"Why" could easily be answered with misleading or unsatisfactory replies like, "Because I said so," or "Because God made it that way."
"How" and "what" require more detailed explainations and filter out a lot of bullshittery.
"Why" could easily be answered with misleading or unsatisfactory replies like, "Because I said so," or "Because God made it that way."
"How" and "what" require more detailed explainations and filter out a lot of bullshittery.
touche...
I've just always felt that "why" is more open-ended and subject to various ideas than "how" and "what." I guess they all have the same degree of legitimacy in making inquiry. Little kids seem to ask "why" a lot more and adults seem more concerned with the mechanical "how" and "why" solutions. Just my observation.
this happened in june of 2012 and i just recently discovered this inspiring video.
of course, the majority of mormons are more centrally located in and around utah, but imagine if the doubting jws who are still inside (myself included) had the chitzpah to pull off something like this!.
another obstacle for us is the df policy.
I can't make the damn thing clickable... I'm doing the process for creating a hyperlink and it's worked before. Is this forum no longer iMac friendly?
this happened in june of 2012 and i just recently discovered this inspiring video.
of course, the majority of mormons are more centrally located in and around utah, but imagine if the doubting jws who are still inside (myself included) had the chitzpah to pull off something like this!.
another obstacle for us is the df policy.
this happened in june of 2012 and i just recently discovered this inspiring video.
of course, the majority of mormons are more centrally located in and around utah, but imagine if the doubting jws who are still inside (myself included) had the chitzpah to pull off something like this!.
another obstacle for us is the df policy.
This happened in June of 2012 and I just recently discovered this inspiring video. Of course, the majority of Mormons are more centrally located in and around Utah, but imagine if the doubting JWs who are still inside (myself included) had the chitzpah to pull off something like this!
Another obstacle for us is the DF policy. When Mormons are excommunicated, the opposite happens: rather than shunning, their friends and family really crank up the love-bombing and "encouraging conversation" to a whole new level!
But wouldn't it be nice? Maybe to see something like this occur in every state over the course of a designated month? If it could all be coordinated on a certain day, that would be epic! But how could something like this be organized? I see this "Operation Juicy Steak" all over YouTube...something about November 2017??? I'm still confused about what's supposed to happen on that day and part of me is concerned that some nutcase will do something violent or crazy. Could that date be commandeered and used as a mass exodus day instead? Due to the enormous emotional investiment and difficulty in planning the logistics to pull of something like the Mormons did, it would be smart to pick a day far in advance to give the lurkers and inside doubters plenty of time to learn about it and plan for it in advance. What say you? Could a YouTube campaign be started? I dunno... this video really inspired me. It made my day. Please check it out...
Scientific method is totally transparent. It's publicly available after extensive research, analysis and peer review. "Truth" is a philosophical concept. I could say it is "true" that every rock will fall to the ground after I toss it over my head. But a scientist would never make a blanket statement like that because to confirm that claim, he or she would have to toss every rock on planet earth over their head to see if they all fell to the ground. That's an impossible test to perform, so, based on all the observable data, what we know about Newtonian Physics and the extremely small probability of a single rock not returning to the ground after a gentle toss over the head, science can only make a prediction of the enormous likelihood that every rock would fall back to the ground.
Philosophy attempts to answer "why" questions.
Science explains the answers to "what" and "how" questions.
the watchtower came up with this wacky idea in today's watchtower sun aug 26 par 7 of the study article.. gods great wisdom is made evident.
in his use of humans to write the bible.. words convey not just information but.
also emotions and feelings.
I noticed something too...
Does anyone else find it noteworthy that the Writing Committee only focused on 3 human emotions--and all 3 were negative?
"FEAR, SORROW AND DISAPPOINTMENT"
Really??? They could have easily chosen "love, empathy and compassion." Talk about a Freudian slip! Or worse, perhaps this is a perfect example of their cultspeak. Neural linguistic programming. Subliminal messaging. Jedi mind tricks. Whatever you wanna call it. It fulfills several categories in Hassan's B.I.T.E. method of cult mind control. This is exactly the state they want the R&F to be in for optimum maleability: fearful, sorrowful and disappointed with themselves (unless, of course, they continue chasing that dangling carrot for the rest of their lives and then "probably" they will be characterized with the happier emotions). The hidden message they want the reader to walk away with is that humans only wrote about how miserable they all were through the entire bible.
I thought that goofball Bro. Lett's talk last year at Gilead and the convention in Portugal (viewable on YouTube--get ready to laugh at his ridiculous facial expressions) was all about how badass the angels are and how we are to imitate them (not christ, mind you... angels). And then they're totally demoted in this awful article. Not that I believe in any of it--I'm just using some counter-apologetics to play devil's advocate.
This also goes hand in hand with the long, long habit JWs have of attributing more tangible, visible and fear-inspiring evidence of negative spiritual forces than positive ones. Demons lurk in every nook and cranny, but boy do you have to shoehorn your thinking to see evidence of a miracle! Sorry, but, for the poor pionner family who gives the experience at the CA about the time they prayed and found a bag of groceries on their porch is NOT a miracle from god like they try to claim it is. But if your kid has a wizard toy, by golly, you'd better toss it in the trash!
Those bozos have no consistency in their "insight" on spirit creatures. None. And it shows.
Why YES... YES HE DID!!!
According to instructions Russell left behind, his successor to the presidency would share power with an editorial committee and with the Watch Tower corporation's board of directors, whom Russell had appointed "for life." But vice president Joseph Franklin ("Judge") Rutherford soon set about concentrating all organizational authority in his own hands. A skilled lawyer who had served as Russell's chief legal advisor, he combined legal prowess with what opponents undoubtedly saw as a Machiavellian approach to internal corporate politics. Thus he used a loophole in their appointment to unseat the majority of the Watch Tower directors without calling a membership vote. And he even had a subordinate summon the police into the Society's Brooklyn headquarters offices to break up their board meeting and evict them from the premises. (Faith on the March by A. H. Macmillan, pp. 78-80)
After securing the headquarters complex and the sect's corporate entities, Rutherford turned his attention to the rest of the organization. By gradually replacing locally elected elders with his own appointees, he managed to transform a loose collection of semi-autonomous democratically-run congregations into a tight-knit organizational machine run from his office. Some local congregations broke away, forming such Russellite splinter groups as the Chicago Bible Students, the Dawn Bible Students, and the Laymen's Home Missionary Movement, all of which continue to this day. But most Bible Students remained under his control, and Rutherford renamed them "Jehovah's Witnesses" in 1931, to distinguish them from these other groups.
Meanwhile, he shifted the sect's emphasis from the individual "character development" Russell had stressed to vigorous public witnessing work, distributing the Society's literature from house to house. By 1927 this door-to-door literature distribution had become an essential activity required of all members. The literature consisted primarily of Rutherford's unremitting series of attacks against government, against Prohibition, against "big business," and against the Roman Catholic Church. He also forged a huge radio network and took to the air waves, exploiting populist and anti-Catholic sentiment to draw thousands of additional converts. His vitriolic attacks, blaring from portable phonographs carried to people's doors and from the loudspeakers of sound cars parked across from churches, also drew down upon the Witnesses mob violence and government persecution in many parts of the world.
Like Russell, Rutherford tried his hand at prophecy and predicted that biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob would be resurrected in 1925 to rule as princes over the earth. (Millions Now Living Will Never Die, 1920, pp. 89-90) They failed to show up, of course, and Rutherford quit predicting dates. In fact, referring to that prophetic failure he later admitted, "I made an ass of myself." (The Watchtower, October 1, 1984, p. 24)
Right after Russell died, didn't Rutherford call the cops in to remove the GB from the premisis at bethel and replace them with yes-men he selected?
hardly a week passes without some credible figure testifying to ufo reality.. http://beforeitsnews.com/unexplained-phenomena/2012/08/ufo-disclosure-may-be-imminent-2430224.html.
i've followed ufo stories for some years now and this barrage of authoritative people looks unprecedented.
couple that with the claim that ufo sightings have increased enormously in the past couple years and...... who knows?.
I miss being a "believer" in UFOs, but, after escaping JWs and learning critical thinking skills, I found that I used the same apologetics, shoe-horning and mental gymnastics defending my personal belief in UFOs as I did defending the WBTS. I also got totally enthralled with conspiracy/new world order stuff to the point that I'm embarrassed when I look back on those days.
Skeptics, free-thinkers and atheists like myself do not doubt the existence of ET life. In fact, many recent observations almost predict it's a certainty. But when it comes to the cultural phenomenon of UFOs (and cryptozoology), you will observe the same dogma, logical fallacies and poor apologetics among those who insist they're real that you see in fundamental religious people!
If UFOs are extraterrestrial, how did they get here? Inter-dimensional travel? Warp drive? Worm holes? You have to realize that the energy needed to drive a vessel through hundrends or thousands of light years in "real time" would require the total energy output of a star throughout its entire life! Not to mention the effect it would have on the travellers--they cannot return to their home planet without seriously messing with their own relative space-time. Ok, so, they may be "an advanced civilization." Then why would they travel so far in these inter-dimensional warp driving ships only to zap cows, make impressions in crops or kidnap and put all kinds of hell up the butts of rednecks? In this age of technology where billions of people around the globe carry amazing handheld devices with HD capabilities, how come every single photo or video of a supposed UFO/alien ship are in such poor quality and can easily be debunked (if not proven forgeries)? You would think by now that irrefutable, super high-quality pictures and videos of UFOs would be available to the world. That's simply not the case at all. Occam's Razor, people... Occam's Razor!