Anony Mous

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Posts by Anony Mous

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  9

  Are Watchtower/ Awake considered religious magazines by Christians?

  by dydeonwl in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  the watchtower and awake have been considered as the most read magazines by christians.

  do you think that all christians agree on it?.

  source:.

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  Anony Mous

  I would take the numbers with a grain of salt. If the stats are true (93M Awake per issue and 42M Watchtowers), every single JW places an average of 15 Awake magazines and similarly large amount of 7 Watchtowers bi-weekly (which was 44/month/JW a few years ago and since they've gone monthly now it is 22/month)

  Even as pioneer I didn't get anywhere close to 30 magazines per month, and they claim every JW turning in a report card does this?

  Interesting is that the 'study' Watchtowers have a distribution of 14M, whereas they're only for JW's and there's only ~6M of those with half of the organization living in situations where it is not only hard to get the timely delivery of the rags, they are in areas where many people would have difficulty reading. Someone's seen counting with a fork?
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  10

  Jehovah's Witnesses Mega Halls

  by RolRod in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i was thinking about this recently.

  the society owns all the kingdom halls and with desperate need of money, their closing down and selling off properties.

  consolidating congregations seems to be the order of the day.

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  Anony Mous

  They're already doing that, for the "foreign language field", circuit overseer visits and even for the memorial, they're now using the assembly halls (at a "voluntary donation" of course).

  The biggest problem with the large assembly halls is visitors, the cost of heating and lighting giant spaces is huge.
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  109

  Proportional Representation vs Electoral Collages

  by Simon in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the craziness of first-past-the-post elections .... we'll no doubt have to now live through the scotts demanding another referendum, because we may take their lands, but we will never take their freedom!

  and so they want to be free of the uk, where they have a disproportionate influence in parliament, and be a little dot that's part of the eu.

  yup, freedom.. but anyway, as it stands right now they have 48 seats after getting 1.2m votes.

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  Anony Mous

  The question is whether you want direct democracy, oppression of the majority so to say, or a representative government where each area of the country, typically divided into cities and groups of towns, gets an equal vote.

  Good and long-term governments are built upon representative governments because each area (eg. farming, fishing, cities, ...) get a say in their policies. If you have a majority vote for everything, a majority can always agree to persecute the minority, whether the minority is rich people, black people, gay people. Hence why direct democracies usually lead to bad outcomes unless you can make every choice between two highly contrasting ideas (eg. kill all the blacks vs kill all the whites)
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  37

  What’s Your Opinion of Adam Schiff?

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i’ve heard some people praise him for his zeal against president trump.

  others have not been so praiseworthy toward the california congressman.. today he was so concerned that trump might be so emboldened now that he has won acquittal, that he suggests that trump might make a deal with russia and sell them the state of alaska.

  😐.

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  Anony Mous

  He looks and talks like a politician, he's really good at it, he's a good lawyer I'd say from the arguments he made at the impeachment. But he comes across as a lawyer and not in the good way, more in the way of "that guy looks like he's defending a mafioso", the way he looks sideways all the time when he makes a statement about his case.

  So you have good Schiff - on the stand, defending a legal argument, even if it isn't logically consistent, he'll stand there and defend it - and you have bad Schiff, when you know he's lying, he's looking left and right, and he did that for 2 days straight in the Senate and then he attempted to do it during Q&A time as well.
  
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  27

  New Wuhan coronavirus around.....

  by mikeflood in

  1. social
  2. current

  new coronavirus wreaking havoc.....first case detected in the us one hour ago....six deaths already in china.....hope it gets controlled soon.....

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  Anony Mous

  @DesirousofChange: again, don't let a few tarnish the many. The NYT has been a sensational rag since Hillary ran vs Obama and they lost tons and tons of subscribers due to dishonest coverage. They never recovered, same goes for CNN and MSNBC, they lost tons of viewers over the last decade and are now relegated to sensational headlines and opinion pieces without substance.

  Luckily we do have a rather large body of small independent journalist sites (eg the Daily Wire) that are open about their biases. I get all my news from independent channels on YouTube and podcasts which can go in deep and honest detail of a particular issue.

  As far as the topic at hand, what I got from my sources is that it's a potentially major issue, it won't spread far beyond China because we have better healthcare and an open media, similar to the SARS and other outbreaks in China. Also, it's a deadlier virus than the cold but it is still a cold which doesn't mean automatic death and it's relatively easy to contain and prevent spreading.
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  12

  Just saw this on Facebbok, by Barbara Anderson, Disfellowshiping cancelled by "worldly" Court !

  by Phizzy in

  1. watchtower
  2. child-abuse

  excuse the translation to english not being perfect ,.

  barbara anderson.

  33 mins · .

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  Anony Mous

  No, the court cannot force association. But the legal entity and its rules falls under jurisdiction of the courts (same goes for the US) and it's not uncommon for disputes within an organization, even non-profits and churches, to be adjudicated in court (eg employment issues - you can't fire someone on illegal grounds such as religion even if you're the Catholic Church)

  The rules of the JW organization can be adjudicated by a "worldly" court and often are in, for example, child custody cases. In my case elders were disallowed from disfellowshipping me because it would be prejudicing and damaging to the relationship between me and my child.

  There are a number of cases where the actions of the JWs get limited, eg you can get a restraining order against the Watchtower entities from their representatives contacting and visiting you. As long as the court does not limit the constitutional protections, which would be the case of a blanket ban on preaching in a geographical area, civil cases in courts can and do result in all sorts of sanctions on the WTBTS, but the WTBTS often can and does get gag orders in place as well, especially if they end up settling rather than litigating.
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  22

  Jordan Peterson - Messiah or Poseur?

  by cofty in

  1. social
  2. current

  a jp video came up on my youtube feed last week - he was on a panel in front of a huge audience and some poor disturbed guy ran on stage and started crying and wailing to peterson that he needed his help.

  it was agonising to watch.. what was even more disturbing was the comments section.

  i do not exaggerate when i say that dozens of people were extolling peterson's wisdom as if jesus had come again.

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  Anony Mous

  He is rarely asked to clarify, he often gets asked what his position is, often with the goal of classifying him into the "ultra-religious right wing cook" which he understandably never answers outright. He also doesn't want to lie and his viewpoint on Christianity is rarely contained in a single sound bite.

  He's admitted to not being a Christian in the strictest sense of belonging to one or another church or believing in the unerring of the Bible but he does believe that the Judeo-Christian message is important in our society and has influenced our morality and it's hard to separate it both from our collective as well as his individual psyche.

  I think he struggles with disconnecting the influence of Christianity in his own thinking and he hasn't made up his mind as to whether the whole thing is a psychological byproduct or something he should actually believe.

  I don't know the man personally but I do understand where he is coming from when he doesn't want to expound on his position, these days people just want to classify you as religious and then they can safely ignore you and your position because you aren't an atheist.

  I am an atheist myself but I do believe that there is a morally superior message in the Judeo-Christian faiths compared to eg Islam or Buddhism which has caused the West to develop as it has.
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  22

  Jordan Peterson - Messiah or Poseur?

  by cofty in

  1. social
  2. current

  a jp video came up on my youtube feed last week - he was on a panel in front of a huge audience and some poor disturbed guy ran on stage and started crying and wailing to peterson that he needed his help.

  it was agonising to watch.. what was even more disturbing was the comments section.

  i do not exaggerate when i say that dozens of people were extolling peterson's wisdom as if jesus had come again.

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  Anony Mous

  He is a tremendous intellectual that has a great amount of insight in 20th century history and how it's starting to repeat itself in the 21st century with the rise of socialism/communism and far-left (similar to Nazi and Stalinist) ideas.

  I don't necessarily agree with all his analysis but he does a decent job at explaining why his ideas are valid. He does fall into the Professor trap where he tries to over explain or treat his audience as students with a significant level of prerequisite knowledge.

  As far as his religiosity and ideas around it, as he has made clear, he doesn't want to expound on a topic that requires a good background knowledge, because he'd be taken out of context, hence he won't argue about those things because it takes a lot of time to properly explain a position. He also won't go into personal religious or "did Jesus really do miracles" because according to one interview, there is nothing to be gained in those debates because it depends on what you believe and how you define the words and which facts you accept. He does have a series of lectures on the Judeo-Christian values and ideas from the Bible.

  All-in-all, he is honest about his views, he is open for honest discussions and when it comes to people and politics, all around brilliant in his debates with journalists and sees right through when the media is trying to entrap him into a sound bite.
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  7

  Police and Fire Department Officials in Guatemala Benefit From Bible-Based Workshops

  by TheFadingAlbatros in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  https://www.jw.org/en/news/jw/region/guatemala/police-and-fire-department-officials-in-guatemala-benefit-from-bible-based-workshops/.

  i am surprised that a government authority is calling on a religious organization to give their police and fire department officials instructions to behave in a better way with the guatemalan population.

  the organization of jehovah's witnesses is well known to separate families (shunning) and have in the past protected numerous pedophiles within their organization ( maybe they are still doing it now somewhere in secret, who knows ?

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  Anony Mous

  The photo is staged, the girl is way too happy, the JWs way too nicely dressed, fresh pressed suits in that environment, climate and dust after you've been schlepping in and out a car for 2 hours and the cart is posed "just so" to make it clear this is the way we spread the message. It's very similar in setup to just about any other JW picture.

  Most likely the thing is the other way around, the government is inviting various religious groups to talk on a subject in the hopes of appeasing the populace, as police officers do the world over after some brutality incident, and the JWs are making it into a media stunt.

  Replace JW with Al Sharpton in the USA and you got the same media release on how Dr. Rev. Sharpton is reeducating police on coming to the Lord and good behavior.
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  10

  Quote Misquote Misleading

  by ZindagiNaMilegiDobaara in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the latest watchtowel (march 2020) study edition has a question from readers ‘what evidence exists outside the bible that the israelites were slaves in egypt?’ from what i read in the bible unearthed there being nothing to base any claims on.

  the article gives a quote by ‘dr.

  bimson : “the biblical traditions of the bondage in egypt and of the exodus have a firm historical basis.” no links or sources given.

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  Anony Mous

  There is no historical evidence of anything in the Bible from Abraham up to King Hezekiah. There are stories that roughly align but the times are all wrong, king David and his lineage never existed, the entire area was continuously occupied and the Jews, although they have historically always lived there (unlike the Jordanians and other invaders currently claiming the land after the British Empire crumbled), until the Persians and Greeks came along never had a unified kingdom. The Greeks and Persians installed kings as an effective means to maintain stability and a feeling of unity within a group.

  As far as the biblical message, yes the Egyptians ruled over the area so it's likely escapee slaves were welcomed in the rebellious area of Israel. The Jews did have a strong written history which made them unique and caused them to be strong predecessors to other organized religions such as Christianity and Islam. Their written history unified them across time and distance lands but a lot of it is allegory and fable written exactly for that purpose.