i have been reading a book called the jesus mysteries and it puts forward an idea that jesus never existed but was born out of the ideas of gnostism.
there are many similarities between ancient religions and christianity, which is very worrying for me.
i have not had a lot of time of late to read up on it properly but here are the conclusions that i have come to so far.. did christ exist?
re josephus: id have to check this but arent there TWO references to jesus? one, with a messianic flavor that is roundly considered a christian interpolation and another one, less descriptive, i think the one that just mentions 'james, brother of jesus' that is considered authentic?
mox
"hi there. nice to meet you all. how's everybody doing? nice party. where's th-- oh wait. just a minute... aww dammit, i'm in a cult."
mox
several have made outright statements and others have suggested that the society's negative position on higher education has changed.
'the society does not discourage higher education where i live.
' worse, 'apostates have made it all up--the society has never discouraged education.
the society's new views on higher education simply mean that the part will end with, 'yes, those graphic design courses that i could complete in one year will be the best way for me to get employment that will help me pioneer.' rather than having the youth pioneer straight out of high school.
mox
for those of you who haven`t been following it,the wts is in a downward spiral here in japan.fs hours are down,memorial attendance.
is down,pioneers are down,studies are down,donations are down,number.
of congregations is down and the number of publishers continues to.
stand firm seminars were held thru-out north america as well. the toronto branch even put together this little and apparently little-known website: http://www.standfirm.ca
mox
i think you can probably guess why i want this.
references making specific mention of 'family members' would be ideal!.
nic'.
ive handled the territory in many congregations and i would estimate 90% of house-to-house records end up with no more information than not-at-homes. publishers are often chided for inadvertently refering to them as 'not home slips' and ignoring all the other 'symbols' at the top.
mox
a number of posts this week drew attention to the pseudo-science of the watchtower organization.
in recent years the wts has not fared much better and clinging to fundamentalist ideas about the age of man, the idea that all of genesis is true only causes problems and serious questions.. i have previously posted thoughts on an archeological find and i thought id mention it again.
the case was the 1991 discovery of the frozen corpse of an ancient man in the italian alps.
naturally, the WT cannot afford to really even mention C14 dating nowadays. simply ignoring it seems to work fine for the typical demographic that make up modern JWs. a disparaging remark every few years is plenty.
interesting point on the 'founders' of the pre-noachian era. never thought about that.
that article was very unusual for an awake. it was one of the first cover articles i remember that really positioned itself as a scientific story with no biblical overtones at all. of course, you're right, it was certainly skewed to favor WT chronology, but not overtly. in fact, it seemed to go pretty much over the heads of most r&f. our CO made a point of mentioning the iceman's support for the idea of civilization being older than previously thought. this was support for genesis' picture of a literate, complex society at an early age, he explained.
mox
for those of you who haven`t been following it,the wts is in a downward spiral here in japan.fs hours are down,memorial attendance.
is down,pioneers are down,studies are down,donations are down,number.
of congregations is down and the number of publishers continues to.
hi jwd. just catching up on this thread after a hiatus.
when i toured ebina last year, we didnt even get to see the residence at all. i wouldve liked to. we felt rushed thru and only got to see some interesting stuff because we knew someone there. he showed us the AV room and some of the grounds where they take some of the 'paradise' photos apparently. nice stuff.
im also curious about some of these references you've mentioned. in particular the KM about pre-JW professionals. could i see the text for that please? japanese is fine. i assume the elders letter is one that you cannot obtain. how did you come by this information and are you sure that the DF situation being discussed was NOT that of masturbation during an encounter on the internet with another PERSON? that is the situation worldwide to the best of my knowledge as of a few years ago and i assume that perhaps the version you heard or came across had gotten altered a bit for whatever reason.
mox
as a jw, i was always disturbed by the inconsistency in the society's position on abortion / kids dying at armageddon.. the wt opposes abortion, calling it murder.
yet if a child is just one day old when armageddon comes, it will perish with it's parents, since the parents bear responsibility for their children.
so goes the wt line.. i could never reconcile these two viewpoints.
yes, that has always been difficult to reconcile. i also a heard similar analogy as a child that stuck with me of household 'pests', rats or roaches, that when you exterminate the adult pests you do not leave the children to see if maybe they grow up to be different, you exterminate them all. even my childhood mind had trouble with that. and my adult mind has more than trouble with that. but this 'illustration' was put forward quite earnestly by a kind brother. tho i rejected this euphimism, i still necessarilly had to try and justify things to myself. i reasoned that to jehovah, lives were so short that a day and 80 years meant very little difference and the presonal revulsion we might feel was a product of our short-sightedness. i had just assumed that there were things about Jehovah's mind that we just couldnt really fathom and would even find objectionable due to the incredibly vast difference in outlook we have.
well, it wasnt much but it kept me going for a while.
mox
i now realize that the reason i left was because i just couldn't deal with all the important issues: http://www.greatcrowd.com/159ubb/forum22/html/000161.html.
expatbrit
jeez. Isaiah volume II... what a shocker. can't let that bombshell out too early.
mox
i really like being here on this board.
i come to read it every day, and now i have the pleasure of reading others responses to my posts and commenting on theirs.
but, i am beginning to feel a resurrgence on that fear and paranoia that kept me from speaking up before.. after posting my notes on the convention, i began to feel a little guilty for ridiculing them when i know my son belives (as a result of my teaching) so strongly, and when i know so many good sincere friends at the kh who also believe so.
LDH is right. you have virtually no need to worry about being caught by some mysterious IP-based method you werent familiar with. if someone is caught it is far more likely to be something simple like positively identifying comments or someone seeing you surf either by just watching you or checking a browser's history or cache. clearing a browser cache and history are easy to do.
in internet explorer: View > Internet Options : click 'Delete Files' & 'Clear History'
in netscape: Edit > Prefences > Advanced > Cache : 'Clear' buttons and Edit > Preferences > Navigator : 'Clear' buttons
mox
