Posts by shepherdless

Pale Emperor, I think it is primarily down to Fox News, and such news services. Outside USA, few people see Fox News and the international media just plays all the crazy stuff he says and does. Hence outside of the USA, he seems to have very few fans.

However, If you watch Fox News (you can get it on live stream), it is like “stepping through stargaze”. Everything is viewed in a very different way. (I could say more but I don’t really want to get into politics.) I go to the Fox News website occasionally, just so I can try to understand how some people think, because, I can’t understand it otherwise.

6

Koreans Becoming Disillusioned with christianity

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

at the start of sydney's lockdown, family gossip told me that a relative who is a pastor, was telling his church members, "you cant catch the coronavirus in church.

"i've hear nothing since, but its interesting that in south korea, a major outbreak was traced to a south korean church that had organised a series of recruiting campaigns in china's wuhan city.. .

now, the hongkong based newspaper, the south china morning post (one of the best informed news outlets in asia) says that south koreans are getting pissed off withe the jesus mob.

shepherdless

A couple of years ago, I saw some data (similar to the Pew report) that indicated that South Koreans were giving up religion at the rate of around 1% of the population, per annum. (And obviously that is before cv19.)

I suspect this COVID-19 is very bad for the organised religion industry, and is probably accelerating the decline, everywhere, including South Korea.

35

So...what do you think about The United States of America?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i know the usa is not perfect.

there have always been social issues and differences.

politics has been for many people divisive.

shepherdless

From Australia, mostly positive, with firm criticisms on a small number of discrete issues. My guess is that if you took an opinion poll, most Australians would have a generally positive view of USA.

On the other hand, I think few Australians would be interested in emigrating to USA; visiting, yes; living there, no. That is not a reflection on USA, though.

42

Flu Vaccine Now REQUIRED For All Students Going To School In Massachusetts

by minimus in

jw
friends

this is a requirement now in massachusetts.

children must get a flu shot by december 31. some allowances are made for religious reasons and health reasons.. personally, i don’t agree with the government making this mandatory.. what is your opinion?

?.

shepherdless

Well Matt, you probably won’t want to peer out under your tin-foil hat to read this, but DDT was not around when, just before WW2, polio swept through and infected the kids in a country town in Australia.

My dad was one of the kids, and was the only one of those kids that survived. He actually never fully recovered; certain muscles around his waist has withered and stayed that way. You should do a little cross checking before you circulate other people’s crackpot conspiracy theories, and not take them at face value.

52

So What Do Jehovah’s Witnesses Do Now?

by minimus in

jw
friends

they don’t go to conventions .

they don’t go to assemblies.

they don’t go to meetings.

shepherdless

My wife and others are on a fierce letter-writing campaign; ie they send nuisance letters instead of being nuisance door-knockers. They get together to (I guess) discuss and motivate each other to write letters. My wife also seems to run a fairly regimented family worship regime, and organises for the kids to meet up with the (very few) other kids in the congregation.

When you include the zoom meetings twice a week, I would say she is about as busy as she always was with this nonsense. However, the little snippets of info I get on others in the congregation suggest she is the exception, not the norm.

11

Purple Triangle

by apostatethunder in

has anyone noticed that the colour purple comes from mixing red and blue, and that the red triangle meant political prisioner and the blue triangle meant foreigner?

purple also comes from mixing pink and blue, foreign homosexual or sexual offender.

that's how the nazis wieved the bible students.

shepherdless

Yellow comes from mixing red and green...

You might want to check on that.

23

The toxic JW Worldview

by TD in

jw
friends

sometimes i forget how small-minded, petty, provincial, mean-spirited ignorant and judgemental it was and still is.... then i sit down with a jw relative, hoping to have a normal conversation and realize there is literally nothing to talk about.. nothing..... current events?

hobbies?

your job?

shepherdless

I get that, completely.

Sometimes I wonder why they think Jehovah will only save a group of people who contribute so little, often don’t know what is going on in he real world, and often have to depend on Government services just to get by.

17

Zoom meetings, how long ?

by Phizzy in

i was wondering two things, 1: how long in total are the zoom meetings, i presume the sunday one is the longest ?.

and 2: if you use zoom for free, the session only lasts 40 minutes, so do they have an intermission so people can log back in, or are all jw's expected to pay for the "privilege" ?.

shepherdless

Long may the zoom meetings continue.

I often hear them, or at least parts of them, from the next room, so I am vaguely up to date with what is going on.

Others have discussed on multiple threads that it must be hurting the borg financially, and I agree. What may be overlooked is that it is also taking away what I think is the no 1 reason people participate in organised religion, and that is the social aspect.

I think a lot of people, even if they don’t admit it even to themselves, like the social routine. It is a social outing that they don’t have to plan, organise or stress about. With zoom, most of the socialising is gone. I know JWs hang on after the meeting and say hello to each other, but there is little meaningful social interaction there, when everything said is heard by all, and only one person can speak at once. It is all friendly enough, but it’s just polite conversation (at least in my wife’s congregation). I reckon the longer zoom meetings continue, the more JWs will be forced to get there social interaction elsewhere, eg work etc, and forced to find other interests, and the whole JW thing will be just a task performed twice a week.

23

What has SARS Cov 2 been doing since 2004?

by BoogerMan in

in 2002-2004 - during its first time around - that "pandemic" killed 774 people worldwide and then "evaporated.".

strange how viruses "work.

".

shepherdless

SARS didn’t “evaporate”. The SARS coronavirus had an unusual Achilles heel, in that a person did not become infectious until after that person displayed symptoms. That enabled authorities to contact trace more effectively and quarantine etc where necessary, until it was wiped out.

Another factor that helped wipe SARS out, was that it was clearly a killer, killing a large percentage of those who got it. That quickly got everyone’s attention. You didn’t have people posting factually incorrect rubbish, or dodgy fallacious calculations saying it was no deadlier than the flu, etc.

I also understand that there didn’t seem to be any asymptotic SARS carriers, but I am not sure of this point.