Suppose a loved one of yours was brutally murdered and the weapon was submitted to the court as evidence. Would you try to gain possession of the murder weapon, take photographs of it, and print many copies for distribution? Would you produce replicas of the weapon in various sizes? Would you then fashion some of them into jewelry? Or would you have these reproductions commercially manufactured and sold to friends and relatives to be venerated? Likely you would be repulsed at the idea! Yet, these very things have been done with the cross!
https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/102006132?q=weapon+murder%2A&p=par#h=11
But children drawing a woman who is being murdered is so much better!
Anders Andersen
JoinedPosts by Anders Andersen
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44
Lot's Wife - Connect the dots - JW.org
by Funchback inyay!
now kids can help draw lot's wife getting destroyed.. .
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Anders Andersen
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Lot's Wife - Connect the dots - JW.org
by Funchback inyay!
now kids can help draw lot's wife getting destroyed.. .
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Anders Andersen
WHAT THE FUCK!
I'm seriously enraged right now!
A woman is executed in a horrible way for a petty offense. Her husband and daughters are there to witness her scream and die.
And your kids can paint happy colours on her dying face!
These morons should never ever open their mouth about morals to me or I'll rip them in half. Asshats.
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You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you....
by kpop innicely sums up most of the population.... https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe.
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Anders Andersen
I shared this on FB. No reaction from any of the multitude of JW I have as 'friends'. A 'worldly- guy restated it though.
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Major changes to convention security beginning in 2017
by Edison Trent inshort info on interesting changes to the major conventions this year: there will be a new security concept that will be implemented at all regional conventions in 2017.. similar to other major events (e.g.
festivals, concerts), there will be admittance controls in stadiums.. - at each entrance, there will be a massive presence of attendants that look at each visitor.. - there will be pocket checks at the entrance.. - suspicious persons are no longer left on the convention grounds.. - suppliers to the stadium will be intensively inspected by attendants.. - there will be a special sign for attendants that must enter the stadium before 7.30 am.
all others (even all attendants) can only enter after 7.30 am..
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Anders Andersen
Soooooooo.......what happened to Jehovah ordering his angels to protect the dubs, especially at large, holy meetings?
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Huffington Post: When Is A Religion 'Extremist'? [Food for thought!]
by AndersonsInfo inhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/when-is-a-religion-extremist_us_590de8e3e4b046ea176aeb98.
tim rymel, m.ed.. governments who support “religious freedom” over the equal human rights and dignity of others condone, and even endorse discrimination.. 05/06/2017 11:27 am et | photo – flickr/ justin kern .
government endorsement of any religious ideology creates religious extremism.
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Anders Andersen
Excellent find. Thanks for sharing.
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How can elders say how Jehovah feels?
by Sour Grapes inwhen we look at the total universe imagine a jar of sand.
just one grain of sand would be our galaxy so we may be able to see our earth with an electron microscope.
with that in mind, it always made we cringe when at the meetings an elder would say "jehovah has prepared a spiritual banquet for us tonight," or "it makes jehovah happy that we made the effort to attend the meeting tonight.
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Anders Andersen
God must feel very mixed up and confused.
Joe is praying and reading the Bible. God happy.
John is in the house accros the street, cheating on his wife. God not happy.
At the very same time, Jane is not giving in to temptation. God happy and proud.
On an other continent, children are dying from hunger and easy to prevent and remedy diseases. God angry.
Oh wait. John is very sorry for cheating on his wife. He prays forgiveness. God happy again.
And Jane finally gave in to the temptation. Loser. God disappointed.And this several times a day, for 7.5 billion people. They all make God happy, sad, proud, angry, disappointed.
I feel sorry for God (well, not really)God urgently needs a therapist. God not feeling well.
(Also because he is a narcissist psychopath murdering sicko.) -
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RC 2017 talk: Safeguard Your Children From “What Is Evil”
by wifibandit inyou read that right.
there is a whole talk on the topic.. .
outline: safeguard your children from “what is evil” co-tk17-26-e. .
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Anders Andersen
Talk 1: protect your children from physical abuse
Talk 2: how to mentally abuse your child by indoctrinating them into our cult
Also the lack of 'how to detect if your child is abused' and 'what to do if your child is abused' are interesting.
They still don't get that it's not only about prevention and reminding parents they are responsible for that. They still deny that the JW org has a responsibility too, and they still haven't improved their ancient rules and regulations to protect children. So sad. :-(
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Cool! Scientists Claim Humans in California 130,000 Years Ago
by kpop ini think this will interest quite a few here.
in an announcement sure to spark a firestorm of controversy, researchers say they’ve found signs of ancient humans in california between 120,000 and 140,000 years ago—more than a hundred thousand years before humans were thought to exist anywhere in the americas.. .
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/04/mastodons-americas-peopling-migrations-archaeology-science/.
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Anders Andersen
I happened upon this interesting post at https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/67qs7r/paleontologists_have_dug_up_a_130000yearold/
**EDIT 5: For all the folks that have wanted to evaluate the material from the site, this is a [link to the University of Michigan Online Repository of Fossils (UMORF)](https://umorf.ummp.lsa.umich.edu/wp/), which contains publicly accessible 3D models of some of the specimens found at this site (as well as many other plants, inverts, and vertebrates housed at the University of Michigan). I hope that you all find it useful :)!**
Paleontologist here,I'd just like to say a few things based on the comments I'm seeing here:
First off, my qualifications: My current advisor is the third author on this paper and I worked under (and collaborated with) the second author when I worked at the San Diego Natural History Museum (in fact, I re-prepared some of the material in this paper about 6 years ago). Furthermore, I am a doctoral student in the final months (hopefully) of my PhD. My dissertation work has been on proboscideans (elephants and their relatives), but I have also done a fair amount of work on cetaceans (whales) and other vertebrates.
As far as the dating methods go, this site was dated using multiple types of absolute dating methods, which all resulted in a very similar age. However, the Uranium-series dating (not to be confused with radiocarbon dating, which could not give you an accurate age this old) that was used here got results with a *very* high confidence. In fact there is essentially no evidence of alteration that might lead to an older date (which really would not be common anyways). The dates recovered are almost unimpeachable (and I don't say that lightly). I would be very surprised if a geochronologist or any other expert had a major problems with the dates themselves (in fact a geochronologist was a reviewer for this paper for just this reason). Also, to the people that are saying that it is perhaps time to reassess our methods of isotopic dating in general, I strongly suggest you spend more time researching and trying to understand these methods before you make a claim like this...
One other misconception that I keep seeing here are peoples' interpretation of what is meant by "human" in this paper. "Human" is meant here in the sense of a species of the genus *Homo*, not necessarily *Homo sapiens* specifically. In fact, because of the old age it seems fairly unlikely that this would be the modern species of human rather than some other [unknown] species.
I'm sure there will be other questions or comments here throughout the next day or so, and I will try to check in from time to time and update this post. I'm also happy to answer any questions that I can (to the best of my knowledge).
Hope this is at least somewhat helpful!
Edit 1: To the folks wondering if this site could have been scavenged by humans (as opposed to hunted), I would say that, that is absolutely possible. In fact there is really no evidence one way or another to argue for hunting over scavenging at this site, and I don't believe that this paper takes a stance on this either. In fact, I would say that the argument of hunting vs scavenging in association with this mastodon is somewhat irrelevant. What is important is that this extremely old site (relatively speaking, anyways) has fairly clear association with ancient human activity.
Edit 2: Several people have pointed out that the article discusses a lack of evidence of meat stripping on the specimen. This does suggest scavenging, as it likely means the soft tissue was at least somewhat rotted and not usable.
Edit 3: Many people are suggesting that this animal could have been scavenged or had its bones modified many thousands of years after its death (i.e., implying the tools are much younger than the mastodon). To that point 1) the type of breakage seen on these bones is indicative of damage while the bone was still fresh. Fresh bone (sometimes called "green bone") breaks in a very different "spiral pattern" than older dried out bone; and 2) you have to remember that the sediments that the tools and mastodon are found in represent the context in which they were buried. Therefore since these materials were all found within the same layer they must have been buried at the same time. It is possible that ancient humans exhumed old bones (though I know of no actual evidence of this), **but** we would see telltale signs of disturbance to the sediment (which was not observed here).
In other words, I don't think that arguments about this site will come down to whether the material is associated and coeval, but whether folks think that these artifacts are indeed stone tools. Those people who do not agree with this identification will then have to reconcile the crazy taphonomy at this site and attribute it to some other natural process (which will be no small feat, IMHO).
Edit 4: For the people asking why we don't have any evidence of humans (or human remains) in North America in the time between the age of this site and more generally accepted dates:
First off, I would just like to note that we are almost certainly not talking about a direct lineage of humans between the time of this site and those of Clovis times (in fact, as I've stated above, we are likely not even talking about the same species). This was likely a very small population of humans that made it to North America that probably died out long before the modern species of human ever made it over. In that sense, there isn't necessarily a gap of time to "bridge".
As for why potential sites might not be preserved: There are a couple of reasons that you might not have evidence of humans found from this time. First off, you may not have rocks of the right age readily exposed in the region where the individuals were living (which is somewhat the case on the west coast, as far as I am aware). Second, the individuals could be living in an environment that is not conducive to preserving fossils (e.g., organisms that live in montane environments tend to not preserve in the fossil record because sediments are not being deposited in those regions). Third, getting preserved in the fossil record (in general) is very rare, and if your study organism has a very small population size or is short lived (as we would expect in the case here) then you have a very very low probability of being preserved (let alone found and collected). Finally, even if these scenarios aren't the case, there is the possibility that scientists have just been looking in the wrong strata, region, or age. -
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Bethelites are Employees
by berrygerry inbethel seems to have legal fires happening everywhere.
https://www.newera.com.na/2017/04/28/church-loses-labour-case/.
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Anders Andersen
The judge managed to see through the whole mindset of Watchtower.
“The congregation cannot pick and choose which laws should apply to them and which may not … it is evident that an employment relationship exists between the two parties,” explained Unengu, adding that the church cannot get a free card just because it is doing the work of God.
Every time Watchtower proves that they do think they can pick and choose which laws apply, and that laws they don't like don't apply 'becoz Johoover'.
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JW Guide to Critical Thinking
by Saename injust found this chart on reddit here: reddit.
and here's a copy:.
what i find scary is that... it's accurate.
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Anders Andersen
@blondie,
Watchtower purposely uses the word almost exclusively with first meaning, never acknowledging that 'adverse and disapproving judgments' may actually be justified. As a result their followers tend to think of 'critical thinking' as 'being negative towards something just because you desire to bash it'. It's cult speak in perfection.
@stuckinarut,
That's a great way of going around this issue!