I remember something similar, although I don’t recall it being published, but someone somewhere did keep track because if you didn’t make the quota, you were sure to get a talking to. And I vaguely remember the price lists when I was really young, so much for a watchtower, so much for awake, so much for a book or a Bible.
Anony Mous
JoinedPosts by Anony Mous
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34
If You Can Remember When This Was Displayed in the KH - You Ain't No Spring Chicken!
by mikronboy in.
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Is Disfellowshipping properly legislated?
by Rattigan350 inin the insight book under expelling, it refers to 1 cor 5 and titus 3 and 2 thess 3 as the basis for disfellowshipping.they've often said that the governing body was stated in acts 15 of the apostles and older men.
however, why was there no decree or letter issued by the governing body or apostles and older men and sent out to the congregations, detailing the principles of disfellowshipping?
it is all paul.
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Anony Mous
As far as the biblical account, I think people really should be looking at the exegesis of all Christian scripture, not just what is in the Bible.
The Bible as most people know it is a filtered version fitted to a particular branch of Christianity. Like the WTBTS has its own ‘translation’ that adds and removes certain components based on their own interpretation, the King James has the same ‘problem’.
Beyond that, Peter denied Christ and was still forgiven, the Pauline letters recount a single incident which does not match general consensus in ANY other scripture. Jewish scripture even pre-Christianity (eg. Sirach which was ~150BC), already mentions forgiveness needs to be given BEFORE prayer can be accepted, which is also what Jesus said (leave your offering at the altar and go make peace or if you do not forgive, neither can the father) and both Pauline and others reflect the same sentiment.
Hence 1 Cor cannot refer to excommunication or shunning from a church (the cutting off of salvation as the WTBTS teaches) because by doing so, the church would put itself as a mouthpiece of God, because only God can make a perfect judgment and only God can perfectly forgive. It talks about discipline, and still accepting that person as a brother (2 Thess 3:15). So if you need ‘the church’ to excommunicate (withdraw salvation) and ‘the church’ to reinstate (restore salvation or provide forgiveness), you are elevating the people in the church to be channeling the divine, which would imply, based on the exegesis of scripture, this is akin to spiritism in the WTBTS elder bodies. -
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Is AI going to change the world?
by Reasonfirst inhad lunch with a friend, whose a lecturer in the accounting dept.
of one of australia's best universities.
he told me he expects to lose his job at some point in the next 5 years, as the accounting dept, will disappear, as all accounting will be done by ai programs, so why teach it.. if his fears are correct, that means that any profession that involves the mind, may one day face the same future.
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Anony Mous
Current LLM can approximate a very low level of human interaction for a very brief period of time. The problem is that it has nothing (eg. morality or experience which are effectively feedback loops to what is acceptable) to anchor itself on, it literally just throws a ton of shit at the wall to see what sticks and unless properly guided, it will just spew out more and more random stuff.
Until we can define and encode what it is that makes up intelligence and morality, then we have nothing to fear from a self-aware AI. People will use AI to improve their effectiveness in many avenues, including killing other people, but that is just people doing what people do. As long as your gun isn’t controlled by someone else (eg. Smart triggers), you will be able to defend yourself.
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54
Is AI going to change the world?
by Reasonfirst inhad lunch with a friend, whose a lecturer in the accounting dept.
of one of australia's best universities.
he told me he expects to lose his job at some point in the next 5 years, as the accounting dept, will disappear, as all accounting will be done by ai programs, so why teach it.. if his fears are correct, that means that any profession that involves the mind, may one day face the same future.
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Anony Mous
The thing is, accountants a long time ago could’ve been replaced by computer programmers, the problem is a shortage and the expense of programmers. Accountants, any dumbass with Excel can do that.
This problem will remain, there are simply not enough people smart enough to program the AIs to take over accountants’ jobs and accountants aren’t valuable enough to invest to replace.
As with computers, “AI” (current language and other prediction models) will increase productivity in all aspects of life, they won’t take over your job, but the accountant will no longer use Excel (as we know it today) like they no longer use tabulated paper or ticker tape calculators. Instead of having to write a formula in Excel, they will put in a sentence on what they want to do with the data. This will lead to a faster results, a slightly more replaceable accountant but increased error rates which someone up higher (a programmer) will then have to solve when they accumulate these documents. Things will change but they will largely remain the same.
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Is WT Using ATTENDANTS At The Conventions To Be: "TOY COPS"
by HiddlesWife ini have heard from a few ppimis and several pimos that the attendants who are stationedly-assigned to the front entrances of the borgvenues (cahs and other arenas) have been checking to see if any persons (members and non-member visitors) have badges.
on the other hand, if these persons don't have one, this is what i was told that these dubs do this: corral around the non-badge-wearing individual and interrogate he/she/them plus questioning them, "why are you here?!".
also, even if that person or persons have an invitation plus showed it to these dubs, these toy cops still do that procedure.
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Anony Mous
This is nothing new, this has been the case literally since I’ve been young, especially at the smaller meetings (circuit, one-day, the yearly ‘special’ and regional assemblies) in non-public venues whereas public venues (3 day assemblies), most of the venues still had a monument or a park that had to remain open to the public so we were told to inform people this was a private event if they got too close/loud/interruptive.
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Why didn't God create us to be obviously different?
by SydBarrett ina silly question since i'm an atheist but one i thought of as a kid jw.
why weren't human's created to be obviously different from animals?
among believers there is some sort of universal hierarchy.
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Anony Mous
Because the gods were lazy. Lot easier to make many different cars if you don’t have to change the chassis.
If you believe in creation, then god must have had some pressure from finance or marketing because many shortcuts were made to finish the project on time.
We’ll fix it later, nobody will notice - God, the first real engineer.
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JW current stance on Vaccines?
by lcarter017 init came to my attention that the covid-19 vaccine works by editing the genetic code of the mitochondrial dna, using gene therapy.. you should seriously question the moral implications of allowing a part of your dna to be modified.
does anyone have any concerns about this?if anyone has any questions, i can do my best to explain.
i personally find it very suspicious how they chose to word it, and conveniently inform us of this fact "after" people have taken the vaccine..
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Anony Mous
I knew the pope was quite progressive, but didn’t know they went that far to comply with COVID vaccine requirements. No wonder there is a schism building amongst Catholics.
I still don’t understand the logical differentiation between committing a sin and benefiting from that sin, in pure legal parlance, if you benefit from a crime you are at least partially culpable for that crime, because if nobody benefited, there wouldn’t have been a crime in the first place. So too, if you need aborted babies’ stem cells or human/animal blood to produce your vaccines, even if it is fractional, the demand for the vaccine creates or enables the sin.
It’s very much like Satan in the garden, he was punished because he suggested a benefit in the product of sin, he didn’t suggest it wasn’t a sin or that the fruit in itself had properties. Likewise David simply ordered the death of Bathsheba’s husband, he didn’t kill himself, but benefited from it and was punished for it.
I don’t have a leg in this fight, I don’t believe in the gods or their stories, but I’m just wondering where the consistency lies.
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JW current stance on Vaccines?
by lcarter017 init came to my attention that the covid-19 vaccine works by editing the genetic code of the mitochondrial dna, using gene therapy.. you should seriously question the moral implications of allowing a part of your dna to be modified.
does anyone have any concerns about this?if anyone has any questions, i can do my best to explain.
i personally find it very suspicious how they chose to word it, and conveniently inform us of this fact "after" people have taken the vaccine..
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Anony Mous
That’s always been interesting to me what Fisherman here says. Back in the day, any blood parts in any product was a big no-no, that has been changed since as they were facing many lawsuits about dead children. I remember the time when we were given pieces of paper at the service meetings that we then had to glue in our books (Everlasting Life I believe was the ‘study’ book, it was a marbled red) and the blood brochures and we all got the new blood cards when that changed.
mRNA and some other vaccines are developed however with the assistance of aborted babies’ stem cells, which (strict) Catholics and various Evangelical groups won’t accept but JW leaves it open to interpretation.
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Unbelievable Amount of PIMOS at Massachusetts JW Convention
by RESPECTFUL OBSERVER inthis comment was made on reddit, perhaps protesting is starting to get the witnesses' attention.. it amazed me how many jehovah's witnesses exiting the convention were reading the protester's signs.
some of the witnesses were taking pictures of the signs.
jws were going by and smiling and giving a thumbs up.
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Anony Mous
As far as the nice cars, many, many witnesses have let their kids go to college over the years and many are doing relatively well as a result.
Sure, there are some tradespeople, but hard working people can be brutally honest and have strong family ties, many tradespeople have also gotten politically activated against the COVID BS and the demanded shots from the Borg would have turned many of them. Those are the ‘high profile’ cases where entire families end up leaving the borg because the patriarch woke up.
To remain gullible or deceptive enough to stay, you need a non-STEM higher education and work in HR, business administration or other such non-operational jobs that keeps people isolated from strong family ties, ‘worldly’ community involvement and get shielded from any information that would challenge their world view.
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"How Long Would Jesus' Reign Be?"
by BoogerMan insimple enough question for a jw to answer, because the org has told them for over 100 years that, .
a) jesus would reign for 1000 years, and.
b) that his reign began in 1914 when he became king.
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Anony Mous
@Fisherman: you cant interpret words like short period or quickly on their face.
Then you can’t interpret the rest of the words on their face either. If one portion of the prophecy isn’t literal, none of it should be interpreted as literal unless there is a clear modifier somewhere along the way. You can’t speak of the end of the world as literal, you can’t speak of Christ coming or going or caring about his flock, or hell, binding Satan as literal. Maybe it was all figurative and he is going to come and with some effort you can bind satan in your heart but death and evil is going to continue to exist, because hey, it wasn’t literal.
So anything he does or doesn’t do isn’t going to happen literally, ever.