Half banana

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Posts by Half banana

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  11

  The New World , Utopian or Dystopian?

  by BluesBrother in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  like many others on here i was raised and spent many years of my life looking forward to , and basing my life around the anticipated "new world" .this utopian paradise would "satisfy the desire of every living thing".

  we would enjoy eternal youth in perfect health,have abundant good food ,comfortable homes ,even welcome our parents and forebears back from the dead - what's not to like?i found this description of a dystopian world on the net :"characteristics of a dystopian society• propaganda is used to control the citizens of society.• information, independent thought, and freedom are restricted.• a figurehead or concept is worshipped by the citizens of the society.• citizens are perceived to be under constant surveillance.• citizens have a fear of the outside world.• citizens live in a dehumanized state.• the natural world is banished and distrusted.• citizens conform to uniform expectations.

  individuality and dissent are bad.• the society is an illusion of a perfect utopian world."hmm.

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  Half banana

  Propaganda and mind control...it works a treat...but only for the cult leaders.
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  5

  Publishers in Tokyo/ Fast decreasing

  by nakanozzi in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  these photos were taken in 2013.publishers chatting away during the field service　were quite common around my neighborhood few years ago.but they are rarely seen in these days.. .

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  Half banana

  Doesn't look like much of a conversation...like to translate?
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  20

  Rogue Bro. exposing TTATT, becomes a huge hit in Japan. It boasts nearly 300,000 access each month

  by nakanozzi in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  a japanese bro.

  in good standing in his congregation, exposing ttatt in his blog, boasts nearly 300,000 access per month.. he is nearly unstoppable.. shou-tan blog.

  http://ameblo.jp/shou-tan-jw/entry-11719728036.html.

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  Half banana

  Nakanozzi, this is delightful news, I never realized before that rubber lips and co were cross dressers.
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  3

  The religious mind and evolution

  by Half banana in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the greatest impediment to clear thinking by people who chose faith above all else is their unsubstantiated belief that the bible is the inerrant word of god.. believers well know about  the feeling of certainty when it comes to their religious vision, they love to announce it but they cannot verify it.

  it is the cart before the horse.. over the centuries, since roman law mandated its own brand of worship through the religious organ of the catholic church, the idea had been established by universal reckoning... and punishment if denied... that the bible always told the truth.. we, all of us here, would not be taking sides on this issue were it not for this grotesque distortion of reality courtesy of the church of the dark ages.. instead if we had taken evidence from the natural world, all would recognize the plain, coherent and evidential logic of darwin's explanation of how life diversified from a common stock.

  one hundred and fifty seven years later after intense scrutiny by hundreds of thousands of scientists, no one has spotted a damning conflict in the theorum nor can they because it is factual.

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  Half banana

  Excellent article Mephis. It's little wonder that Jesus' words are put in the Bible to say that the kingdom belongs to those who are like children i.e. naive. Hardly surprising that the WTBTS want only those individuals stuck in the same limited, undeveloped and uncritical mode like a child who still believes an invisible man must have made everything.

  It's endearing to see our kids making category mistakes, we know they will develop but quite appalling when adults force others to believe that the child's approach is best.
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  15

  WILL this be New Light? Is the Watchtower preparing to say out loud, Jesus is Jehovah?

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk7ertncbsk

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  Half banana

  The pedigree of this ambivalent belief is so interesting. How can anyone be someone else? Literal truth is never going to come to rescue us since the characters involved are mythical.

  Only in myth can the irreconcilable become reconciled, that is its function.

  Contemplate the mental cog-whirring which has occupied the religious minds over time in attempting to understand this story. It makes more sense when understood in its original setting.

  It began in the solar mythos, as do most religious essentials; the fundamental legends drawn from the earliest farming communities of the late Stone Age. These were based on the mnemonics of oral tales describing the annual path of the stars, sun and moon as they passed through the twelve heavenly 'houses'. The legends of the Twelve Labours of Hercules exemplify a Greek version of the stories i.e. one momentous labour for each zodiacal month. The constellations of the ancients being used as markers in a calendar to facilitate the timing of the various duties throughout the farming year.

  The supreme deity was the sun, and the Sun God fathered a solar son god born in the 'Virgin' (Virgo) three days after the annual death of the old sun on 22 December, which the astute might note is no longer the case due to what is called the precession of the equinoxes. (Son and sun are not to be confused... it's just a homophone in the English language and these stories are almost global).

  To keep it as brief as possible; what was a compendium of  orally transmitted stories about the heavens and the activities of its Gods became the framework for formal religious teaching.

  The Egyptian Horus/Osiris legends carry forward the ideas with an ambiguous solar hero Osiris, who is also his father Horus. Just to make one startling connection with Jesus. Horus raised from the dead, as did Jesus, 'his friend' Lazarus -( Elazarus> El Osirus> Osiris). His other self!

  I could go on but enough to say that most christian stories were already found in ancient pagan mythology two and a half thousand years before Jesus' name was appended to them.

  Carl Jung recognized that the Horus/Osiris myth was the source of the Christian rising and dying saviour.

  As a last point, note the convergence of all major religious festivals with the winter solstice; the death of the Sun and the rebirth three days later on Christmas day, next the spring equinox, the time when the solar deity is sacrificed and goes up to his heavenly father who is also a solar god.

  The river of time flows but the myth in whatever dress remains, and so will the essential ambivalence of the identity of the solar deities.
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  3

  The religious mind and evolution

  by Half banana in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the greatest impediment to clear thinking by people who chose faith above all else is their unsubstantiated belief that the bible is the inerrant word of god.. believers well know about  the feeling of certainty when it comes to their religious vision, they love to announce it but they cannot verify it.

  it is the cart before the horse.. over the centuries, since roman law mandated its own brand of worship through the religious organ of the catholic church, the idea had been established by universal reckoning... and punishment if denied... that the bible always told the truth.. we, all of us here, would not be taking sides on this issue were it not for this grotesque distortion of reality courtesy of the church of the dark ages.. instead if we had taken evidence from the natural world, all would recognize the plain, coherent and evidential logic of darwin's explanation of how life diversified from a common stock.

  one hundred and fifty seven years later after intense scrutiny by hundreds of thousands of scientists, no one has spotted a damning conflict in the theorum nor can they because it is factual.

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  Half banana

  The greatest impediment to clear thinking by people who chose faith above all else is their unsubstantiated belief that the Bible is the inerrant word of God.
  

  Believers well know about  the feeling of certainty when it comes to their religious vision, they love to announce it but they cannot verify it. It is the cart before the horse.

  Over the centuries, since Roman law mandated its own brand of worship through the religious organ of the Catholic Church, the idea had been established by universal reckoning... and punishment if denied... that the Bible always told the truth.

  We, all of us here, would not be taking sides on this issue were it not for this grotesque distortion of reality courtesy of the Church of the Dark Ages.

  Instead if we had taken evidence from the natural world, all would recognize the plain, coherent and evidential logic of Darwin's explanation of how life diversified from a common stock. One hundred and fifty seven years later after intense scrutiny by hundreds of thousands of scientists, no one has spotted a damning conflict in the theorum nor can they because it is factual. All subsequent major discoveries in the field have confirmed and further illuminated its truthfulness.

  Not to believe this demonstrates a wilful ignorance of the facts of life as geology reveals.

  To believe in creation demonstrates a person places a blind conviction in a spirit world and the thousand consequential and idiotic beliefs which follow from this primary error...none of which can be proved. The foundation of religious thought is whimsical, unprovable and therefore logically cannot be built further upon.

  Humans are of course more than logical machines, we are far more... we are sentient; we feel for others and often want to be like them and be accepted by them. Perhaps unlike animals we greatly enjoy using emotion and imagination but what is the point of enjoying the emotional pay-back which comes from the certainty of belief in the unknowable... when contrary evidence within our grasp is testable like evolution is?

  Surely we are observing a grave flaw in the human psyche?
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  1093

  THE NEWS IS BIGGER THAN DATELINE, BBC, CBC, ETC.

  by AndersonsInfo in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  if i told you that something bigger is on the horizon than dateline, bbc, cbc, sunday (australia), and all other tv programs which exposed the sexual child abuse cover-up by watchtower in 2002-2003, would you believe me?

  have i ever misled you?

  i'll answer that--no!

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  Half banana

  D+Restart, like to give details and references?
• 
  31

  No historical evidence for bronze age men living to 500yrs old?

  by purrpurr in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the bible tells us that noah etc lived to 500yrs old as did many other characters who lived apparently to incredible years.. yet archaeological research tells us from looking at skeletons that have been dug up that the average lifespan was very short.

  if a man got to the age of 50 they would have considered that quite an achievement.

  when i was in i always wondered about this?

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  Half banana

  Dropoff, I recall from reading in the first Guinness book of records that the life expectancy in Mali in the mid nineteen fifties was twenty seven.

  Worse still, in 1850 the life expectancy of a male in Liverpool England was a mere seventeen years due to the immigration of hungry and unemployed Irish during the time of the potato famine............... Long live the National Health Service!

  Notsure, that's possible today (with an unhealthy bit of determination from the mother!)

  But again, why imagine that folk tales are true accounts?
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  31

  No historical evidence for bronze age men living to 500yrs old?

  by purrpurr in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the bible tells us that noah etc lived to 500yrs old as did many other characters who lived apparently to incredible years.. yet archaeological research tells us from looking at skeletons that have been dug up that the average lifespan was very short.

  if a man got to the age of 50 they would have considered that quite an achievement.

  when i was in i always wondered about this?

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  Half banana

  
  
• 
  31

  No historical evidence for bronze age men living to 500yrs old?

  by purrpurr in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the bible tells us that noah etc lived to 500yrs old as did many other characters who lived apparently to incredible years.. yet archaeological research tells us from looking at skeletons that have been dug up that the average lifespan was very short.

  if a man got to the age of 50 they would have considered that quite an achievement.

  when i was in i always wondered about this?

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  Half banana

  Purr purr, the Bible is just a collection of folk tales which has been used to beat religious people over the head with.

  How do we know how old a person was at death?

  The wear on the teeth from the time when a lot of gritty matter was chewed is a good immediate reckoner for death age. Teeth could be completely worn down to the gums by forty years old back in the Bronze Age. Also taking note of the sort of life they led such as highly developed muscle attachment points on the bones indicating heavy manual labour or in the absence of such development, it would tell of a passive and possibly elite lifestyle. Joint wear indicating arthritis was commonly found but not on the very young but universal in the aged. So taking this background information firstly then for the forensic archaeologist, the skull becomes the focus.
  

  As we age, right from birth our skull which is made up of five bony plates, is constantly closing up and smoothing over until about fifty years old. (It never fully fuses). A new born has the fontanelle pulsing on the top of its head which closes within eighteen months but the fine meandering fissures joining the plates of the skull, called sutures, seal up at a recognized rate giving the age of death. For example the saggital suture along the top of the skull behind the fontanelle will usually close up at 29 years old in a healthy person.

  In the cemetries of Egypt in the Greek controlled city of Alexandria in the third century CE, there have come painted portraits of the deceased, lots of them. I have twice seen an exhibition of these and was greatly struck by the early deaths in each case and these were people who were not peasants and Alexandria was at the time the greatest and most advanced cosmopolitan city in the world. Mid to late twenties was a common age for death with no one older than early forties as I recall.

  Hyperbole (pronounced hy Per bo lee) or gross exaggeration, is a literary device in ancient story telling which would account for the absurd ages of the heroes of old.

  Don't take the Bible literally!