Not much sun to be seen where I am this morning - gale force winds, showers and snow to 1100 metres ASL. Welcome to Tasmania, in the Roaring Forties!
Bill.
Bungi Bill
JoinedPosts by Bungi Bill
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152
Rugby World Cup 2011
by dm6 in21 days to go!.
whos looking forward to it?.
any kiwis here on this board?.
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152
Rugby World Cup 2011
by dm6 in21 days to go!.
whos looking forward to it?.
any kiwis here on this board?.
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Bungi Bill
Where have all the rugby fans gone?
Well, this one has just woken up!
World Cups in any sport make for an interesting time - for example, the last Rugby League World Cup. I don't for a moment believe that New Zealand has the best Rugby League team in the world, but they snaffled the last Rugby League World Cup none-the-less.
As John Eeles (captain of the victorious Australian team in the 1999 Rugby World Cup) said, it is not about the best team in the world - rather, about the better team at the tournament.
Performance in the Pool Games and beforehand would seem to have little relevance where it counts, i.e. from the quarter finals and onwards. England in 2003 secured The Cup ("The Bill") by winning the games that counted. They also did rather well in the 2007 World Cup, by making the final - despite a disastrous 36 to nil loss the South Africa in the pools.
This Rugby World Cup is many things, but one thing it isn't is boring!
Bill.
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"All religious belief distills down to faith in utterly unprovable stories."
by Franklin Massey ini read this today on the board and want to ask, is the statement true?.
all religious belief distills down to faith in utterly unprovable stories.
i feel this way sometimes.
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Bungi Bill
In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I would have to agree with the above statement.(Furthermore, I won't exactly be holding my breath waiting for any such evidence to appear, either!)
All too often, religion is something either concocted - or adapted - to allow one group to manipulate the many;
- more than a little bit silly when you think about it i.e. to allow yourself to be manipulated by a " faith in unprovable stories!"
Bill.
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Poll: What do you believe now?
by Lunatic Faith ini have been noticing we ex-jw's are very different in our choices of beliefs once we leave the wts.
some choose christianity, others flee christianity.
some find they can't beieve in anything any more.
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Bungi Bill
"Religioned out" would best describe my position.
I try to keep an open mind towards such matters:
- but nothing so far (and it has been over 17 years now) has shaken my intense distrust of religion in any of its forms.
Bill.
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Watchtower admits the KISS method works - Nov 1, 2011 WT, p. 24
by Alleymom inthe following posts and graphics refer to the k.i.s.s.
(keep it simple, sweetie) approach to 587/586 bce,.
which i introduced on july 12, 2003.. here is a link to the original thread:.
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Bungi Bill
This would be a good one for djdamnfool djeggnog:
- on another thread several months ago, he screamed bloody blue murder about the use of the K.I.S.S. method, and what he termed as the "insertion" of dates.
Lo and behold, but his beloved GB has now just done that!
Bill.
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Kingdom Hall Observations
by howdidtihappen ini've done a thread on this before, but i've made new observations at the hall (trust me, i just go now for entertainment value and baptism has been put off until forever) thus have new questions i want to ask the "great crowd" here.
i might be imagining it because i've become so skeptical of jehovah's witness behavior, but when i ask them certain things, they shut down as if i'm heavily criticizing or they imply that only "spiritually up building things" should be spoken about.
it's bizarre.
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Bungi Bill
Before my first visit to a Kingdom Hall, I was left with the impression that attending a JW meeting was a mind-altering experience:
- going by all the hype that I had heard beforehand, anyway.
However, the reality proved to be rather more like your first experience! Then, for a long time afterwards, I thought that it must be me - that there was a point that I was somehow missing. Reality did take a long time to finally sink in.
Bill.
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The list of things that would never have occurred if the JW organization never existed
by thetrueone incoming off a topic that terry started recently concerning what if j rutherford never grabbed a hold of the wts.
corporation.. i thought it might be interesting to accumulate a list of things that would never have happened due to the wts/jws .
existence and expansion over the years.
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Bungi Bill
I, too, would never have met my wife:
- thus sparing her, me, and the three children from untold misery.
(As you might have deduced by now, that didn't work out too well!)
Bill.
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WT Nov. 1, 2011 (public) - When Was Ancient Jerusalem Destroyed - Part 2
by AnnOMaly inout now.. yes, yes, yessssss!
on p. 26-27 they talk about how the lunar positions on vat 4956 fit 588/7 bce!!!.
"clearly, much of the astronomical data in vat 4956 fits the year 588 b.c.e.
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Bungi Bill
It is a technique called "muddying the water":
- usually resorted to by people who know that they are wrong, but no way in hell will they admit to this!
Bill.
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Delineating the shameful story of the Jehovah's Witnesses failed apocalypse saga
by mankkeli inone of the most firmly established new religious movements which bases its mission on apocalyptic predictions is jehovahs witnesses.
jehovahs witnesses believe that we are living in a harvest period, the end days of the present world, and should dramatically change our lives accordingly.. the movement can be traced to the 1830s, when a baptist leader named william miller announced that the bible is full of secret numerical clues.
according to his interpretation of scriptural passages, he wrote of his prediction that christ would return to earth some time between march 21, 1843 and march 21, 1844. an estimated 100,000 people accepted his message and formed an informal network to anticipate the second coming, often leaving their mainstream christain churches in the process.
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Bungi Bill
Further to theBibleResearcher's comments, C.T. Russell adopted the date 1874 from the Second Adventists - but after the event, and by which time they had modified its significance to beginning the "invisible return" of Jesus Christ. (The meeting between Russell and the Second Adventist's N.H. Barbour occurred sometime in 1876). The Second Adventists were a result of the wreckage of William Miller's Adventist movement. The JWs, however, were only very indirectly so.
However, both Russell and Barbour both believed that 1914 would mark the end of the "last days", and definitely see the end of the world. (Barbour later abandoned this idea, but Russell never did - until 1914 came and went, after which he amended it to 1915, according to his The Time is at Hand of that same year).
Likewise, in the early 1920s, the Witnesses did predict that the end would happen in 1925 (WT 7/15/24, p.211). This was the thrust of J.F. Rutherford's bombasts that "Millions Now Living Will Never Die." (Incidentally, the "understanding" about the Other Sheep came about ten years after that, in 1935).
Once again, the JWs were expicit about expecting the end to happen in 1975. While they may not have anywhere in writing said precisely that "Armegeddon will happen in 1975", that thought was left hanging there repeatedly:
- so as to leave the reader with no doubt that this is what the WTS believed; and furthermore, what it wanted its readers to believe. (Either that, or the WTS made an abysmal job of communicating what they did believe!).
Just a few examples of many include Life Everlasting in Freedom of the Sons of God (1966). Around about page 29, after extensive discussion about 1975 marking the 6000th anniversary of human creation, the expression "appropriate" was used to describe the sequence of events should God pull the pin on "This System" during that same year.
Further to that, a series of Watchtower articles in 1968 added fuel to the 1975 fire :
- WT 5/1/68 p.271 spoke of the "gap" as being "less than one year."
- WT 8/15/68 p.499 talked of "weeks or months - not years."
During those years, I was an avid reader of everything that the WTS printed, and I saw first hand how their writings about 1975 were interpreted:
- both by Witnesses and non-Witnesses alike.
In addition to what was written, much more was said from the platform - much of it quite specific that the end would be in 1975.
So what Mankelli says concerning JW predictions about the date of "Armgeddon" are quite correct - and it would take a great excercise in weasel talk to try and talk their way out of that one (particularly the 1975 date). Not to say it hasn't been tried, however!
Bill.
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322
WT Nov. 1, 2011 (public) - When Was Ancient Jerusalem Destroyed - Part 2
by AnnOMaly inout now.. yes, yes, yessssss!
on p. 26-27 they talk about how the lunar positions on vat 4956 fit 588/7 bce!!!.
"clearly, much of the astronomical data in vat 4956 fits the year 588 b.c.e.
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Bungi Bill
Regarding Rolf Furuli, and what he might know that nobody else does, I thought that his area of expertise is in the ancient languages?
- His profile gives occupation as lecturer in the Semitic Languages at Oslo University
i.e. Rolf Furuli is not an historian, an archeologist or a chronologist - making him more of a JW apologist on this matter, rather than any sort of an authority.
Bill.