I was at Oxford Circus tube station yesterday. Amongst the milling throngs there were distributors of free Evening Standard newspapers...lots of takers... then there were noisy Hare Krishna devotees with their miniature cymbals clanging away and talking to people and one lonely Awake waver talking to no one and being ignored. Except by me that is and I just had time to say in passing that the Awake was rubbish (just to cheer him up!)
Half banana
JoinedPosts by Half banana
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TROLLEY WITNESSING BECOMING A ROUSING SUCESSS!
by nowwhat? infrom last weeks meeting.
"we are now going to talk about experiences from trolley witnesssing" .
this is the honest to god response.
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Why the Future of Religion Is Bleak
by defender of truth inreligious institutions have survived by controlling what their adherents know, argues tufts prof. daniel c. dennett, but today that is next to impossible.
illustration: brian stauffer for the wall street journal.
by daniel c. dennett.
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Half banana
Defender, I love this bit by Daniel Dennet: “Hardly anybody today believes in—or would want to believe in—the wrathful, Old Testament Jehovah, for instance. A God who commands our love is a nasty piece of work by today’s perspectives..."
This is a realistic assessment of the average developed world viewpoint...Jehovah is an undesirable entity and that means that Jehovah’s Witnesses are tarred with that same brush.
With the internet reinforcing western cultural values, this viewpoint will make life even harder for the JW org. for who in their right senses would want to have truck with a grisly old testament God?
Long live the internet... and long live Dan Dennet’s writings.
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Ebola Fears Cloud Jehovah's Witnesses International Convention in Zimbabwe
by jwleaks invoice of america.
august 14, 2014. .
http://www.voanews.com/content/ebola-fears-cloud-jehova-witness-meeting-in-zimbabwe/2413748.html.
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Half banana
Even if it's a disaster JW org will say Big J was looking after them. -
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Jehovah's Witnesses Are "The Religion Of Hatred!" Why Would We Want To Return To Your Organization?
by PokerPlayerPhil ini saw some of the quotes coming out of the new assembly brochure "return to jehovah", why would anyone abused by the congregation decide to return for more hate by the congregation?
jehovah's witness are the first one's who tell you "we are god's organization because we are the only religion that has the love jesus christ spoke about!
", that's a big whooper!
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Half banana
WT thinks,”How can we get new subscribers?” Let’s try those suckers who have left and are feeling guilty ‘cos they still think it's da troof.
Every couple of decades they have the same campaign but who can say how effective it is? I’m sure the internet is now on the side of the ex JW which can confirm that their decision to leave was the right one, something which twenty years ago was not available.
I suppose we should ask their target audience (us here) is anyone at all the slightest tiny bit interested in returning to the JW org?... I’d sooner chew on glass than return to the Borg.
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I've just been disfellowshipped!
by maksutov inapparently it was announced last night.
i was not informed (for 'legal reasons'), but they phoned my dad and told him.
i understand it is due to my apostate book.
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Half banana
All the best with your family Mak (and by the way, very well done on the book!). Do make sure wifey and daughter can understand that your motive is honest and truthful.
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PBS NEWSHOUR: Did Leades of Jehovah's Witnesses Cover Up Sex Abuse? Watch 2/17/15
by 4thgen inhttp://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/leaders-jehovahs-witnesses-cover-child-sex-abuse/.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-w3smjzugm#t=28.
transcript.
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Half banana
“JAMES MCCABE, Jehovah’s Witnesses lawyer: Jehovah’s Witnesses abhor child abuse of any form.”
Then why do they permit child molesters in their ranks even though they know they are likely to re-offend?
Their answer would be that they base their beliefs on the Bible. This demonstrates that the Bible is an outdated moral guide... today we have much better ideas than the Bible. Plain common sense is one of them.
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For God/Truth Seekers Only!
by Nicola.threeangelsmessage infor the past three years, my husband and i have been watching these sermons by remarkable worldwide speakers.
the biblical truths we have learnt from their presentations, in such a short period of time most definitely tip the scales compared to the truth the jw.org led me to believe i had for over 20 plus years of my life.
thanks to these videos, we have now found the truth and the truth is jesus christ (john 14:6).
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Half banana
TTWSF, The Bible is an old collection of texts. First collated in the fourth century CE and therefore it might be said to be “historical” in its appearance in time. This does not make it historical in the sense that it is a ”history”, far from it! It is a collection of texts much doctored and edited to suit the propaganda of the users of the books even before their inclusion into the Bible by the Catholic Church. The source documents and stories for the Bible are mainly pagan and do not qualify to make a historian’s account of what is a proper historical record. This is because they are derivative and are not first-hand records by reliable witnesses. Much of the OT Bible content is ancient folk myth dressed up in Jewish costume to make it appear historical.
There is no uncontested evidence that Jesus existed as a historical figure. The most compelling is the mention of Jesus by Josephus which a long time ago was discredited as a later Christian forgery. There is evidence that Adam is a myth. Firstly that the story in Genesis reads precisely as a creation myth would read. Secondly that archaeology has indeed a record of the evolution of Homo sapiens embedded in the datable geological column. I have hands on experience of this and might add that genetics only confirms our close kinship with the earlier hominins such as Neanderthals. As Cofty says most of us (outside of Africa) have a small component of Neanderthal genes. New light is genuinely possible in science when a new species and new evidence is discovered and time will no doubt refine the understanding of the human pedigree.
Adam however remains in the myth category. How on earth could Jesus buy back the "perfect life" which Adam lost? Christianity is pointless if perfect Adam did not exist and yet evidential science precludes the possibility of Homo sapiens being descendents of one such man. If you then say that there was such a man because the Bible says so, what about all the unredeemable men and women who we know lived before “Adam’s time”? At what moment in humanity’s evolutionary chain of life does the ransom sacrifice begin to work?
If no first Adam then certainly no second. The first perfect paradise was a myth and so is the foretold one.
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For God/Truth Seekers Only!
by Nicola.threeangelsmessage infor the past three years, my husband and i have been watching these sermons by remarkable worldwide speakers.
the biblical truths we have learnt from their presentations, in such a short period of time most definitely tip the scales compared to the truth the jw.org led me to believe i had for over 20 plus years of my life.
thanks to these videos, we have now found the truth and the truth is jesus christ (john 14:6).
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Half banana
Nicola I feel so sad that you wasted so much time like many of us did as a JW... and then go on to waste your time in another similar unprovable delusion.
Where is the evidence that Jesus ever existed? How could he be the second Adam when Adam never lived? It's a story not a historical truth...it's a fantasy.
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Interesting point about elders appointment by holy spirit (apostacy case)
by joe134cd ini was just listening to a jc for apostasy on jwstruggle.
the issue was raised if elders are appointed by holy spirit, then why is there such an issue with sex abuse.
the answer was given (and i thought it was quite true) well jesus was the son of god and he appointed judas under holy spirit, just to have him turn on him.
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Half banana
I have to hold my ground here; most of you are talking as if these people were real. Judas didn’t go bad after he was selected, only his fictional character did because he probably did not exist. He is a made up person. At the time when Paul wrote, Judas had not been thought of yet (like in the oldest stories of Robin Hood, Maid Marion had not yet been invented). This is the nature of folk tales, they gain in intrigue and padding the more they are told and copied. The name Judas Iscariot is a literary invention not an historical person. Probably since the name Judas meant Jew, it was to load the blame for the Jesus-hero’s death on the Jewish nation...a political ploy for the Christ cult to remove themselves from their former connection to Judaism around the end of the first century and gain Roman favour.
The first writings of the death of Jesus were between thirty and seventy years after the supposed events took place. Can anyone remember the talk, words and fine details of ancient events for which they were not even eyewitnesses? As for all those details of Jesus’ death, they so closely resemble the narrative of a play that in fact they were the narrative of a play...A play seen and written down afterwards. All events are so compressed together in a seamless theatrical way. None of these events are historical; they are early Christian cult literature with magical holy spirit thrown in to bolster the credibility. They are no more or less truthful than any fictional tale is.
By believing that these things were true, we are deceiving ourselves and become embroiled in unending and pointless doctrinal squabbles. Logically how could these stories have any imperative meaning today?
The most interesting use of the Bible now is in uncovering the social and political history which forced the propaganda to be written down in the first place.
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Interesting point about elders appointment by holy spirit (apostacy case)
by joe134cd ini was just listening to a jc for apostasy on jwstruggle.
the issue was raised if elders are appointed by holy spirit, then why is there such an issue with sex abuse.
the answer was given (and i thought it was quite true) well jesus was the son of god and he appointed judas under holy spirit, just to have him turn on him.
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Half banana
Prologos, I understand the need to reference the Bible to speak to ‘insiders’ but to quote things found there often implies they exist if the wording is not clear. Holy Spirit is qualitatively no truer than Tinkerbelle is in Barry’s famous play. It’s just that HS is sprinkled with holy stardust and takes on a life in the imagination of religious people.
My point is that so much harm comes from living a life dependant on these total fictions... people wasting their precious lives.
If one knew the Bible well enough, and most of us did, then we might recall in the Book of Samuel that Ahitophel the royal adviser betrayed King David for thirty pieces of silver and hung himself. David here seen as the archetype saviour- king, not prophetic of Jesus but a stock mythical character from paganism of which Jesus became the name pinned to the second century Christian copy of this story. The fact that the Judas tale is second hand and literary (not factual) in style; disqualifies venerable talk of “decisions of holy spirit”. This demonstrates the nature of the Bible’s contents; not only self referencing stories but a vast borrowing from paganism which religious people are disinclined to consider or investigate since they prefer to believe in magic before reality.