dozy brought up a good point a few months back about how the wt uses third party terminology to obscure their real motives.
i thought it was a good idea to revisit this wt writing technique.. (http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/184897).
look at the nov 15th 2009 wt, "treasure your place in the congregation" and compare what happens when we replace the third party terminology (words in bold type) with first party words.
Since the Governing Body IS the slave class that first paragraph doesn't actually make any sense. Let's replace slave class with Governing Body
"We (The Governing Body and you readers) need to examine our response to the direction we receive from the Governing Body..."
This makes absolutely no sense. How can I give myself direction?
some of my christian co-workers have related to me how jesus has spoken to them.
one of the comments that i remember specifically, was this:.
"jesus put it on my heart to [take a certain course of action].
Jesus talks to my dog and my dog tells me what Jesus said.
hey!.
i have a question regarding creation thats burning me.
i dont have any clever arguments depending on what is answered, i am just curious.. first off i want to say that i think people are free to believe whatever they want.
frankiespeakin,
I'm not sure what your point is, but you give pure speculation and claim that it is correct.
"probably do the same thing with chimps and humans" is PURE speculation and totally false.
any of the rhetoric, demands, conciliation, etc., etc., remind you of anything?
wasn't this all how this war started in iraq?
(or the justification for it, anyway?
llbh,
Your ability to shift and twist things around in order to deflect accounatability away from your beloved Democrat party just amazes me.
Yes, I know the shah was totalitarian, I watched the news every day when the people of Iran were overthrowing him.
No, the Ayatollah Khomeni did not overhtrow the shah, the people of Iran did that while Khomeni hid abroad. Khomeni was brought to Iran to steal the results of the revolution from the people of Iran by the French with the approval of Jimmy Carter. The Iranian people did not want a religious government, they wanted a secular government, most of them did not even know who Khomeni was, to many he was a comic book character.
I was a young adult when this was going on and watched it on the news everyday. Perhaps you should read some history books since you obviously don't know what your talking about.
I'm not sure what Bush and Iraq have to do with the point I was making about Carter making it possible for the radicals to take power in Iran from the secular revolutionaries who overthrew the shah.
The current regime is our enemy, they were emboldened by Jimmy Carter's do nothing policy, they are further emobldened by Obama's group hug policy. Their goal is to unleash a nuclear holocaust on the west. We have to smash them before they are able to do that. If the peopel of Iran want to remove the radicals so that we don't have to, that's okay but they better get on with it because we cannot afford to allow those lunatics to obtain nuclear weapons.
my husband was raised in this religion, but was never baptized and does not go to meetings, although my mil is heavily involved.
although my husband doesn't practice his religion, he believes it is the truth and i hate asking him questions, because he is very defensive of the religion.
he and his mother, many years ago before i knew either of them, were treated for severe depression and hospitalized (at different times as a result of them going through divorces.
And as always there are the talks, comments, innuendos, and aspersions from the platform at every assembly and special talk that reinforce these idiotic ideas that are not in print. That way the WTBTS can claim "we never SAID don't go to psychiatrists".
i was overhearing a conversation among some christains at lunch the other day at my favorite diner.. a teenager had been at some kind of marching band camp, but it had been raining most of the time they were there.
they quoted the camp director as saying something like "i know it has been raining but today the rain stopped, thank the lord that he made the rain stop, now we can have our band practice, the lord made the rain stop to give you all the tiime to practice....".
so, i turned around and asked "if the lord made the rain stop, did the lord also make it rain so that the marching band camp was ruined?
I was overhearing a conversation among some Christains at lunch the other day at my favorite diner.
A teenager had been at some kind of marching band camp, but it had been raining most of the time they were there. They quoted the camp director as saying something like "I know it has been raining but today the rain stopped, thank the LORD that he made the rain stop, now we can have our band practice, the LORD made the rain stop to give you all the tiime to practice...."
So, I turned around and asked "If the LORD made the rain stop, did the LORD also make it rain so that the marching band camp was ruined? I mean if the LORD is responsbile for controlling the weather then he must have made it rain also. And, if the LORD did ruin your band camp with the rain isnt' the LORD a bad guy?".
The response was something like "The LORD had his reasons for making it rain and we can never understand them".
So the LORD had reasons to ruin the teenager's band camp which we cannot understand but he is not a bad guy?
But we can understand the LORD's actions enough to definitely say that he stopped the rain so that the band camp could continue without rain?
Christains are delusional.
"i do not think you are appointed by the holy spirit".
Do you mean that you do not think that elders are appointed by holy spirit or you do not think that the specific elder you are talking to is not appointed by holy spirit?
any of the rhetoric, demands, conciliation, etc., etc., remind you of anything?
wasn't this all how this war started in iraq?
(or the justification for it, anyway?
The Iranian regime committed an act of war against the United States when they invaded our embassy and kidnapped our people. Carter emboldened the regime by doing nothing except wanting to have a group hug. The current Iranaian president can be clearly seen in photographs of the hostage takers in the early days of the hostage crisis. Iran and the United States are enemies. Until the current regime is replaced we will continue to be enemies.
When the Iranian people took to the streets to overthrow the shah they wanted a secular government, they did not like nor want the Ayatollah's brand of religious fanatacism, most of them did not even know who the Ayatollah was, he had been in hiding abroad for 20 years. It was the left, Jimmy Carter, and the French that made it possible for the Ayatollah to steal the results of the Iranian people's toppling of the shah and steal the government.
Now these same leftists and Democrats are complaining because those of us who view Iran as our enemy want them smashed instead of allowing them to obtain nuclear weapons which the Iranians have promised to use to start their version of Armgaggedon?
Unbelievable.
my husband was raised in this religion, but was never baptized and does not go to meetings, although my mil is heavily involved.
although my husband doesn't practice his religion, he believes it is the truth and i hate asking him questions, because he is very defensive of the religion.
he and his mother, many years ago before i knew either of them, were treated for severe depression and hospitalized (at different times as a result of them going through divorces.
Kristina,
The Watchtower literature has many many times said that JWs should not go to psychologists, psychiatrists, or other worldly "counselors" because those people only have the counsel and ideas of the world and could give the JW ideas that would lead them away from "The Truth".
The Watchtower literature is full of such statements.
JWs are very superstitious and most of them believe that mental illness is a sign of demon influence, evil deeds committed by the mentally ill person, or spiritual weakness / apostasy. The literature of the Watchtower Society has done nothing to debate such thinking but encourages it.
So, the refusal to visit a person who is suffering from mental issues comes from two beliefs. One, that psychiatry/psychology is "worldly" and is a bad influence, and two, that the person is doing something wrong/evil or is involved with demons.
hey!.
i have a question regarding creation thats burning me.
i dont have any clever arguments depending on what is answered, i am just curious.. first off i want to say that i think people are free to believe whatever they want.
bohm,
About the species thing. As i understand your position, you are saying that you believe it is plausible that wolf and dogs have the same common ancestor because they are quite 'similar', but eg. a human and a ape do not because they are to 'different' (correct me if i am wrong).
TD mentioned the example using wolves, dogs, foxes, etc. Wolves and dogs must have a common ancestor or else dogs came from wolves or wolves came from dogs because dogs and wolves can procreate and produce fertile offspring. For me "similar" doesn't mean anything. I think the test is the ability to produce fertile offspring. I don't think that humans and apes have a common ancestor for two reasons, humans are sentient (not exactly the right word, I will explain below) and apes are not and humans and apes cannot produce fertile offspring. I dont' think that humans and apes are similar at all, other than they both being bipedal. Being habitual bipeds puts them into a very select group of mammals and a select group of animals. There are very few habitual biped species.
Now, my point is that i have never seen anyone point out exactly what gap between man and apes evolution cannot pass - ie. what property(ies) that definately seperate an ape from a human. Is it that we walk upright? is it our brain capacity? etc.
This doesn't prove anything. You are assuming that apes are an ancestor of humans and then pose the question, "what properties separate them". I do not share that assumption. Humans are sentient, apes are not. I don't think that sentience can be the result of evolution. (I know sentience is not exactly the right word).
Sentience. Okay, I used the word sentience but that is not actually the correct word. I'm not sure what the right word is, and I know that the philosphy types, the "I am therefore I do not exist because the tree fell and a woman was not there to complain about it" types can object to whatever word I use.
Humans have a capability to think in a way that animals do not have and will never have. I know, the animal rights nut jobs will go ballistic at that statement, I'm cool with that. I do not believe that this ability could be a product of evolution. And, yes, I am having troube being very specific as to just what this capability is/entails. As,I go through the list of things that humans do that animals don't do I can find examples of different animals doing specific items in the list to a more or lesser degree. For example, I have lots of trees and I watch squirrels out my window while working. They can learn, plan ahead, cooperate, play pranks on other animals (they love to torment cats), they have a sense of humor, they like to play, they will hoard food when it is in abundance, they set up sentries to watch for danger when gathering food, well the list is pretty long. But, a squirrel will always be a squirrel, a squirrel will never become an architect or a deep sea diver or a down hill skier or a mathematician. Squirrels do not wonder why they were put on this earth or what happens to them after they die. They don't have five year plans. They don't know what happened one hundred years ago and they don't care. I'm sorry but I can't put those qualities into words. But I think you can figure out what I am talking about.
