shepherdless

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Posts by shepherdless

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  8

  Please track baptisms with attendance numbers at 2017 Regional Conventions here. (U.S. locations) Thx

  by Gayle in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i always like to hear baptism with attendance numbers at rcs.

  observe if the bigger amount baptized are jw children?.

  convention.

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  shepherdless

  According to posters on reddit:

  Belleville MI had approx 2400 in attendance with either 7 or 9 baptised. 3 of the baptised under 18.

  Southern California Qualcomm Stadium (Spanish) had over 12,000, with 60 baptised.
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  11

  The Amazing Andamanese People

  by LoveUniHateExams in

  1. social
  2. current

  i recently watched a documentary about andamanese people on youtube.. the andaman archipelago is officially ruled by india and lies in the bay of bengal, between the eastern coast of india and burma.. the indigenous people are or were stone age people, hunter-gatherers.. they have the general appearance and stature of african pygmy people.. there are 4 main surviving groups: great andaman (made up of several tribes, although the remaining people are few in number and have discarded tribal boundaries), jarawa, onge, and sentinelese.

  i've read a bit about their languages (only on wikipedia - tsk!

  tsk!

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  shepherdless

  my late mother could tell time to the minute just by observing the sun

  I found that if you spend a lot of time working outdoors in a rural environment, where you would finish each day at sunset, and fences and buildings aligned north-south or east-west, after a while you know the time from the position of the sun (and shadows) to within a half hour, if not better, almost without thinking. Not to the minute, though.
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  162

  2017 Convention Video To Be Shown Regarding The 1975 Failure

  by pale.emperor in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go3arnnsfkk&feature=youtu.be.

  no mention whatsoever that it was watchtower themselves that strongly hinted towards this date.

  instead they blame those who "put their trust in a date, not jehovah".. let's recap... .

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  shepherdless

  Someone could make a great parody with this video.

  Change that date at the start from 1997 to (say) 2027. Grandpa is wearing outdated clothes from a goodwill bin, because their choices had left them poor. Grandpa explains that they kept me in with emotional blackmail, saying I would only see grandma again if I continued to do the Borg's bidding. Then change the oblique references to 1975, add references to "overlapping generation", insert Splane's whiteboard before grandpa says "but something just didn't seem right" etc. Finish up with grandpa saying "I am so happy I am out of that stupid cult. Now kids, how are you going at college?"

  There are other possibilities, of course.
  
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  19

  Jerusalem's destruction.....

  by Unstuck in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  hello all - so me and stuckinarut2 are at the state library proving to ourselves that wt has it all wrong re: 607. i've read at length jwfacts, jwsurvey and crisis of conscience that all go into the subject and i've just downloaded gentile times reconsidered.. while it is fabulous to have someone else compile all the research and evidence for you, it is quite another to see it in print for yourself - and so, here we are.. while we wait for our array of books i couldn't help but share with you how the state library has catalogued jewish history - 586 bc to 70 ad.

  no mention of 607 as a key date as far as the library's catalogue is concerned!!

  evidence before we have our books!!.

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  shepherdless

  Firstly, well done Unstuck. It takes courage to honestly research your convictions (not just about religion, but about anything) but the personal satisfaction of doing so makes it all worth while.

  There are many ways to research what is the correct date for the fall of Jerusalem. I think whether one way is more convincing than another depends on the individual. For example Wifibandit has an outline that shows, using Watchtower's own publications, that it must have been 587 BC.

  Stone tablets such as VAT 4956 would be conclusive proof in most people's eyes. VAT 4956 was a record of astronomical observations made (according to the tablet) in the 37th year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. The astronomical observations recorded as described only happen once every 20,000 years, and would have occurred in 567 BC. Given the bible says Jerusalem was destroyed in the 19th year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, the date of destruction must have been 586 BC (not 607 BC).

  Watchtower did a job on VAT 4956 a few years ago. In an article, they argued that the Babylonians didn't have clocks (crap) and the names the Babylonians gave to planets was uncertain, and therefore excluded most of what was written on the tablet. They then fitted the remaining observations into their chosen year; they could have probably fitted into any year, at that point. Worse, from memory, the Online version of the article did not even mention the dodgy assumptions Watchtower made. The effect is that any ultradub will throw that article at you, if you try to raise VAT 4956.

  You can also show Watchtower chronology is wrong in other ways, by for example, going through Egyptian records of when Pharoah Necho was on the throne.

  Personally, I think the easiest way for someone at home with nothing more than the internet, to prove Watchtower is wrong, is to use Ptolomy's canon.

  Ptolomy's canon is really just a list of observed eclipses going back to 747 BC. The list was maintained and handed down through the ages. There were no "BC" dates back then, so the year portion of the date of an eclipse was recorded by reference to the relevant ruler of the major power in the near east, be that Babylonian, Persian, Ptolomeic or Egyptian, and the year of his reign. Because today we can accurately calculate when eclipses would have occurred even thousands of years ago, we can check whether it is accurate, continuous, and assign exact dates for each reported eclipse. Because the purpose was to record eclipses, not act as a calendar, it does not describe when during a year a king took power, and so any date derived from it can be up to a year out. (Short-lived kings that lasted less than a year often don't get mentioned, for that reason.)

  As a result, anyone can simply look up Ptolomy's canon and see that Nebuchadnezzar came to power in 604 BC (+/- 1 year) and Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon in 538 BC (+/- 1 year).

  I like this approach because once you understand Ptolomy's canon, you realise it is plain unarguable, it is easily checked at home without relying on experts, and as far as I am aware, Watchtower has not yet concocted any rebuttal.
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  11

  Evolution is a Fact #39 - Homologous Structures

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  every living thing descended from a common ancestor over millions of years.

  this is the central fact that the theory of evolution explains.

  house sparrows and tree sparrows only need to go back relatively few generations to find their common ancestor, while trout and tigers must search much closer to the roots of the tree for theirs.. darwin sketched this idea of common ancestry along with the words "i think" in one of his notebooks.

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  shepherdless

  I think there were only three occasions in natural history that a species larger than an insect evolved the ability to fly, namely:

  • the bird (fossils suggest it evolved from a type of feathered dinosaur),
  • the bat (fossils suggest it evolved from a mammal), and
  • the pterodactyl (extinct - fossils suggest it evolved from a reptile).

  As shown in the diagrams in Cofty's OP, the bird and the bat have very different wing structures. For the bird, the fingers have shrunk to virtually nothing, and the feathers provide the rigidity. For the bat, the fingers became very large with a membrane or webbing between the fingers. The pterodactyl wings are very different again; the fingers are still there (and the elbows play a role), but there is one enormous finger and the rest are stubs.

  All 3 creatures have hands and fingers (or the remnants of them). All 3 have very different wing structures. Surely one way of creating a wing is superior to all others. So why would a creator create three completely different ways? Further, why would a creator use the fundamental bone structure of a hand, each time? Evolution provides an obvious explanation for each of these questions.
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  27

  Apostasy endorsed in this yesterday's Watchtower Study

  by doubtfull1799 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  “there may be occasions when it would be good for us to reconsider a choice or decision.

  it could be when the prevailing circumstances change.

  jehovah altered his decision at times when circumstances changed.

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  shepherdless

  If there is a change coming, my guess is that it is more likely to be a change in the 2 witness rule, or how child abuse is handled, or something like that. Hanging on to 1914 might hurt the borg, but mismanagement of child abuse allegations really hurts where they feel it the most - financially.
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  11

  Evolution is a Fact #25 - Deep Time

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  in the 18th century the calculations of archbishop james ussher regarding the age of the earth were still accepted without question.

  according to ussher god made the earth at 6pm on the evening of saturday 22nd october 4004 b.c.. this naive certainty was to become a victim of the scottish enlightenment and the brilliant mind of james hutton.

  having qualified as a medical doctor in 1749 hutton returned to the family farm in berwickshire not far from where i am typing this now.

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  shepherdless

  Great work as usual, Cofty. Just wanted to mention something; apologies for the sidetrack.

  In the 18th century the calculations of Archbishop James Ussher regarding the age of the earth were still accepted without question. According to Ussher god made the earth at 6pm on the evening of Saturday 22nd October 4004 B.C.

  James Ussher published "The Annals of the World" on 13 July 1650. The copy I have does not mention "6pm" as the time of the creation of the earth. It just states that the "beginning of time, according to our chronology, happened at the start of the evening preceding the 23rd day of October in the year... [4004BC]" I suspect he used that expression because he probably understood the whole planet could not be in one time zone, and he actually acknowledged that "day" and "night" were created the next day.

  Ussher must have used the Masoretic (or Vulgate) version of the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament), not the Septuagint, because the book has Seth born 130 years after Adam, etc. I mention that because if Ussher used the Septuagint, he would have concluded the Flood occurred around 750 years earlier, and the beginning of time about 1000 years earlier. The book is incredibly impressive, given when it was written. It appears thoroughly researched with extensive biblical and "secular" cross-references.
  

  Interesting for JW's:

  1. Ussher puts the date of the destruction of Jerusalem as April 588 BC, and the fall of Babylon as occurring in 538 BC. Ussher probably used Ptolomy's canon, which you can use to calculate the correct dates +/- 1 year. (The reason any calc using Ptolomy's canon can be 1 year out, is that it is a list of eclipses by reference to list of rulers and years of rule, not a calendar.)

  2. Ussher biblically interprets the "70 years" as commencing from the date Jehoiakim was led away in chains by Nebuchadnezzar, NOT the destruction of Jerusalem. He goes into a lot of detail on this point, but here is a quote:

  775. Nebuchadnezzar chained Jehoiakim to carry him away to Babylon. 2Ch 36:6 Later upon submission and his promises of subjection, he let him stay in his own house where he lived as his servant for 3 years. From this time of the carrying of the king and people of the Jews into the bondage of Nebuchadnezzar, starts the 70 years of the captivity of Babylon which were foretold by the prophet Jeremiah. Jer 25:11 29:10.

  BTW, anyone who thinks that the bible supports the JW version of when Jerusalem fell, rather than "secular history", should read those passages of Jeremiah.

  3. Ussher concludes that Jesus must have been born in 4 BC.

  [edit: 1 word deleted]
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  22

  I have a theory related to the cult spectrum

  by ILoveTTATT2 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  translating jwfacts into spanish has made me critically analyze pretty much everything paul has written.

  i would say paul is right 90%+ of the time.

  some things are just things that are outdated, on other occasions, things are partially right and just need to be tweaked.anyhow... one of the articles is "where else would i go"?since i am an atheist, ideally, for me, the answer would be "become at least agnostic, if not atheist, and lead an evidence-based life".

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  shepherdless

  Seems a reasonable theory to me.
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  46

  The real reason Chelmsford hasn't been stopped

  by Saltheart Foamfollower in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i haven't seen this mentioned yet.

  last year in the uk, shortly after the money grab that everyone had, we had a video and letter (both probably still available from atlantis) appealing for money for the new bethel and slips were handed out etc.

  this means that most uk congregations are sending a regular donation specifically for the chelmsford build.

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  shepherdless

  This Chelmsford projects seems to be quite a drain on the Borg's UK finances. The recently released IBSA 2016 accounts contain:

  
  

  and

  
  

  So they have spent £12,775,126 last year (no mention of costs in preceding years that I can find), and are expecting to spend a further £94 million in the future. That is quite a bit more than I would have thought.
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  18

  UK JWs go up 72 places in latest 2017 Charity 250 Index (2nd highest climbers)

  by darkspilver in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i'm not really sure what this charity 250 index is trying to do.

  partly because i'd expect a few big household name charities to be on it at the top.

  i've copied the table below - see positions 19 (up from 70) and 130 (up from 202).

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  shepherdless

  Have you checked the 'Documents' tab on the Charity Commission's website? Are they the documents you mean? Or, are there others?

  No, I missed that. These appear to be identical to the ones I have. I see it has the 2016 accounts as well. I will have a read, when I get the chance.