Posts by Rainbow

44

The Latest Trend in NW England: Homeschooling Your Children

by pale.emperor in

i dont know if this is becoming a national thing or even globally.

but im hearing more and more people i knew from my jw days have taken their kids out of school to home school them instead.

in my sisters case she's taken her 8yo and 6yo children out already and her 3yo wont ever start a school.

Rainbow_Troll

GrreatTeacher: Jeezus! Where do you live that public schools are so awful? We live in a suburban area with excellent public schools!

The title to this thread gives you the clue North-West England

I don't live in NW England (though that is the topic of the OP) but I attended 6 public schools while growing up and I've spoken to plenty of survivors from all over, which has convinced me that compulsory public schooling is just a bad idea. True, some are better than others, but the potential for really bad things happening always exists because the system itself is designed to produce these outcomes.

If EVERYONE has to attend because parents are busy working then that means that even dangerous sociopaths can't be denied the right to a public education, as well as the right to ruin that experience for all the other kids. What will the principal do if Johny pulls a knife on Tom? Will he expel Johny? Sorry, but that boy has rights! Tom will just have to learn fucking jujitsu or maybe get himself a gun.

Besides this, I've come to accept that most of the present curricula have been deliberately designed to create dumb, compliant adults with no cultural literacy (many classics have actually been banned from most public schools) and just enough functional literacy to fill out forms and read their TV GUIDE. I know it sounds paranoid, but it's the only explanation that fits all the facts. If it were just a matter of apathy, the schools would be utterly indifferent towards a child, for example, taking an interest in higher mathematics; they wouldn't try to actively discourage him/her from learning, which is what they do in practice.

44

The Latest Trend in NW England: Homeschooling Your Children

by pale.emperor in

i dont know if this is becoming a national thing or even globally.

but im hearing more and more people i knew from my jw days have taken their kids out of school to home school them instead.

in my sisters case she's taken her 8yo and 6yo children out already and her 3yo wont ever start a school.

Rainbow_Troll

I don't agree with their purpose for doing it, of course, but literally anything is better than a public school. With websites like Khan Academy, Betterexplained.com, Mathoverflow.com and all the free university lectures on Youtube, it doesn't matter how stupid or uneducated the parents are, just plop the kid in front of a computer and he or she can benefit from the collective knowledge of mankind!

As for developing social skills? Bah! School is NOTHING like the adult world. The closest thing I can compare it to in adult terms is the type of social order you see in prisons where you either join a clique/gang or get raped and gutted. Screw or be screwed. Are those the 'social skills' you want your kids to learn? If you want them to be sociopath adults, send your kids to be socialized in a public school. If I had kids and couldn't afford private schooling for them (and having that kind of money should be a prerequisite for procreating), homeschooling would be a must.

20

My mom is into "The Secret"

by BlackWolf in

jw
friends

lately my mom's gotten into all kinds of weird "power of positive thinking" kind of stuff.

she watches "the secret" and bob proctor videos all the time, and now she's trying to get me into it.

to me her being into this sort of thing seems kind of hypocritical.

Rainbow_Troll

You should encourage her. Maybe she'll go from a JW to a New Ager and, no matter how you might feel about New Age philosophy, that has to be an improvement.

My own mom once had a client (she was a caregiver at the time) who's wife was a hip Zen Buddhist Jew from New York about the same age as her. As part of her caregiving service my mom often had to read to the guy and he always chose Buddhist stuff. Pretty soon my mom started remarking how similar the Buddha's teachings were to the Bible and she actually became friends with the guy's wife! She started saying things that were cool, but were totally out of character. She had me get books for her on eastern philosophy and I obliged. For a while, it looked like she was starting to wake up but then... CRASH! The gates of her mind came crashing down hard! She stopped seeing the Zen Jewess and redoubled her efforts to be a good JW. She was about 63 when this happened, so it was probably her last chance.

I don't know what scared her away but to this day I really regret not encouraging her exploration of Buddhism. I could already see the improvements in her character and on her happiness that slight flirtation caused and I'm sure that if she stuck with it, her entire life would have changed and she would have left the JWs. So please, don't be a wise ass and berate your mother for her hypocrisy. Use this golden opportunity to lure her away from the JWs BEFORE the elders catch on and slam the gates shut.

BTW The Secret is just watered down and warmed over New Thought. Try introducing her to authors like Ernest Holmes and Joel Goldsmith. Joel Goldsmith especially is a lot more Christian sounding and uses a lot of scriptures to back up his theology. Being a Bible thumper, your mom might respond to him more readily.

43

Watchtower today

by Gorbatchov in

jw
friends

today a main point in the wt was a guess game.. the study elder asked: .

what's wrong on the picture?.

before i share the local conclusions here, i would like to hear the comments made in your congregation 😎.

Rainbow_Troll

The brothers on the left:

The guy with glasses is a show-off. He's wearing a matching 3-piece TURQUOISE suit. Where the fuck do you get turquoise? Not at Wal-Mart, that's for sure! He obviously wasted an afternoon and at least $300 at a Men's Warehouse that he should have invested in field service. Asshole.

The other man (the one in grey) is obviously a homosexual. The lavender tie is enough as it is, but look at the way this pansy gesticulates and how close he is standing to his 'friend'. I wouldn't go out in service with these two for all the palm leaves in paradise.

As for the guys on the right? I honestly can't see anything wrong here. These are two clean cut young men standing a manly distance from each other while plotting their field service route on their phones. Shining examples for JW males everywhere!

28

Women are a "stack of bones and a hank of hair" - J.F. Rutherford

by krismalone in

i have heard rumors and anecdotes of j.f.

rutherford calling women "a hank of hair and a stack of bones" but i never thought it was documented.

well thanks to jwfacts i finally found the quote in print.. this j.f.

Rainbow_Troll

His attitude towards women was an overreaction to a time when women were customarily given an excessive amount of deference and respect by men. I'm sure if he had been born in OUR era he would have had a totally different policy towards the opposite sex and most likely towards jews as well.

That said, I in no way condone his attitude or the present status of women in our society. The whole idea of sexual equality is naive and misguided, but Rutherford was as misguided as they come.

19

Should Blood Transfusions be forced?

by Fisherman in

1.there are times when a doctor decides that the only life saving medical treatment -short of a miracle- is a blood transfusion.

in such a case, what should be done when a person refuses treatment on religious grounds and why?.

2. should a person be allowed to "mutilate" his body and why?.

Rainbow_Troll

Yes, it would allow JWs to live while keeping them off the hook so they couldn't be disfellowshipped for wanting to see their children graduate from High School. Best of all, the GB could stop the hair-splitting bullshit about which blood components Jehovah approves of. Everyone wins.

How St. Patrick Saved Me From Christianity

by Rainbow_Troll in

there was a celtic fair every st. patty's day where i grew up and my mom would take me there on the flimsy premise that since it was a celtic fair (not an irish fair) and i was half-scot, it wouldn't be celebrating a holiday.. the first time we went i was 10 and i remember there were all these pretty teenaged girls there dressed in white, dancing around a very firm, very thick may pole.

so far so good... next i noticed that most of the merchants were women in long-flowing robes who wore pentagrams and celtic knots.

okay, should be creeped out at this point, but they seem like nice girls with normal sized noses and no warts.

Rainbow_Troll

There was a Celtic Fair every St. Patty's day where I grew up and my mom would take me there on the flimsy premise that since it was a CELTIC fair (not an Irish Fair) and I was half-Scot, it wouldn't be celebrating a holiday.

The first time we went I was 10 and I remember there were all these pretty teenaged girls there dressed in white, dancing around a very firm, very thick may pole. So far so good... Next I noticed that most of the merchants were women in long-flowing robes who wore pentagrams and Celtic knots. Okay, should be creeped out at this point, but they seem like nice girls with normal sized noses and no warts. I eventually buy a book of Irish fairy tales and my mom a Loreena McKennit tape and we play it on the way home.

Astonishingly, my mom did not notice the may pole, the witchy outfits the merchants were wearing, or the blatantly pagan themes Loreena is singing about as we drive home. But I notice and I'm enchanted. For three beautiful years I have a secret love affair with Celtic neo-paganism and, while I never formally converted to the old religion, it did open my mind to a world beyond the Watchtower.

13

Inactive Witness Preaches To Me Today

by pale.emperor in

a rather bizzare situation, this morning.

i was taking my daughter to the park, as i walk past a row of shops a car horn beeps and shouts me.

i turn round and see a car in a disabled parking space with a guy who used to go to my hall smiling and waving to me.

Rainbow_Troll

I once met a man on the bus who was DFed, but had nothing but good to say about the Watchtower. If I brought up anything negative, he would tell my friend (who was with me), that I was a liar and the JWs were the best people on earth and the only true religion. It was a unique and baffling experience. He never mentioned why he was DFed, but I'll assume it wasn't for apostasy.

11

Born in baptisms to avoid embarrassment

by Spoletta in

i noticed a recent commenter mention an assembly that had only one baptism, a born in.

the last assembly i went to had three baptisms, of which two were born ins.

could part of the motivation for youth baptism be to avoid the embarrassment of an assembly with no baptisms at all?

Rainbow_Troll

Born-in baptisms were very common in the assemblies (or is that conventions? My memory is hazy over which is which) I attended in the nineties, though there were plenty of adult converts as well. Most born-ins seem to get baptized in their early to mid teens - just at the time when you would expect them to begin thinking for themselves about theological and philosophical subjects.

205

Mathematically Measuring Evolution.

by towerwatchman in

mathematically measuring evolution.. when judging relationships in terms of morphological characteristics we will always be bound by the subjective.

morphologically one cannot exactly measure the distance between two organisms strictly in mathematical terms.

using the standard method of taxonomy we cannot quantify the difference between a horse and a mouse, or know which is closer mouse to cat, or mouse to fish.

Rainbow_Troll

cytochrome c is a means of measuring the differences across the evolutionary tree. Any other means of measuring the difference is more subjective than anything.

Why? By your own admission, cytochrome c does not support the theory of evolution any more than the Bible. Why are other genes and fossils of no importance in testing the theory of evolution while cytochrome c is the deal breaker? Is it because it's the only criteria that slightly favors the creationists?

if cytochrome c did not mutate then there should be no difference. If mutate slowly over time we should see the pattern, but we don’t.

Cytochrome c is a protein with a finite number of nucleotide sequences available to it if it is to remain functioning. The evidence you cited in your original OP only proves that it was able to recombine in similar sequences even in creatures which are evolutionary very distant from each other. Wow, what are the odds huh? Eyes are much more complicated structures than single proteins and yet they appear independently in creatures as distinct as vertebrates and invertebrates.

As to arguing and troll I notice something rather funny. You and several others here call me a troll who likes to argue.

It wasn't meant as an insult. I'm actually giving you the benefit of a doubt; that you aren't actually serious and are just messing with people because you are bored or wish to sharpen your rhetorical skills.

Rainbow_Troll

Posts by Rainbow_Troll