Posts by Anony Mous

169

Rich Man and Lazarus

by Ding in

i have never understood the watchtower's explanation of the rich man and lazarus story jesus told in luke 16. of course, they don't believe jesus is talking about what happens in an "afterlife" after people die.. but from the watchtower's point of view:.

1. who are the five brothers?.

2. why can't lazarus go witness to them?

Anony Mous

@aqwsed: where modern English translations are biased towards Christian doctrine, they do indeed translate ‘hell’ where it should read Sheol, which is not the idea of a fiery place, but rather a disconnect with God, a place where you bring yourself voluntarily through deeds and can lift yourself up. Jewish lore is a lot closer to Hinduism in that they almost believe in a sort of karma that follows your soul through the “incarnations” of life as well as death.

Hence why in your OT references, you have to stretch a lot to get to an idea of hellfire whereas your NT references only have an approximation of hellfire in specific “authors” but not in others, most of them being anachronistic with and most likely inserted later in comparison with the rest of the text (as in the Lazarus and the Rich Man story).

The biggest differences between the NT and OT when it talks about death, is that the NT beliefs in redemption after death through faith, whereas the OT/Jews do not, redemption is only through action and your deeds follow you into the afterlife and even applies to higher levels of consciousness, including for example, angels, whereas in the NT figures like Jesus and the angels are infallible.

169

Rich Man and Lazarus

by Ding in

i have never understood the watchtower's explanation of the rich man and lazarus story jesus told in luke 16. of course, they don't believe jesus is talking about what happens in an "afterlife" after people die.. but from the watchtower's point of view:.

1. who are the five brothers?.

2. why can't lazarus go witness to them?

Anony Mous

@ray: Hades being a fiery place of torment is a rather Hellenistic idea, not at all in line with Jewish belief.

Yes, the Jews believe in a life continuing after death, but they don’t believe in a place of torment, that would’ve been pagan, similar to child sacrifice, hence why the idea would be repulsive to the listener if it was indeed told at the time.

The whole story is anachronistic, the idea of hellfire only came hundreds of years after Jesus supposed death with the Catholic Church iconography and isn’t at all visible in other Christian branches such as Orthodox and Ethiopian Orthodox iconography.

45

Advice to reduce hours earn less and spend more time on the ministry

by ExBethelitenowPIMA in

the advice to reduce work and earn less to spend more time preaching has not aged well.. the cost of living crisis means many have more going out on necessities than they have coming in.. so many asked their employer to reduce their hours and refused promotion only to see their colleagues go up the ladder when they stayed lowly position with rubbish jobs thinking the end will be here soon.

next week midweek meeting is all about preparing for an economic crisis.. they say have a go bag and new advice for all jws to store food and water at home and grow a vegetable garden, i kid you not.

this is the new direction..

Anony Mous

Interesting how they explain to download a few publications (a true disaster doesn’t give you access to electronic devices after about 2 days) but nowhere do they tell you to get a hard copy of the actual Bible to read, let alone suggest other translations, literally one of the easiest books to obtain

169

Rich Man and Lazarus

by Ding in

i have never understood the watchtower's explanation of the rich man and lazarus story jesus told in luke 16. of course, they don't believe jesus is talking about what happens in an "afterlife" after people die.. but from the watchtower's point of view:.

1. who are the five brothers?.

2. why can't lazarus go witness to them?

Anony Mous

I’ve heard a lot better explanation during a recent Presbyterian sermon. It made a lot more sense than the JW version which is indeed full of contrivances to fit a particular belief. Basically the idea is that you should serve God while you’re still capable of doing so and not just as an afterthought. The warning of the brothers would’ve been refused as each person has an individual responsibility and you can’t improve someone else from beyond the grave

Linguistically it seems this story is inserted from other sources, as it introduces us to a lot of ideas foreign to Jews (which is where Jesus would’ve maintained some continuity with Jewish lore).

78

Top AI inventor Geoffrey Hinton reluctantly concluded that AI will probably humanity fairly soon

by slimboyfat in

geoffrey hinton, major inventor of artificial intelligence: .

“if you take the existential risk seriously, as i now do—i used to think it was way off, but now i think it’s serious, and fairly close—it might be quite sensible to just stop developing these things any further, but i think it’s completely naïve to think that would happen.

there’s no way to make that happen.

Anony Mous

Plenty of experts on climate, oil and other things have spelled doom for literally centuries now. I work adjacent to the AI field myself and current models are nowhere close. We’ve basically got a better predictive text algorithm, yes, interesting but it’s nowhere near close to thinking for itself.

As with everything else, Bitcoin, AI etc will have a measured impact, like the Internet did in its day, but we’re still decades away. Right now everyone is on pre-dial up with AI, where you have to dial yourself and at best you get a 14k connection, and you pay by the minute. We still have to get to the era of 56k, AOL, DSL and Cable before we can even think of it as moderately useful commercially for a day to day function.

Once I can ask it a question and get an answer I myself and nobody else haven’t thought of, then we should start worrying. I have AI enabled in my code generation, it is useful for very small things where you basically wished you had an intern, and like the intern, it more often doesn’t do what you want.

Now, 20, 30, 50 years from now, we may get to a form of AGI in a functional body. A semi-useful multi-function robot if you’re rich enough to buy one. But for that to happen, we first must find out what it is that makes something intelligent or sentient. And I am very suspicious of anyone that declares they know the answer to that question as to make a statement like that.

18

Silicon Valley Bank bankruptcy....

by mikeflood in

didn't know silicon valley bank was so important for start-ups....now there's some sort of contagion, people taking their money from regional banks to the big banks.

.

system seems pretty resilient and different from 2008. thoughts?.

Anony Mous

@mikeflood: it won’t get fixed, it only gets worse. Biden guaranteed all deposits, even those above $250k (the FDIC limit) at SVB, now every bank that’s insolvent will declare bankruptcy, get bailed out by the government and assets taken over by their “parent” bank companies.

First National got its rich customers bailed out, the bank was then taken over by JP Morgan, JP Morgan received $13B in deposits and got a $50B bonus from the Fed to do it.

This is the Obama bank bailouts all over again.

17

Charles the Third and the Two-Headed Beast

by Anony Mous in

i was reading an article about the pomp and circumstance around the first coronation in nearly a century.. made me think of the revelation book (the red one, not the bible) and the picture of the two headed beast with a sword and if i have some time today i will see if i can’t find it and age it a bit, it seems the sword is a bit dull and the two heads are now both octogenarians with severe dementia, kind of funny to see that instead of “swift judgment” we’ve come to internal decay.. what do you canadians, english, scots, irish and australians think about your new leadership?.

Anony Mous

@New Day: not so quick, the British still view Republic of Ireland at least partially as U.K., people of the Republic can vote and become MP in the British parliament and vice versa Brits can vote in Republic of Ireland.

The Brits never officially recognized the independence, unlike other territories like India. So it’s only independent de-facto, from the viewpoint of the crown, they legally still have full ownership of the area, as they do all the rest of the commonwealth, only civil uprising and lack of resources preventing the exercise of the power.

@stan: lol, no, I mis-remembered, it’s the beast with the two horns of a lamb that’s Anglo-America. My point being that the beast is a bit aged.

17

Charles the Third and the Two-Headed Beast

by Anony Mous in

i was reading an article about the pomp and circumstance around the first coronation in nearly a century.. made me think of the revelation book (the red one, not the bible) and the picture of the two headed beast with a sword and if i have some time today i will see if i can’t find it and age it a bit, it seems the sword is a bit dull and the two heads are now both octogenarians with severe dementia, kind of funny to see that instead of “swift judgment” we’ve come to internal decay.. what do you canadians, english, scots, irish and australians think about your new leadership?.

Anony Mous

I was reading an article about the pomp and circumstance around the first coronation in nearly a century.

Made me think of the Revelation book (the red one, not the Bible) and the picture of the two headed beast with a sword and if I have some time today I will see if I can’t find it and age it a bit, it seems the sword is a bit dull and the two heads are now both octogenarians with severe dementia, kind of funny to see that instead of “swift judgment” we’ve come to internal decay.

What do you Canadians, English, Scots, Irish and Australians think about your new leadership?

23

JW visit...after 12 years out

by Nobleheart1 in

i used to post here under the name nobleheart but forgot the old password, so put up a new account (nobleheart1).

was a jw (2002-2011), ended up writing a da letter.

i am a christian (since leaving the org).

Anony Mous

The problem is that most of them aren't even AWARE of these points anymore, or how to answer them. They got rid of the "little brown brother" a long time ago, they're just robot sales people now, it's all about conformance, not substance.

So ask them a difficult question, the first thing they'll ask is where did you find that and a canned answer that if it's not in the app, it's not acceptable. Why, because that's what we learn. Substance we grew up with has gone, nobody remembers it, everyone with a shred of knowledge and decency has left the org.

77

Biden running in 2024 🤣

by LoveUniHateExams in

i've filed this under news and world events, although i could've posted it under entertainment, lol.

apparently, joe biden will be seeking re-election for another term in the white house.. this, despite a recent poll showing that 70% of people don't want him to run again.. biden just has to be the worst president i've seen.

his gaffes, over-relience on a prompter, and, more than any other president, his refusal to answer journalists' questions, all go to make him top of the list in terms of bad presidents.. it will certainly provide entertainment, if nothing else..

Anony Mous

@JeffT: I honestly think it is too late for that, Obama and Biden have both stoked the flames of faux racism, no way to put it out at this moment, police officers are abandoning their posts, people are taking things in their own hands.

Which in the end will be the end of the US, the large corporations have also abandoned good business dealings in favor of DEI everyone from the bank to the beer and are failing as a result, which results in handouts which requires money printing.

If another Biden/Obama-style person gets elected and they continue with the idiotic energy and fiscal policies the US is done for in less than that person's 2 terms, rural America is going to resemble the Wild West, and the cities are going to resemble Mad Max and a large civil war between the two.