Posts by Seeker

P.S. You might notice I block my email address on this site. This is a custom I began years ago on h2o. I did it for one reason, and one reason only: JanG

27

Selling Ice to an Eskimo

by Jang in

jw
friends

the second step is the real target.

on the first step.

i give a little, you give a little.. a second explanation of the ditf that has been given is called, "perceptual contrast.

Seeker

"Some points here about spamming may be valid--but could they be addressed in a different, non-embarrassing manner?

I did notice JanG's email addy is unblocked--perhaps a brief note to her inbox would've been a better idea."

As one of the resident nice guys in this forum, and yet one of the person's who said JanG was spamming, please allow me to explain my actions, Lisa. What you said is quite legitimate, and shows kindness on your part. Here's why I didn't do what you suggested: Sending email to JanG is the worst possible thing you can do. You run the risk of being put on one of her mailing lists, and forever more you will be subjected to emails from her. It won't matter if you ask to be taken off the lists, you won't be. I've had several of my h2o friends get caught in this predicament, until they finally had to publicly ask JanG to stop sending those damn emails! That is as classical a definition of "spam" as I know.

Since JanG has had this reputation for years, and I've yet to see her ever admit to doing anything wrong no matter how many people publicly begged her to stop, and considering the incredibly selfish and rude response she made to Ginny in this thread, I felt justified in using the word "spamming." With anyone else, I might hope a kind email would work. With JanG, I know it won't.

27

Selling Ice to an Eskimo

by Jang in

jw
friends

the second step is the real target.

on the first step.

i give a little, you give a little.. a second explanation of the ditf that has been given is called, "perceptual contrast.

Seeker

You are not the only one who felt annoyed at this spamming of the board. I noticed, and disliked, Focus doing it as well.

I'm in the Less is More camp too. Jan's article, though important and interesting, could have been much shorter. I got the point in the first few paragraphs and the rest of it was just more of the same over and over again. Much better would be to post the first few paragraphs, and then post a link to where the article was found. That way those of us who want to read more can do so, and this board doesn't get flooded with extra storage needs.

27

Selling Ice to an Eskimo

by Jang in

jw
friends

the second step is the real target.

on the first step.

i give a little, you give a little.. a second explanation of the ditf that has been given is called, "perceptual contrast.

Seeker

What a remarkable response!

"I will not be around for the next few days as far as doing as you suggest. Hence, I got these up while I could."

You mean you won't be able to post when you get back?

"If people don't want to read them they don't have to. You didn't have to open the message or any of the others if you felt this way."

Many of us do skip messages from certain posters, but what Ginny was saying is that en masse posting makes other topics disappear off the front page unnecessarily. You didn't address that point, and it was Ginny's main point.

"Maybe i might get a friend of mine to post the messages in future that way and then those of you who have this opinion of me that I am yelling 'listen to me" might realise that I could care less about who gets the credit for the articles beign available, and more interested in making it available when I have time to post them."

This isn't about you, but about the way you were posting. Having friends spam the board on your behalf results in the same problem.

"As for putting them all up on my website.... I guess you will pay for the extra secure webspace for me"

So your solution is to make this board take up the storage instead?! I guess they will pay for the extra secure webspace for you.

8

Rutherford & Creature Worship

by Farkel in

jw
friends

but then again, he was just an imperfect man, right?

after all, he was just an imperfect man.

but he was just an imperfect man.

Seeker

Nice post, Fark. I've noticed this too. While in prison in 1918, Rutherford railed about destroying creature worship when he got out. Given his subsequent actions, it seems clear he really meant to get rid of the creature worship of CTR and foist it upon himself instead. And as you pointed out, for all his prison time determination, as soon as he got out he began to glorify CTR for a time even more than Russell had ever done! So much for that promise. Only later he began to undo almost every one of Russell's teachings, and putting himself in that place. Once again, he failed at his attempt to undo creature worship.

As for being freed from Babylon the Great, I once wrote a post that researched all the beliefs and customs belonging to Babylon the Great that the Society says they used to follow before 1919. The idea, as your mother absorbed, is that pre-1919 = enslavement to Babylon the Great, post-1919 = spiritual freedom.

In fact, the only thing that changed in 1919 was the release of the Society's officers from prison. For years afterward, JWs continued to do all the things that "indicated" they had been in bondage to Babylon the Great: birthdays, Christmas, lack of neutrality, etc. It was until almost a decade later that all those things were finally changed, as Rutherford began to systematically wipe out CTR's teachings.

So for much of the 1920s, during which time the Society was supposedly free from Babylon the Great, they continued to practice the very things they now teach were signs of their Babylonian bondage! For someone who supposedly freed the Society from these things, he sure took his sweet time. Maybe he was too disconcerted about Prohibition to notice.

15

Helpful Techniques for Getting in your Time

by Jang in

jw
friends

i found this a few years back on one of the sites which has since closed down ..... .

remember: there is a time for everything under the sun.

helpful techniques for getting in your pioneer time .

Seeker

Enjoyed the original post, even though it's clearly it was written in jest. Not that those techniques aren't used, for they absolutely are! It's just that the tone of that message is one of cynicism, and all "faithful" JWs will at least TRY to sound sincere even if inwardly they are being just that cynical. My guess is that this message was originally written by an ex-JW as if it were written by a current JW, for a joke.

As for the techniques, it just goes to show what happens when man-made rules are instituted. You lose track of the whole purpose of preaching, and start looking for legalistic ways to get your time while accomplishing nothing of value.

29

just for fun

by peaceloveharmony in

jw
friends

hey everyone, here is a fun little test..... : http://www.mystcweb.net/misc/smart.htm.

enjoy .

love.

Seeker

Jan, I also wondered about the inning question, since I thought about cricket. But I figured that was a bit obscure, and went with baseball. As for why the answer is the way it is, remember there are two halfs to an inning, thus double the number of outs we went to think of.

29

just for fun

by peaceloveharmony in

jw
friends

hey everyone, here is a fun little test..... : http://www.mystcweb.net/misc/smart.htm.

enjoy .

love.

Seeker

10 / 11 here. I got the Ark one wrong, and I made the obvious error. I was so focused on the fact that none of the supplied answers was correct, I missed the obvious bit.

I also objected to the wording of this question:

"Is it legal for a man in California to marry his widow's sister?"

The word "legal" is incorrect, for if you answer the question correctly, you are implying something in a legal sense that is not the case, for legality has nothing to do with it. Therefore the question is misleading in an unintentional way, for it turns the correct answer into an incorrect one.

Don't take my criticisms seriously, I'm just nit-picking at a fun test.

55

Demons / Urban Legends! Which Is It????

by Big Jim in

jw
friends

has anyone on this board ever experienced contact with demons?.

i have heard demons talked about for years, however i have never known anyone that has had any real experiences with them, i have only heard storys.. .

(some quotes).

Seeker

I would like to continue my earlier thought by discussing the way the mind can produce things that are real, or at least seem as real to us as anything else. Reality is subjective. What is real is whatever our mind tells us is real. Our senses are not the primary means of detecting reality, our minds are.

For instance, have you ever walked right past someone you know and not noticed them? Maybe your friend says to you, indignantly, 'What, you can't even say hello?' And you respond in surprise, 'Oh, I'm sorry, I never saw you!' Your friend huffs and says, 'Yeah, yeah, you were looking right at me.'

Our eyes worked, but our mind turned the signal away to some dark corner because it was busy with something else at that moment. Our perception of reality comes from the mind, not our senses.

Another example: If you have a vivid nightmare, and wake up in a cold sweat, why did your body react with the fight-or-flight response? Because of something your senses were picking up? No, for nothing was actually happening. But your mind told your body something was happening, and thus your reality was formed.

Another example: Mental illness can produce symptoms that in times past would have been chalked up to demons. Hearing voices, having visions, and the like, can happen to a person with certain types of mental illnesses. Are those voices real to that person? Absolutely real. Is that reality subjective? Of course.

Another example: If you take LSD, will reality change for you? Yes. Will the world around you be changing, or is it only your mind that thinks it has changed? It is the mind. Your eyes may tell you that you are seeing a monster, but the eyes have been fooled by the mind. Your nose may smell something, but it's just the mind. Mess with the chemical balance of your mind, and your reality changes.

All of these examples show that something that is "real" to us, because I "saw" it, or "heard" it, or "felt" it, may not necessarily have an outside cause. And yet, and this is the key point, it will seem every bit as real to us as if there were an outside cause. Our senses will be telling us things that are indistinguishable from objective reality. It's real to us, and no one can tell us otherwise. For it really is real, at least to the mind.

What about more than one person perceiving this reality? Our mind is open to suggestion. In the middle ages, it became common to see the Virgin Mary in vision. Nobody saw aliens. In the twentieth century, visits by the Virgin Mary, while still around, were not as common. But alien visitations sure increased, as soon as science fiction writers began to write about them. If I write a book today about small, intergalactic woodchucks that have pink antennae on their heads, and the book becomes well known enough, pretty soon people will start to see intergalactic woodchucks at the foot of their beds late at night.

Now, and this is another important point, please do not mistake this message as saying that ALL such events can be explained away as tricks of the mind. Don't be offended and think I'm calling you crazy. I'm not. For one thing, these mind tricks happen to everyone, not just "crazy" people. For another, it's entirely possible that some of these events that have been related were caused by something real, objectively real. That brings me to my final point.

As Mommie Dark said, we don't know all there is to know about the phsyical universe. Theere may well be unexplained physical forces and phenomena in the world. Perhaps in time science will come to understand these new forces, and then we'll laugh and say, 'Oh, that's what caused those visions!'

Can you imagine a primitive human's reaction the first time he or she saw ball lightning? Try to tell that person this is a natural force, and you won't be believed. Clearly it was a demon! Or imagine not understanding weather patterns, and being confronted with your first thunderstorm. Can't tell you that's not the gods!

One day, we may feel the same about the stories in this thread. What at one time seemed like demon stories turned out to be nothing more than ___________, where that blank is yet to be filled in with a scientific explanation.

So remember, just because something was real to you (and I'm sure it was real to you), it doesn't mean your senses actually picked up on something, for it could have been a trick of the mind and there's absolutely no way for you to know the difference. Or maybe you did actually perceive something outside your mind, but what that is may be something entirely different from demons.