i try to keep my hands clean regularly and stay away from areas and people that i know are sick.. i have never gotten a flu shot and i do know that many that do get one, get the flu anyway.. still, the flu is considered very very bad this year..
I no longer get flu shots:
- not after having done so during the four years 1997- 2001 (when my then employer used to provide flu shots to any members of the work force who wished to receive these).
During those four years, I have never been so sick in my life, before or since.
So, no - these days, I don't waste my time anymore!
Bill.
for those of you who used to be jws, or who are active, if the society was in charge of the earth, how many people do you think you would have seen stoned during your lifetimes?
i realize some elders can be zealous about their work, but if they'd actually had administrative authority to have kh members stoned to death, how many elders did you know who would have been zealous enough to really order them?.
did you know any elders who would have ordered stonings, even if the condemned people had been willing to repent?.
Cold Steel,
The trouble with a "Theocracy" is that they all think that this is what they have got - they and nobody else. Once convinced of that, it is then just a short step to being able to justify such atrocities as stoning to death, burning at the stake and similar.
Bill.
for those of you who used to be jws, or who are active, if the society was in charge of the earth, how many people do you think you would have seen stoned during your lifetimes?
i realize some elders can be zealous about their work, but if they'd actually had administrative authority to have kh members stoned to death, how many elders did you know who would have been zealous enough to really order them?.
did you know any elders who would have ordered stonings, even if the condemned people had been willing to repent?.
All religions have produced their share of fanatics, including that of the Watchtower. Also, in the scale of history, it wasn't that long ago that the so-called "Mainstream" Christian churches used to burn people at the stake for such offences as "heresy" (read apostasy) and witchcraft.
In its own way, burning at the stake is just as gruesome as stoning a person to death. Yet it was sanctioned by what we like to now call the "Mainstream" (i.e. not the lunatic fringe element type) Christian churches - and in the Western countries, which like to view themselves as the very pillars of "civilization."
To those who say "Come On!", and "Really", I am not so sure.
While I don't ever recall any elder making an outright statement that he would like to stone somebody to death, nothing would surprize me too much in this regard. I certainly knew all too many JWs of a fanatical enough frame of mind that they would have carried out the order if it had been issued.
As has often been noted:
"Good people will do good things, and bad people will carry out bad things. However, if you want to get good people to do bad things, just introduce the G.O.D. word into the equation!"
This applies to the JWs just as much as anybody else.
Bill.
like many on here, as a jw trying hard to follow the direction of the gb, i listened to the advice to pioneer and trust in jehovah to provide (mat6.33) instead of going to university.
after struggling for ages in low-paid physically-demanding jobs, i decided to become a student (thanks for the encouragement on here guys!).
i tell a jw i wish i had been to university when i was a teenager, and put all that pioneer time into studying hard for a good grade, get a good job, and if i had wound up tired as i am now, at least i would have been paying into a mortgage on a home and pension.
"It might have been my decision, but at the time I did not feel like I had any other options but go pioneering."
That is exactly how I felt when the twerps got me to abandon my apprenticeship, almost 40 years ago to the day.
(Down in this part of the world at least, they took the 1975 hype to the point where they even stopped kids from entering into an apprenticeship).
After that time, I also have had some of them try and tell me that it was my choice, and mine alone. The same ones, (of course!) still had the daggers out for me when I resumed the apprenticeship as an adult some seven years later.
"Your choice" - I say it was Hobsons Bloody Choice!
Bill.
.....some of the things he did and got away with , to me now is unbeleivable , and maybe to you.. in all fairness he was well versed in the bible and very clever how he used it to put a critic to rest at the doors and in one instance when i was witnessing with him , he demoralised a pastor of his church .and i was impressed at that time.. but he had some strange ways , he was always looking for someone to break gods laws so to speak .he did set himself up as the policeman for enforcing gods law on the congregations .
( this is my description ) he was known to stand outside bros/sis.
homes to see if he could find something incriminating against them .
I hate to buck the trend here, but I recall no elders who would actually fit into the category of "weirdo."
Upstarts, officious, snobs, a few just out right nasty, and almost all badly undereducated:
- but weirdos, nil.
The nearest that I recall was one elder's wife, who if not actually a weirdo, was very close to it.
Bill.
http://www.goddiscussion.com/105352/british-redcoats/.
american pastor blames mass murder of children on 'british redcoats' richard dawkins and christopher hitchens .
in his "on the box" program dubbed "a biblical truth zone" ray comfort of living water ministries weighed in on the horror and tragedy of the shooting spree at sandy creek elementary school in newtown, ct, in order to offer his viewers an explanation.
Pyramid Scheme,
This prize-act's real name is indeed Ray Comfort, that I know for a fact.
He hails originally from Christchurch, New Zealand, and is evidence that the religious lunatic fringe element is not limited to the JWs!
Bill.
i was in an used bookstore this weekend and saw a new world translation and some other society publications.
this made me think, what did others do with their books?
i gave mine to my mother, 22 years ago.
It gave me intense satisfaction to dispose of all of mine with a box of matches, and a few litres of kerosene!
Bill.
I admit to being over 55.
Bill.
i've just started munching through the figures for 2012 in the new 2013 yearbook, now available on jw.org.. i thought you might be interested to see which countries saw "negative growth" over 2012.. these are as follows.... .
*sudan is so dramatically reduced because south sudan is now independent and the society has adjusted the publisher figures accordingly.. .
countries added.
jgnat,
When you list the GDP of the "Wealthy and Internet Savvy" group of countries, presumably you are referring to the average , andper capita GDP of that group? According to the most recent estimates, Ukraine's per capita GDP for the year 2011 was USD$7200 - considerably different from the figure of $36 396 that you quote (unless their economy grew by some unbelievable amount in the last 12 months!)
Bill.
gd2-status-2 spaceid=95400273 loc=logo noad qyz cms_none_avail,,98.139.32.249;;logo;95400273;2;who's filling america's church pewsin puritan new england, protestant and catholic churches are declining while evangelical and pentecostal groups are rising.
why the nation's most secular region may hint at the future of religion.by g. jeffrey macdonald | christian science monitor sun, dec 23, 2012 .
start article more from yog-5u on a snowy 20-degree day in december, the visitors shiver as they move among vestiges of a long-closed pizza hut on this city's struggling main street.
They say "any port in a storm" - but that would have to be a hurricane!
Bill.
