Half banana

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Posts by Half banana

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  3

  Research Question

  by vienne in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  we need this to further our research... .

  the booklet russell, rutherford and "the harp of god" : the heresies of the international bible students association published by the british bible union and written by c. leopold clarke.

  we can't find it in any american library.

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  Half banana

  Have you tried this Australian source called Trove? The booklet appears to be available online at https://trove.nla.gov.au/version/209271138
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  22

  The Hailstone Message :2018 Assembly

  by jwdoctrine in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the following is the talk of the assembly followed by my 15 minutes commentary.i have included part of my notes below which i used for the commentary .

  what is the hailstone message?.

  is it literal or symbolic?.

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  Half banana

  You write as if you believe the Bible to be meaningful. . . it isn't.
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  16

  Arguments I’ve Had: Historical Accuracy and the Bible

  by Saethydd in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  when i was a jw and still living with my parents i remember the way my father held what could almost be described as contempt for archeologists, paleontologists, and other scientists who dared to try explain what happened in past.

  he justified this attidtude with the argument that these people don’t have enough evidence to make such claims with any certainty.

  however, i see now that his viewpoint was more likely a defense mechanism to protect his presupposed conclusion that everything described in the bible actually happened.

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  Half banana

  Yes Redvip, the governing body's conceit is that God is guiding them so to hell with hard won information and facts, the enormous collective evidence discovered by scientists over many generations through experiment, exhaustive testing, measurement, debate, counter argument and analysis-- the ignorant narcissists at JW HQ dismiss it all with a wave of the hand and a smug self righteous smile. Education is from the devil!
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  37

  Anyone else get a message from Hanged Man?

  by pale.emperor in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i dont know why i'd want to argue over something like this.

  i've been aware of this theory for years.

  as interesting as it is - it's still bullshit.. for future reference, i believe the bible to be a collection of fantasy, myth, real locations and crazy ramblings of psychedelic bloke stuck on patmos.. my reply:.

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  Half banana

  Fred you are guessing about some of these matters, Jesus could not have been born in Nazareth since it only began as a place about a century after he died. The Bible makes a linguistic conflation of the word nazarite (Jewish mad monk syndrome) and Nazareth (place founded after Jesus died).

  Pale I think you should think again, there is nothing wrong with the word Zodiac. It has suffered from a contamination with astrology but it only describes the zone 9 degrees either side of the plane of the ecliptic (the belt within the cosmos in which the solar system travels and marked by 12 constellations each year). Predictive astrology is foolish but if you want to get to know the stars you absolutely need to know where they are at different times of the night and where they are in the sky in relation to the constellations of the Zodiac each month of the year. Stories about the stars, perhaps even sung communally, were a great way to remember a vast amount of information, learned by repetition, by rote, before the time that writing was invented.

  There are a lot of stars! All 'primitve' peoples know thousands of them by name, even today--why? Because the stars were the abode of the gods and stories about the stars were the mnemonics told from time immemorial from parents to their children to be able to connect one star with another and recognise the constellations and to what end? Importantly to navigate the deserts and seas but also the heavenly events were the tribe's calendar which determined the times for annual rituals and later on after 7000 BCE; the heavens became the farmer's almanac.

  Think of the Twelve Labours of Hercules, a story for each month. . .

  Genesis 3;15 is a great example of how a star story got adopted and hijacked by having it put in writing and then fixed into the Bible canon. What the churches and Watchtower consider the pivotal and profound prophecy is actually a description of how to remember a bunch of stars near the Pole star. Hercules' club is about to smash the head of the serpent while the snake is about to bite his heel.

  So the churches condemned astrology-- why should they have done? It is because the folk tales of the Bible are actually at source "star stories" woven into a historical sounding narrative. It is paganism made holy but don't tell anyone!
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  9

  Interesting new findings on evolution...

  by Bad_Wolf in

  1. social
  2. current

  i link the article below.

  in summary it claims that analyzing dna code from over 100,000 species found that 90%of all species including humans came about at the same time 100,000 to 200,000 years ago, and another "and yet—another unexpected finding from the study—species have very clear genetic boundaries, and there's nothing much in between.".

  read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-05-gene-survey-reveals-facets-evolution.html#jcphttps://phys.org/news/2018-05-gene-survey-reveals-facets-evolution.html.

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  Half banana

  Speaking as both part lettuce and half banana, I would like to add that the background to evolution in the northern and southern temperate zones is influenced by two important factors; cyclic climate change and specie extinctions.

  During the past 2,6 million years there have been on average a recurring cycle of about 100,000 years repeating typically this succession of climates: very cool for most of say 50,000 years punctuated with an arctic "or "glacial" episode followed by very cool and then warming up to the mild "interglacial" which we have been experiencing for the last 10,000 years. This may last another ten thousand, maybe more maybe less. These cyclic episodes alter the ecology of the various geographical regions and habitats and put stress especially on the ability of mammalian inhabitants to keep the same populations breeding.

  It came as a surprise to me to learn that during the last cool episode leading up to and including the last glacial, that in North America were lost something like 75% of all large mammals. For example mammoth, mastodon, glyptodon (giant armadillo) giant beaver and six of the seven species of bison, camelops, big cats and short faced bears. The extinctions allow for new species to evolve by the vacant ecological niches available to be exploited. There is a rule that the larger the mammal the fewer the generations they survive. Squirrels have been around for about twenty million years but woolly mammoths only from 250,000 years ago to 4,000. Extinctions can be sudden but speciation (arrival of new species) is only apparent over geological time.

  Incidentally, doing palaeontology and archaeology were things I put on hold when I became a JW as a young teenager. So it was with great pleasure after leaving the cult, that I joined a university group and helped dig up many mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) as well as a few straight tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) here in Oxfordshire, England.
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  9

  Latest update: Finally Free!

  by campaign of hate in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i haven’t posted here in a while, although i have been keeping an eye on the posts.

  i love morpheus bluntness and sbf optimism that jw chariot is going to fall of the cliff imminently!.

  as the title suggests, the latest in my life is that i’m finally free!

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  Half banana

  Liberty is glorious! No more constant surveillance from an imaginary sky-god! No more meetings or preaching lies and having to do what all the other lobotomised zombies do. Now free to think your own thoughts and know that they are as valid and worthy as anyone else's ideas. No more mental slavery! .............Well done CoH!
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  89

  Is Jesus Christ, Jehovah God? (Not the Father, but Equal to the Father)

  by JW Answers in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  jehovah's witnesses,is jesus christ, jehovah god?

  (not the father, but equal to the father)what if the watchtower told you about god in a false way, and yet the bible taught you about god in his true character, how would you respond?could it be true, that the watchtower have been leading you up the garden path, describing god in a way that the bible does not describe?

  please watch my latest video to help you to see how the bible describes the lord jesus christ, and also within my video, i explain from the new world translation how the bible which the jws use, also describes jesus as jehovah god.

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  Half banana

  Like most of the Bible we are dealing with sacred fictions. The question we could ask is why should there be such conflict regarding the identity and substance of an almighty God and his son?

  There is no possible way to verify dogma or doctrines determined by votes, there are no facts available to resolve contradictory mental constructs. This subject incidentally is in turn drawn from even earlier mythology, in this instance sun gods and their sons being the "exact representation of their very being".

  Therefore when faced with the impossibility of knowing anything factual about an almighty God, all we can do as Ehrman does (in Cofty's youtube submission, "Evolution of Jesus in early Christianity") is to trace the development of the myths and religious doctrine giving a date and a sociological snapshot of the milieu in which the concepts took root.

  Btw, did anyone note how Ehrman speaks here in the "messianic" style of Fred Franz, with the same high pitch for almost half of his talk and going higher still at the paradoxical high points? The only differences being that Ehrman uses a critical analysis of his material and speaks faster than Franz did.
  
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  112

  London Protest 2018

  by josephus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  well today marks the beginning and biggest day of our protest at the london excel.. we believe it's a record number at around 100 exjws at the front door.. we spoke to lots of jw's and one young man studying who has quit after talking to us.

  we've been approached privately by jw's who thanked us for coming and the security at the event treated us very well.. if anyone wants to see some clips they are available on my channel the great apostate.. thanks to all for the support and love..

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  Half banana

  Well said Phoebe and well done Josephus!
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  22

  A film about Jonah

  by Sergey Antonov in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  who has any thoughts about the new film about the prophet jonah?

  how could they divide the entire period into days, if the bible does not say so?

  the king ordered them to fast 20 days before the destruction ???!

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  Half banana

  But a fairytale with brass knobs.

  The trope of "three days dead" was a signifyer for a Sun God in ancient literature, later applied to any hero who descends to hell and returns, think Ulysses, three days dead, and Orpheus going to see Eurydice in Hades for example.

  Since the sun metaphorically dies for three and a half days at the winter solstice and metaphorically comes back to life again by virtue of the points at which the sun rises and sets having stopped for this period of time, on Christmas day start moving north again on the east horizon (the rebirth of the Sun God)

  To attribute this "three days dead" experience to Jesus was to award him the mantle of divine glory as a super-hero. This was a necessary move on the part of the Jesus cult to have this included in scripture because earlier "Christ" literature gave no personal name, just the title; The Christ.

  But hey! the more ancient fables which are retold by JW org as if they were true, the more JWs there will be who will wake up, join us and leave the cult to stew in it own ignorant juice. How anyone can see a divine hand at work in last years story of Lot and his daughters, beats me.
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  22

  A film about Jonah

  by Sergey Antonov in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  who has any thoughts about the new film about the prophet jonah?

  how could they divide the entire period into days, if the bible does not say so?

  the king ordered them to fast 20 days before the destruction ???!

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  Half banana

  Fairytale!