Posts by Anony Mous

13

Only one weekly meeting?

by mikeflood in

new wt october 2023....first an article remembering 1923....they make changes, the had a "prayer, praise and testimony weekly meeting".. after an study article about obey, specially paragraph 18.. i have a wild guess, next year, just one weekly meeting for the borg..

Anony Mous

@St George: Upkeep is a really expensive part of owning a building. Less upkeep such as heating/cooling/water/maintenance is more money that gets sent to the branch, less buildings, means more density, even if you lose a little bit of donations per congregation, doubling or tripling the number of congregations per building means a bigger revenue per building.

Then there is also the psychological effect of having a lot more traffic at a building vs having a few cars pull in and out at night makes the building look a lot more popular than it actually is. Becoming a mega-church every weekend will make some people ooh and aah.

I think they know they’re at rope’s end with expansion, now it’s just a matter of improving efficiency of what they have so they can stretch it as long as possible.

13

Only one weekly meeting?

by mikeflood in

new wt october 2023....first an article remembering 1923....they make changes, the had a "prayer, praise and testimony weekly meeting".. after an study article about obey, specially paragraph 18.. i have a wild guess, next year, just one weekly meeting for the borg..

Anony Mous

Well, they’ve always held the Sunday speaker to be the only ‘public’ meeting, the Watchtower study isn’t considered part of that ‘public’ meeting. Wouldn’t surprise me if they started adding a 15 minute break to allow “others” to leave and make the Watchtower study private and combine it with the “service meeting”.

Having an hour long Watchtower study on a simplistic topic question and read the answer has always been very boring and drawn out and simplifying the language last decade hasn’t helped.

A 30/15 break/30/15 minute meeting schedule would still be shorter than the 2+ hours we grew up with, then followed by an almost mandatory Saturday or Sunday “going out in service at least 60 minutes after the service meeting” isn’t outside the realm of possibilities - all your minimum responsibilities as a JW fall into a 4 hour slot every Saturday or Sunday morning/afternoon/evening which is on par with many other churches in the US (you typically don’t go out in service, but many do events/outreach/charity after church).

That schedule can cram up to 8 congregations per building with no heating costs every day of the week, forbid the elders from using the hall for their own damned meetings, as they already told them to pull back critical documents from the building and minimize the library, there is literally no reason except perhaps a CO visit or pioneer school to use the hall during the week.

15

Jehovah’s Witnesses Open Historic Museum in Edo

by Bangalore in

jw
friends

jehovah’s witnesses open historic museum in edo .. https://punchng.com/jehovahs-witnesses-open-historic-museum-in-edo/.

Anony Mous

Interesting location, that area recently got an injection of funds ($118M) for building roads and ‘social projects’ such as museums. I wonder how much came out of the pocket of the local congregations and governments, vs “the worldwide fund”

39

Only baptised JWs will make it?

by ExBethelitenowPIMA in

i think it was a john cedars video or someone else’s where the point was brought up that only baptised jws will be saved?

then one talk about kids of baptised jws hope they will make it but even them don’t know.

most jws probably think that some good people who are not baptised may make it through, but this is not official teaching?.

Anony Mous

We all know that the WTBTS doesn’t follow what is in the scriptures and (mis)interprets it solely based on what they need in the here and now.

The WTBTS is pretty clear, we can’t judge but we know it won’t be you unless you’re baptized.

Not that it’s relevant, Christianity does generally not revolve around a doomsday scenario.

34

If You Can Remember When This Was Displayed in the KH - You Ain't No Spring Chicken!

by mikronboy in

jw
friends

.

Anony Mous

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.

16

Is Disfellowshipping properly legislated?

by Rattigan350 in

in 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.

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.

54

Is AI going to change the world?

by Reasonfirst in

jw
friends

had 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.

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.

54

Is AI going to change the world?

by Reasonfirst in

jw
friends

had 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.

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.

26

Is WT Using ATTENDANTS At The Conventions To Be: "TOY COPS"

by HiddlesWife in

i 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.

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.

14

Why didn't God create us to be obviously different?

by SydBarrett in

jw
friends

a 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.

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.