"Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia."
shepherdless
JoinedPosts by shepherdless
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45
Personal opinions spouted from the platform?
by purrpurr inhave you ever heard some brothers own ideas and opinions spouted from the platform?
perhaps off brand or crazy ones?
some that i've heard is:.
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shepherdless
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Australian States & Territories Fail to Sign Up on a Redress Scheme For Victims of Child Sexual Abuse.
by smiddy3 inat a recent coag {,council of australian governments} meeting the subject/issue of states & territories to sign up for a national redress scheme to compensate victims of institutional abuse sexual and otherwise fell on deaf ears.. not one state or territory agreed to sign up .
not one.. i am sure the victims of child sexual abuse within various institutions not only the jehovah`s witnesses victims would be very disheartened to learn that.individual states and territories of government within australia do not support a national redress scheme to compensate victims of child sexual abuse .. the south australian govt.
to my understanding is they will never do so .
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shepherdless
I have done a bit more research and just thought I would add a little more, as what I said above was not the complete picture.
The Fed Govt has introduced a compensation scheme for victims of child sex abuse, that operates in a similar way to the some workers' compensation schemes. Under the scheme, rather than going through the courts and engaging lawyers, a victim can just apply and, through an administrative assessment process, receive an amount of up to A$150,000.
If no State, religious organisation or other relevant organisation opts in to the scheme, then the scheme only covers the victims of organisations controlled by the Fed Govt, which amounts to only around 1000 of the estimated 60,000 victims. So far, only the Catholic Church has opted in, and that covers around 4,400 more victims. Most of the other major religions have given in principle support, but have not yet opted in. Watchtower is one of the few that has given no commitment at all, at this stage. None of the States have agreed to "opt in", and one has stated categorically that it will not, as it has its own scheme that pays out a lower amount.
If Watchtower does not "opt in", then individual victims can still sue Watchtower in Court, and there will be no A$150,000 cap.
Contrary to what I said in my earlier post, the Fed Govt has already agreed to cover the shortfall in the situation where an organisation lacks the funds to pay. The issue fought at the COAG meeting appears to be about whether the states will "opt in". As I read it, in effect, the States are maneuvering for funding.
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Australian States & Territories Fail to Sign Up on a Redress Scheme For Victims of Child Sexual Abuse.
by smiddy3 inat a recent coag {,council of australian governments} meeting the subject/issue of states & territories to sign up for a national redress scheme to compensate victims of institutional abuse sexual and otherwise fell on deaf ears.. not one state or territory agreed to sign up .
not one.. i am sure the victims of child sexual abuse within various institutions not only the jehovah`s witnesses victims would be very disheartened to learn that.individual states and territories of government within australia do not support a national redress scheme to compensate victims of child sexual abuse .. the south australian govt.
to my understanding is they will never do so .
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shepherdless
I haven’t found any news item on it. I looked at the COAG website. There was a meeting a few days ago. The Royal Commission was on the agenda, and there was a wispy washy statement made about unifying child protection laws across the states, but no mention of funding compensation.
It sounds to me like there is a behind the scenes arm wrestle about which arm of government is going to cover any shortfall in compensation available to victims, where the relevant institution or religion doesn’t have the funds. Issues over who pays occur regularly in Aust Federal vs State relations, and it is one of the main reasons COAG exists. It will be sorted out with some horse trading, and if not, the Federal Govt will pay.
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Wives With Unbelieving Mates
by minimus ini knew many witness wives with unbelieving mates who pretty much led a double life.
“my husband says i have to go the workplace christmas party.” or my mate tells me i have to make a thanksgiving dinnner.
or “ my mate insists i do things in the bedroom that i know the watchtower has talked against.
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shepherdless
I am the “UBM”. I married a POMI that got dragged back into the Borg after having kids.
One point I don’t think I have seen anyone mention, is that it seems to me that these days, the unbelieving partner is typically not dragged into the Borg. I have no stats to back that statement up; just anecdotal observation.
For example, my mother-in-law was the one originally responsible for the Borg coming into the family. She brought my father-in-law into the Borg. Even though he was an elder for many years (but resigned on a feeble excuse some time ago) he has never once mentioned religion to me, and my suspicion is that he joined to keep the peace. I think that that is what happened a lot in his generation; not just in JWism, but in most religions.
In my generation, it is quite common for marriage partners to not have the same religion, and the Borg is not getting the spouses like they used to. This in turn makes it much harder for the Borg to get their clutches on the kids, shields them from some of the potential shunning, etc.
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$5.5 Million to be transferred to World Wide Work from Assembly Hall fund
by Sour Grapes ina letter was read tonight in our kingdom hall that the money that the circuits in the indianapolis area had in savings to build a new assembly hall will now be transferred to the www to build kingdom halls in lands where they are needed and a new assembly hall for us will not be built.. we had a beautiful assembly hall near downtown indy that was paid for.
it was sold a couple of years ago.
we were promised a new assembly hall to be built in southern ohio near the indiana border but they can kiss that goodbye now.
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shepherdless
I have to agree with sbf, on this. Only a corporation with significant financial issues would pull this stunt; and this is just the latest.
Interestingly, if the Borg is still resorting to cash raising measures that are counterproductive in the long term, it must mean that all of the previous cost cutting measures (reducing printing, laying off bethelites, selling Kingdom Halls, etc) have not been sufficient to fix the financial issues. So there is most likely more of these stunts to come.
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My Boyfriend's Family Wants to Meet Mine (My Parent's are JWs) Help!
by LaurenM inso i have been "faded" for approximately 2.5 years.
my parents know i haven't attended a meeting in quite some time, but don't know that i have been dating a guy for about eight months.
we really love each other and his family is super sweet.
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shepherdless
I agree with PizzaZahut and Giordano. I would just try to explain the situation to your boyfriend’s parents. You will generally find that normal people are usually pretty reasonable and accomodating.
The hardest part is likely to be to get them to understand how dogmatic the borg’s adherents are. Normal people will often find it hard to comprehend. (It is a battle I have faced.) They are likely to think that you are grossly exaggerating or something like that. You might have to show them some apostate websites or something like that.
Edit: why not show your boyfriend’s parents this very thread? It might be the quickest way to get the point across.
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shepherdless
I remember you from when I was first came across this site, and “lurked” a bit.
I reckon back then, the yearbooks were still showing solid growth in virtually every country and the Borg appears to be going from strength to strength. Things have changed quite a bit in a relatively short time.
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The Snake and the Cult
by TerryWalstrom inthis is what happens in cults!all opposition is silenced, forbidden and punished.a cult never makes any true progress.they are rooted, fixed, immobile.watch a snake going from point a to point b.the snake never ever moves in a straight line.a snake curves to the left and curves back to the rightand yet it makes progress from point a to point b.. what is progress in society?moving forward, not backward.
right?improving your chances within an environment.achieve advantages, advancing all the while.okay?we can agree that progress is good.
but wait!.
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shepherdless
Interesting way of looking at things, Terry.
You could apply the same logic to Islam. In the first 3 or so centuries, they imported scientific knowledge from the whomever they came in contact with, and made use of it. To quote Wikipedia, “an era of high culture and innovation ensued, with rapid growth in population and cities”. All their achievements in mathematics, medicine, chemistry, physics, optics etc come from this early period.
Later on, particularly in areas where the rulers doubled down and enforced the religious dogma, they went into cultural and economic decline. I don’t think that is a coincidence.
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"Wondrous expansion is now taking place!"
by stuckinarut2 inso we have all heard the worldwide reports about khalls being sold off and congregations being amalgamated etc.... of course, jws are being told that these actions are a sign of "just how much the work is progressing, and how jehovah is blessing the increase and expansion!".
i can share the following from my part of the world too!.
in perth, western australia the following has occurred.. three "new" congregations have been formed!
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shepherdless
Hi Stuckinarut,
do you mean that, in effect, there will be a net zero increase in congregations, but one less Kingdom Hall?
Do you know how much they hope to get for that KH? It looks well located. My guess would be close to A$ 3 million.
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Calling Cofty and others regarding evolution
by dubstepped inso i have started down the path of trying to understand evolution, and to get the linear lies that the jws planted in my head out of it.
i bought an audiobook called "evolution: what the fossils say and why it matters" by donald prothero.
i heard it recommended on an atheist podcast that i listened to.
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shepherdless
@shepherdless: lol, you are applying an ENORMEOUS double standard!
There are things the standard model does not explain like dark matter and other things that falls outside its scope. but within what it tries to explain it is pretty damn precise. tell me a single experiment that it has failed?
evolutionary theory on the other hand have no explanation for a bunch of stuff, like the origin of thought.
so if you want to say the standard model has not been proven beyond reasonable doubt bc it does not explain EVERYTHING (like dark matter), you got to apply the same principle to evolution.Well, I won’t get involved in your discussions with others.
There is no double standard.
The Standard Model should really explain dark matter. It is supposed to explain all particles. Also, it hasn’t really been verified by that many experiments, as they are expensive, time consuming, and dealing with cutting edge physics.
The theory of evolution on the other hand, has been verified in countless ways, and there are no longer any mysteries of any significance.
When I was at University, I remember a chemistry lecturer stating that DNA was always a right hand spiral, and nobody knew why. (I remember at the time that some creationists at the time were making an anti-evolution argument based on a misunderstanding of the second law of thermodynamics, yet on the right hand spiral issue, creationists would have had a legitimate point to raise, but none seemed aware of it.) That mystery has since been solved. I didn’t know it had been solved until I read one of Cofty’s threads.
Since then, I don’t know of any legitimate argument against evolution. I don’t count appeals to emotion as legitimate arguments. There is plenty of info available about this topic.
You raise the “origin of thought”. Well, you may have noticed that many more sophisticated animals can apply some very basic abstract thought. Your cat will go to the door, look at you and meow, to go outside. Crows have been shown to be able to count up to 5, etc.
But why are we far smarter than any animal? The answer is simple. About 1.2 million years ago, a creature known as homo erectus started to learn how to make fire, and not long after, started to learn how to cook with fire. Brains use a lot of energy, and natural selection meant that an animal of any sort tended to have a brain just big enough to allow it to carry out necessary functions. If it had too big a brain, the animal would be at a disadvantage as it would require more food to survive. That changed with the use of fire. Cooked meat gives about 20% more energy (and is safer); many vegetables release more energy after being cooked. Food could be stored. Suddenly, a creature such as homo erectus had a massive advantage if it had a bigger brain, and had abstract thinking ability. The species spread across a large part of the planet; it was the second most successful hominid (apart from ourselves) in colonising the planet. One branch of homo erectus got even better at abstract thinking, and was our ancestor.
I hope that answers your question.