I live in a hamlet out in the country. Not far from my house is a small graveyard which once also was the site of a tin-roof chapel of some obscure sect, possibly Strict Baptist. Tall ash trees have overtaken the site and now even they are dying off. Why can't the JW org go the same way?.
Half banana
JoinedPosts by Half banana
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29
The WT in 10 years time
by Coded Logic ina. in 2026 in what state do you think the organization will be?.
) 9million + members.
) roughly the same amount of members as today (7-9 million)..
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Evolution is a Fact #5 - Vitamin C
by cofty inpart 1 - protein functional redundancypart 2 - dna functional redundancypart 3 - ervspart 4 - smelly genes.
in part 4 we saw that roughly half of the 800 genes in the human genome that code for olfactory receptors are broken remnants of our evolutionary history.
they were vital to our distant ancestors but in humans, as in our primate cousins they have been allowed to fall into disuse as our eyes became more important to our survival than our nose.
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Half banana
What a nice man Clambake is.
Cofty thanks for the details, evolution has a solid history and everything humans learn about life only goes to support the theorum. Nothing in its 156 year history has detracted from its soundness, even the great advances such as Mendel's inheritance laws and Watson and Crick's revelation of the biological mechanism involved, then recently the genome analysis; all demonstrate conclusively the soundness of Darwin's great idea.
Just for the fuller picture, I have always known that fruit bats and guinea pigs share the inability to synthesize vitamin C as with us humans and looking it up on the internet just now, trout and salmon likewise.
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A 17 Year Old's Journey To Freedom
by DLou278 inhey guys!
i have written an article on my exit from the watchtower.
i am 17 years old and leaving has been the best decision that i have ever made.
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Half banana
Well done Douane! I think there will be many on this site who envy your honesty in recognising the false utopia so early in your JW career. Very well written too. -
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WT Study 1/10/16 Encouraging Child Baptism And More Nonsense
by JW_Rogue ini've noticed that each wt lesson really only has one or two points they want remembered.
normally they build up to these by about the third subheading.
this week's lesson though was different, the main point was insidiously made through an experience in the first paragraph:.
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Half banana
Post script:
the next stage will be to baptize the dead as the Mormons do...this way the numbers chart will look healthy!
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WT Study 1/10/16 Encouraging Child Baptism And More Nonsense
by JW_Rogue ini've noticed that each wt lesson really only has one or two points they want remembered.
normally they build up to these by about the third subheading.
this week's lesson though was different, the main point was insidiously made through an experience in the first paragraph:.
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Half banana
With the failure of the d2d preaching...it now takes something like 13,000 hours to make one convert, the best way the JW org has now found to keep its numbers up is to ‘harvest’ their own children.
Yes it is indeed a trap but it’s also even worse than that; it is a form of child abuse.
It is forcing hapless children, who have little idea of how the real world works, to make a commitment to something they have no knowing of whether they can keep to it or not.
The trap is sprung by the lure of pleasing the parents and barbed by a no escape clause with the threat of heartless shunning by family and friends should they try to get free.
The JW Org is without conscience and shameless in its disregard for the welfare of the young under its control... and the world is getting to know it.
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Evidence of Human Activity in Northern Siberia 45,000 years ago.
by fulltimestudent inthis information makes the biblical dating of human origins a sad joke.
quote: " when they dated the remains, the researchers got another surprise: the mammoth died 45,000 years ago.
that means that humans lived in the arctic more than 10,000 years earlier than scientists believed, according to a new study.
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Half banana
What is astounding to my mind are the sculptural artifacts from Mal'ta near the great lake of Baikal in Siberia. These 26,000 year old figurines are made not of bone or wood but fired clay. To make a ceramic sculpture requires more than an ability to make fire, it demands a control of kiln temperatures. Imagine the difficulty of living in Siberia during the Ice Age! Humans did so and of course critically they knew that controlling fire was vital to their existence. -
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Infighting at the top?
by JeffT inwe've all been trying to decipher what is going on at the top of the watchtower organization.
clearly, the game's afoot, we just don't know what game we're playing.
item: the constant harping about money and donations.
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Half banana
You make a valid point Vidiot but the likely-hood is that one or two have arrived at the point of cognitive dissonance and are having to deal with it. If most of the seven have arrived at that 'moment of realization', i.e.that the focal JW teaching on 1914 is false, I reckon statistically two or three should now show signs of cracking.
However the JW delusion runs so deep and keeping only the company of like minded zombies; mitigates against admitting such a heresy to oneself or straying from the prescribed path under any circumstances so that CD is less likely.
Nevertheless some of them must surely be waking up!? which makes Eyeuse2beadub's quotation relevant; they and the whole org won't last long with such serious divisions...
Again... would any of the governing body care to reply and let us know how they are getting on?
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Infighting at the top?
by JeffT inwe've all been trying to decipher what is going on at the top of the watchtower organization.
clearly, the game's afoot, we just don't know what game we're playing.
item: the constant harping about money and donations.
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Half banana
I agree Listener that something's afoot. Rank commercial strategies have replaced the older more dignified type of authoritarianism they once wielded. Are they just desperate for enormous wealth or do darker forces gnaw at the heart of the GB? Could it be a schism because of in-fighting as the OP suggests or could it be a realization infecting the body that what they teach is not supportable by Bible text?
One Eyed Joe, thanks for that info, it shows that the GB authorized this talk as a committee decision, which to my mind means they are all conscious of its content and its intended purpose which is shamelessly to keep the flock loyal. 1914 is important, it has become the test, the touchstone teaching; if you don't believe this you are not a believer at all...you are not with the GB.
How though can anyone really believe the statement “more evidence (for 1914) than for gravity”? The very broadcasting of this at assemblies only highlights its implausibility.The GB must listen to their own cant and be aware of how hollow reasoning like this actually sounds.
I see this as a symptom of the 21st century dilemma the GB has inherited: trying to keep the Watchtower cash-cow alive when it is intellectually bankrupt and clearly not divinely guided.
Apart from resigning from the body, the only alternative for an individual GB member who is awake would be to keep going and put up a pretense of believing. To remain within the GB you would need to be simply the finest of actors but I think with the cognitive discord buzzing away in the head his mind would finally snap and demand cessation or culminate with a total mental and physical breakdown.
(I'm saying this for the benefit of any GB members reading here!)
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No more reporting time for field service!!!
by Khaleesi inso at last i am in my next step of my fade, this month is the first month i did not turned in any hours.
i received a text from our group leader an ms & i told him i didn't have any to report, then of course it got bumped up to the elder & i text him back i have no hours to report for december.
i came to this decision when reading many posters here about the yearbook stats, i do not want & refused to contribute to this organization "boosting" numbers for their glorious purposes, after the rc in australia they do not deserve for me to give them a "production" report of what i do for god, no more.
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Half banana
Well done Khaleesi! and keep determined.
Having been in a similar situation, I suggest you try not to get into a situation where you give your son's father the right to bring the boy up as a JW if at all possible. Two of my three children although adult are still JWs and the distance between us is very painful to me.
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Did Jesus actually start a church to himself?
by TTWSYF inwith some 30,000 different christian denominations, how would one know which one was for real?
some folks think jesus did start a church, others think no.
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Half banana
I admit I take a radical viewpoint but for a better critique of the NT we should, as I have suggested, be asking asking the question why was it written rather than being over precious about what it says. By asking this (better!) question I feel that we can penetrate the political and cultural impulses and events which created the stories which are contained in the Bible.
Has anyone else read JM Roberston's A Short History of Christianity? After reading Crisis of Conscience, I reckon any ex JW should read this little gem to wean him or herself off slavish regard of the subtleties of words and grammar in the NT. Instead of trying to see what the NT writers meant, Robertson sagely used sociology, then in its infancy, as a tool to evaluate the world in which the writings were made. He clearly has a significant contribution that to understand the Bible; the social context, prevailing cultural assumptions the source material, custom, and cult politics play the primary role in textural criticism... and not the meaning!
I say this because we are all too ready even as non believers to listen to the voice of the Bible writer without knowing why it was written down. Believers though are slaves to the letter.
It is a self evident fact that any human organisation needs regulating. It is also a fact of psychology and human frailty that where individuals are given or take power; there will be those who abuse it at the expense of the weakest in the group.
The Christian Jesus cult was not immune to these factors and with religion being an appeal to the heart, its course has to be interpreted in the light of competitive strands seeking dominance. That is why the matter of succession was of vital interest but especially so for the Catholic Christianity of the late third and early fourth century. (I expect to find, but will be happy to be disproved that the "Peter the rock" idea is a late interpolation). The notion of the Christ in glory of first century Jewish Christianity was scuppered by the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE and therefore a successor to the Christ (probably not yet called Jesus) had not before that time become an issue.
@ FTS the early evidence for Christianity surely finds it roots with the ascetic and messianic Jewish cults (about 200 to 150BCE?) but this does not explain the source of the Roman Christianity which includes a large dose of the older pagan god-man cults including the Dionysian and Mithraic.
The other assumption fundamental to all of Christianity is its lead character. There is an extreme paucity of questionable information supporting a historic god-man teacher who could raise the dead in the first century. There is no testable evidence for his existence and there would have been had he existed...there is only a historic silence. That god-man cults existed however is beyond doubt.
Jesus could no more start a church than can Harry Potter.
The reason a church was started in Jesus' name and was made successful, surviving even today, was due to Jewish messianic hopes fused with pagan cults by the Imperial and catholic Roman Church.