Posts by Half banana

1

Psychology and art

by Brokeback Watchtower in

art has lots of psychological connotations and themes to it.

so i offer this site for your perusal.

lots of interesting essays about works of art.. http://www.psyartjournal.com/article/list/2014.

Half banana

Very interesting Brokeback. A superficial analysis of Watchtower illustrations: mindless and escapist utopianism driven by fear of loss and death.

23

Managing a doomsday cult

by Half banana in

the wtbts have only one objective: to keep their religious engine on the tracks.

the pastoral care of their followers (although they would publicly deny it) is right at the bottom of their priorities.they demand abject loyalty.

as a matter of sociological fact the subscribers to the watchtower belief are on average placed at the lowest rung of the income ladder and in the bottom category of the least educated of religious groups.

Half banana

Whereas you are absolutely right Steve, their authority came from making 1914 a special year. This is based on the fallacy that they saw in advance WWI as if they were told by divine prompting. Tight pants Tony recently said something lauding and marvelling the insight of “Those guys” predicting the year 1914.

Do you not think though, that they are hoping to remove their need for authority? The idea of the right of instructing moral directives is only apparent to people who actually bother to think about authority, it is an intellectual concept and the rule of the Watchtower is not to think but to ”just obey”. If you have a smidgen of sense you will avoid obeying people who have no authority. Nevertheless the GB must know amongst themselves that their old authority has vanished and now they are out on a limb?

They no longer have reason to claim any authority, inevitably their teachings fail and become meaningless falsehoods requiring a committee discussion to revise the faulty doctrine to once again appear plausible or credible. It is never possible to claim that the idea thought up is inerrant truth because it was simply formulated by a committee and produced entirely for political expediency and not because of any evidence.(If only the JWs would stop and think!)

The GB now have to maintain the tradition of appearing authoritative through the columns of the Watchtower. Authority, or rather perceived authority has its own aura of power which the sheep turn to, whether their leaders have a legitimate right to direct people or not.

So with their sparkly new media show on the road; is GB ”authority” even relevant to the flock anymore?

14

Is 1919 Important to the WT?

by Anon_SA1 in

does anyone know if the wt still claims they were appointed in 1919?

is there proof of this appointment?

any ideas where i can find out how they get to this date?

Half banana

High fives Orphan Crow, it's always the money when dealing with the governance of the WTBTS.

@Splash, what an amazing record of indecisiveness! What God would back this idiocy?

13

Demon Watchtower Subliminal Images

by artcritic in

its a long time since i posted here.

time is hard to get to do the things you would like.

some of you may be wondering if the watchtower are still placing demonic images in their publications here is a link judge for yourselves.

Half banana

Hi Artcritic, depends what you want from life, if these notions press your buttons, this sounds like a good idea. I’m inclined to agree Zeb, artists love playing with images...it’s what they do! Think of how Michelangelo portrayed himself as a flayed skin in his Sistine Chapel masterwork.

To quote the book of Revelation as if it were a serious work of prophecy, indicates that the case you are raising is drawing strength from ideas already given magical properties by a certain type of readership.

You ask a question assuming that the Watchtower had already produced “demonic” images. To continue down this track, the unsupported premises are that the Bible has magical prophecies (by that I mean prophecies which come true)... and that demons are real things. This is only the start of analysing what is really going on and it requires sceptical questioning at every turn to get at truth... but not belief.

Remember, it’s a lot easier to build castles in the air than on the ground.

48

If this isn't the truth, then what is our hope?

by Gigi2121 in

i'm new here but not new to researching and questioning the jw beliefs.

i have quite a story.... one that's been haunting me for awhile... but first, i'd like to hear what people have to say about this topic question, please.. -gigi.

Half banana

If the Watchtower isn’t the truth then what is? Gigi, that’s a reasonable question... but only from the perspective of someone who has had their mind persuaded that hope supported by incessant indoctrination is the most important thing in life.

There is no packaged “truth” or magical reality, what humans are heirs to is a relatively short life in a very beautiful world and if you are clever enough, you can share it with realistic, positive people who also appreciate just how valuable being alive is.

16

Carbon-dating questions??

by DATA-DOG in

i recently heard a story from a jw about stupid scientists.

there was an awake article about archeaologist who found an ancient piece of art.

it was sent to a university for dating.

Half banana

It’s funny how scientists have better things to do than broadcast the naive claims of stupid JWs... we only hear it the other way round from the Watchtower org.

@DD, Probably beds are a poor archaeological example but there can hardly be one bed apart from the most crudely made which would not yield a date based on style, joints, nails, tool marks or type of wood, finish, provenance etc.

Archaeological dating is a big subject and its complexity is one of the reasons why it is virtually hidden to those whose certain belief is that the Bible is the final authority on everything. The small, fuzzy and wet brain of a JW thinks: “They say it’s old but it can’t be ’cos the Watchtower says that carbon dating is inaccurate.” End of thinking process.

After I escaped the Borg I took a university course on early man. Then with another university I spent most of my free time and weekends digging on pre-historic excavations. This meant working with scientists and experts of many kinds; geologists, palaeontologists, entomologists, etc, since that is the way of modern archaeology. It was for me an affirmation of the real world of determining truth by evidence. Also it was an attempt to catch up to where I should have been educationally had I not wasted my youth on the WTBTS.

My office is cluttered with archaeological bits and here in England is a great place to come across finds because of the long period of occupation. Southern England has artefacts (humanly made objects) which go back continuously to the Upper Palaeolithic and discontinuously before that to the Lower Palaeolithic of about 800,000 years BCE on the East Anglian coast. My garden and the field adjoining contain stone tools from the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age with very early Roman occupation pottery just recently found here and with ceramics from all periods subsequent to that.

I have Neanderthal tools (Mousterian culture) behind my computer (probably 120,000 years old) When a JW, I found a simple piece of pottery near where I lived at the time in North West London. On exiting the Borg I took it to the British Museum for dating. To my surprise they not only were they able to identify what this shard was (the rim of a large Romano British storage jar) but were able to pin-point the pottery kiln from which it most probably came two thousand years earlier...(from Lambeth on the south bank of the Thames).

As my example shows there exist vast scientific data bases for information of typology (i.e. style and period and materials used) and this goes into the remote past. For different periods different criteria are used. In pre-history, which is the contentious period for fundamentalist argument, artefacts are dated by being able to position them with reference to a specific “climate stage” from the past 2.7 million years of very well recorded ice age climate-change history. (It just happens that we have been in a temperature maximum for the last ten thousand years)

If you haven’t gone to sleep yet, the first enquiry at the find's site is done by the geologist since pre-history took place in geological time. So with an approximate determination made from the stratigraphy (chronological sequence of layers) the next thing is to evaluate the matrix (what the finds were embedded in). In pre-history matrix material makes for a determination because there are usually many indicators present, often microscopic, such as bug remains, pollen, rodent jaws, teeth, bones, seeds etc. Each climate stage represents a place in the slow tidal drift of climate changing from temperate or thermal maximum (today) down to full blown glacial episodes.

The average time between these temperature peaks is around 100,000 years. The key to it all is knowledge of the plant, bug, snail and animal communities in which the finds were made. For example when you find reindeer and mammoth remains in soil in Spain with seeds of arctic plants it must be evident even to a JW (perhaps not!) that the climate was arctic at the time of the animal’s life.

I could go on but you get the picture. Dating in archaeology is done primarily by context and typology after that with reference to dendrochronology and/or radiometric dating etc, if the site suggests it to be old enough to warrant that method. Pre-history is done by discovering which flora and fauna community you are dealing with in a particular stratigraphy, indicating the place in the specific climate sequence which is then corroborated by the appropriate methods which Finklestein has listed already. So you do not need always to test the artefact, just the context in which it was found.

What I have described is of course an over simplification but a picture from the work-face of archaeology. It is often pains-takingly slow, careful, technical and analytical, only to be dismissed in the mind of the JW who believes that the GB must know so much more than any worthless scientist...

14

Is 1919 Important to the WT?

by Anon_SA1 in

does anyone know if the wt still claims they were appointed in 1919?

is there proof of this appointment?

any ideas where i can find out how they get to this date?

Half banana

In the absence of any concrete demonstration of being God’s appointed in 1919 or any other year, the Borg’s tried and tested method of claiming the effects of Holy Spirit have all to do with their worldly success. In effect the WT reads like this: “Look we have eight million people bringing in their contributions and unloading their family’s inheritances into our coffers. See how Jerhoover is blessing us! ” followed by a non sequitur scriptural reference. (vomit)

1919 was a critical year financially for the Borg. The Watchtower leadership must remind each other of their in-house myth of how salvation came for them. It was a critical time what with Russell proving himself mortal three years before and the bailiff about to call, for they had run out of money (odd... because Russell died with a squillion Dollars cash in the safe). At the eleventh hour there was a believer, the fabled man who arrived with wads of Dollars stuffed inside his clothing, saving their bacon, as if by divine intervention. (Sorry, can’t find the reference at the mo)

Forget all the tiresome drivel about “inspection and cleansing” ...Who believes that nonsense anyway? You see this is how god really works for the WTBTS: his Holy $pirit is revealed by the presence of printed bank notes, that’s my theory of why 1919 was the year they were appointed... and let’s face it, what the WT says on one subject is just as worthless as what it says on any other subject.

So that’s why in the minds of the GB (whose motto is “Money First”) they were saved by wads of Dollars in 1919. And they continue to pull in the billions by dishonestly claiming ”It’s Doomsday folks, so roll up and join our cult and you will get a ticket to paradise!”

88

First law of thermodynamics vs God vs Big Bang

by EndofMysteries in

first law of thermodynamics, that energy cannot be created or destroyed but changed from one form to another.

how does that fit in with god and the big bang to you?

does it make one make more sense then the other to you?

Half banana

Sowhatnow, yes it truly is a mystery but I can explain it away rather than know! I am not a physicist as others will note but this is how it could be spun.

Imagine billions of years ago the simple hydrogen atom (which at the sub-atomic level is only bound-up energy after all) and energy in equilibrium, not created, just there, swirling around space forming pockets of stronger potentialities in one place and weaker in others. Just as there must have been small zones of attraction and repulsion through the polarity differences or charge, there could also be large potentialities. Given cosmic time this could build up to stupendous velocities and charge and without a magic-maker-man, matter could be created, as Mr Einstein has proved.

(corrections always welcome!)

Next question: how did the energy get there?

10

So, every sin can be forgiven, except Apostacy? Right...that makes sense.....

by stuckinarut2 in

ok, so we know that the wt teaches that every sin can be forgiven, but if one leaves the org and becomes a "vile apostate", that is "sinning against the holy spirit" and can not be forgiven?.

so, murderous sick people are ok.. child abusers...ok. violent drug dealers ...ok. war mongering genocidal killers...ok. but, speak against the gb....not ok....you are the worst of the worst!.

makes perfect sense really hey?.

Half banana

I think you are forgetting that the GB are now immortal demi-gods who have the exclusive ear of him upstairs...now let’s have some respect around here.

16

The difference between old school dubs and modern dubs - and the GB 2.0

by TheListener in

old school witnesses thrived on the fact they were different and persecuted for it.

it was a point of pride.. i think the whole witness experience is much more social based for younger and newer witnesses.

that may be why so many newer ones that come to this board cannot understand or accept some of the information we present here about how things "used to be".

Half banana

The GB is very aware that the social pressures to conform to their sectarian view are a powerful element of being a JW. Shunning would not work half as well if the socialising was not practised.

Social gatherings strongly help persuade the newbies to realise that the famed oddballs called Jehovah’s Witnesses are just ordinary people. Secondly, social gatherings are hardly ever religious in content so ordinary human interactions are possible.

Today with the new and glossy public relations makeover, JW zombies are being distracted from the perpetual doctrinal problems and are happy about belonging to an apparently progressive religion.

The end result is still total mind control and misinformation which upholds the GB’s sole aim to keep the money flowing in and the cult strong...but I do hope their new dalliance with public media will unwittingly expose their nasty cultic practises.