Posts by Anony Mous

24

Why you need Christmas to understand Easter/Memorial

by Anony Mous in

so i went to a christmas evening candlelight service tonight and it hit me.

i was primarily doing christmas since leaving the jw for the children.

lots of people do it for family without really thinking of the relevance.

Anony Mous

So I went to a Christmas evening candlelight service tonight and it hit me. I was primarily doing Christmas since leaving the JW for the children.

Lots of people do it for family without really thinking of the relevance. During the service I was thinking of why JW does celebrate the Passover/Easter/Memorial whatever you want to call it, and listening to the story, the story of his death does not make sense without the Christmas story.

Jesus is born from human being, he is born in the most humble/poorest conditions at the time, he is immediately placed in severe danger from King Herod. As an infant he is purely dependent on humans despite the fact that he will eventually redeem the world, for pretty much the first half of his life he does not have the capacity to defend himself. That promise is not yet fulfilled at birth and his death cannot be fulfilled without his birth. You cannot think about someone dying without celebrating where they come from and their life and birth.

What the JW do however, is skip that entire first part, something that is part of every single Christian religion and reject it as false, thereby rejecting that Christianity does not come from high borne political or religious leaders or wise men, Christianity can be started and understood from the most basic principles, the parallels of Bethlehem and Nazareth being nothing towns born in the lowest place of that town and the story of his path to Jerusalem is the exact opposite of JW doctrine or various other religions that starts from a big city and self-declared wise men down.

You cannot think of a fulfilled life without celebrating the mother, and the father, and the environment that raised that person. Even if you believe Jesus was just a good person, Mary and Joseph is the one that made him that way, that is why Christmas is important to understanding the Passion.

And in this sense I am now also thinking why Catholics venerate the mother (Mary), it just makes sense deep down… although I am not sure yet of the significance.

These are my ramblings for the night, Merry Christmas!

21

JWlite can be the purple pill

by Teddnzo in

i really like the red pill analogy in the matrix.

the one guy wishes he didn’t take the red pill and would have preferred to take the blue pill.. many used to be pimi which is the blue pill and then they wake up to the fact that the gb are not who they claim to be which is taking the red pill.. they go through conflict and confusion as to what to believe now?

does god exist?

Anony Mous

JWLite is like Cypher from the Matrix movies, you’ve been red pilled but you want to be reintegrated into the Matrix as a rich and famous character, if they could only see what you believe is correct. In the end you’re just the annoying side character that ends up dead and forgotten.

9

Big Local Case, Sexual Abuse by former Elder, Police Raided the Kingdom Hall ! Kent, U.K !

by Phizzy in

the police have started an investigation where a woman has courageously come forward about her sexual abuse by a former elder, who had a record of doing such things with the local congregation, and i think it was all covered up.

they have charged him, he is claiming he is not mentally fit to appear in court, i hope that lie does not hold up !.

this case was unknown to the local elders, but hopefully will now give the strength for other women, who were all very young and very vulnerable at the time , to come forward as well.

Anony Mous

So mentally unfit to stand trial, but he can run a congregation? Does the elder name happen to be "Joseph Biden".

12

Make America Great Again.......Maybe...........For all you on Social Security.

by liam in

so there's a bill called the social security fairness act that "might" help those on social security.

the bill is something trump said he would push for once he become president.of course there is some rinos and democrats who don't want the bill because they still want to fund wars that americans have no business getting involved.

all the president has to do is signed it "if" he makes it into office.. this could go in effect as soon as next year.

Anony Mous

Social security is not an investment, it is welfare. Although you pay into it proportional to your income, you may not receive accordingly, there is a cap as to what you will get out of it. Illegal immigrants can get social security without work credit (there is a long list of exceptions for immigrants that do not need work credit, recently including the men that evaded their draft in Ukraine but also anyone that had to endure spousal abuse, Haitians, Cubans, etc etc), disabilities, being trafficked - so that includes pretty much anyone except for Canadians.

If you are earning $10,000 or more per year for 20 years, you receive 70 to 80 percent of the Social Security benefits paid for a full work life. Note that you do not have to “work”, being unemployed, Bethelites and special pioneers are often on some kind of “disability”, earning a stipend together with odd jobs, unemployment and state assistance, all counts because from your unemployment/income there is a withholding which at the end of the year (at tax time) is technically negative, it is considered “paying into” and making you eligible for payout.

Yes, those of us paying $1500/month in social security taxes, we are expected to receive $600/month out of it and the others are subsidized by us to the tune of $500-550/month. The thing you don’t have and what people may be confused about is 401k or pensions, you earn that on your own, it has a yield of approx. 180% if you work from a reasonable age (so if you pay into it now for 40 years, you can live very well for the other 40-60 years). In comparison, Social Security will have a net negative investment rate for the average person (you will never get out what you pay in)

31

Wythenshawe Kingdom Hall - Sold

by AdamCzarnobay in

jw
friends

i was slightly surprised to see that wythenshawe hall has been sold.

it's now a mosque.

this one had an attached flat where the co and his wife lived, i wonder what accommodation they put them in these days..

Anony Mous

The rules have long changed. I know back in the 80s and 90s even going to a Catholic hospital was frowned upon and dutifully avoided where possible. Now you can be active duty police, non-combat military, work at a religious school or hospital, even perform work for a church as long as it does not violate your conscience.

Although selling KH to make profit for the WTBTS real estate scam has always been allowed, even when it happened in the 90s, some were offended they didn’t hold out for another buyer but it was explained that they do these things through third parties and have no control (which is a blatant lie).

37

Maddison, WI Shool Shooting - 3 Dead

by Sea Breeze in

like the one in tennessee, this one in maddison, wi, was done be a female.

the police chief points out that: .

“yes, i don’t know whether [the shooter] was transgender or not, and quite frankly, i don’t think that’s even important.

Anony Mous

@jhine: you can’t compare the total school shootings in the UK with ALL of the US. The UK is relatively tiny, many states can fit multiple UK’s. That being said, according to the Ben Kinsella trust, there were 99 children murdered in 1 year by knife in England, most of those in or on the way to school with 738 reported criminal possession incidents. Multiply that by 40 for a size comparison. 4000 children did not die in US schools last year, when counting gun homicides, you get to ~1500 children per year, most of those were not in schools but gang-related. A MORI Survey for the Youth Justice Board found that 29% of Secondary School-children, along with 57% of those excluded admitted to routinely carrying knives. - imagine if 29% of US school children carried guns because they needed it for protection.

@joey: you are the one that said that more guns = more gun crime, so you brought up the issue of proportionality, when pointed out the data, now you agree with me that gun ownership is not correlated? I already pointed out the data on guns and crime rates for other countries is incomplete, which you can see in the total discrepancy between reported and surveyed crime rates, but the UK has some nice knife crime statistics. It also doesn’t line up if you look for reports on teens being arrested with guns in Europe, there are quite a few pretty much every week that make some local headline, yet they are not reflected in any statistic?

37

Maddison, WI Shool Shooting - 3 Dead

by Sea Breeze in

like the one in tennessee, this one in maddison, wi, was done be a female.

the police chief points out that: .

“yes, i don’t know whether [the shooter] was transgender or not, and quite frankly, i don’t think that’s even important.

Anony Mous

Again, there are no official stats on gun violence in the EU, so whatever stats you pull out of your behind do not show the whole picture. Similar to how recently the FBI declared a decrease in crime simply by not including certain cities.

According to the EU’s own data on crime victimization rate (https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/criminal-justice/protecting-victims-rights/victims-rights-eu_en) survey show 15% of Europeans are victimized annually, in the US his rate is 2.3% https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/criminal-victimization-2023#:~:text=In%202023%2C%20there%20were%2022.5,6.9%20per%201%2C000%20in%202023.

Again, the official stats either don’t exist or cannot be compared. European countries do not consider crime reportable if the offender is not found or no guilt is found, the US considers a victims report to be sufficient. In Europe there is no central reporting agencies that all agencies report up to, there is in the US. In Europe, police will often not respond to emergency calls (Calling 112, 28% of calls do not get responded to at all, if calling 999 in the UK average waiting time for priority police calls in UK is 5h30m) in the US, criminals are in many cases effectively pursued (99.8% of calls get responded to within an average 15m20s). So the only proxy you have is to survey victimization rates.

37

Maddison, WI Shool Shooting - 3 Dead

by Sea Breeze in

like the one in tennessee, this one in maddison, wi, was done be a female.

the police chief points out that: .

“yes, i don’t know whether [the shooter] was transgender or not, and quite frankly, i don’t think that’s even important.

Anony Mous

@joey jojo: that statement is misleading, the EU does not collect information about gun or most other crime in any centralized manner nor do a lot of other countries. Estimates in studies must use proxies such as whether people are self-reported victims of crime and criminal assault with a weapon is significantly higher in the EU. The most dead in what FBI considers mass shootings (note EU does not have a definition of statistics on mass shootings) in the last decade is the EU, because their police nor schools are prepared to deal with gun crime and people with guns cannot stop criminals with guns.

And you should be honest about the consequences as quite a few countries have an equally “high” per capita gun ownership rate as the US, yet you claim there is no proportional gun crime.

Here are just a few outstanding examples of guns in Europe.

November 2015 - FRANCE - Islamist attackers in Paris armed with guns and bombs target the Bataclan music hall, six bars and restaurants, and the perimeter of the Stade de France sports stadium just outside the French capital, killing 130 people - including 90 concertgoers in the Bataclan - and injuring hundreds.

March 2023 - GERMANY - A gunman in Hamburg shoots dead six people before killing himself at a Jehovah's Witness worship hall. Eight other people were wounded, including a seven-months pregnant woman, who lost her unborn daughter.

May 2023 - SERBIA - In a single week, a 13-year-old boy guns down eight fellow pupils and a security guard in a Belgrade school. Two days later, a gunman kills eight people and wounds 14 others in a village near the Serbian capital. Both suspects are arrested.

December 2023 - CZECH REPUBLIC - A Czech student shoots dead his father then kills 14 people at his Prague university. The gunman, killed at the scene possibly by one of his own bullets, is also suspected in the killings of another man and his two-month-old daughter who were found shot dead in woods in a village outside Prague, the week before.

5

More Menorah

by peacefulpete in

another brief example of ancient traditions reinterpreted by worshipers of yahweh.

the book of exodus 25:.

31 ¶ and thou shalt make a lampstand of pure gold; of beaten work shall the lampstand be made; its base and its branches, its bowls, its knops, and its flowers shall be of the same.32 and six branches shall come out of the sides of it, three branches of the lampstand out of the one side and three branches of the lampstand out of the other side,33 three bowls made like unto almonds with a knop and a flower in one branch, and three bowls made like almonds in the other branch with a knop and a flower; thus in the six branches that come out of the lampstand.34 and in the lampstand shall be four bowls made like unto almonds with their knops and their flowers.35 and there shall be a knop under two branches of the same, and another knop under two branches of the same, and another knop under two branches of the same, according to the six branches that proceed out of the lampstand.36 their knops and their branches shall be of the same; all of it shall be one beaten work of pure gold.37 and thou shalt make its seven lamps; and they shall light its lamps, that they may give light over against it.. ok, so there is this strangely detailed description of a sacred golden lampstand, with 7 lamps in a strict formation of 3 branches on each side a single 7th in the center.

Anony Mous

@Kaleb: there is a difference between history according to archeology and history according to scripture and then what some people re-interpret history to be based on either or combinations of those sources.

What do Native Americans know about their own history - not much, most of it is told from an anti-Western narratives, few of the Native American tribes had a writing system, let alone a historical record, most were nomadic and continuously at war with each other, trying to eradicate or enslave the other. I’m sure they have stories that are wonderful and self-praising how great their ancestors were to start the best civilization in history - until the Spanish came and submitted them in record time because they had technology like armor and muskets that made the Spanish and later the French and English practically gods in comparison.

The Jews did a lot better, as writing had been invented already a few times in that region, but once you go before 300BC, which is when the scripture as we know them today were ‘edited’ into the current canon, it becomes a lot less clear what is myth, history or a little bit of both, and that is not even accounting for the fact that Jews and interpretation as we know it today didn’t become established until after the destruction of Jerusalem, so there is 500 years or so of unwritten change and re-interpretation, which is why Judaism looks so differently today than it would have when Herod’s temple was in place.

405

Is Jesus the Creator?

by Sea Breeze in

that's what the word says.

.

colossians 1:16. for by him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through him and for him..

Anony Mous

@joey jojo: the original text definitely makes references to a trinity. What Jews believe today is often very different (especially as there are still different factions) than what was once believed, pretty much like every religion.

Christianity was a Jewish sect at one point, Islam as well, so all the ideas come from the same root - purely historically speaking, the Jewish God has both Elohim and Yahweh as name, both coming from different deities, and the spirit is also often mentioned, it would make sense that if you’re trying to meld multiple gods into one, you take aspects of a ‘father’ god (El) and his son Yahweh, often depicted as a bronze snake.

Note that a more recognizable form of Judaism and the composite Old Testament doesn’t develop until the 5th century BC, many centuries after the earliest writings surrounding the (initially polytheistic) cult of Yahweh starts (1800BC), references survive such as the different names of god, story about the King of Salem, bronze calf, references to other gods being ‘real’ and having some power and beasts that were once worshipped in various places like the Book of Job etc, it would thus be likely that ideas about a trinity or unity deity may have survived through tribal or sectarian knowledge transfer.