schnell

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Posts by schnell

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  201

  I am glad to have found the true religion

  by A Believer in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  it really is great.

  i remember browsing this forum the day after i had joined it, and their was a knock on the door.

  i thought it was one of my package from ups but instead it was two sisters.

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  schnell

  I know of one, who was a presiding overseer and regular pioneer, who thought that the term "Judaism" came from judo, and that those who practiced Judaism were experts in martial arts.
  

  ...

  
  
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  201

  I am glad to have found the true religion

  by A Believer in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  it really is great.

  i remember browsing this forum the day after i had joined it, and their was a knock on the door.

  i thought it was one of my package from ups but instead it was two sisters.

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  schnell

  I see now that Jesus isn't our mediator and only the 144000s. Who are actually of all kinds because from the Israel tribes we all came from.

  (A Believer, January 5, 2017)
  

  Oh nothing, just wanted to quote A Believer renouncing Christianity in favor of idolizing men.
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  52

  You wake up one morning and see

  by A Believer in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the un has banned religion.

  what are you're thoughts?.

  also changes to it seem to be on the way.... http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/12/trump-vows-israel-vote-161224040133216.html.

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  schnell

  For posterity:

  The UN, through UNESCO, protects ancient religious sites like Stonehenge as heritage sites.

  Trump (”Presbyterian, that's as middle of the road as you can get") is a Republican elected by Christians and allied with Putin, president of mostly Orthodox Russia, who is also allied with Assad, president of vastly Muslim Syria.

  You're betting on a horse that isn't even in the race.
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  201

  I am glad to have found the true religion

  by A Believer in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  it really is great.

  i remember browsing this forum the day after i had joined it, and their was a knock on the door.

  i thought it was one of my package from ups but instead it was two sisters.

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  schnell

  That said, I'm aware that religion isn't going away any time soon. Religious ideas go back tens of thousands of years, so if I had to guess, they'll just keep going. So politically, it's basically fine for someone to be religious. They should also be allowed to leave that religion.
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  201

  I am glad to have found the true religion

  by A Believer in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  it really is great.

  i remember browsing this forum the day after i had joined it, and their was a knock on the door.

  i thought it was one of my package from ups but instead it was two sisters.

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  schnell

  The idea of "religio" and thus religion is dumb. Your ideas do not have rights and they deserve scrutiny, though this is not to say that consistent results are impossible or should be dismissed.

  So why hold onto them when you should be scrutinizing them? Good grief.
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  15

  A Question about Spiritistic Books

  by schnell in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i have a nearly academic interest in the occult, though i am not a spiritualist and remain a skeptic.

  i've come to learn that demons are based on everything from dust devils in the desert, to diseases, to actual people.

  probably most of all, demons are a tool of good ol' fashioned con artists and fear mongers.. but here's a question.

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  schnell

  Yep, Jung was influenced by the Corpus Hermeticum, as was Sir Isaac Newton who saw it in relation to Christianity, and there has been at least one book about Jung and Taoism.

  Funny thing about the Corpus Hermeticum and Christianity: I've mentioned this before on this forum, but it says, "As above, so below." This turns out to be a common quote or a sort of mantra about microcosms and macrocosms, but once you know about it, you can't really look at the Lord's Prayer the same way... "As in heaven, so on earth."

  So much for pure worship.
  
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  5

  Pro-JW site with scanned out-of-print material

  by Funchback in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  maybe i'm late to the party but i stumbled upon this site:.

  http://www.strictlygenteel.co.uk/index.html.

  lots of old publications and such.. enjoy!.

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  schnell

  You never saw that one? God, I'm old! That was the first book I placed in somebody's hand. I was a just a little boy (though with the same smart mouth I still have). Anyway, it brings memories.
  

  @scratchme1010, I may have heard of it before, but yeah.
  
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  15

  A Question about Spiritistic Books

  by schnell in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i have a nearly academic interest in the occult, though i am not a spiritualist and remain a skeptic.

  i've come to learn that demons are based on everything from dust devils in the desert, to diseases, to actual people.

  probably most of all, demons are a tool of good ol' fashioned con artists and fear mongers.. but here's a question.

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  schnell

  @scratchme1010: I have a little coffee table book called "Spooky Science" that debunks spiritualism thoroughly enough. "The Magic of Reality" by Dawkins makes a good case against it, too: Why believe in supernatural things that would require a rewrite of all the laws of physics to accommodate them? Why take the more complicated route? If you have a proponent who wants you to believe in ghosts or gods or whatever, why believe when you could just question his/her motives?

  And I simply ask the question: What is a spirit? No hand wavery, just what is it? My friend suggested that it's "the opposite of flesh", which is... what exactly? I do offer a definition, too, and it's simple: It's a ploy. :)
  

  I have learned that religious and spiritualist ideas evolved right along with mankind, out of Africa, with kings long forgotten being deified into gods that we still know today, like Osiris. That also goes for divination practices, like the Odu Ifa in Yoruba religion and the I Ching, both of which are mathematically based and rather fascinating in that regard. Actually, it is truly fascinating that math, even very advanced math, grew up out of divination. This, to me, says that these were just ancient people using their heads and trying to understand the world around them, not that they were 100% correct about everything.

  If you can explain something and where it comes from, it really takes the edge off of it.
  
• 
  15

  A Question about Spiritistic Books

  by schnell in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i have a nearly academic interest in the occult, though i am not a spiritualist and remain a skeptic.

  i've come to learn that demons are based on everything from dust devils in the desert, to diseases, to actual people.

  probably most of all, demons are a tool of good ol' fashioned con artists and fear mongers.. but here's a question.

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  schnell

  I have a nearly academic interest in the occult, though I am not a spiritualist and remain a skeptic. I've come to learn that demons are based on everything from dust devils in the desert, to diseases, to actual people. Probably most of all, demons are a tool of good ol' fashioned con artists and fear mongers.
  

  But here's a question. If you found a print copy of "The Secret Teachings of All Ages" by Manly P. Hall, would it haunt your house?

  If you don't think so, awesome, but if you do... What about the e-book???

  Is your phone or tablet going to be haunted if you download it? Will you have bad luck if you do? Every time an occult e-book gets copied and downloaded, does a new demon get created to follow that copy around? So when you delete the file, are you killing it?

  I'm just curious. :)
  
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  5

  Pro-JW site with scanned out-of-print material

  by Funchback in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  maybe i'm late to the party but i stumbled upon this site:.

  http://www.strictlygenteel.co.uk/index.html.

  lots of old publications and such.. enjoy!.

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  schnell

  Interesting.

  I never saw that earlier "Did Man Get Here By Evolution or By Creation?" book. I bet it would be pretty easy to debunk...

  CHAPTER 1

  Is Evolution an Established Fact?

  (...snip...)

  ORGANIC EVOLUTION

  Evolution, in the sense that it is applied to plants, animals and man is said to be the transforming of one kind of life into another kind. A writer in the Houston Post of August 23, 1964, defined it this way: "Evolution, in very simple terms, means that life progressed from one-celled organisms to its highest state, the human being, by means of a series of biological changes taking place over millions of years."

  Wrong. Evolution is not life transforming into another kind of life. That's not even what Darwin suggested a century before this book was published. And humans are NOT the highest goal of evolution, as if every other species should be trying to evolve into humans. Geez.

  Evolution is change in genetic frequency over time, change in heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. No species has ever resulted from evolution by natural selection twice, for the same reason that you do not have an identical twin cousin. All species are transitional, including humans. Kudos for quoting a journalist in Houston to define and clarify evolution, rather than a biologist or biology textbook.

  This is nice because that's how unreasonable they were even then.