This is a very useful forum, but there are lots of tech issues that make it very frustrating to use. Is that just the forum framework itself or is anything adjustable. E.g. IE9 posting, IPAD/Phone posting, double threads, not being able to paste... the log in is a nightmare!
snare&racket
JoinedPosts by snare&racket
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15
PLEAAASE modify the captcha logic on this website
by redvip2000 ini'm desperately begging to the administrators of this website, to please modify the logic of the captchas used to validate the logins.. they were perfectly acceptable up to sometime in the last few days when they seem to have been modified.
the level of deciphering needed to read the captchas has gone up tremendously.
it took me about 30 attempts for this last login.. please revert the logic as it was before, where you had 2 words, one easy to read and another moderately hard to decipher..
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8
Dawkins and Killers frontman clash over Book of Mormon
by cedars inhere is the video... (the interesting bit starts at 07:30 or thereabouts).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjwsg36xtz8.
and here is the article covering it.... http://www.gigwise.com/news/76350/watch-brandon-flowers-rows-with-richard-dawkins-about-religion.
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snare&racket
I saw this, I felt bad for him but then Dawkins is right in what he says, thought not perhaps the way he said it.
BroMac, may I humbly ask whether it is Dawkins you disagree with or the evidence he presents? Have you read "The Greatest Show on Earth?"
Snare x
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45
At This Point In Your Life Would You Care If You Were Disfellowshipped or Disassociated?
by minimus ini'm curious..
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snare&racket
Their whole setup is such a charade, to have any feelings would seem like I was legitimising their game. Despite that.... I am sure it would be a strange thing to hear. Either way, I am never going back and there will be as much consequence to that fact in regards to my interaction with old friends etc as being DF'd or DA'd. As for the family members I love and care about, it is up to them to make the correct moral desicion. I no longer believe, I no longer share their faith. If they think it is ok to cut off a family member for that..... then I can't do anything about it. I dont condone that behaviour at all. I think it is abhorrent. As it is, my door is always open to them no matter what they believe and I always will love them. This seems to have worked for me so far. I speak plainly to them and it has paid off. No secrecy, no hiding my feelings. I understand this will not always work and may be forced to a head soon. But even if they booted me, I know I am trying to be a good human being and I know that I left that cult with a heavy heart and regret, I wanted it to be true, but I know it is not. I lose no sleep over that, not even 1% of me thinks the WT possibly represent a god.
The DF rule is a net to catch people on the way out of the door, it makes people stay longer than they ever would by free will.If the JW's introduced a policy tommorow of :
"We will no longer DF any member that decided to leave the religion of their own free will and we accept their right to freedom of worship without consequence. No matter what relgion or non, members that leave take on, we will not pursue any judicial decision. This is between the member and his own belief."
If that happened I am confident a good 10-20 % of JW's would exit. Partners, teenagers.... they would leave in a click. It's why it will never happen despite the WT nagging the worlds governments for the exact same right to worship freely without prejudice. They know how powerful the DF threat is. Only marry in the lord..... considering the Jew's would steal wives from other nations on gods suggestion and had special rules for non Jewish wives, the "JW only" marriage restriction is not at all biblical, still they push this RULE very hard. They marked a sister in our hall for marrying a non-believer. They gave a local needs talk the week after her marriage.
They are not stupid, leave the WT....leave your family?
Anyway, sorry for waffling...
Snare x
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30
"ARAB SPRING" smells like composted pig manure now
by Nathan Natas indoesn't it?.
this is not unexpected, unless your part of the presidents team of geniuses.. .
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snare&racket
I see what you mean New Chapter. I agree with Hitchens that nobody has the right to NOT be offended. But still to go out and offend with intention seems a little distateful.
I agree with everything else you say though.
May I ask what your background is NC ? You are a very intelligent, well articulated person. You put me to shame, I love it !
Snare
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13
Everything is going bad.
by Decided ini just went up to see my friend who was in a care center.
i went in his room and he was dead, i had to call the nurse who said she was with him 15 minutes before.
i was in walmart the day before and saw an old school mate who's mother was a jw and he said he had cancer and had two years to live according to the doctor.
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snare&racket
A scientist once explained that the greatest artists, greatest writers, greatest thinkers, greatest people have all not existed and never will. The probability of any of us experiencing life is so low. The chances of your parents meeting, the number of sperm that dont make it are in the millions, the number of eggs that dont fertilize, the number of pregnancies that dont go full term and then the probability of surviving birth and childhood...
Life is sometimes very hard, but it is important to appreciate the privelage it is if we can.
Please dont think I assume you dont appreciate this or know it already. I also dont mean to sound patronising at all. especially whilst you are feeling down, but I find it helps me keep things in perspective. I hope life gets easier soon x
Snare x
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49
More excrement in the fan
by outsmartthesystem inwell.....i am now officially on the precipice of divorce.
it started last tuesday night.
my wife brings the kids home at 10:00 pm after the meeting....then dinner....then ice cream.
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snare&racket
Sorry to hear your story mate, sounds heart wrenching.
I know this is obvious, but many people foreget when they disconnect from the JW's that you have rights as a human, a lot more than you do as a JW. You can leave, as sad as it would be. Use the courts to get access, and offer an alternative way of thinking for your children.
I feel for you and I know nothing anyone says will help. Make the most of your friends here, we are all on your side and watching your back. Again I hope you dont take offence at the above suggestion. A friend of mine left the JW's leaving kids behind and was distraught at his wife not allowing access. He was sill thinking like a JW and was trying to figure out how to get the elders to allow him access... then I reminded him that we have courts for that. Society dictates that fathers have rights as much as a mother, even if they are not a JW in good standing ! You may even get custody if you go for it, tell them everything thats happene. Again, none of this is nice, all I can say is I hope things improve for you and your kids will one day be greatful and certainly proud.
Snare
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16
Jehovah's victory in France!
by Kensho insomebody please explain this to me!.
last talk of the dc today,( i know everyone has already attended by now, i just put it off as long as possible) the bro.
read letter from gb about jah's stricking the jaw of the gov.
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snare&racket
They all have to pay the tax on any donations they receive. But only The Jws carried on taking money without paying the correct level of tax... Until they were found out in 1998. They didnt even pretend to have mistakenly not paid, they just said they shouldnt have to pay it! So the JW's are the only ones with a tax debt, for the years 1995 on... The scientologists likewise made a big fuss in the media about the whole thing, but paid their taxes. Xenu is VERY conscious of his credit rating.
"Scientology: crisis in France
It claims to be one of the world's fastest-growing new religions but a battery of legal cases threaten its very existence in this secular country."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/29/scientology-france-legal
Snare x
Ps its a pleasure to help.
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16
Jehovah's victory in France!
by Kensho insomebody please explain this to me!.
last talk of the dc today,( i know everyone has already attended by now, i just put it off as long as possible) the bro.
read letter from gb about jah's stricking the jaw of the gov.
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snare&racket
Konceptual99
The WT tells its followers that its special and that the world (under satans power) is trying to destroy it. This is not true and simply childish. The Church of Scientology was under the same laws, only they paid their taxes !
The French do not have tax exemptions on cults. Their is a long list of cults in France of which the JWs are one. The JW's are listed as cults in many european countries. In France they changed part of their tax law which then included people such as the JW's and the other cults. France bravely decided to go after cults, it wrote a report and set out guidelines on how to define a cult, there are over a hundred that this report included and therefore were affected by the tax laws on donations, including scientology!
http://cftf.com/french/Les_Sectes_en_France/cults.html
Here is the report, it was written and brought into law in 1995. So LEGALLY the JWs were not classed as religion in France from 1995, and therefore not tax exept on donations, they should have paid taxes on donations from 1995 onward!!
Due to this classification of cult, the donations received in France are not classed as "gained religiously" and therefore not tax exempt.
"French authorities say the donations were not raised from a religious source and so were subject to the same rules as other donations."
The French still class JWs as a cult, the new law still stands, however the issue of retrospective payments was argued because WT claimed it would inhibit the worship of its French followers if it was forced to pay it ! (as a side note they first claimed the money was for Rwanda as humanitarian aid, now they say it is needed to keep the French arm of the cult alive)
"The Strasbourg-based court, however, rejected a Jehovah's Witness demand for €250,000 in damages -- one euro for each of the sect's followers in France -- as well as another request for France to scrap altogether its efforts to collect taxes from the group."
http://www.thelocal.fr/page/view/3704
The issue has never been the legality of the tax, it is the consequence of the WT coughing up the coins that won them the case, a technicality by my book. Feel free to disagree.
"On June 30, 2011, the European Court of Human Rights unanimously ruled that France's imposing a retroactive tax....had violated Jehovah's Witnesses' right to freedom of religion under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights."
The WT lawyers are not arguing that they are a cult or not a cult. They are saying that paying the bill will lead to an impingment in freedom to worship for the JW's in France. It is no victory, they are still a cult, they still have to pay all future taxes as a cult, they just dont have to pay their tax bill.
They will have to start paying the very same tax bill the moment they return to normal service in France, they are still classified as a cult, they are still not tax exempt on donations. Thanks to the UN, Europe and Satan's system they have avoided criminal prosecution and a large bill.
Prayer apparantly didnt work for the Governing Body , so they went elsewhere.......
"Swingle also wrote an open letter to Jacques Chirac, the President of France. He said, in part: "The ability to practice religion freely is a basic human right, supported by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights...
PAY BACK CAESARS THINGS TO CAESAR !!!!
Snare & RACKET
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Did Jehovah give Noah a specific command to warn others of the flood?
by hoser incause i just read genesis chaper 6 and i didn't see it.
or am i missing something?.
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snare&racket
I just read the account again for the first time in a few years. Just reading the claim that people were living 900 years, that Noah didnt start having children until 500 years on earth... its just so stupid. It doesnt even equate to the thoughts and imagination of a modern child. We have human remains older than this, we have their DNA. They were not all living for 500 + years. It is as hocus pocus as star signs.
Just think about living on earth for 500 years. What did he do with 7 lifespans? Nothing apparantly. Then he had kids ....
The Jewish scholars revised the bible, we know this for sure. They had to explain the journey from adam and his perfect body to a human that lives 70 years max back then. (btw this is for evolutionary reasons, mammals have a maximum number of heart beats according to size etc, also there is a linear connection between number of offspring and lifespan of mammals.) So they made all the old heroes live long lives, it made them sound even more special ! The irony is of course we have human remains older than the times these stories took place according to the bible. For example most early humans lived short horrid lives, LESS THAN PEOPLE TODAY, dying of tooth decay and starvation. Teeth are rubbish in humans and dont last. Teeth have a specific width and therefore a specific lifespan. They do not last 500 years, unless Noah had teeth like beer cans to begin with.
Nothing from the OT aligns well with modern facts and evidence. Even the little details such as teeth, world history, DNA evidence etc. Nevermind the idea of 7 of each species in pairs, clambering into a boat. The bible quite clearly says Noah was told to collect them all with only 7 days notice. Like I said... not even a modern child would come up with this.
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Atheist Book of Bible Stories
by crystlew123 inok so i dl'd this book.
and i immediatly began reading it.
i am about 50 pdf pages into it.
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snare&racket
Sulla thinks the bible is a complex, sophisticated read
You will love the sequel....
