Half banana

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Posts by Half banana

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  101

  Who is the mediator for jehovahs witnesses?

  by atomant in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  lm getting conflicting advice.ls it the 144000 or jesus.l was always under the impression it was jesus.lf its the 144000 then when they pray the jw;s should be praying through the remnant not in jesus christs name but in the 144000;s name..

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  Half banana

  No serious researcher today uses the Bible as an authority.

  The very reliance on the Iron Age writings incorporated into the Bible indicates an attitude of unquestioning submission. Here is where the fundamental fault lies in giving proper meaning to ancient texts. They were written by the powerful to control the dumb at a time when written language was itself an evidence of authority. Those who believe the Bible are the dumb and fearful who listen in awe to the religious mediators of the day.

  Who needs a mediator? No one unless you're trying to settle a dispute.

  "Spirit anointed Christian"? A modern post-Watchtower fiction!

  The premise that man is sinful is a catchy religious fallacy which has allowed the priests, clergy and cult leaders to flourish financially and therefore wield power like they did in the first century and continue doing so today. There is no such thing as the "144,000 anointed" it is a myth courtesy of the Watchtower cult.

  For our own sanity and progress in the world, we must ignore JW teachings and their irrelevant demands and get a proper life based on things which have evidence for their existence not this worthless Watchtower hocus pocus.
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  35

  I Saw An Elder Yesterday Who Told Me 3 Area Kingdom Halls Were Being Dissolved

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  he said they read the letter to the congregation and were told the kh would be disbanded.

  2 other halls in the area were slated for closure.

  he said many people in the congregation began crying.

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  Half banana

  It must be tough for the governing body (poor things) to have to keep coming up with a positive spin on the decline of membership. "Jerhoover is speeding up the work"--no he downright isn't, that is a lie. People are not interested in joining the cult and Jehovah is not the slightest bit interested in the JW organisation as we can tell from the failure of their prophecies and the closure of kingdom halls.

  Even the true believers will soon start to get the vibes: the JW religion is going down the tubes.
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  21

  It baffles me why they would even say this

  by Tameria2001 in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  back in 2001, i left the jws rather abruptly.

  i had discovered things about the watchtower that really made me quite angry, angry because i had been lied to, and it took me just to darn long to figure it out.

  before i had left, my husband and i wrote 3 letters, one to the elders at our congregation, and two to our parents.

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  Half banana

  To me it confirms that accepting the Watchtower belief system is all about getting a psychological fix.

  To believe gives hope, to see others believing the same things reinforces that hope whether it's true or not. Joining the JW religion gives you like minded friends, a safe community. Lastly it gives you an identity, you know who you are and where you stand in your group and where you stand in relation to the rest of the world-- alienated, as it happens.

  The fact that the JW religion historically has proven to be false does not mean that its aura of divine promise isn't a help for some people at a private and emotional level. Especially for those with limited education or experience of how the world works.
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  18

  Can someone help me figure out something, dealing with paganism?

  by Tameria2001 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the watchtower and quite a few other religious groups don't do certain things because of pagan origins.

  they go on about the different holidays, certain traditions, and say they don't do those things because of pagan origins.

  yet they turn right around and do other stuff, which does have pagan origins.

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  Half banana

  The Jews of course were only the people of their own declared god YHWH, who in turn was borrowed from the Phoenecian pantheon of gods, YHWH being a son of the God El. So the Jews chose their own god to represent them and then claimed themselves to be "his people", or "God's chosen people", just like JWs do today.

  There is of course no evidence for YHWH choosing anyone or ever having spoken or done anything at all-- but this is the very nature of religious belief.

  So what is "pagan"? The word pagan originally referred to things from the countryside, and simply meant of the village, the word in Latin for village was pagus. Likewise the word heathen meant a dweller on the heath. In other words; relating to rustic life as opposed to educated civilisation found in cities. Fourth century Roman Christianity (when the Bible was compiled) saw itself as a civilised, sophisticated and urban (hence urbane) religion and wanted no demeaning connection with the peasantry.

  The irony though is that the underpinning of Bible stories are indeed folk tales i.e. pagan, often based on almost universal mythologies drawn from very ancient fables about the sun, stars and constellations.
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  9

  Congratulations to the W. T.

  by joey jojo in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i think congratulations are long overdue to the wt for the excellent job they do of keeping members dumbed-down and feeling safe inside the cocoon of a hive mind.

  they tell us that the best education program in the world is reading the wt publications but here is a conversation i had with my uber elder buddy yesterday that may prove otherwise.

  we were talking about the october broadcast and the question of whether gods name should be included or not, when i made an offhand comment about the compiling of the new testament and the canonisation of its books.

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  Half banana

  I agree with you Stuck, I have encountered this pride in JWs several times recently. Proud to be a believer whatever evidence there is to the contrary-- proud to be a JW--proud to be ignorant!

  If your self worth depends on a validation by JWs then that's where you will likely remain, sealed in a bubble and interpreting everything you hear and read in the light of your cherished delusion.
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  42

  Serious Issue ....... that MUST be Addressed !!!!!

  by Simon in

  1. forum
  2. announcements

  this is such an important issue, more and more people are succumbing to what must be some viral outbreak wreaking havoc in the world.. i'm talking about unnecessary punctuation.. it's easy to become infected.

  you want to write something and add some emphasis so you add an exclamation mark to make it "important!

  " but dang, it's not important enough is it??

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  Half banana

  Girl next door, since you mentioned one of my favourite poets Emily Dickinson; Wendy Cope an English poet and academic gives a response to her unconventional punctuation:

  Higgledy-piggledy
  Emily Dickinson
  Liked to use dashes
  Instead of full stops.

  Nowadays, faced with such
  Idiosyncrasy,
  Critics and editors
  Send for the cops.

  ~Emily Dickinson by Wendy Cope
• 
  42

  Serious Issue ....... that MUST be Addressed !!!!!

  by Simon in

  1. forum
  2. announcements

  this is such an important issue, more and more people are succumbing to what must be some viral outbreak wreaking havoc in the world.. i'm talking about unnecessary punctuation.. it's easy to become infected.

  you want to write something and add some emphasis so you add an exclamation mark to make it "important!

  " but dang, it's not important enough is it??

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  Half banana

  The above three sentences show that sometimes you just have to have an Oxford comma.
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  20

  Russian gunman raised in JW family

  by Alex Bogdanov in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the link bellow is sort of ok. i could not find a decent article in english language about this, but russian media is exploding.

  2 days ago a teenager killed 19 people and injured dozens and committed suicide.

  he was raised in a jw family.

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  Half banana

  Often people join the JW religion because they come from a dysfunctional family.

  It is the dream of paradise sold them courtesy of the Watchtower which gives the false hope for a better life. The youthful gunman may have decided to kill whether he had been exposed to JW ideas or not. Nevertheless, surely it is better to be nurtured in a caring family without experiencing JW style conditional love?

  I knew a hard line bro, son of the cong overseer who said back in the seventies that if Armageddon didn't arrive by 2000 he was going to leave the org. I wonder if he (or others like him) did?

  Isn't this the way JWs want to talk among themselves speculating on a date for Armageddon with thoughts such as "well at the very outside it must come by 2014"? Seeing a disaster coming down the pipeline the GB introduced their totally unconvincing overlapping theory preemptively in 2005. However the flock will still have been harbouring the popular consensus thought of "2014".
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  3

  Nothing unusual to see here, I think

  by Doug Mason in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  in my slow but relentless foray into the “second temple period” i have marked up a few pages from one more source.

  it does not contain anything that is extraordinary, i think.. http://www.jwstudies.com/reading_romans_in_context__intro__marked_up.pdf .

  doug.

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  Half banana

  Continuing your thought of Biblical "adoration", I think this is the biggest hurdle to scale in attempting to get an accurate picture of historical times and events of the period it covers. The sacralising of texts in the fourth century by the Catholic Church has formed an overwhelming tradition for an unthinking high regard for the Bible.

  Darwin's biological evidence in Origin of the Species (1859) shocked the Christian world for its blow to Bible literalism. Yet nearly one hundred and sixty years later people still parrot "the Bible is God's word" and because people take things on trust, few find out for themselves how unreliable and misleading it really is.

  The Holy book is nothing like divine wisdom, like Brighton rock the Bible has human frailty written though its length; savage retribution, nationalism, power along with fawning servility, conceit and hopeless dreams are its core material.

  I agree with you DM, once we understand the Bible as human in origin we can then see how certain peoples thought in the past and note that in the 21st century we have at least made some progress towards democratic civilisation.
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  3

  Nothing unusual to see here, I think

  by Doug Mason in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  in my slow but relentless foray into the “second temple period” i have marked up a few pages from one more source.

  it does not contain anything that is extraordinary, i think.. http://www.jwstudies.com/reading_romans_in_context__intro__marked_up.pdf .

  doug.

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  Half banana

  One problem here is the reference to Biblical accounts as if they are historical, such as things to do with the first temple, which mainly was a glorious but imaginary structure from the 10th century from a time period where archaeology shows no evidence for such building and that the inhabitants of the land would have been incapable of constructing it due to lack of resources.

  The two Jonathons, Linebaugh and J D Worthington seem to be teachers of religion rather than secular academics. Without a dispassionate and critical appraisal, no progress can ever be made. Naturally they concur with the historical date for the destruction of Jerusalem but invoke divine prophecy at the same time.

  Have you had a look at the books on biblical text and history by Thomas L Thompson?

  Nevertheless well done for your determination to get to the root of things.