Half banana

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Posts by Half banana

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  12

  New JW.org Logo

  by Not_Culty in

  1. social
  2. humour

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  Half banana

  Brill! Let's hope the GB see it and fix the image in their minds..............
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  14

  The people who decided the Scriptures

  by Doug Mason in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  many people over many centuries have been involved in deciding which documents were scripture.

  there has never been unanimous agreement, including today.

  only the church of rome took a vote on the canon.

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  Half banana

  In his book The Text of the New Testament, Dr. Vincent Taylor writes that "The manuscripts of the New Testament preserve traces of two kinds of dogmatic alterations: those which involve the elimination or alteration of what was regarded as doctrinally unacceptable or inconvenient, and those which introduce into the Scriptures proof for a favorite theological tenet or practice". (http://BibleCorruption.com ).

  Very apposite Irenaeus.
  
  
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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

  Egregious idiots! one hundred and thirty nine years of "special" JW messages attacking "false religion" like hailstones the size of pianos raining down and enlightening mankind before it's too late..............

  How delusional! What a confidence trick! What a waste of precious lives! What a scam!

  The good bit is that the tide is turning and the public no longer want to tolerate abusive cults like Jehovah's Witnesses.
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  50

  1969 Awake on Education - A Sore Spot for Me

  by NotBlind in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  my father would have started college 49 years ago this week.

  about three months earlier, the week he graduated high school, the awake!

  magazine came out with some very clear direction to teenagers.

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  Half banana

  I too suffered from not getting the education I wanted. In summary people should know from the first contact with Jehovah's Witnesses that you should never believe a word they say and never do what they ask you to do. Use your brain instead.
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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

  I recall it referred to an 18 page booklet? It would be strange to want to abbreviate an already brief work?

  Different format, different type size or just one edition?
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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

  @ waton

  "female fireworms come up from the bottom of the sea to spawn at precisely 55 minutes after sunset on the third night after the full moon."

  Astonishingly good time measurement by anyone's standards-- but from a 4 centimeter worm!!
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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

  The key point is that the origins of the Bible do not represent astrology, the Bible is not astrological.

  Astrology came from a divination of the night sky. Astronomy and astrology use the Zodiac (a word drawn from Greek referring to a circle of little animals) but that does not make astronomy false or astrology true. It was in the same way that Tarot was an ordinary card game which by the eighteenth century, superstitious people began to take it to have mystical predictive qualities. Humans are like this!

  The Bible stories parallel many of the myths and legends but not astrology! which were developed as mnemonics (memory pegs) to fix in mind the succession of the twelve constellations of the zodiac and the stars in relation to them.

  During the long Stone Age era of mankind and afterwards, people needed the Zodiac-- it was their map and compass, their calendar and their bible.
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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

  Don't jump to premature conclusions without learning the evidence. Remember that religious belief has always evolved but it has to originate somewhere, where then did it come from?

  It came not from astrology or horoscopes but the stories, myths or legends if you like, about the constellations, stars and movements of the heavenly bodies as symbolic of the activities of heavenly heroes. The places where the sun rose and set on key days of the year were the markers for festival days, symbolic of the rebirth of the sun in mid-winter, and the sacrificed sun god going to his father at the spring equinox, these being among the main events of the pagan solar year--as they still are in religious circles today, namely Christmas and Easter.

  Before the Bible existed in the fourth century, there was another 'Bible'-- people looked to the stars, sun, moon and constellations for insight and wisdom. It was alas, no more reliable than the Bible for prophecy!

  The links with the occult and 'paganism' were condemned by the Roman Church especially in the fifth century and under penalty of death for infringements.This disguised the fact that the source of their religious power was actually drawn from folk tales and the Catholic religion held itself to be sophisticated and superior to the idle stories of mere rustics.This blanket condemnation and the enforced destruction of virtually all pagan documentation was successful in concealing the origins of Christianity but it did not negate the fact that there are tangible links of Bible text with the folk stories of the constellations stars Sun Moon and planets, not just coincidental patterns or similarities.

  Here's the rub, we humans are pattern spotters, that's what gives us the edge over all other living things on the planet. But we should approach evidence in the spirit of the courts of law. If we spot patterns because we want to pursue a private hunch it is usual that we see the patterns we want to. It's called confirmation bias. If though we are scientific about it we will weigh the evidence dispassionately and see the pattern or links for what they are. In the end all assessment of truth is by the force of evidence for a thing on one hand outweighing the facts on the other hand. Knowing from JW experience that "new truths" are something of a con, it is from the history of ideas and the knowledge of universal myths and folklore which should inform our investigations on this particular subject, not the knee jerk response to say that "astrology is wrong".
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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 the surprising thing is that there was not even a settlement at the place that was later called Nazareth. Obviously it did exist at the time when the manuscripts of the Bible texts were last edited.

  The archaeology of the area shows that there had been a cemetery there, not a good choice for habitation --although at some time before the first century there had been one farmhouse nearby but that is all. Josephus, that scrupulous recorder of everything Jewish, lived within a half hour's walk of the place not long after the supposed time of Jesus' residence but he never mentions it (neither does he mention Jesus) and nor do any contemporary Roman maps show a village called Nazareth. Since Judea was under Roman rule they would have needed to mark and assess the taxable value of every village if not every house.
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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