Bungi Bill

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Posts by Bungi Bill

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  136

  Water Fluoridation

  by still thinking in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2vcgb_pgbte#at=679.

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  Bungi Bill

  finallysomepride,

  You have a PM
• 
  136

  Water Fluoridation

  by still thinking in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2vcgb_pgbte#at=679.

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  Bungi Bill

  While remaining rather sceptical towards this negative publicity about adding fluoride to public water supplies, there is something that I feel compelled to say here. According to Statistics New Zealand (June 2012 population estimates), New Zealand has 15 cities - not three, as has been claimed. Also, anybody that reckons Hamilton has only five traffic lights has very obviously never counted these for themselves! Likewise for the claim that you can walk from one end of the town to the other in 30 minutes. (Yeah - that I would like to see!) Hamilton does have its own research facilities, at the University of Waikato. Also, don't denigrate the Waikato Institute of Technology. (I happen to know something about that institution - it being where I obtained my Certificate of Engineering from). If - and it is a big if - these research facilities were not adequate enough, just 111 kilometres away are three excellent laboratories available in Auckland: Auckland University, Auckland University of Technology, and Manakau Institute of Technology. Contrary to what has been alleged, Hamilton does have the facilities to research this matter. Whether its decision to cease adding fluoride to its water supply is right or wrong, this decision has not been arrived at for lack of a suitable laboratory. Bill. PS: I am rather tempted to add a remark or two about the American tendency to rubbish everything non-American. However, there have been enough ad-hominem attacks made on this thread already, without me adding more!
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  43

  "Worldly people don't love the same as Jehovah's Witnesses"

  by Comatose in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  in a conversation with my mum she said, "son the friends love you and care about you so much.

  they would die for you.

  that's something you don't find in the world.

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  Bungi Bill

  When I decided to take a different course from my parents over the matter of the "Truth", my father did warn me

  - "If you get into any trouble, the only ones who will help you will be from this family."

  Boy was he right!

  Ten years later, my wife's health collapsed. Were the Dubs there to help care for our three small children?

  Like bloody hell they were!

  Rather, I was accused of trying "to use people." Instead, the two older children were cared for during the day by a welfare group run as a joint-initiative by the local churches. This being in a small town, the irony of that was noted by many in the community, I can tell you!

  Also, the youngest, not quite two years old at the time, was cared for by my terminally ill mother (who was dead before that year was over).

  As my father correctly predicted, have any problems, and the only people you can rely on are those in your own family (whether "worldly" or otherwise.

  Bill.
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  29

  Do you still use Jehovah's name?

  by naazira in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  when you pray do you still use the name jehovah.

  i still do.

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  Bungi Bill

  Like bloody hell I do!

  Bill
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  74

  Since leaving watchtower what has been your biggest act of rebellion?

  by 3rdgen in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i'm in a pissy mood and would love to hear your stories.

  personally, i'm thinking of getting a tatoo on my rear end saying wbt$ kiss this!.

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  Bungi Bill

  1) Addressing the local Catholic priest as "Father"

  2) Relieving feelings of frustration by liberal use of expletives

  3) Listening to songs such as the Statler Brother's "Bed of Roses"
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  22

  Was the TM School really any good ?

  by Phizzy in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  many of us were members of the theocratic ministry school for many years.

  some say it helped them with public speaking, and maybe it did for some.. but, when you look back at the quality of student it turned out, was it really any good ?.

  most elders are crap public speakers, most r&f bros are crap at reading aloud, most jw's are crap at selling their religion at the door, most jw's have scant real knowledge of the bible.. there are reasons for this, quite often the tms overeer hasn't a clue how to teach a person to progress.

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  Bungi Bill

  As a young adult, I had a long, but ultimately successful, battle with shyness. The TMS helped me in no small way to overcome this.

  I also developed into a good speaker (not my own estimation, but the almost unanimous observations of others), again, thanks entirely to the TMS.

  Further, I was by no means a natural speaker. So while it may be the case that the TMS has helped some with natural talent to develop their latent abilities, that wasnt the case with me. My speaking skills learned on the TMS have helped, particularly in facing down an angry crowd in some Third World country, who were teetering on the brink of becoming a Lynch mob!

  While I too have been guilty of bashing anything connected with the JWs, the TMS is not as useless as many ex JWs claim it to be.

  (White Dove, eat your heart out!)

  Bill.
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  23

  did Russell come up with 1914 via the pyramid or just confirm it via pyramid

  by Crazyguy in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  so i read somewhere that the 1914 date came from bourbor and that russell used the pyramid to confirm his belief in 1914. its this accurate?

  .

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  Bungi Bill

  Russell was not by any means the originator of the 1914 date. Rather, this was borrowed from a group known as the Second Adventists, a fact readily acknowledged by the late N.H. Knorr (as quoted in Raymond Fraqnz's Crisis of Conscience). Led by one Nelson Barbour, the Second Adventists was one of a number of groups that emerged from the wreckage of William Miller's 1844 debacle. As others here have noted, Barbour finally settled on 1914 after his prophecies about 1873 and 1874, failed to eventuate.

  Incredible as it may now seem, Pyramidology was taken quite seriously during those years of the mid to late 19th Century. (Many persons, it would seem, were very taken in by an 1864 book on this subject by a Professor Smythe). Charles Russell went on to use this pseudo-science to back up his 1914 date, probably deluding himself into believing that Pyramidolgy actually "confirmed" what he had said all along about 1914.

  One of the morals of this story is that if two dates line up, it means nothing at all!

  Bill.
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  27

  How many people have you helped/facilitated to leave JWs?

  by Julia Orwell in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  me: one, my husband, so far.

  if we all snatch one person from the borg, will our numbers grow exponentially?

  i'm no mathematician.. how many have you personally helped?.

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  Bungi Bill

  I regret to have to say that my success rate here is as bad as my success rate was at "bringing others into The Truth" i.e. a big fat zero!

  However, I may have succeeded in frightening some off from getting involved with the JWs.

  Bill.
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  23

  Does the borg really produce great readers? How much did you actually read when in?

  by likeabird in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i've been reading a lot and learning even more (project deadlines to meet), getting this overwhelming satisfaction and feeling good.. and then i stopped and realised that i never got that feeling when reading borg publications.. i also realized that i have probably read more non-fiction books in the last month than i did during my whole life in the borg.. for all my reading (and i was fully in) i read no more than two wt books cover to cover.

  none of my study books were studied cover to cover and wts were usually quickly underlined and rarely properly studied.

  magazines were usually flicked through and resolutions to read them cover to cover rarely lasted more than a few weeks.. i did manage to read the bible through once - but that was because i was always afraid someone door to door would ask me if i had, so i figured i should just crack on with it.

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  Bungi Bill

  I have always been an avid reader, and this is what played a large part in getting me into trouble:

  - i.e. when my newly converted JW grandmother started supplying us with WTS literature, I read everything I could get my hands on. That is what then led me into the JW religion.

  For 28 years, I read everything that the WTS printed. During the majority of that time, Fred Franz was the writer of their hard-bound books. Whatever has been said about the reading skills required to understand the current WTS books, this wasn't the case back then (when Mad Freddy used to come up with seldom-used words of the English language such as "revivify"). While the content of his books was straight out of Cloud Cuckoo Land, you would have struggled to read these with only Grade 5 reading skills.

  I also once read the bible from cover to cover - and a lot of good that did me, too! I only did that for exactly the same reasons as already been stated by Likeabird.

  So, in answer to your question about whethe ror not the borg makes us into good readers, with me it was the opposite:

  - it was my already being an avid reader that brought me into the borg. (Unfortunately though, I had yet to learn critical reading skills).

  Bill.
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  14

  Double standing on higher education

  by KSFernando in

  1. watchtower
  2. medical

  jw discourage higher education through conventions magazine etc.

  in kindom ministry 2011 july they considered higher education as date, and use alcohol or drugs.

  however if you look at the front page of the brochure "jehovah's witnesseswho are they?

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  Bungi Bill

  Julia Orwell

  - Good one!

  Yes, when it comes to the matter of higher education, JWs have freedom all-right:

  - the freedom to do as they are told!

  (Which, in the broader sense, is the JW attitude to Christain Freedom as well).

  I would have gone to university at the end of Grade 12, only the elders had some pull over my father, and stopped it

  i.e. while some would like to argue that "it was my father's choice", had that elder not interfered in the process, I know what my father's choice would have been!

  Bill.

  PS: Incidentally, I have never known the WTS to give bibles away, as some here have claimed.