Sulla

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Posts by Sulla

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  59

  Former Jehovah's Witnesses, will Jesus destroy all JW's when he comes to the Earth?

  by Change Name in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  what do you believe happens when one of jehovah's witnesses dies?

  do they go to hell?.

  if you do not respond, does it mean that you are only looking to discredit and bash the jw's?.

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  Sulla

  To answer the OP: I really, really hope so. And soon. Really, smash their fxxxing brains out.

  Sorry, I've just decided that I hate them. I'm gonna own that, for now.

  Edited for language, guideline 3. - jgnat
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  43

  Yesterday's WT Study par 17

  by leaving_quietly in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  i marked down "research" next to this paragraph w13 1/15 p.11 par.

  17), and have yet to do so fully.. "modern christians held in nazi concentration camps with possible death facing them were given repeated opportunities to gain their freedom by signing a declaration renouncing jehovah.".

  was the declaration to renounce jehovah?

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  Sulla

  When they say "modern Christians," they mean JWs specifically in exclusion of people like Max Kolbe.

  Fuck 'em. JWs can all die in a fire.
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  24

  Is claiming your baptism null and void an exit plan?

  by awakening in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i have read some of you talking about baptism not being a legaly binding contract as, for most it was undertaken as a minor.

  has anyone successfuly nulled their baptism and exited free of consequence?.

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  Sulla

  No, it's not a plan. It's absurd.
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  45

  The 265th Pope slithers off into retirement

  by designs in

  1. social
  2. current

  he now lives out of reach of the secular world's laws.

  the pope emeritus spent part of his youth with the nazi leagues of his homeland.

  he receives a 'retirment check' of about $3000.00 per month, which is the high end range of our social security system if you were a top earner and waited until 70 to collect.

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  Sulla

  Ok, sooner. So putting every single person who comes into regular contact with young peope through a pretty extensive training program and repetitive messaging to those young people to report anything that makes them uncomfortable is exactly the same as what the JWs have done.

  As for the people who developed the program, I guess you don't understand the process of working with the folks who inderstand where risks come from as part of the process to eliminate those risks. My homeowner's insurance company has lots to say about keeping my home safe and I listen to them. Turns out, they undersand what factors lead to burned-down homes. You would, perhaps, be happy if the program were designed by people who didn't know anything about this sort of risk. Gotcha.

  Well this thread is really about the wall of priviledge that exists around the top Leaders of the Catholic Church, from Popes to Cardinals to Bishops to Priests. Few are serving prison time, and they get protections and retirement money, which is a step beyond your comment of them not getting 'a pass' for their sexual abuse sins against so many.

  The Church doesn't run quite so many prisons as you seem to think. As for "retirement money," I don't really know who gets what. I do know that everybody gets pissed when, like, a guy who kills somebody gets to keep his retirement benefits. That's just stupid, though, since we dont live in a society where being a criminal places you beyond the protection of the law.

  The source of the sexual problems however may be endemic to the Church of Rome whose leaders adopted such councils as Elvira, warping human behaviour the way Knorr and Franz tried to do in the 70s and Evangelical groups try to do still.

  Which explains why the rate of sexual abuse by priests has been about the same as the rate of sexual abuse by schoolteachers, scout masters, coaches, etc. Clever. In my work, I design models that attempt to use differences between people to explain diferences in behavior. You have found a way to use differences in people to explain similarities in behavior. You should publish; clearly, this is a revolution in social science.
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  8

  We just laughed and laughed

  by irondork in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  an experience was told buy one of our congregation's uber pioneer sisters regarding a bible study she brought to the memorial last year.

  a good study.

  smart.

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  Sulla

  Hey irondork. I see you've thought this through. It seems that you are, at this point, still just planning to do communion once this year around the time of the Memorial (plus or minus a few days). Does it seem to you that you are lacking anything at all by having such a small group with which to share communion? Or do you suppose that there is some larger way in which you are connected with the body of all Christians?

  I ask merely for information: I don't think my perspective is unknown and I'm interested in yours.
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  23

  The real problem with Watchtower.

  by Rattigan350 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  a topic on here about 1975 prompted me to write about how, for me, that is and never was or will be an issue.. also, the 144,000 and 'two classes' with memorial partaking, and child abuse are not issues with this religion.

  everyone has their unique teachings and personnel problems.. the real problem with this religion was highlighted in the 2008 yearbook.

  it gave a story of a young woman who was from estonia who was on the equivalent of american idol for estonia.

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  Sulla

  The real problem with the Watchtower is their doctrine: they teach a false gospel. Their false doctrine leads them to teach that one ought to waste his or her natural talents in support of the false god that is the JWs.
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  45

  The 265th Pope slithers off into retirement

  by designs in

  1. social
  2. current

  he now lives out of reach of the secular world's laws.

  the pope emeritus spent part of his youth with the nazi leagues of his homeland.

  he receives a 'retirment check' of about $3000.00 per month, which is the high end range of our social security system if you were a top earner and waited until 70 to collect.

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  Sulla

  So by that way of rationalizing it...

  Ted Bundy should have been set free if he just made the necessary steps to never murder and rape again.

  Bernie Madoff should go free if he promise never to run another Ponzi scheme.

  The guy that molested me as a youth and thereafter many of my cousins and his own step-children should have his name taken off the sex offender role and his record absolved.

  I don't suppose you've missed the point on purose, so let me clarify what I said. You asserted that our view of the Catholic Church and the Watchtower should be the same because both organizations "aided and abetted the sexual abuse of children. I point out that the responses have been quite different from the two organizations -- much overdue in the Catholic case, but ultimately quite strong. I also pointed out that I don't know anyone who thinks the bishops who protected bad priests should get a pass.

  I hope you can see now that I haven't said anything at all that justifies your characterization. What I have done is point out a significant difference between the two organizations in the way this was ultimately handled and the level of seriousness which, finally, the Catholics have addressed the question. I haven't justified the delay in these developments.

  There are JW apologists who feel similarly about the reforms made by the Wt. Leaders and claim now everything is set right, relax God is in charge again. They find it difficult if not impossible to fathom that the sky-god the product of one's imagination and they were simple bowing to civic pressure to make necessary changes.

  Well, designs, I don't know whether these changes have been made or not. What I can say is that the VIRTUS program seems quite robust and is commonly consulted by other organizations who also understand the risks associated with young people working closely with adults. These reforms would almost certainly not have been made absent the media coverage about the issue. That does not change the fact that changes seem to have been made that are qualitatively better than the changes the JWs have made or, for that matter, the policy changes we fail to see in the "civic" school system, which has some stories to tell of its own.

  Again, as I have to point out on a board that is defined by a pride in its bad faith arguments, I don't justify or minimize the badness of what happened. But the question was asked how the Catholics differ from the JWs. This is part of the answer.

  So a xJW who sees the terrible position the Wt. Leadership took in the Conti case and other such cases trying to protect the 'good name of the church' and writes and speaks out about it, if they have converted to Catholicism should they put blinders on with the criminal cases now moving to prosecution phases in the world's courts against your favored Church.

  How to put this? No, they should not put blinders on. Not sure when I advocated putting blinders on, actually. Mahoney, in Los Angeles, for example, seems to have been quite the bastard -- hiding priests accused of molestation or other improper behavior in Mexico, for Christ's sake!

  But if there are similarities between what the Catholic Church and the JWs did -- and again, there are -- it turns out there are also differences. At the same time, if you are searching for institutions that you can trust when it comes to this sort of thing, plan to be disappointed: is seems institutions have an ability to hide bad shit at all cost. The most naïve among us are shocked -- shocked! -- when they find the girls lacrosse coach is fucking the girls lacrosse team, or when they find Father Friendly is getting blow jobs from altar boys, or when they find out that the Ministerial Servant who takes a real interest in the kids has a computer filled with video of the kids masturbating while he watches.

  Like, no shit. Doesn't everybody know that a quite small percentage of adults who work with young people take advantage of them? And doesn't everybody know that almost every single organization will find a way to protect the abusers as a way to protect itself? Haven't we learned this by now?

  So what matters is creating institutional structures that prevent organizations from operating this way. The Church has implemented a set of procedures that look promising -- at least promising enough that other organizations seem interested in borrowing those procedures. Will it be enough? I don't know.

  With 30,000 pages of documents against Cardinal Mahoney in the Los Angeles Archdiocese alone he is without reservation or censur from the exiting Pope allowed to vote in the next Pope, he is in Rome at this very moment. What message to the kids who had their innocence robbed from them, what message is that.

  Pretty fucking bad. But Mahoney is a piece of shit and this is how you expect a piece of shit to act, isn't it? But Cardinals aren't like VPs in a multinational and the Pope can't just fire them whenever he feels like it. There is this huge process because the Popes have not always been nice guys themselves and because there is this idea that the bishops are in charge of their own cities. It's like a schoolteacher with tenure -- they have due process rights that can take a lot of time to work through. So, yeah, Mahoney outta stay the fuck out, but when he was taking victory laps for all his lefty political viewpoints, I guess it made him think he was above all that.
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  38

  TV Show, 'The Bible'

  by LV101 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  anyone planning to watch 'the bible' tv show march 3 on the history channel.

  five episodes focusing on o/t and five about the n/t.

  any thoughts?

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  Sulla

  RE: Ice Road Truckers. There's a scene in Breaking Bad where Walt asks Jesse what he does with his time. He tells him he watches IRT. "What's that?" "These truckers... drive on a road... made out of ice..."

  Good times, good times...
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  3

  Jacob's name change to Israel -- happens twice?

  by srd in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  there was a thread here months ago about the 2 jacob-to-israel stories -- can't find it.

  anyway, thought this might be of interest:.

  http://contradictionsinthebible.com/penuel-or-bethel/.

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  Sulla

  Yeah, there's lots of that. My favorites are the two stories of Sarah (and one of Rebecca) getting taken away by local warlords and their husbands claiming their wives are their sisters. Seems like the editors wanted to collect all the variations of a particlar story rather than simply selecting one.

  Of course, these are "contradictions" only under a particular type of hermeneutic. Put differently: the Jews and Christians have been reading these stories for a couple thousand years, it's not a surprise to them.
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  44

  Evil Elderettes, the true Hounds of Hell!

  by Bubblegum Apotheosis in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  my wife was told a brother was going to be disfellowshiped, "how do you know this is going to happen?

  " sister so-so said "he was not repentant or humble to the brother's kindness.

  " instead of engaging into a heated debate, she knew who the leak was, so-so's husband.

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  Sulla

  Well, it is impossible to avoid the social pecking-order, much as JWs like to imagine themselves above that sort of thing. It is one reason why cases where an Elder leaves the JWs his wife will very often leave him, especially if she has good alternative prospects -- the social cost can be very high for these women if they remain shackled to the corpse.

  Of course, one problem for these Elder's wives who have husbands who leave the JWs is that they will not typically have good alternative prospects -- the sex ratio is generally not in their favor. I'd recommend finding another Elder with a wife who is not a good match (not attractive, not good socially, whatever) and breaking up that marriage.