fulltimestudent

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Posts by fulltimestudent

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  16

  More similarities with North Korea

  by neat blue dog in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  other posts have mentioned the similarities between jws and n. korea with regards to uniformity of dress and grooming, backlash for criticism and being hard to escape.

  just thought i'd add a couple more, thanks to quotes from david mikkelson and john delury, a n. korea analyst at yonsei university in seoul, s. korea:.

  north korea is notorious for a lack of transparency.

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  fulltimestudent

  Sifting (what may be) facts from innuendo and anti-NK propaganda is very difficult.

  
  

  The ROK (South Korea) operates an active anti-NK propaganda program, and many of the sillier stories emanate from that source.

  
  

  Let's see if its possible to sort things out - just a little bit. We could take something that would seem to be a bit innocuous - a recent beer festival (the first ever) and compare versions of newscasts.

  
  

  -----------------------------

  Here's a YT video seemingly sourced by a pro-NK entity posting on Youtube.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBMDlJSSDQ8

  Now a German version. (From DW - a German media group)
  

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIhoGCK57Wo

  
  

  (and third (and technically for some reason, the worst) a Chinese version from China Central Television,

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tZYdv9KM5c

  So did it happen? Were there non-NK people present? Did some people (at least) have a good time? Does it tell us anything about daily life NK? If you'd been a tourist in NK during that festival, would you have been permitted to attend?

  (Sorry - I don't know why YT posts are duplicating - I see it happened to stillin's post also, and it happened to me yesterday)
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  5

  Buddha Beats YHWH/JESUS in the missionary field

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  who needs real people (who don't actually do much except move their trolleys around) and their trolley carts, anymore.. the buddhists engage with the robot age.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7dnf1c1sj0.

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  fulltimestudent

  LoveUniHateExams : A 400lb lardass will always whup a skinny Jewish carpenter, hands down .

  OK, (Grin) but.

  but SOME Buddhist sites say that the 'happy' Buddha figure does not represent Buddha at all -

  

  One site says:

  Happy Buddha / Ho Tai / Prosperity Buddha
  Ho Tai, as he is called in Chinese, is often confused with the Historical Buddha. But a word to the wise; Ho Tai is not the Buddha at all, but is actually a revered Chinese Monk. He is somewhat akin to the West's Santa Claus / St. Nick, since Ho Tai was famous for his Buddhist sermons and for his bag full of gifts, which he brought to children in order to reward them for coming to learn about the Dharma.

  Whether that's the view of all Buddhists is a matter for discussion (which would bore me).

  For the first few hundred years of historical Buddhism, there seem to have been few, if any, images of the Buddha. The first images seem to have been developed in the Greek Kingdoms in what is now Afghanistan.

  And, because there are no original representations, each 'brand' of Buddhism developed its own 'culture.' (Just like Christianity)

  Here's a typical Thai representation.

  

  This is a Thai Contemplation Buddha: The Contemplation Buddha signifies quiet determination and patient understanding.

  And, I think its fair to say that a muscular carpenter (Jesus) would likely beat a contemplative man, (from a wealthy family) in a fight. That is, unless we are talking about warrior Buddhist traditions, like the Shaolin tradition in China.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE5YifCsrXw

  And with determined practise, Buddhists can even RUN on water (Well, sort of).

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrncG8NvZJI

  But there's even more complexity, because there is more than one Buddha. Some sources suggest as many as 28. And, of course, in Buddhist teachings, we can all attain Nirvana and become Buddha.

  All nonsense, of course, but nicer nonsense than having your head sliced off by a vengeful Jesus.

  
  

  
  
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  5

  Buddha Beats YHWH/JESUS in the missionary field

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  who needs real people (who don't actually do much except move their trolleys around) and their trolley carts, anymore.. the buddhists engage with the robot age.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7dnf1c1sj0.

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  fulltimestudent

  and,

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyeiTatXJWQ
  
• 
  5

  Buddha Beats YHWH/JESUS in the missionary field

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  who needs real people (who don't actually do much except move their trolleys around) and their trolley carts, anymore.. the buddhists engage with the robot age.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7dnf1c1sj0.

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  fulltimestudent

  Who needs real people (who don't actually do much except move their trolleys around) and their trolley carts, anymore.

  The Buddhists engage with the robot age.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7DNf1c1SJ0
  
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  10

  Jesus (if he exists) has a heart of stone - a saga about the hurt of children in his church.

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  jesus is supposed to care for little children.

  mark 10 is often quoted to illustrate his concern.. mark 10:13-16niv.

  the little children and jesus13 people were bringing little children to jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them.

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  fulltimestudent

  How interesting!

  No-one stands up to defend Jesus, not that he is defensible, nor does he defend himself (assuming he is alive somewhere in the universe).

  Yet over the years, some have stood up to declare their faith in him. Do they too, agree that Jesus' failure to act against those who (in his own church, so it is claimed) committed these great crimes against these children, not just sexually but also with cruel physical punishments.
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  2

  Why we got fooled into accepting the JW/Christian Superstition.

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the problem lies in the way our brains work.

  this video is not specifically about religion as a fallacy, but shows why we can accept superstition as a reality:.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5xqtol5hpe.

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  fulltimestudent

  Sorry, I did not pick up the sound hassle on YT. I first saw this program on an Aussie TV/Radio network, SBS.

  Australians could watch it on SBS 'on demand' - http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/739748419539/brain-games-superstitions

  But I'm not sure that many other countries may have access to SBS.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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  2

  Why we got fooled into accepting the JW/Christian Superstition.

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the problem lies in the way our brains work.

  this video is not specifically about religion as a fallacy, but shows why we can accept superstition as a reality:.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5xqtol5hpe.

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  fulltimestudent

  The problem lies in the way our brains work. This video is not specifically about religion as a fallacy, but shows why we can accept superstition as a reality:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5xQTOl5hpE
  
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  10

  Jesus (if he exists) has a heart of stone - a saga about the hurt of children in his church.

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  jesus is supposed to care for little children.

  mark 10 is often quoted to illustrate his concern.. mark 10:13-16niv.

  the little children and jesus13 people were bringing little children to jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them.

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  fulltimestudent

  Jesus is supposed to care for little children. Mark 10 is often quoted to illustrate his concern.

  Mark 10:13-16NIV

  The Little Children and Jesus
  13 People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them. 14 When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.15 Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” 16 And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them.

  But, in the real world, where children can and do suffer, we observe that Jesus does not help. His heart is stone and he does not hear the cries of little children as they suffer.

  Here's a specific case that illustrates his stony silence:

  This is the story of little children in the care of the Roman Catholic church, whose lives turned into a nightmare, as told on SBS a government owned media network in Australia.

  http://www.sbs.com.au/news/feature/girls-paedophile-and-cardinal-pell?cid=trending

  
  
  
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  28

  Why the story of Noah's ark is scientifically impossible: Minimum Viable Population

  by ILoveTTATT2 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i didn't know this but there is a way to calculate the minimum population required for a certain species to survive over the next 100 to 1000 years.

  this is called the "minimum viable population".. genesis states that 2 (or 7) of each "kind" went into the ark.

  supposing that each "kind" means each "species", and they all could fit in the ark, and they came out safely, most of the species would have died, because it is impossible to survive, long-term, with a starting population of 2.this is interesting:"an mvp of 500 to 1,000 has often been given as an average for terrestrial vertebrates when inbreeding or genetic variability is ignored.

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  fulltimestudent

  And then there are the Graeco-Roman flood myths, which should be of greater interest to Bible students, since the Palestinian area, where the Jewish people's lived was part of the Hellenic cultural zone, and naturally the Jews were greatly influenced by that culture.

  Cutting and pasting from Wikipedia we see some interesting parallels between the mythical Greek version and the Jewish mythical version.

  Quote: The fullest accounts are provided in Ovid's Metamorphoses (8 AD) and in the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus.[9]Deucalion, who reigned over the region of Phthia, had been forewarned of the flood by his father, Prometheus. Deucalion was to build a chest and provision it carefully (no animals are rescued in this version of the Flood myth), so that when the waters receded after nine days, he and his wife Pyrrha, daughter of Epimetheus, were the one surviving pair of humans. Their chest touched solid ground on Mount Parnassus,[10] or Mount Etna in Sicily,[11] orMount Athos in Chalkidiki,[12] or Mount Othrys in Thessaly.[13]
  Hyginus mentions the opinion of a Hegesianax that Deucalion is to be identified with Aquarius, "because during his reign such quantities of water poured from the sky that the great Flood resulted."
  Once the deluge was over and the couple had given thanks to Zeus, Deucalion (said in several of the sources to have been aged 82 at the time) consulted anoracle of Themis about how to repopulate the earth. He was told to cover your head and throw the bones of your mother behind your shoulder. Deucalion and Pyrrha understood that "mother" is Gaia, the mother of all living things, and the "bones" to be rocks. They threw the rocks behind their shoulders and the stones formed people. Pyrrha's became women; Deucalion's became men.
  Deucalion and Pyrrha had at least two children, Hellen and Protogenea, and possibly a third, Amphictyon (who is Autochthonous in other traditions).
  Their children as apparently named in one of the oldest texts, Catalogue of Women, include daughters Pandora and Thyia, and at least one son, Hellen.[14]Their descendants were said to have dwelt in Thessaly. One corrupt fragment might make Deucalion the son of Prometheus and Pronoea.[15]
  On the other hand, Dionysius of Halicarnassus gives Deucalion's parentage as Prometheus and Clymene, daughter of Oceanus, and mentions nothing about a flood, but instead names him as commander of those from Parnassus who drove the "sixth generation" of Pelasgians from Thessaly.[16]
  One of the earliest Greek historians, Hecataeus of Miletus, was said to have written a book about Deucalion, but it no longer survives. The only extant fragment of his to mention Deucalion does not mention the flood either, but names him as the father of Orestheus, king of Aetolia. The much later geographerPausanias, following on this tradition, names Deucalion as a king of Ozolian Locris and father of Orestheus. Plutarch mentions a legend that Deucalion and Pyrrha had settled in Dodona, Epirus; while Strabo asserts that they lived at Cynus, and that her grave is still to be found there, while his may be seen atAthens; he also mentions a pair of Aegean islands named after the couple.[citation needed]
  The 2nd-century writer Lucian gave an account of the Greek Deucalion in De Dea Syria that seems to refer more to the Near Eastern flood legends: in his version, Deucalion (whom he also calls Sisythus)[17] took his children, their wives, and pairs of animals with him on the ark, and later built a great temple inManbij (northern Syria), on the site of the chasm that received all the waters; he further describes how pilgrims brought vessels of sea water to this place twice a year, from as far as Arabia and Mesopotamia, to commemorate this event.

  reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deucalion

  There's more, of course. From India, where civilisation grew up around the great river systems of the Indus and the Ganges, we find similar mythical accounts.

  And, in China similar myths exist, where Yu tames the Yellow River and becomes Emperor of the first Xia dynasty. Lots of excitement in academia lately as a researcher believes he's found the source of the great flood account that Yu tamed.
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  28

  Why the story of Noah's ark is scientifically impossible: Minimum Viable Population

  by ILoveTTATT2 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i didn't know this but there is a way to calculate the minimum population required for a certain species to survive over the next 100 to 1000 years.

  this is called the "minimum viable population".. genesis states that 2 (or 7) of each "kind" went into the ark.

  supposing that each "kind" means each "species", and they all could fit in the ark, and they came out safely, most of the species would have died, because it is impossible to survive, long-term, with a starting population of 2.this is interesting:"an mvp of 500 to 1,000 has often been given as an average for terrestrial vertebrates when inbreeding or genetic variability is ignored.

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  fulltimestudent

  In a river valley system floods can be expected, right now Louisiana in the USA is experiencing serious flooding.

  But in pre-history there may well have been catastrophic floods that affected our primitive ancestors. Melting ice as ice-age epochs (never mentioned in the Bible-ever wondered why?) came to their end and the ice melted must have killed whole areas of early humans.

  Another theory, that accounts for the flood memories of West Asian peoples is now known as the Black Sea Deluge hypothesis. In brief (from the National Geographic web-site) states:

  Quote:" Columbia University geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman wondered what could explain the preponderance of flood legends. Their theory: As the Ice Age ended and glaciers melted, a wall of seawater surged from the Mediterranean into the Black Sea.
  • During the Ice Age, Ryan and Pitman argue, the Black Sea was an isolated freshwater lake surrounded by farmland.
  • About 12,000 years ago, toward the end of the Ice Age, Earth began growing warmer. Vast sheets ofice that sprawled over the Northern Hemisphere began to melt. Oceans and seas grew deeper as a result.
  • About 7,000 years ago the Mediterranean Sea swelled. Seawater pushed northward, slicing through what is now Turkey.
  • Funneled through the narrow Bosporus, the water hit the Black Sea with 200 times the force of Niagara Falls. Each day the Black Sea rose about six inches (15 centimeters), and coastal farms were flooded.
  • Seared into the memories of terrified survivors,the tale of the flood was passed down through the generations and eventually became the Noah story.

  Reference: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/blacksea/ax/frame.html - if this concept is of interest, there are more pages to explore.