Jude also mentions some dispute between the archangel Micheal and Satan over Moses' body, which not something that happens in any of the books of the Bible I have read. Does it also come from an apocryphal writing?
Saethydd
JoinedPosts by Saethydd
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27
the Book of Enoch and the Nephilim
by schnell ini've heard all my cognizant life that angels from heaven looked upon the daughters of men, took wives, and their wives bore giants called nephilim.. i've heard all my adult life about the book of enoch and why it's apocryphal and to be avoided.. so tonight i was curious enough to download an e-book and have a look, since dothemath had the thread about rarely used scriptures and the book of jude directly quotes from the book of enoch.. if jude quotes from enoch, shouldn't both or neither of them be canonical?
if you consider jude canonical, then enoch should be too.. hey, how many fallen angels were there again?
two thirds of heaven, right?
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Is this a normal JW practice? Warning, this will be a bit graphic.
by Sequoia inthis post may be disturbing and i apologize, but i'm just trying to find out if this is a practice the jw teaches.
i was taken advantage of by a guy claiming to be a jw preacher.
he took me to his house supposedly so i could give his daughter piano lessons, and then he basically forced himself on me while telling me he was in love with me and wanted to marry me.
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Saethydd
I'm a bit baffled by an individual who would think that you will be destroyed for being an "unbeliever" but that he's going to be okay even though he is committing sexual assault, and even if you were willing to sleep with him it would still be a sexual relationship with someone he's not married to, not only that according to his beliefs you wouldn't even be a good candidate for marriage on account of your being an "unbeliever." It's just wrong on so many levels.
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JW.org as a Prank Tool
by schnell inthe moment i saw the "request a study" form on the site, i thought, "umm, that could be a bad thing.".
but to date, i have heard of only one case where it was used for less than genuine purposes.
that was in the case of a "game developer" who was selling crappy asset-flips on steam.
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Saethydd
I'm studying to become a white-hat hacker, and one subject I'm examining at the moment is the history of the of the collective known as Anonymous. One of the things they are most well known for is defacing the websites of the Church of Scientology back in 2011. Among the reasons listed for taking on such an endeavor is the fact that they were revealed to be highly controlling which didn't sit well with anarchists. Heh, I bet it wouldn't have taken much for them to shift their focus to websites of the Jehovah's Witnesses, though I doubt it would have been any more effective at stopping them than it was at stopping Scientology.
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Why do some Jehovah's Witnesses choose to be atheist or agnostic?
by Cassaruby in"traumatic as the initial transition may be, it can lead to the development of a truly personal relationship with these two greatest friends [the father and the son] .
.. "whatever sense of 'belonging' that membership in some religious system may create, it can never compare with the power and beauty and strengthening benefit of the intimate personal relationship the scripture presents .
from reading joseph campbell i've come to understand that there are functions to religion or mythology.
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Saethydd
I too have found that the belief system which most resonates with me is that of secular humanism. After years of trying to ignore my sense of reason to accept some piece of theology or another, I do not relish the thought of going through the whole process once again with another religion.
Therefore until God communicates with me directly, I shall remain an agnostic at best. As for whether or not I would worship God after that, all I can say is that it would depend on his answers to certain questions I have about his decision-making process.
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JW.org as a Prank Tool
by schnell inthe moment i saw the "request a study" form on the site, i thought, "umm, that could be a bad thing.".
but to date, i have heard of only one case where it was used for less than genuine purposes.
that was in the case of a "game developer" who was selling crappy asset-flips on steam.
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Saethydd
Does it track personal data of the person that does they request for the study? Like i.p. address, etc. ?
Almost certainly, yes, but it is trivial to use a proxy or VPN to hide your IP address (just search for free web proxy, or install a VPN plugin for your browser, such as Hola).
If you want to get really hard to track, then use a TOR Browser. (only the FBI, NSA or some other government organization would be capable of tracking you, and even then it's a lot of effort for them to do it.)
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How long did people like Methuselah really live?
by dubstepped ini was working today and my brain was working in circles like it often does and i started wondering about what i was always told about people like methuselah in bible times, and their incredibly claims of longevity.
i've tried researching things but have a hard time getting through all of the bible thumpers to some real evidence, and figured that some here may be more informed or have done the research previously.
so, did people really live longer way back when?
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Saethydd
From what I could find, there are theories that perhaps they counted years in shorter durations than the current calendar, but some point to similar lengths of months, though maybe not as many months per year. Does anyone really know?
The issue with this theory is that people are mentioned having children around 50-100, meaning by that count they would be between 4-9 years old.
It is claimed that some of these old time counters did not grasp the "0" concept, well here they added one, 96.9 years is not far fetched, what is a zero among friends anyway?,
Same problem exists for this explanation, 5-10-year-olds aren't exactly the right age to father their firstborn.
My personal theory is that it was all made based on the Mesopotamian myth that men lived longer before the global flood that is recorded the epic of Gilgamesh.
Back in the day we were taught that man's longevity was due to the canopy of water around the Earth which filtered out harmful cosmic rays, which is what eventually kills us.
This bubble of water is what fell during the flood. The protection was gone. Immediately after the flood, men's life span reduced dramatically.
I think maybe the dinosaurs died in the flood too.
That canopy of water would actually have been more hostile to life on earth, in fact, that is included in an informative video by Aron-Ra on the meteorological implications of the Noachian Flood.
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Feb. 2017 "Who is Leading God's People Today?"
by Saethydd ini know that i am not by any means the first person to take note of this article, but today i finally got around to reading it.
i quickly found the now infamous line "the governing body is neither inspired nor infallible.
" in the interest of fairness, however, i decided to finish the paragraph, which led me to finish the lesson.
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Saethydd
This article makes me wish that the Watchtower study included a period in which the audience could ask questions instead of just parroting back the information they have only just read. Perhaps if such a session were included and honest hard questions were encouraged then their logic wouldn't be so easy to blow apart.
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Just a dumb question. A minor was df in our cong 15 yrs old
by poopie inthe question is can her mother and father who are witnesses greet her in the morning only or would they be a sharer in her wicked deeds and thus also be df for saying a greeting?.
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Saethydd
Well, I've never heard anything that strict. If my understanding is correct you can interact with family member living at home normally, except when it comes to spiritual discussion, in which case the disfellowshipped person is not supposed to participate. The exception to that would be if the disfellowshipped person is still young enough for their spiritual care to be the responsibility of the parent, in which case they can study the Bible with them.
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The Cheerleader Effect
by Saethydd inthe cheerleader effect is a cognitive bias that causes people to appear more attractive in a group.
i'm no expert on psychology, but i have a theory that a similar phenomenon exists for beliefs.
by compiling a list of beliefs you make them appear more reasonable, however, if you actually break one away from the herd and really break it down you can easily discover what an illogical mess it truly is.. i first noticed this when i debated with my father on the subject of the bible, oftentimes when i would make a valid argument against the bible he would say something along the lines of, "and that is enough to make you forget about such and such" (usually the "accuracy" of bible "prophecy" or the good effect the bible has on people's lives).
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Saethydd
The cheerleader effect is a cognitive bias that causes people to appear more attractive in a group. I'm no expert on psychology, but I have a theory that a similar phenomenon exists for beliefs. By compiling a list of beliefs you make them appear more reasonable, however, if you actually break one away from the herd and really break it down you can easily discover what an illogical mess it truly is.
I first noticed this when I debated with my father on the subject of the Bible, oftentimes when I would make a valid argument against the Bible he would say something along the lines of, "and that is enough to make you forget about such and such" (usually the "accuracy" of Bible "prophecy" or the good effect the Bible has on people's lives). I think that phenomenon may be part of what is responsible for allowing religious groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses to survive so long in an era where information is so readily available.
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Now I'm Convinced There Probably Is No God
by pale.emperor inyesterday i made a visit to the museum in my city.
the top floor is the planetarium, which has a connecting room with a huge dome ceiling where they project lessons and lectures and you have a 360 view of the night sky etc.. this particular lecture explained about our galaxy, and how it's only one of billions in the universe.
and then we learned about each planet, some of their moons and the sun.
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