Someone who thought he was anointed for 5 years, and then learned TTATT and then turned up on the jwrecovery website (which is no longer is online). He described how he came to believe he was anointed, and what eventually brought him to reality. It was an interesting read. A brave and humble poster, for a while. He went by the username goat-bone (or goat bone or goatbone). He also later made a few posts on the exjw reddit site. I haven’t seen a recent post. He’s probably moved on in life. Good for him.
shepherdless
JoinedPosts by shepherdless
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29
Anointed Delusions of Grandeur
by Kohanic inso here is something i've been wondering about.
how do the 'anointed' come to the conclusion that they are chosen?
is it some weird collective delusion of grandeur and how is it manifested in such ones?.
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55
The watchtower does not have the resources
by pepperheart inif you have a look at the december broadcast on jw tv they tell you that they wont be showing you a normal format for december but the 143rd event of gilead because the watchtower does not have the resources other wise to translate it many different lanuages.. with all the cuts the watchtower have made and are going to make you would have thought that they would have lots of resources.
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shepherdless
I would love so much for that to be true.
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35
Local elder dies of starvation
by Steel inwell , not really.. our hall recently had a secret collection for our head elder who is almost on the verge of becoming homeless.
i guess he lost some cleaning contracts because his clients were just sick of his no shows because of his pioneer work.
there is always something more important to do than earn a living.. this is the same assholes he is always shaming people to not doing enough.
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shepherdless
They condemn “this system of things” as being part of Satan’s - yet as quick as they mouth these sorts of critical sentiments, claim all kinds of monetary benefits and welfare checks when their feeble attempts to get by are not enough. The numbers of local JWs on some sort of welfare benefit is staggering - and suggests this religion attracts no-hopers.
Yes, this is what I observe as well, Steve. It seems to me too many JWs are on some sort of welfare benefit, and in some cases, needlessly so. Hardly a group worthy of being the sole survivors of Armageddon.
Just one point, though. Does this religion attract no-hopers, or does it turn them into no-hopers? I suspect a bit of both, but perhaps more the latter.
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315
Flat earth vs round earth
by Jrjw inmy brother has been talking about the earth being flat and some big conspiracy going on to make people beieve otherwise.
what are people's thoughts on this?.
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shepherdless
What presently remains of the Great Pyramids are just the cores of the structures. The outer surfaces of the pyramids, which were apparently a limestone mortar, are completely gone. When in their prime the surfaces of the pyramids were smooth and white as snow. Unlike anything the World has ever seen.
I have been to the pyramids, been inside one of them, and climbed on another.
From memory, it was mostly blocks of stone cut to the same size, and laid in place. I suppose each stone would weighed about 5 tonne. The outside was once finished with a smooth surface of pale stone. A small amount of it still remains on one of the pyramids. The local guides said that during the period of Ottoman rule, the smooth stone was quarried and used for their palaces. In and around Cairo, you can see Ottoman palaces made of pale stone. “Snow white” is an exaggeration.
I also visited an ancient stone quarry, when travelling in Egypt. The guides explained the clever technique for cutting stone out in blocks. There was a giant obelisk there, half cut out, and on its side. I walked on top of it. The guides said it was probably abandoned after it developed a large crack, which was still visible. The quarry was a long way from any archeological site, but (like virtually every archeological site there) was close to the Nile. Obviously they used barges to float the quarried stones to wherever they needed them.
The locals say that any “ramp” used to raise and position blocks into place on the great pyramids would have been a spiral around the pyramid, not the classic ramp shown in movies. Some western “experts” have said that they couldn’t have done it that way, because it would have made surveying the structure and keeping it aligned, too difficult. While it does complicate construction, I suspect such “experts” have never physically built anything themselves, and would probably struggle to assemble an IKEA bookcase.
The locals also say the ancients would have used a lot of sand to support structures as they built them. For example, the giant columns at Luxor would ha e been constructed by rolling a column section into place, surrounding it in sand, and then rolling the next on top, and so forth. It might sound a lot of work in theory, but I have seen it done to assemble freeway overpasses in the Middle East. It is a quick and simple way of building tall structures where you have lots of dry sand available.
In short, the effort that they went to was amazing, but all very explainable.
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315
Flat earth vs round earth
by Jrjw inmy brother has been talking about the earth being flat and some big conspiracy going on to make people beieve otherwise.
what are people's thoughts on this?.
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shepherdless
I was just reading a bit on the internet on the Antikythera mechanism. Apparently the ancient Greeks (or whoever built it) knew that the moon and planets have slightly elliptical orbits (ie not perfectly circular) and added gears to the mechanism to compensate. Even Copernicus didn’t know about the elliptical orbits. That wasn’t re-discovered until Kepler came along, and after a lot of observations over a long period.
By the way, those Babylonian tablets that are often referred to as proving Nebuchadnezzar came to the throne in 605BC also show that the Babylonians knew how to predict eclipses. Seems they likely thought the earth was a sphere as well.
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315
Flat earth vs round earth
by Jrjw inmy brother has been talking about the earth being flat and some big conspiracy going on to make people beieve otherwise.
what are people's thoughts on this?.
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shepherdless
I like the FACT that the ancient builders of the world's megaliths not only accomplished tasks still not attainable by modern technology, they also thought the earth was flat.
In about 200BC, Eratosthenes of Cyrene not only knew the world was round, he was able to calculate the diameter of the earth, and the tilt of the earth, using the suns shadows. His calculations for both were remarkably accurate for the time. Eratosthenes was not the first person to realise the world was round. There seems to be quite a number of others before him. Some ancient Greeks seemed to think the world was cylindrical. In fact, there is very little evidence of the educated class of any advanced ancient civilisation thinking the world is flat.
ancient builders of the world's megaliths... accomplished tasks still not attainable by modern technology...
Sorry, but that is rubbish.
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40
Introduce myself
by dantoole87 ini'd like share why i went from being a teenager determined to work in full time service for jehovah my entire life, to now being on here commiserating with you all.
i use to be an atheist but i now believe in god.
but i'm not preachy about god.
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shepherdless
Welcome!
Its like a 30 year old that believes professional wrestling is real. Sorry bro, but eventually you have to give up that delusion and realize its only sweaty guy opera.
Great analogy.
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168
Where to draw the line: how Platonism haunts our discourse and the search for exorcism
by slimboyfat inin the discussion about race i adopted a position i am not entirely comfortable with.
i think there is a sense in which it is useful to distinguish categories of description that can be fruitfully defended (apples and bananas) and those that cannot (caucasian or other racial descriptions for example).
but there is a more fundamental sense in which i believe that everything is socially constructed, every single line you can think of.
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shepherdless
Well if God or some other deity was involved in making PI the value that it is, why did he/she/it have to make it an irrational number? Damn unnecessary complication, if you ask me. Same goes for the Euler number.
Not to mention, the idiot god that wrote the bible thought that PI was exactly 3.
By the way, I remember learning the mathematical proof at Uni, a long time ago, that:
PI = 4 x (1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7 + 1/9 - 1/11 + 1/13 ...)
From that infinite series expression, you can calculate PI to as many decimal places as you like.
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315
Flat earth vs round earth
by Jrjw inmy brother has been talking about the earth being flat and some big conspiracy going on to make people beieve otherwise.
what are people's thoughts on this?.
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shepherdless
Question for Kairos.
The flat earth map seems to show, for example, Sydney and Johannesburg on opposite sides of the world, and a straight line between the two would go somewhere near the North Pole. Yet Qantas is selling flights between the two cities that take a little ove 11 hours. How do they do it?
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Watchtower Releases 2017 Grand Total Figures!
by darkspilver in2017 grand totals.
branches of jehovah’s witnesses: 90. .
number of lands reporting: 240. .
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shepherdless
If we assume that there are less converts and more born-ins who are getting baptized, would the above statement of yours take the premise that more and more JW kids are staying in the religion and then having kids who are becoming JW's, thus repeating this cycle and the rate of publisher increase is equaling the world population growth?
It would appear from past figures that in places such as USA, Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia, this is what is happening. There seems to be few converts, and the numbers are made up of born-ins. Unsurprisingly, numbers are stagnant in such countries.
In Latin America and other strongly catholic countries, there is still growth. In Christian African countries, where there is strong population growth, there is often a massive increase in numbers and a lot of those countries already have higher ratios of JWs to population than many Western countries.
Because, if JW's have low retention rate( born-ins are leaving the cult) and outside converts are also less, then the peak publishers should go down at some point.
That is probably already happening in some Western countries. On another thread I all but proved (using Australian census data) that decline is now inevitable. Better to just rely on “average publishers” not “peak publishers” when trying to work out what is going on, by the way.
For e.g. In my congregation of 40 publishers, almost everyone is a born-in JW, i.e. all had witness parents. There has not been a single convert in years, but the publisher number is increasing because existing witnesses are having kids who are growing up as JW's. So, in reality, in my cong, born-ins are staying in the org. Is this a worldwide trend?
From memory, you are in India? In many Western countries, a number of born-ins leave when in the 15 to 25 age bracket, but a lot of them drift back in, particularly when having their own kids, sometimes dragging a spouse in with them.