Faith is comforting, Qcmbr, and to lose it is akin to experiencing an amputation without benefit of anaesthesia. The first defence against mental trauma is denial. Posters like reniaa and debator, when faced with data most logical people cannot dismiss, have a choice. They can accept the data as fact, either absolute or virtual, and thereafter modify their faith to fit it (thereby wrenching themselves away from the Watchtower) or they can deny it outright to maintain the comfort they feel, or they can embrace it entirely and face up to the amputation.
Lion Cask
JoinedPosts by Lion Cask
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310
Are they really that bad???
by anonymous4 inhad a good look into the doctrine, beliefs and practices of jws and to be honest, i don't really see anything wrong with it at all.. it's biblical and i've had such an eye opener the past year or so reading some of their books and magazines .
is there really any real reasons why i shouldn't want to get involved further?
:-).
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I find it very hard to believe in a god
by Newborn inbut i find it equally hard to believe in the evolution theory .
so for now, i chose not to believe in anything but myself and love.
that was all.
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Lion Cask
Lion Cask's British English - American English translation service: torch = flashlight, dross = waste.
Faith is comforting. To be able to fill your heart with love and hope and speak to God (especially in the quiet stillness of 3 in the morning, when all those heavy thoughts and fears just won't let you sleep) calms the emotions. It feels good to have faith, and that is why people have faith. But that doesn't mean that faith and truth are synonymous. On the contrary, faith is a spectrum. It is multi-coloured and inequal, in other words, not the same. This means that faith either has a whole lot of different "truths", some of which directly contradict one another, or faith is an illusion. Is there a very, very narrow band within that spectrum that is the true light of faith? That is what the Watchtower claims as their own, but most of us in this board have come to the conclusion from observing the Watchtower closely that it does not, in fact, represent that very narrow band of light.
One of the hardest things I had to give up when the last vestige of faith drained away from my psyche was prayer. Life is heavy and at times it is traumatic and being able to reach out for some spiritual comfort was, well, comforting. But it is also an illusion, and to pray to a god, of whatever name you give it, is escapism. When you at last learn to face up to reality, however cruel it may sometimes be, with courage, a sense of wonder and strength of character, you will find you no longer need the comfort of faith and you will be emancipated.
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Remember the GLOBAL FOOD SHORTAGES of 35 years ago?
by Nathan Natas in.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/12/027844.php.
ha ha ha ha ha!.
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Lion Cask
who says climate change is a new phenomena!
Those of us who have been around long enough to have seen lots and lots of weird weather understand the assertion, BB. There are several interesting proxies for historical weather patterns but water levels in the Great Lakes tell the tale nicely. Weather phenomena are cyclical. Some cycles are relatively short, others long. Europe's historical records go back a long way and also show that the only constant in climate and weather is change. The UK is bracing for its coldest winter in 1,000 years, which many attribute to the global warming phenomenon. It sounds counterintuitive, but it really isn't. The Greenland glacier is melting, which is causing the salinity of the North Atlantic to decline, which in turn reduces the specific gravity of the uppermost layer of water to decline. While the UK is at the same latitude as Hudson's Bay in Canada, which experiences severe arctic winters, its winters are relatively warm because of the Gulf Stream. But the specific gravity of Gulf Stream waters is higher than North Atlantic waters causing them to sink, so less of it is at the surface of the oceon by the time it reaches the British Isles. Historically, colder, snowier winters have augmented the northern glaciers, which ties up a large portion of the planet's fresh water. The real question is, are the historical patterns still relevant, or will hotter summer temperatures due to the buildup of greenhouse gasses cause complete disruption of the planet's weather patterns? And, if that happens, the next question is what will happen to global food supplies?
http://www.great-lakes.net/teach/envt/levels/lev_3.html
http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=other;type=winthist;sess=
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310
Are they really that bad???
by anonymous4 inhad a good look into the doctrine, beliefs and practices of jws and to be honest, i don't really see anything wrong with it at all.. it's biblical and i've had such an eye opener the past year or so reading some of their books and magazines .
is there really any real reasons why i shouldn't want to get involved further?
:-).
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Lion Cask
Interesting, isaacaustin. More than eight months passed between reniaa's last post and debator's first. If they are one and the same person, did she just stay away for all that time or was there an intermediate personna? I'm not interested sufficiently in this to dig into it statistically, but two observations of differences are that Reniaa had a designated avatar while debator's is assigned and debator has never started a thread while reniaa started 14 (not all that many considering she was a member of the board for a year and a half). However, renaiaa's writing style and demeanor are very, very similar to debator's. It would be interesting to run the posts of both personnas through a comparative parser to pull out and count the occurances of identical idioms or particular sentence structures used - but, again, the whole thing just isn't that interesting and probably not necessary, anyway. If these are two different people, their online personalities are so similar it's spooky. Neither seems inclined to concede the smallest point, even one that is clearly lost.
However, I see now why reniaa left. It had to have been difficult taking all that abuse, as unsurprising as it is. As much as she either started the fights or waded into them, it seems she always led with her chin, so to speak.
Debator, if you were reniaa before, so what? I am certain you are not alone in your peculiarity - I mean the peculiarity of having reinvented yourself on this board, rather than the peculiarity of your rationalisation process, which is what makes you stand out from the crowd somewhat.
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65
I find it very hard to believe in a god
by Newborn inbut i find it equally hard to believe in the evolution theory .
so for now, i chose not to believe in anything but myself and love.
that was all.
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Lion Cask
Newborn: Are you having difficulty rationalising the extremely low statistical probability of life being generated in the first instance (abiogenesis), or accepting evolutionary theory? They are quite different. Take some time and research abiogenesis first - there have been some excellent discussions on this board, too. Once you get past the hurdle of understanding how abiogenesis could have happened, seeking to understand the mechanism of Natural Selection in the evolution of already existing life will broaden your horizons and free you of your ambiguity.
I recommend you type "abiogenesis" in the search field of this board as a way to begin your education.
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26
Remember the GLOBAL FOOD SHORTAGES of 35 years ago?
by Nathan Natas in.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/12/027844.php.
ha ha ha ha ha!.
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Lion Cask
Paul Ehrlich and Rachel Carson scared me far worse as a young man than anything my Witness relatives ever said.
The differences between Watchtower publications and the two books The Population Bomb and Silent Spring is the former is based on religious superstition and the latter were based on science, observation and logic, some of it faulty. I don't think much has come out of Ehrlich's work, although he still defends it more than forty years on. It was basically a rehash of the Malthusian catastrophe argument which posits that populations will grow to the extent they outpace their abilities to feed themselves - which has been proven wrong in a global perspective because, coincident with their growth, populations figured out how to multiply agricultural yields using science. The science employed, primarily the development of pesticides and more recently genetic engineering, is what Carson's warning is all about. We can thank Rachel Carson and her book for the environmental movement, good and bad.
One defense of Ehrlich is that he was directionally right. While we folk in the western world get fatter and fatter, 35 or 40 million people in third word countries die of malnutrition every year. We are complacent in our comfort to the detriment of those who are living and dying with a reality we have for the time being avoided.
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JW Whips 12 year old daughter to death !! This is very graphic be warned!!
by Hairyhegoat inthis is a old case but just shows what goes on behind closed doors if you are a jw family.
this arsehole needs to go to the chair!!.
more news:.
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Lion Cask
A contrarian perspective, perhaps one that will precipitate heated feedback.
There is a line, a very wide one, between spanking and beating, and a wider line still between beating and bludgeoning.
My parents reserved spanking for very serious offenses. I was spanked twice as a child. Both times when I was 6 years old. The first time was for playing with matches and setting the back field ablaze and the second time for playing on the railroad tracks and crawling up and into and under slowly moving boxcars. In other words, I had endangered my life, was too young to understand how serious my actions were and my parents needed something more than words and reason to make an indelible impression on me. Both of them in turn sat by my bedside hours after each spanking, spoke to me in soft reassuring words and made me promise not to repeat my behaviour. I remember my father's face in particular was drawn and his eyes were moist, as if he'd just lost someone dear to him. Probably 25 years later my father offered an apology. The act of spanking a 6 year old boy who adored him had played on his mind all that time and he was afraid that my memory of it might diminish our relationship. I told him he probably saved my life and thanked him for having the courage to do what he did. He was not assuaged, saying he wished he had been older and wiser at the time and had exercised some better option. What option would that have been? He didn't know. And neither do I.
I spanked one of my three kids, once. I hated it. The child was five and had done something very serious, which I will not get into lest she someday stumble upon and read this. Two slaps on the bottom, with my wife in the room with me. The pain was momentary, no physical damage was done and behaviour was corrected. Do I regret having done this? Yes of course, and no, for reasons that should be apparent. Now that it is more than 25 years on, I wish I had been older and wiser and had exercised some better option. But I don't know what it would have been.
I expect there will be some pushback from people in here, but that's ok. Beating a child under any circumstance whatsoever is criminal. Spanking a child for minor offenses like acting up in the mall or at the Kingdom Hall is unconscionable. But in very rare circumstances corporal punishment may be the best option. In the end, it's the one doling out the punishment who has to live with the memory of it.
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JW Whips 12 year old daughter to death !! This is very graphic be warned!!
by Hairyhegoat inthis is a old case but just shows what goes on behind closed doors if you are a jw family.
this arsehole needs to go to the chair!!.
more news:.
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Lion Cask
There are different kinds of mental illness. There's psychopathy, like Larry Slack's, and there's garden variety delusion. Mix the two of them together and you have a volatile mixture that ends up being doled out to innocent victims.
Sad story, indeed, but probably not directly attributable to the WT religion, although its doctrines likely added fuel to the fire.
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55 reasons Jehovahs Witnesses will never be reformed
by Hairyhegoat infound this on another site and you can use it on the witlesses when they knock the door.. 1. teaching that true christianity is an organization instead of a way of life .
2. claiming salvation is dependent upon belonging to the jw denomination .
3. claiming that the organization speaks for and is controlled by jehovah, thereby equating the organization with god himself .
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Lion Cask
great list. Here's another.
56. Hypocritically drawing upon allowed blood fractions from the stored donor base while refusing to donate blood themselves.
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Samson the Unvulnerable?
by VM44 injudges 15:15.
"then he found the jawbone of a recently killed donkey.
he picked it up and killed 1,000 philistines with it.".
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Lion Cask
Don't you remember the 1949 Cecil B. DeMille classic, VM44? Why, Samson had help from God, that's why his hair didn't get messed up. (That, plus great makeup for Victor Mature.) This is the scene. I think you will agree it is very realistic and believable. Why else would this masterpiece have won two academy awards (I mean, besides the fact that most of the Academy at the time were Jewish and the rest Protestants? I think they may have had a Roman Catholic member, too, but he wasn't allowed a vote.)
http://youtube.com/v/jtoOsoqPC-M
I hope you realise you made me use up one of my precious few newbie posts, Q ..... besides, its invulnerable, as in Superman, except for kryptonite. Kryptonite was the same as getting a haircut, I guess.
edit. I think Simon's playing around with the source code this weekend ...