the above is a phrase taken from an article written by steven pinker in the review of this weekends wall street journal.
the title is violence vanquished and presents the thought that human history has been so loaded with tribal violence in particular, that our current era is "the most peaceable era in human existence".. battle deaths and murder generally have declined substantially across centuries to the low level they generally are today.
i admit i am mystified as to why we don't see much more violence and crime at present, in this ugly economy.
I am a real fan of Steven Pinker (Read Blank Slate, How the Mind Works )
Pinker approaches the violence statistics as the number of people killed as a percentage of the population.
Inter-Tribal struggles have been notoriously violent. Imagine a world divided up into neighborhoods of Hutus and Tutsis.
It wasn't unusual for half the men to be wiped out in a single battle. And there were incessant battles.
you gotta admire the skill manifest in the watchtower's deception skills.
don't kid yourself, even the gestapo, in internal documents found after the war, found the magazines to be well crafted in the field of propaganda.. the latest deceptions?
well, there's the nov. awake magazine with its cover asking, "is belief in a creator reasonable".
I like the clever design of the cookie cutter shark. Look up the images on google. They take nice circular plugs out of the sides of other sea creatures.
according to smart money magazine, the average life expectancy in 1975 was 72.6 years (us).
in 2011, it is 78.2 (oct issue, page 58 - unlike the deceptive awake, i give proper references).
pretty good for a 'dying system", huh?.
Most of us wanted the end to come in 1975.
For many of us it screwed up our lives when it didn't come.
We didn't stop believing because we wanted to live a debauched life. We stopped believing because it all became "unbelievable".
Now its time to get what ever debauchery you can get in your senior years.
was looking for something else, when i found this webpage.
i have never seen such a long list of failed watchtower prophecies!.
http://ziddufacts.blogspot.com/2010/05/charles-taze-russell-false-prophet.html.
In 2014 there should be a free speech public readings of this material outside kingdom halls and in front of all branch offices. It should be done with loud speakers. If this were done the news media would surely pick this up.
long story short, i have been a jw for the pst 7 years.
i am married with 2 kids.
hubby is a die hard jw who is an ms and would like to be elder.
Hey Farkel,
Great seeing you post again.
But, maybe its your ghost. Or a zombie. Or maybe someone related to Farkel that has access to his computer.
You can never be too skeptical, right?
long story short, i have been a jw for the pst 7 years.
i am married with 2 kids.
hubby is a die hard jw who is an ms and would like to be elder.
Win them over without a word. You are free to read and inadvertently leave reading material out in the open. Find old publications (best) or search Watchtower CD and book mark them and underline the nonsense with a bright highlighter. Especially the articles telling young people not to go to college (1969) because they will never be able to fullfil their career goals before the end.
There is enough stuff in the Watchtower publications to get anyone to doubt.
If anyone questions you they will have to confront their own publications. All you have to say is that you are doing research.
Eventually, you might keep a journal with your questions.
If your husband takes your material to the Elders he will have seriously breeched husband/wife confidentiality.
This is the same method they reccomend to women with unbelieving husbands.
watchtower not one female!.
today i uploaded a new article to my blog taking a fresh look at a now 40-year-old watchtower illustration of what it terms the modern-day theocratic organization of jehovah's christian witnesses.
something is missing in the picture.
When we were studying the Revelation book there was a pictures of the 12 elders surrounding the throne in heaven:
I made the comment: "Remember, at least half of these bearded "elders" pictured in the illustration collected their human experience as women."
i'm sure we have been visited by the third kind, but i am referring to a time, within our lives, where as a whole man will be visited and see them.
i know mother shipton, maya, sumerian, and others all reference a future (in all aspects similar to our modern time) when the "gods" will return and help men ascend to a new level.
personally, i don't think such an event is too far fetched..
Starting Over:
Big foot. Nessie. etc. These are possibilities. But population theory says if a species is down to just a few members it is virtually extinct. And if "big foot" is a primate as some imagine, it couldn't survive without the support of a significant community. So there are no real consequences other than satisfying curiosity whether there is some final member of a species. It is more significant that some of us have strands of dna that seem to have come from our neanderthal cousins.
Extraterrestials would be a game changer. It would be contact with another world or even - universe. It would turn our religion based culture upside down. OR... it might put the Bible in the context of a collection of culture forming memes intended to alter our destructive course with minimal outside intervention. Jesus was a pivotal character in human history. He stood for self-sacrifice and an "extraterrestial" kingdom that is "not of THIS world". The kingdom of the heavens. Intervention occurs at the point where the survival of the human race is at stake - "unless those days are cut short - no flesh would be saved."
i'm sure we have been visited by the third kind, but i am referring to a time, within our lives, where as a whole man will be visited and see them.
i know mother shipton, maya, sumerian, and others all reference a future (in all aspects similar to our modern time) when the "gods" will return and help men ascend to a new level.
personally, i don't think such an event is too far fetched..
Starting Over.
Intelligent people believing in God cannot be compared to Airmen 1st class sent to scout out what appeared to be a crash in the woods near a strategic airforce base and actually encounter A UFO on the ground. Walk around it and touch it. Watch it shake rattle and roll and then shoot straight up through the forest canopy. At that exact moment hundreds back on the base saw its vertical take off. There are a lot of reports like this.
I don't believe in all powerful God/s. And I think those who do are caught in some ignorant prescientific thinking. However, if a group of scientists figure they have found Higgs Boson (whatever the hell that is or means) I have no reason to compare that to imaginary beings. UFO's appear as material structures and behave as if operated by intelligent systems. I don't believe these vessels travel physical "distance" to get here. It could a universe orthogonal to our own.
Dimenional jumping doesn't have to be a big deal. We just haven't stumbled on a method yet. Look at our world. Who would have ever thought that spinning some magnets surrounded by copper wire coils would produce electicity. Michael Faraday did that only 180 years ago and now we use electricity for everything. There are technologies that we can hardly imagine that will emerge at some point when we stumble on the "X effect"
i'm sure we have been visited by the third kind, but i am referring to a time, within our lives, where as a whole man will be visited and see them.
i know mother shipton, maya, sumerian, and others all reference a future (in all aspects similar to our modern time) when the "gods" will return and help men ascend to a new level.
personally, i don't think such an event is too far fetched..
Terry,
I struggle daily to improve my tools for clear thinking and I am an open minded skeptic. I include books that will challenge my preferred orientation.
Read the book I referenced in my last post. It will re-wire your thinking. Extraterrestials may be dreams for some people but the actual observations and experiences of the tough minded and practical military officers reported in Leslie Keans book ARE NOT dreams of an escape to paradise.
Read it. Read it. Read it. And then make an assertion based on some facts. I'm not talking about Roswell, Area 51, Abductees, Anal Violated moonshine 'coon hunters.
These are career military men who know what normal flying machines are capable of doing.
