Half banana

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Posts by Half banana

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  63

  EXACTLY Why JW's Are NOT Christian

  by Perry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  a lot of people, ex-jws, believers and unbelievers alike, think that jw's are just a somewhat kooky brand of christianity.

  is it possible to "try and follow jesus" and not be christian?

  what exactly makes someone a christian?

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  Half banana

  I "liked" Opus dei's comment on the salad of beliefs in the first century.

  I would say we should make a distinction between christianity, alias the historical christ cults before Jesus, and the Jesus christ-cult which was derived from them and became orthodox western Christianity under Roman patronage in the fourth century CE.

  It was the Roman Christ cult which stuck the new name of a composite pagan and Hebrew saviour god-man "Jesus" to that role. This name, although it resembles half a dozen other names in a number of languages, has a common denominator in the Latinised symbol of the sun: the letters IHS, both in Hebrew and the the Greek. "Iasus" was one of the names assumed by initiates to the Dionysian christ cult well before Jesus. Remembering that in English, the letter "J" began as a capital "I". (This is just the tip of the iceberg on the pagan origins of Christianity and I will refrain here from going further!)

  Perry you ask a good and reasonable question but you are only looking to an interpretation of the Bible for an answer, that is like digging for diamonds only in your back garden. The meanings and answers to problems of human culture and whether JWs are Christian are found much more readily and with greater certainty outside of the Bible.

  Seen through an anthropological lens, JW are followers of Christ Jesus, hence they are Christian... and their religion comes from Adventism and before that protestantism, before that the Roman Catholic Church and before that the second century fusion of christ cults, before that it was drawn from cabalistic sun worship and before that astrological folklore.

  If you are seeking to condemn JWs as unchristian you are using the same unreliable straight-edge which measures all who today call themselves Christian.
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  19

  Royal Commission taking our emails to heart

  by wannaexit in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  during the proceedings of australian royal commission, as many of you, i also took time to share with the office of mr stewart, my thoughts and perspective on what what being said and not said by the witness elders on the stand.

  within a day a received a reply from office of angus stewart thanking and appreciating the insight from those on the "inside".

  yesterday i received a further email that my correspondence was passed on to case study 29 (jehovah's witnesses) team for their consideration.. it sounds like they are taking all our collective experience and knowledge into account as the commission continues its work..

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  Half banana

  Searcher, the Charities Commission of course is not related to a Royal Commission, the latter set is up ad hoc to investigate public concerns such as abuses which may occur in large institutions in Commonwealth countries. The Charities Commission is a regulating body to oversee the running and irregularities in British registered charities.

  In so far as the law reflects public opinion and based inevitably on traditional usage; the law still recognises religion as a "good thing" and therefore can be registered for charitable status and tax exemption. (Even if it is a polytheistic one which promotes self flagellation and is devoted to alien beings!)

  By all means the Charities Commission should be aware of the selfish indifference shown by JW leadership to child sex abuse victims in its own ranks and the self protecting approach to deal with the information by excluding the police and local authorities.

  There are many reasons we here can think why the JW org should not be a charity and I would add that its purpose is not so much religious but is a money farming exercise with a religious flavour.

  I suggest to that is not in the public interest to give any concessions to the JW org because the work they do is blatantly not educational but indoctrination and millions are kept ignorant and poor and lacking in self esteem as a consequence of this so called charity's work. It does nothing for society or the individual. Its work is harmful.

  But as I said if it's called a religion then the Charities Act of 2011 says you can register...even if you are the world's most suffocating, uncharitable, misleading, money hungry, ignorant, blind-guide religion.

  The only opportunity we have is to promote the idea for the purpose of new legislation; it should dismiss "religion" as an automatic term to gain charitable status and instead charities should be made to demonstrate that all their work and money is intended exclusively for the common good, being publicly and legally recognised for the genuine welfare of others.
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  19

  Royal Commission taking our emails to heart

  by wannaexit in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  during the proceedings of australian royal commission, as many of you, i also took time to share with the office of mr stewart, my thoughts and perspective on what what being said and not said by the witness elders on the stand.

  within a day a received a reply from office of angus stewart thanking and appreciating the insight from those on the "inside".

  yesterday i received a further email that my correspondence was passed on to case study 29 (jehovah's witnesses) team for their consideration.. it sounds like they are taking all our collective experience and knowledge into account as the commission continues its work..

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  Half banana

  The Watchtower is a religious dictatorship...and we are not used to a democratic listening ear in connection with them.
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  34

  Hebrew Was The First Language

  by Bloody Hotdogs! in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  according to the newest watchtower:.

  jehovah communicated with adam in the garden of eden, using human language.

  god likely did so in an ancient form of hebrew.

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  Half banana

  Since early man with a vocal apparatus and the appropriate brain development (known from the brain imprints on skull interiors) have walked the earth and made stone tools for two and three quarter million years; it is likely they had verbal communication. So no one is ever going to know the earliest language.
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  16

  Price for Child Abuse

  by vinman in

  1. watchtower
  2. child-abuse

  how much money do you think the watchtower will have to dish out for this scandal in australia?

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  Half banana

  Since their income seems to be in astronomical figures even if they were required to pay a billion Dollars compensation that would possibly only knock them back a year or two before they recovered. They would just have to keep construction projects on hold for a bit longer or sell off more of their vast property portfolio.

  What would be more hurtful to them would be to receive exposure in the world media for their uncaring attitude for the victims of child abuse and the arrogance in dealing with it "in house".

  To really hurt this cult will require enormous amounts of bad publicity over a long period of time, then to have most of their money spent on claims against them and thirdly a dramatic drop in the number of followers.
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  21

  Theory of Evolution and humanity are moving in parallel, and in opposite direction too!

  by iconoclastic in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  proponents of evolution theory was comfortable with their easiest method of induction that says something like this: i saw a blind man in the us, then in russia, then in australian, then in africa ..., hence all men are blind.

  yet proofs are abundant for the decline (opposite of evolution) we experience globally!.

  1) most humans declined into greed, the result of which is climate change which has the potential to wipe out all life from the earth.

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  Half banana

  Iconoclastic, why not go on a course of critical thinking? Scepticism is the best approach to assess information.

  When you write something ask questions like; is this really true? Is there concrete evidence for this? Is the evidence from a reliable source? Are there arguments which would invalidate this statement? Is my argument internally coherent? Is that evidence falsifiable? If it's not, it's not worth being called evidence, a good example of an unfalsifiable statement is, "God is love", it is thereby rendered to be a mere assumption... on which nothing more can be built.

  When dealing with theorems such as evolution we can ask; Does this statement, or mine, agree with the scientific method i.e peer reviewed by other scientists and does it have have the ability to be replicated to test for its truthfulness? For there is no better way of determining something as being true than the scientific method, unless you have found one?

  You have many crossed threads in your post such as making evolution responsible for the cultural societies of Homo sapiens. If you want to make this link you have to demonstrate that evolution is true or false in the first place and then illustrate the connection. If you are trying to make a logical argument or statement you must remove personal bias and emotion from it.
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  34

  New convention theme

  by StarTrekAngel in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  just wanted to post here real quick, as many have joked about it.

  we had an announcement in our cong last week about the upcoming one day assembly.

  the title of the assembly is "imitate jehovah".

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  Half banana

  "Imitate Jehovah"

  What!-------------- become an invisible, ineffectual non-entity?

  Although attributed with love in people's minds, this God has a hair trigger response to heresy, his outstanding features are genocide, xenophobia, homophobia, megalomaniac power, vindictive to his own offspring and indifferent to the sufferings of those who don't worship him in the specific way he prescribes.

  Jehovah or Yahweh is the very last possible thing anyone should imitate. Most humans do far better than Jehovah. Give the assembly a miss!
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  71

  What went through your mind when you saw this Picture?

  by John Aquila in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

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  Half banana

  Actually "calamari" was the thing which instantly showed on the brain screen, then I thought "giant squid" then; what a horrid WT illustration? Then I thought it's a depiction of a paranoid state of mind and lastly; a nightmare of magic realism. You did ask.
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  12

  Does Good exist?

  by Bugbear in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  atheists, deists, or believer.....basic philosophic ground .

  either good exist, or has never been, or is dead.

  those are he the three basic premises that we all humans must take a stand to.

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  Half banana

  Bugbear, I think you are not a native English speaker but as Stillin asks do you mean god or good?
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  7

  disfelloshiped treated worse then lepers

  by poopie in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  wow lepers could at least cry out unclean unclean

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  Half banana

  I think with the recent publicity about JWs and their inability to act responsibly in child abuse cases, it's they who might be feeling like lepers.