Who cares about tornado shelters as long as you have your gun?
scotoma
JoinedPosts by scotoma
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60
I don't get it ... 80% of people in Oklahoma DON'T have a Tornado Shelter. Are they nuts ????
by RubaDub ini really don't understand.
how can any homeowner in his right mind, not have a tornado shelter ???
i understand that some people live in apartments and condos, but someone with any size yard (even a driveway) could have a shelter.. to me it's a no-brainer.
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103
Do some x witnesses shock you despite being one?
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scotoma
Seraphim:
You have no need to feel defensive. I completely understand your reaction. Thanks for bringing it up.
There are more that read these posts than the few who engage in the discussions. Hopefully they
can overlook some of the things we say and remember that our behavior is mostly reactive and motivated by frustration.
None of know exactly how we will be viewing things a year from now. And no one will know a hundred years from today.
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103
Do some x witnesses shock you despite being one?
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scotoma
Seraphim
So it sounds like you are eliminating the Divine from future scenarios for the earth.
Atheism is religion just like gravity is religion? Apparently everything is religion.
There are militant atheists. But most have a realistic view that belief in God serves some function. Let people believe in God. Let atheists not believe in God.
I believe that God is a cheap answer that lets people get on with their lives. We can't all be scientists and philosophers. There is a big world to run and if people occupied themselves with the origins of everything nothing would get done.
JHVH "he causes to be" the great "BE-cause". Mommy why is grass green? BE-cause!
Just Sayin' Nuthin.
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Do some x witnesses shock you despite being one?
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scotoma
Seraphim,
Atheist are BAD!!!!!
But atheists are in the minority. So that should make you optimistic. The horrible atheist contagion should be easy to control. Then you will have paradise because you will have eliminated the greatest scourge on mankind. You will then be able to end war, come up with new treatments for disease, feed the starving people in the world.
Judge NOT!
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Loaded Language Word of the day : SPIRITUALITY
by BU2B inthis is really becoming one of my biggest pet peeves.
jws use the word spiritual to describe anyone who goes out in service weekly, holds a congregation position, has privledges, in good standing etc, meanwhile this person can be rude, manipulating, or just plain evil and jws will gush about how spiritual they are.
on the other hand you can have someone sincerely trying to be christlike, manifesting good qualities and kind, helping others out, but if they dont have privleges, pioneer, ms, elder, or dosent comment at the kh, or does not attend enough, that person is not "spiritual" to a jw!
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scotoma
"The WT conductor today said you can measure a persons spirituality by looking at the Publisher's Record Card!"
We really really love this teaching.
All those who put in a lot of hours don't need any help. Right. Ignore them. And start helping the ones with 1 or 2 hours field service.
Meanwhile the zealous ones are drifting into all kinds of crap because they are self righteous bastards.
Service time is the currency of the Watchtower organization. Pile it up and you can cash it in on stage time, assembly parts, pioneer club meetings, international assembly attendance. All great opportunities for the status worshiping very ordinary non-spiritual publishers.
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Sense of reality
by d insince leaving the jw's in 2008 i still struggle with a crisis of meaning at times.
i feel like at times life has no set purpose and we are just empty humans floating in space.i struggled a lot with this when i left in 2008 but so no much any more.. i feel like my set version of reality was falling apart and i felt at times i was falling into a deep abyss.. .
did any of you feel like that when you left the jw's?.
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scotoma
This is called an existential crisis. You are human and have a bigger brain than most animals. Your brain is a rut digger.
Your brain tries to get you on a predictable path. Your brain gathers all sorts of clues, information, but tries to distort them to make you keep going in one continuous direction. Unfortunately, your early information is what other people tell you and it is wrong (for YOU) at least half the time.
Eric Berne (transactional analysis) described masturbation as the first existential crisis. It's something that is immensely rewarding and you are left with the decision of whether you should do it and when and how often you should do it.
To me the best way to deal with the existential crisis is to embrace it. Don't let religion, politics, organization, corportations define your purpose.
You are free to ask yourself "What do I want right NOW?" "What can I do to bring THAT want into reality?" Or you can ask yourself "What do I want to avoid right NOW?" " What can I do to avoid THAT" If you learn to make a habit of asking those questions it's as effective as prayer.
If you don't know what you really want you need to take a long Forest Gump walk until you do. Just don't sit down and wait. That stagnation will give other people the power to get you to do what they want.
There is only one ethical or moral thing to take into consideration. Make sure that what you want doesn't physically harm someone else.
You can even join a religion, political movement or whatever if it is something you really WANT to do and you don't surrender your own personal goal.
Only be concerned about truth and reality if you really want truth and reality.
Only be concerened about what others think about you if fame and reputation is something you have chosen.
Only be concerned about power if you want power.
Only be concerned about relaxation, sexual pleasure, or whatever if you choose it.
Living a life of your choosing is as good as it gets for you personally and society at large.
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What would it take for YOU to come back?
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scotoma
I don't believe in God but I would want to associate with anyone that could make extraordinary predictions about the future that would be fulfilled in an unambiguous fashion without having any need of reworking the explanation.
Essentially that's what JW's claim yet utterly fail to do.
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If there is such a thing as ORIGINAL SIN what does that do to "morality"?
by Terry in"it is the concept of original sin that negates morality.. if man is guilty by nature, he has no choice about it.. if he has no choice, the issue does not belong in the field of morality.
morality pertains only to the sphere of man's free will -- only to those actions which are open to his choice.. to consider man guilty by nature is a contradiction in terms.".
augustine had the mistaken view that many metaphysicians had at that time: all humans were "nested" inside of adam like those russian dolls that fit inside each other.
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scotoma
In the late 1800's (My Grandparents Generation) August Weissman figured out the role of sperm in reproduction. Up until that time the bronze age myth that sperm were very tiny humans was the dominant thinking. The Bible writers believed that myth. The whole concept of sin and salvation has to do with the idea that Adam had a whole world of little people inside him and that Jesus dare not have children because the whole world of little people in Jesus' loins had to die with him to properly satisfy God's eye-for-an-eye justice.
How can an enlightened 21st century intelligent person give this concept serious consideration.
So where does "sin" come from? I believe in intrinsic sin NOT inherited sin. Sin is just another name for putting your own advantages over others to the detriment of everyone. The appearance of life required membranes to form a wall between the organism and its environment. Look up the etymology of the word "self". It means one's own person. Ownership emerges from fences. Cell membranes are special fences. Our "ego's" are a mental boundary. Organisms have to compete for material to maintain metabolism. The rest is history. Eat or die.
If there are no biological forces that predispose certain people to criminality how do you explain the overwhelming size of male prison populations vs. female prisoners. Read some of Steven Pinker's books.
Sexual crimes are particularly interesting. Some men need to surrender their testicles for the privilege of living in society. It was interesting listening to "progressive/liberal" talk radio last week. So many liberal callers felt that surely the Cleveland case of abduction would merit the death penalty. What's wrong with giving the person the option of imprisonment or castration. Not castration as punishment but castration as a biological corrective. How is castration any worse than Angelina getting a double masectomy to avoid the 85% chance that she will get breast cancer and die before 60 like her mother?
Society has found it convenient to lock men up in "marriage" to keep them from violent competition for females.
Adam, Eve, Sin, and mystical atonement with blood sacrifices whether animal or human are a feeble attempt to understand the problems of the great and diverse biological excursion we call - LIFE.
Sorry for the hodge-podge of subjects and ideas but that's what you have anyway.
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The self-made PARADOX of "witnessing" without Television or Radio
by Terry inwhat if i asserted the following as true?
the watchtower bible and tract society has no interest in an effective evangelical program of conversion.. .
would that sound silly?
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scotoma
The Christian Broadcasting Network of Pat Robertson is an interesting success story.
There is no reason JW's couldn't have supplemented their knocking activities with this strategy.
In fact you can see from the Watchtower's internet activity that they have learned a few things from CBN.
Read the history of CBN and you will no longer be able to argue against the effects of satellite broadcasting.
http://www.company-histories.com/The-Christian-Broadcasting-Network-Inc-Company-History.html
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The self-made PARADOX of "witnessing" without Television or Radio
by Terry inwhat if i asserted the following as true?
the watchtower bible and tract society has no interest in an effective evangelical program of conversion.. .
would that sound silly?
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scotoma
Terry,
I don't see a conspiracy either. You state your perspective very clearly in this threads title.
I am not really criticizing the topic. I think it is one of the most important features of trying to understand what JW's are REALLY doing.
But some of what you say wanders off into a conspiratorial framework.
Wikipedia has a good working definition of Conspiracy Theories:
A conspiracy theory is anexplanatory proposition that accuses a person, group or organization of having caused or covered up an event or phenomenon of great social, political, or economic impact.
The whole wikipedia article of course elaborates further.
In particular I find the following section a little paranoid:
(At the very least your implication is that there was some consensus amont the leaders of the organization that they had to fool tax auditors into thinking they were spending their money on the preaching work while their main interest was to pump up activity that would allow them to invest in property that they could liquify at some future point for their personal benefit)
The Watchtower Corporation had to generate a kind of marvellous "machine" you could pour money into and make it disappear in the form of the preaching work.
CONSTANT EXPANSION was the key!
What was the purpose? POWER INVESTMENT!
REAL ESTATE!
The Watchtower was a corporate Donald Trump. It could grow dollars and not have to pay taxes on them. It could point to a worldwide work as evidence of money well spent (which wasn't really "spent" at all.) It could account for the cash flow by pointing to new projects in development and new acquisitions ostensibly for more and more publishing effort.
Further, every once and awhile a GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE would have to be run. This would be in the form of date setting.Date setting (determining when Armageddon was to arrive) was an Investment.
The publicity was golden. The threat level was heightened. The cash flow was extraordinary. The need for more investment property increased. The grip of absolute power was made real.
The downside was practically nil!!
Without having documented evidence to show that this was an "ACTUAL CONSPIRACY" you have merely suggested a "THEORETICAL CONSPIRACY".
But I think your main point needs to be discussed: On one hand they want if possible to SAVE EVERYONE yet on the other hand they throw so many obstacles in the way of their intended aim.
Why do they demand their members refuse blood transfusions under threat of being excommunicated? If they just changed that one teaching they could have 20 million members.
Why turn Christmas and Easter into a doctrinal divide? Couldn't they join in the telling of those wonderful stories with their own spin all the while encouraging moderation. Same with birthdays.
Couldn't they have allowed alternative service to be a conscious matter instead of letting it ruin the lives of some of its members?
Why not let some members just work 20 hours of overtime each month and contribute that money to a sattelite network that could beam the message 24/7 around the world. They could then have well trained volunteers at the ready to talk to people that respond?
They could have retained their message of impending doom for mankind and everlasting life on earth as a reward for the faithful.
There could now be 100 million members with even larger real estate holdings.
It's not a conspiracy it's conservative authoritarianism at its worst. It's a joke!