from its earliest days but through the reformation, etc., and through to the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries when denominations, sects, cults took off in all directions like exploding fireworks.. i was aware, in broad terms, of luther, calvin and the development of protestantism from which so many denominations and sects (including jws) arose.
i was vaguely aware of the schism (1,000 years ago) between the western (catholic) and eastern (orthodox) churches and was tangentially interested as to why it happened (if the 'east' was the home of christianity, how come the 'west' disagreed with it?).
i was quite interested to read, while living in cyprus, a greek orthodox english language bible which had a large section in the back about the schism.
I would recommend 'A History of Christianity - The First Three Thousand Years' by Diarmaid MacCulloch.
i am compelled to write a bit about this at this late hour here in the us, because it is keeping me up.. the recent four year old thread on the briggs myers personality type test that was dug up, produced an interesting finding.
many here, (at least tested informally for), the intj personality type.
intjs also do not understand irrational behavior particularly well at all.. why does this matter?
Hello
Just checking in as another INTJ, having taken the test yesterday.
Shyness is nice ....
source: supplied.
source: supplied.
source: supplied.
There is more information on the Patient Blood Management (PBM) here:
It's worth noting that under the program "Certain patients at Fremantle Hospital, where the PBM program was piloted, are restricted to one unit of blood at a time regardless of whether their doctor recommends more than one unit."
So when dealing with a dieing Witness needing a transfusion, these guys would push the doctrine of abstaining from blood (well, of course there's fractions ...), but are being paid millions to promote a program that only seeks to restrict the use of blood to one unit at a time.
so i just heard this today at the meeting.
honestly i've never really paid much attention too it, but i know it's out of place.
can anyone shed some factual and historical light on this subject?
In 2013 the British Museum hosted an exhibition of Ice Age Art. All the works on display were older than 20,000 years, and all art is the product of the structure and organisation of the modern brain.
From the British Museum web site:
"Through archaeological evidence from Southern Africa, we can ascertain that the modern brain emerged just over 100,000 years ago with the appearance of art and complex behavior patterns. This exhibition will demonstrate how the creators of the work on display had brains that had the capacity to express themselves symbolically through art and music."
https://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/news_and_press/press_releases/2012/ice_age_art.aspx
The British Museum is rather venerated in the Org with Society approved tours - pretty sure this exhibit (like plenty of other items on display) would have been off the itinerary. Maybe they tried to hide it behind a sign saying 'Beware of Leopard'.
visiting london years ago i had the chance to participate on a bible tour arranged from bethel.
what i remember, it was one out of 12 topics, and a brother or sister served as a guide, showing particular objects related to bible accounts.. at that time, i was quite enthusiastic about it, thinking i learned something valuable.. .
now, being awake to ttatt, i wonder what real scientific value those tours served.. or rather it raises the suspicion, that those tours are for visiting witnesses in order to distract them from many other finds in the museum, that would disprove either the bible or their own theology.. anybody ever made such a tour ?.
I've been to the British Museum twice. The first as a gullible twit who dutifully took the WT sanctioned tour. The second time I was somewhat better prepared to check things out for myself.
It was interesting to watch them in the Babylonian rooms. With bibles out, the guide spent an inordinate amount of time explaining one of the exhibits, then guided the group on to the next room - walking past, among other things, an artefact with explanatory notes placing Neduchadnezzer's 10th (?) year to a date incompatible with WT chronology.
