It seems more and more people are becoming religious to me, you have about 2M “imports” just this year which are primarily Catholic. A lot of younger people are recognizing the need to have a religious community for their children to grow up in and the childless left wing politics has become a religion in and of itself, complete with their saints, priests, even prayers and doctrine.
Anony Mous
JoinedPosts by Anony Mous
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26
Is the USA gradually moving to a majority of citizens being non-religious
by Reasonfirst inthis is a topic discussed in a current article in the hongkong based asia times*.
find it at: https://asiatimes.com/2023/09/nones-still-no-match-for-us-christian-nationalism/.
the claim is made in the article, that near 30% of americans are non-believers, and that this number is increasing.
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JW.ORG Needs Lawyers
by Vanderhoven7 injehovah's witnesses are not encouraging university education... but those who are lawyers already can apply to volunteer to help at bethel.. https://youtu.be/5d_-1lbg-oc?si=fsxeewic-fkczu9p.
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Anony Mous
From what I understand in the past at least they have used the same attorney houses that other churches have relied upon. There are firms that specialize in these kinds of things, so you’ll see the same attorney defending cases for JW, Catholics and a few other organizations.
There is simply not enough talent inside the org to do this and it would come as a serious shock to the faith of those that would participate in these things when the facts come out and what the biblical doctrine has led to.
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How to Legally Dissolve a Religious Organization
by EasyPrompt inregarding the state dissolving a church organization.... .
as posted in another thread, here is what is happening in japan, filing a court order to dissolve the unification church.... .
https://www.eurasiareview.com/06092023-japan-seeks-court-order-to-dissolve-unification-church/.
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Anony Mous
I was just speaking legally, there is nothing wrong, they are not transparent about donations, but they don’t have to be. It doesn’t phase me one bit, because every religious organization does it.
Hence why I say keeping with their teachings is going to lead down the same path, because their interpretations is what allows it, if you agree with their interpretations, which some people on this forum obviously do to some extent, you agree with a similar organization setting up similar rules. You cannot reject the organization and not the doctrine it is built upon. Humans don’t individually corrupt an organization, long-term bureaucracy does make cowards out of people.
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Exes: Would You Rat On A Current JW?
by NotFormer init's an interesting thought.
if you are an ex jw, presumably dfed, and you see a current jw in good standing engaging in behaviour that would concern their elders, would you pass on that information to interested parties?
do accusations from exes and other outsiders carry any weight?
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Anony Mous
Nothing would happen, you're not "IN" therefore you cannot say anything about them, everything is a lie. You're below female children even when it comes to status.
Maybe if you "come back" they'll take you seriously, but if you are DF'ed or even on your way to be DF'ed (people confess to many things in the judicial meetings or try to pull comparisons between them and another 'sinner'), once the elders decided you're going to be DF'ed, anything you say is irrelevant, including but not limited to CSA.
This causes some really interesting chain reactions though. You'll have someone DF'ed, they want to stay in, so they'll be coming back and repentant and then 6-9 months later they get reinstated, then a few weeks/months later someone else gets disfellowshipped, because once you've confessed or pointed out these things that others have done and not been punished yet, the elders will remember when you get reinstated. Then people start getting worried about the "spiritual health of the congregation" and it's all downhill from there, more comes out, the CO starts a witchhunt amongst the elder bodies and in the span of 2-3 years the entire congregation has been demoted, DF'ed or reproved.
F-in everyone in the congregations has a holier-than-thou attitude, until someone is in the hot seat, then the beans get spilled elder's wife is a drunk, she cheated with him, his kids had sex with their kids, he beats his wife - EVERYONE suddenly knows something about someone else.
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Were the life spans of the patriarchs just an allegory of astronomical cycles?
by was a new boy inlengths of life of the patriarchs.
genesis.
length of life.
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Anony Mous
As far as the other question, nearly all the numbers and names in the Bible are allegorical or spiritistic/mystic in nature.
From Genesis to Revelation is based on various number systems that were mostly lost to time. Many Bible researchers, but going back even further, the practice of Kaballah attempts to rediscover the relationships between the letters/words and the numbers (eg. 666 = NRON QSR or Caesar Nero in Greek)
Various Babylonians also used similar number systems that were well documented (they used a 12-based number system, so a lot of stories will surround the number 12).
The ages of the patriarchs from Adam to Moses add up to 12,600 the sum of its digits is 9 and has 72 positive divisors. Hey, look all those numbers mean something - Jesus appeared 9 times after resurrection from when he was dead for 72 hours and quite a few other 'coincidences' around those numbers throughout the Bible. 1260, a time, two times, and half a time [3½ years] using the ancient calendar system, also how long Jesus preached etc etc.
When it comes to names, the interesting thing is that names have meanings that if you put them together spell out poetry. Eg. the 12 tribes of Israel in order of birth, likely a mnemonic that was used for the transfer of the stories in oral or song form.
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Were the life spans of the patriarchs just an allegory of astronomical cycles?
by was a new boy inlengths of life of the patriarchs.
genesis.
length of life.
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Anony Mous
@raymond franz: nearly ALL the Bible writers are actually much closer to us than they are to the events that they reported happened, especially when it comes to the Old Testament.
The oldest books we know off were written ~500BC, with likely ancestor books and oral stories going back thousands of years which in itself were already talking about events before their time. So a book that's 2500 years old, is talking about events that supposedly happened 5000-10000 years before it.
The Prophets are the first real 'historical' writings, which although still largely allegorical started being written ~300 years after the Babylonian siege of Jersualem. Only the New Testament was written ~70-200 years after the purported events happened (post Jerusalem's destruction), a lot closer but still 1-2 generations of "telephone".
Beyond that, we then have over 1500 years worth of copies and translations with various details added or removed and a lot of stories are actually taken from other cultures, eg. the figure of Jesus in Summarian mythology predates "Jesus H. Christ" about 6500 years.
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How to Legally Dissolve a Religious Organization
by EasyPrompt inregarding the state dissolving a church organization.... .
as posted in another thread, here is what is happening in japan, filing a court order to dissolve the unification church.... .
https://www.eurasiareview.com/06092023-japan-seeks-court-order-to-dissolve-unification-church/.
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Anony Mous
This would fall under: administrative costs.
The activities at our world headquarters, branch offices, and translation offices, as well as the activities of those serving as traveling ministers, are supported by funds donated to our worldwide work.
Nothing about it is fraudulent or criminal, they don’t have to report every receipt and the CSA lawsuits are small potatoes in comparison with the massive real estate enterprise they have. Based on business bank reporting, the US branch of WTBTS alone has revenues exceeding $1B annually.
Their side business however (circuit-vehicles, regionalbuildingcommittee and used-tools-equipment websites) are legally dubious. Basically they take your donations, instead of renting/leasing equipment, they purchase it (making it an expense on the balance) and then they resell it again through a for-profit corporation while keeping/putting congregations in a sham debt on the purchase.
It could be said that these kinds of businesses are well outside the scope of a not-for-profit combined with some money laundering, but you’d need to do some serious investigations in documents that the government would have to subpoena.
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My Prediction Regarding New Space Telescope That Will See Back to 100 Million Years From the Big Bang
by Sea Breeze ina new space telescope launched a few days age that will supposedly be able to see to within 100 million years of the big bang.
wow... only 100 million years from the big bang.
that is pretty early given the 12 billion year age of the universe assigned by scholars who adhere to naturalism.
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Anony Mous
This article accurately ‘predicts’ the composition of galaxies at redshift 20 which is exactly what JWST is seeing:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11177
written in 2012 - your information is wrong.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40668-014-0006-2 - 2015 - it is likely that Population III stars were much more massive than present-day stars
A general description of structure formation in the early Universe may be found in Barkana and Loeb (2001), Loeb (2008), and Wiklind et al. (2013). The high-redshift IGM is discussed in Barkana and Loeb (2007) and Meiksin (2009), and the effects of the relative velocity offset between DM and baryons may be found in Fialkov (2014). The formation of the first stars in minihalos is reviewed in Bromm and Larson (2004), Glover (2005, 2013), and Bromm (2013), while the properties of the first galaxies are described in Bromm and Yoshida (2011), Johnson (2013), and Loeb and Furlanetto (2013). Less focused reviews of star formation at high redshifts may be found in Bromm et al. (2009) and Loeb (2010). Finally, feedback by Population III is summarized in Ciardi and Ferrara (2005).
although simplistic calculations go back to 1967 (the quantum physics is extremely difficult), all the objections you regurgitate have been debunked starting in the 1970s. JWST is simply confirming these hypotheses. See, accurate predictions, confirmed with accurate data. Science reporting in the media is junk these days, stop reading the briefs on CNN and thinking you have an understanding.
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My Prediction Regarding New Space Telescope That Will See Back to 100 Million Years From the Big Bang
by Sea Breeze ina new space telescope launched a few days age that will supposedly be able to see to within 100 million years of the big bang.
wow... only 100 million years from the big bang.
that is pretty early given the 12 billion year age of the universe assigned by scholars who adhere to naturalism.
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Anony Mous
A) you didn’t predict anything, you made a bad assumption based on a poorly written news article. Predicting something would mean you said something before the article was published.
B) if you kept up with the actual science, you would’ve seen that JWST did not dispute anything, as a matter of fact, it confirms simulations of the Big Bang, what was unexpected is that we could actually see them with JWST. Now that at least 3 objects have been confirmed to be dark stars, the early reporting (which every serious science article said was preliminary data and needed to be reviewed) was just bad reporting.
C) Genesis claims an 8000 year old universe where light, the earth and vegetation was created before the sun and stars, it also claims the moon emits light.
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My Prediction Regarding New Space Telescope That Will See Back to 100 Million Years From the Big Bang
by Sea Breeze ina new space telescope launched a few days age that will supposedly be able to see to within 100 million years of the big bang.
wow... only 100 million years from the big bang.
that is pretty early given the 12 billion year age of the universe assigned by scholars who adhere to naturalism.
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Anony Mous
@Sea Breeze: why do people always want to promote their own YouTube vids or those of their particular denomination of crazies?
I am not interested in seeing an hour long video on why the Bible cannot be challenged, the WTBTS has plenty of content. Can someone on your side write a scientific paper or summary based on the data which they don’t immediately have to retract (like the one you pointed at previously) from their own websites (not even getting to pre-print).