Posts by okage

70

Why Do You Come To This Site?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i believe that this site, jwn, serves many purposes.

.

some are here almost, out of need.. others are here because they want to know the latest in watchtower world.. still others come here for the entertainment.. why do you frequent this place?

okage

I come for the free beer and the hot and cold running chicks on tap.

17

JWs and Earthquakes

by okage in

yesterday, my wife's sister shared on facebook a screen capture of people talking about the earthquake in china.

the top of the list was a twitter user saying "is it just me or are these 5.0+ quakes coming more frequently" (paraphrasing).

her response "people are finally seeing what's coming" (not paraphrasing).. initially, this pissed me off because there is no increase in earthquakes.

Taking a cue from @jwfacts, I took it upon myself to write to the USGS. They are authorities in the subject and were used by Bob Thiel to argue that there were MORE earthquakes today. My sister in law shouldn't have used that article without checking the facts because this is what I sent them:

Thank you for reading this. My wife and I are in debate with her sister, who believes the "increase in the frequency of seismic activity" is evidence of the Biblical end times prophecy.

She used the recent quake in China to launch a platform that it is proof there are more and more earthquakes, and that it shows that Armageddon is about to begin.

We are not debating her faith. We are debating her facts. Using the statistics provided by USGS for the range 1990 - 2012, we illustrated to her the sporadic nature of the planet, not to be confused with the idea that earthquakes are occurring more frequently.

However, it is published numerous times by her church over the decades that there were considerably fewer instances of seismic activity prior to 1914 than after 1914. One official statement is that apparently today there are 20 times more earthquakes than before 1914.

I was hoping that someone at the USGS could send a statement putting this matter to an official rest. We did refer her to your article "Are Earthquakes on the Rise?" but it makes no regard to the 1914 timeframe in question.

So if at all possible, could someone with the USGS email or snail mail a statement regarding this issue?

Any response would be deeply appreciated.

Here's their reply that I received this morning:

From: ESIC, GS-AK <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 2:53 PM
Subject: Re: Official Statement Re: Seismic Activity Prior to 1914
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected], GS-AK ESIC <[email protected]>

Hello- The same logic could be used to argue that tornadoes were far fewer in North America until settlers started moving westward. I think that anyone can see that it was just a matter of having more "detectors" available, yet people have difficulty understanding that in terms of seismicity, we didn't have many detectors before the early 20th Century. Also, until the advent of 24/7 news and social media, many large earthquakes and eruptions occurred entirely unknown to the population as a whole. It might be noted that in terms of recording earthquakes, we do indeed pick up more of the smaller ones every year - but it is because we continue to "densify" our seismic network. The larger occurrences remain pretty steady. We can examine the recurrence intervals of large earthquakes along known faults and tsunami run-up zones. These are regular occurrences, and did not just begin! There is a USGS FAQ that provides additional information. Good luck with your efforts to enlighten, but it's been my rather lengthy experience that your chance of success is slim. Since seismic occurrences are not a linear distribution, any clustering of events can be pointed at to "prove" some perceived point of view! Regards, Greg Durocher USGS Office of Communications & Publishing Science Information Services - Anchorage, Alaska -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Science & Alaska Questions: [email protected] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Twitter: @USGS YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/USGS FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/USGeologicalSurvey Other Social Media: http://www.usgs.gov/socialmedia/

17

JWs and Earthquakes

by okage in

yesterday, my wife's sister shared on facebook a screen capture of people talking about the earthquake in china.

the top of the list was a twitter user saying "is it just me or are these 5.0+ quakes coming more frequently" (paraphrasing).

her response "people are finally seeing what's coming" (not paraphrasing).. initially, this pissed me off because there is no increase in earthquakes.

okage

@jwfacts:

Thank you. It's an honor to have your input as you are the top analyst (in the opinion of myself and others on here) in the field pertaining to Jehovah's Witnesses.

It also makes me proud that we both felt it significant to cite the USGS article Are Earthquakes on the Rise? Particularly because I'd never seen your article examining the relationship between seismic activity and Watchtower doctrine before you linked it. It's an awesome article and one I will use in conjunction with my own fact sheet for Witnesses down the road.

My personal choice to examine the last 22 years on record is mainly because I cannot discuss her faith with her or she shuts down the conversation. This is despite 1 Peter 3:15 instructing her that she must be ready to give an answer to people who ask about her faith. While I'm stuck with being viewed as worldly, I was never a baptized Witness or even a study. No Apostate loopholes for her to exploit.

So, when I can't argue a point made from her religious dogma with that dogma, I go for facts and figures. She's 29, so she lived in the same world that those records occured in.

17

JWs and Earthquakes

by okage in

yesterday, my wife's sister shared on facebook a screen capture of people talking about the earthquake in china.

the top of the list was a twitter user saying "is it just me or are these 5.0+ quakes coming more frequently" (paraphrasing).

her response "people are finally seeing what's coming" (not paraphrasing).. initially, this pissed me off because there is no increase in earthquakes.

okage

@jookbeard: You are the people I write for. I enjoy facts and figures and presenting accurate facts and figures to show a better semblance of truth than we're all used to.

17

JWs and Earthquakes

by okage in

yesterday, my wife's sister shared on facebook a screen capture of people talking about the earthquake in china.

the top of the list was a twitter user saying "is it just me or are these 5.0+ quakes coming more frequently" (paraphrasing).

her response "people are finally seeing what's coming" (not paraphrasing).. initially, this pissed me off because there is no increase in earthquakes.

okage

Lmao @Sir82.

It must suck for them when statistics show that crime is at an all-time low and that gun violence is 40% lower than it was just 20 years ago. Even Hurricanes have remained the same.

Sure refutes the idea that the world is some lurid deathtrap waiting to kill innocent J dubs.

17

JWs and Earthquakes

by okage in

yesterday, my wife's sister shared on facebook a screen capture of people talking about the earthquake in china.

the top of the list was a twitter user saying "is it just me or are these 5.0+ quakes coming more frequently" (paraphrasing).

her response "people are finally seeing what's coming" (not paraphrasing).. initially, this pissed me off because there is no increase in earthquakes.

okage

Yesterday, my wife's sister shared on facebook a screen capture of people talking about the earthquake in China. The top of the list was a twitter user saying "is it just me or are these 5.0+ quakes coming more frequently" (paraphrasing). Her response "people are finally seeing what's coming" (not paraphrasing).

Initially, this pissed me off because there is no increase in earthquakes. But my wife made me proud when she noticed a nuance. "People are finally seeing what's coming," as though her sister had some superior knowledge of how the world works.

We went to the USGS (United States Geological Survey) website and told her that 2012 only saw 16,667 earthquakes, which was beneath the annual average of the decade before.

She sent my wife an SMS of a screen capture of a random article explaining how earthquakes are on the rise.

I went into research mode and found the article myself. It can be found here:
http://www.cogwriter.com/earthquakes-today.php

The screen capture began with the section about Roger Meyers and ended with Earthquake dangers seem to be rising. So it ignored the proposal by the author that human activity could be a factor in some of the earthquakes. It ignored the listing of the three deadliest earthquakes in history that unintentionally showed that even the three deadliest earthquakes were less destructive than the one listed before (they are in order chronologically).

She also ignored the COGWriter is a man named Bob Thiel, who is a member of the Church of God, which means she shouldn't be on that page anyway.

My wife sent a text asking for the article's link and got no response. She asked her sister who Roger Meyers was, because neither of us could find him, though the article presents him as a voice worth listening to. My wife got no response.

So I wrote a detailed breakdown for her sister and we sent her a pdf.

I used the USGS site to show her the following information:

Between 1990 and 1999, seismic activity averaged 19,678.2 earthquakes annually.
Magnitude 8.0 - 9.9 saw .6 annually.
Magnitude 7.0 - 7.9 saw 14.7 annually.
Information found here: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/info_1990s.php

Between 2000 and 2009, seismic activity averaged 27,219 earthquakes annually (an annual increase of 7540.8).
Magnitude 8.0 - 9.9 saw 1.4 annually (an increase of .8).
Magnitude 7.0 - 7.9 saw 15.4 annually (an increase of .7).
Information found here: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/eqstats.php

I gave her these (true) statistics for a reason. Jehovah's Witnesses LOOOOOOOOOOOVE to be right. She would keep reading if she felt it would only confirm her argument. This is important, because she wasn't right.

Also on the USGS site is an article dated January 9th, 2013 asking the question Are Earthquakes on the Rise?
This information can be found here: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/increase_in_earthquakes.php

The article states an answer for this:
"We continue to be asked by many people throughout the world if earthquakes are on the increase. Although it may seem that we are having more earthquakes, earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater have remained fairly constant.

A partial explanation may lie in the fact that in the last twenty years, we have definitely had an increase in the number of earthquakes we have been able to locate each year. This is because of the tremendous increase in the number of seismograph stations in the world and the many improvements in global communications. In 1931, there were about 350 stations operating in the world; today, there are more than 8,000 stations and the data now comes in rapidly from these stations by electronic mail, internet and satellite. This increase in the number of stations and the more timely receipt of data has allowed us and other seismological centers to locate earthquakes more rapidly and to locate many small earthquakes which were undetected in earlier years. The NEIC now locates about 20,000 earthquakes each year or approximately 50 per day. Also, because of the improvements in communications and the increased interest in the environment and natural disasters, the public now learns about more earthquakes."

If you read Bob Thiel's (COGWriter) article and this USGS article, you notice something similar:

Thiel: "Based on records kept since 1900, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) expects a yearly total of 17 major earthquakes and one great earthquake."
USGS: "According to long-term records (since about 1900), we expect about 17 major earthquakes (7.0 - 7.9) and one great earthquake (8.0 or above) in any given year. "

This line is only used once anywhere on the USGS website and it's the closing line to the article that explains that we are not having an increase in earthquakes, just a better perception of them. Mr. Thiel blatantly ignored this clarification in an effort to further his argument.

And what of Roger Meyers? At first, I thought it was a typo for Robert Meyers, who is the EiC for Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science, a publication many researchers for the USGS have written for.
But further study and research showed me that it is indeed Roger Meyers, whose article can be found here:
http://www.tomorrowsworld.org/node/5299

Mr. Meyers is a random contributor to Tomorrows World. His seemingly sensible writing had him published though he has no connection to Geological Studies. Meyers cites many large, noteable quakes that made the news in the years but disregards the hundreds of thousands of earthquakes big and small that occur annually. One could think the point of Meyer's contribution was to discuss only the noteable quakes, but the very last paragraph shows his intention:“ Many people have heard of the Mt. Olivet prophecy when Jesus described events leading up to His second coming. In that prophecy, Christ mentions "earthquakes in different places" (Matthew 24:7) as being part of "the beginning of sorrows" (v. 8) He then goes on to describe other happenings which will occur in the few short years immediately preceding His return – events which parallel the events described in the book of Revelation.”

Correlation between earthquake frequency and the prophecies of Jesus. Funny how Bob Thiel never cited his source for Roger Meyers or made mention of this paragraph, despite it being written directly after the two paragraphs being cited.

To close out my statement to my wife's sister, I refered her to the 2000-2012 stats on the USGS site to pay focus to 2012.

16,667 is 10,552 fewer quakes than the annual average of the 2000-2009 decade.
16,667 is 4,910 fewer than 2010 and 5,622 fewer than 2011.

These numbers show that there is no evidence to support the claim that the number of earthquakes is increasing, but it is evidence enough to show the sporadic nature of our planet.

Her sister never wrote back.

25

What will happen when JWActivists goes back online?

by okage in

the aawa website jwactivists is down for repairs or whatever, so here is my prediction of what it will be when it comes up:.

* the site will have removed all mention of jwn.

* the site will have revised their own history.. * the site will have a registry that will be contingent on confirmation of identity in relation to the wts, but will also limit the function and communication of naysayers of john cedars' only working organization on earth.. * privacy will not be addressed.

okage

Currently 20 hours 23 minutes. Last night, the countdown was on all zeroes.

11

Need help finding a citation re: You wouldn't go to a Toyota dealer

by okage in

okay, online, many jws use the line that if you have a question about a ford, you wouldn't go to a toyota dealer.

they use this to say "only jehovah's witnesses can answer questions about jws.".

i can swear that there is some version of this statement in a watchtower publication.

okage

Okay, online, many JWs use the line that if you have a question about a Ford, you wouldn't go to a Toyota dealer. They use this to say "only Jehovah's Witnesses can answer questions about JWs."

I can swear that there is some version of this statement in a Watchtower publication. Can you please help me find it?

25

What will happen when JWActivists goes back online?

by okage in

the aawa website jwactivists is down for repairs or whatever, so here is my prediction of what it will be when it comes up:.

* the site will have removed all mention of jwn.

* the site will have revised their own history.. * the site will have a registry that will be contingent on confirmation of identity in relation to the wts, but will also limit the function and communication of naysayers of john cedars' only working organization on earth.. * privacy will not be addressed.

okage

I guess, QuietOne. I'm currently looking at the jwactivists page and aawa.co and both say 18 hours, 4 minutes.

423

I have just been disinvited to my brother's wedding - Thanks AAWA!

by Sic Semper Tyrannis in

i am an inactive jw.

i havent been on this forum for a few months and have been lurking in others.

i have met a few people in real life and online, both on this forum and on others.

okage

@Tylinbrando: We have nothing from the other AAWA board members who frequent JWN to correct this issue. Simon has allowed a couple of them to be respected (Anderson and Lee) in their privacies. And that's fine. But Juan Viejo and Paul Grundy are quiet as a field mouse on the subject, and there has been no proclamation from our boss Simon to respect their privacies as it concerns the AAWA. What it looks like to most is that Cedars was probably elected to do the chest-puffing and grunting for the group because he usually writes eloquently. It backfired because somebody dropped the ball and let three members add around 700-800 members without those individuals' consent, and when Cedars was busy writing a puff piece, he started getting slammed with criticisms. And let's be honest, Cedars is crap when it comes to handling criticism. It's either his way or no way at all, but unfortunately, the imaginary man disregards the fact that he's THE guy at AAWA and criticism is going to happen. Now, if you see how Richard Kelly, Bo Juel Jensen, and John Cedars compose themselves in the comments section at JWSurvey, you start to see a more open view of how the AAWA is being run. One man suggested changing the name to something that doesn't involve the word "ANTI" and Cedars chewed him out, criticized him, and eventually deleted him. And this chewing out included the phrase "We don't want everyone to volunteer, just to know we are here." What kind of help Organization that is staffed completely by volunteers makes the comment that they don't want everyone to help?! Will that phrase be on the new website next to the volunteer button? I seriously doubt it. Cedars is a great writer when it comes to numbers and analytics, but when it comes to PR, he sucks. That's why they are hiring a PR firm, so they don't get those gems Cedars has been crapping all over the floor. Bo is no better. He censors people and slanders names just as well as the others. But we need to ask ourselves something about Mr. Jensen: If he's already founder of one organization he puts all his time into, why would he be a board member simultaneously to another group? What qualifications does he have to moderate jwsurvey or run to anti-Jehovah's witness organizations? You know, aside from being Cedar's friend. I remember asking Cedars on JWSurvey "what is the mission of the AAWA? To take down the Watchtower or to help it's victims?" I painted the significance of it by asking "Are you the group that complains about Coca Cola? Or are you the group that complains that there are dangerous ingredients in Coca Cola?" Because the distinction is important. If he's dead set on being "the Guy Who Took Down the Watchtower," his current volunteers should know this is his goal, as should potential volunteers. If he's actually trying to do what his mission statement says the AAWA is set out to do, he's knee-capping the movement by having that dreadful name. Unfortunately, he can't do both because one will draw away from the other. He cannot take out the WTS without neglecting the victims. He can't save lives and take out a cult. The AAWA is new, inexperienced, and as EntirelyPossible has stated: "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." They are small potatoes and have no clear direction to travel.