I've got no problem with someones preference unless it causes me some sort of problem. That being said I cannot understand as a male being attracted to another male. I mean, ewwww.... I'm just very suprised and gratefull that all women are not lesbians. THAT actually makes more sense to me... (only half joking)
techdotcom
JoinedPosts by techdotcom
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65
Have your views on gays changed over the years?
by laverite insome questions....feel free to answer any or all of these.
have your views of gay people changed over the years?
do you have or have you ever had gay friends?
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77
If You Still "Had" To Go To Meetings What "Disrespectful" Things Might You Do?
by minimus ini know some who go to meetings because they feel they have to because of family or other considerations.. imagine going to a meeting and having your iphone with you!.
how would it look if you had a watchtower in your hands along with a tv guide?.
think about going to a meeting with strong booze breath.. any other suggestions?
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techdotcom
Oh and on kid qoutes my littlest one has said a couple of different times pretty loud "Its taking forEVER". lol
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If You Still "Had" To Go To Meetings What "Disrespectful" Things Might You Do?
by minimus ini know some who go to meetings because they feel they have to because of family or other considerations.. imagine going to a meeting and having your iphone with you!.
how would it look if you had a watchtower in your hands along with a tv guide?.
think about going to a meeting with strong booze breath.. any other suggestions?
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techdotcom
Hell, I just want to sit there and read a kindle book on my iPhone but my wife considers that disrespectful and a bad example for the kids. I agree in principle but it helps if I can't hear what the speaker is saying. That way I don't have a OMG and WTF look on my face all the time and I don't accidently blurt out (not loud, but still rude) "Is he joking????" (actually did that one, at the assembly, sigh.... was alot of apologizing for that one)
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The no beard or facial hair rule
by Soldier77 inokay, something that has always been a side point but still a rather ridiculous rule is that brothers cannot "serve" if they have a beard/goatee/anything more than just a moustache.
at least in the states, i've heard of some congregations in some countries allow this, but they are the exception?
your experience?.
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techdotcom
The only priciple that really applies is showing humility and meekly following the direction of the elders and the higher ups in the societies power structure. You cannot outright refuse an order from an elder or higher without a sound scriptural reason agianst it. There is no burden whatsoever for them to show a sound reason for it. The simple justification that someone could be "stumbled" is more than enough. Failing to humbly follow their direction is grounds to punish. That punishment may be the removal of privledges and could, if the person showed a rebellious nature, include disfellowshipment.
This type of petty control and lack of balance is one of the fundamental issues I have with being a witness. To most who are active, this is dismissed as being a little thing and should not be harped upon or used to cast doubt on the "Truth" in general. They simpley have been too well trained from using sound judgement and will tend to follow without question (openly anyway) any rule, or suggestion without a regard to it being scriptural, ethical, or moral. After all it is not for "man to judge his own footsteps".
To me, however, all people have both the right and responsibility to judge the correctness of thier actions. While a person may choose to do something to "fit in" and this facial hair rule might apply, there are too many of these petty restrictions and controls without sound scriptural basis for me to simply ignore. These rules by themselves would not be such a deal breaker for me if it were simply social deterents (frowns, disaproval, ect.), irratating and judgemental, yes, but unethical, no. To enforce these petty behaviours with the possibility of the most extreme punishment that witnesses have, disfellowshipment and death at the big A, makes this both unethical and tyrannical. Granted, usually all that happens is removal of some 'privledges' but ANY outwardly noticable rebellious attitude could result in a Judical Commitee at some point.
In fact if I were to speculate, I would think that this type of seemingly little and petty rule helps weed out those who have an independent spirit thru the simple aggrivation of how utterly rediculous it is.
Sorry for the spelling/grammatical errors to the grammer nazis. In a rush and didn't want to cut and paste from MS Word.
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Who Are Your Past Circuit Overseers? It's a small world..
by mentallyfree31 inwho were your past circuit overseers?
i'm sure a lot of us actually know mutual people, as the co's relocate all over the country.. here's a few from the southeast us: (let me know if you recognize any names and post yours too please...).
ellwood johnson (new york/philadelphia area for several years also).
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techdotcom
Andy Cole I remember but honelstly I stopped paying attention to who they were.
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Honest Question..........
by thraxer68 inwell, first off, iam new to the forum here, i registered maybe a week ago???
sometime around there, but anyway, i do have an honest question.
i guess a little background about me might be helpful and if not, at least therapeutic.
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techdotcom
While I don't share you faith God or the Bible, I think Earnest said it well:
I have to say in all this time there has been no single answer and, as far as I am concerned, no answer at all.
In my opinion, problems with the Witnesses and potential issue with any belief system, religious or not, is the tendancy for all of us to want to throw away the uncertainty of life and bask in the comfort of certainty. It has been my further oberservation that this comes at too high of a cost, both to induviduals, and to society in general. While there have been many great and good people of faith and good things can be attributed to many religions, many of the most horrible people and most heinious works can be attributed to people of strong belief doing what they "know" to be right.
Keep asking questions, and enjoy.
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Smurfs
by Aussie Oz ini noted on another thread the mention of 'smurfs' and a certain jws dismissiveness of the matter.
which got me to thinking as tonights episode of southpark is about the student councel wanting to kill smurfs..... does anyone remember this one that did the rounds here in my part of oz:.
a child took a stuffed toy smurf to the meeting as a cuddle toy and partway through the meeting the smurf got down from the chair, declared it was tired of listening to this rubbish and walked out of the hall!.
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techdotcom
Yeah, I remember that story. What cracks me up about the JW's is that they like to think that they are without "superstitious dread" and yet took this story at face value with no doubt that it was true, all the while being terrified at a harmless childrens show. I've slowly been trying to help my wife understand what the word "superstitious" really means and not to be so afraid of peoples imagination.
She cringes about my daughter watching the Twilight movies but let's it slide. At some point hopefully she will notice that the house and daugter are not possessed and put two and two together.
Still its a long road when you grow up around superstitious fear to get it retrained in a more rational way.
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Talking to two J dubs on a busy downtown street
by ldrnomo inso im out of town for a couple of days for a software seminar.
it didnt start until noon yesterday so i took a walk down a busy street famous for its shopping and as i got to the end of the stores and the beginning of apartments i noticed two women standing on the sidewalk in front of what i later noticed was a kingdom hall.
as i started walking by giving them a smile and a polite greeting the one that was older, they were both young based on my terms the older in her 30s middle to late the younger in her 20s probably late.
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techdotcom
By the way your segue way into your critique raises a question. If you hate to do it then why do you? Is it a sacrifice you feel you need to make to help out a lesser intellect?
Lol. Sorry, I do get critical sometimes (and I wouldn't say I exactly hate doing it either). Still I also don't mean to be discouraging. I just know the mindset and if you did make them think, and they double check the figures, I'd be willing to bet they write the whole thing off with a smug "he just made that stuff up, I'm sure glad our faith is strong enough to see past those sort of deceptions". And they will totally miss the point you were trying to make about how the long the big A takes, the more people that will not be JW's and will be killed. (see I just did it agian)
Still if it made them think at all maybe they will get the point at some time too.
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Talking to two J dubs on a busy downtown street
by ldrnomo inso im out of town for a couple of days for a software seminar.
it didnt start until noon yesterday so i took a walk down a busy street famous for its shopping and as i got to the end of the stores and the beginning of apartments i noticed two women standing on the sidewalk in front of what i later noticed was a kingdom hall.
as i started walking by giving them a smile and a polite greeting the one that was older, they were both young based on my terms the older in her 30s middle to late the younger in her 20s probably late.
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techdotcom
then I told them there were about 3.5 billion people on the earth and it the growth rate of the earth was 10% per year
Where did you get this figure? The numbers I've looked up show a growth rate of the world as about 1.1%
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth
Qoute from jw facts at http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/statistics.php:
n the 5 years prior to 1975 the number of publishers was increasing at an average of 15% per year. During the 1980?s and early 1990?s growth continued at over 5% per year. This has fallen to between 1 - 2%, hardly more than the world?s population growth of 1.2%
These number seem to be in basic agreement.
Since your basic conclusion is correct, I hate to criticize. However, if you are really interested in being the light of reason and intellect to the those who have been lied to and mislead, then it hardly seems like a good idea to either lie outright to prove your point, or to simply guess without really looking up the data.
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Should a Christian see the movie "AVATAR"?
by skeeter1 ini give the movie a 6.5 score.
the scenery was wonderful, but the plot was not zipped up well.
it sort of follows the story-line of "dances with wolves", but in space.. .
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techdotcom
Setting precedents for our brothers and sisters and spreading our opinions is not good and there are articles for that. We cannot dictate something that Jehovah has left up to our choice.
You might want to tell the brother who gave the talk at the end of our circuit assembly. He read all the definitions that had to do with spirits inhabating 'Avatars' and then mentioned how there were other definitions too...
Then he goes on to compare the definition of the word with how angels came down to earth before the flood. "And how the demons must be rejoicing" with the movies success at the box office.
He admits there are other uses of the word and apparently did not even read a synopsis to see which definition applied to the movie. He never mentioned the other aspects that could have caused some to be bothered if they wanted to be picky. Violence, sex, semi-spiritual content with the planet itself being the Navi's god. Nope, he used the single WRONG application to imply that the movie somehow could be a symbolic depiction of preflood earth and the angels coming down.
You know what several people said when I mentioned this.... "They research this stuff, he can't just say whatever he wants up there...." Sometimes I want to laugh and cry at the same time.
The other sad thing is that even those who know he was off base about the movie will most likely just chalk it up to "imperfection" and still trust any other thing that come out of someones mouth on stage no matter how wrong without even bothering to check on something that might have set off a warning bell in their head.