Apognophos

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Posts by Apognophos

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  8

  How Religion Got in the Way

  by Billyblobber in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i feel this is an excellent mini-summary of the relationship of religion to science of the years and is a good read.

  the only part i disagree with is "defining yourself by atheism.

  " marginalized groups are defined that way by the majority and are forced to have it as part of their self identity.. .

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  Apognophos

  Interesting article, and I might agree with some points, but I tend to think that spirituality is not really much of a thing to live by. He basically defines it as an emotion, a feeling of awe. Emotions are the enemy of reason, are they not?

  Besides the desire to think clearly, which I believe is aided by science much more than spirituality, I didn't grasp any other reason that he gave for the benefit of spirituality. It certainly can't answer "why" to anything, as nature itself presents no answers to "why". So looking at trees and birds tells us nothing except that nature is nice. To go beyond that is to use our imagination to make artificial value judgments, and that's what religion does.

  If someone wants to make decisions in a clear-thinking way, then they should rely on reason. Leave emotions for the things that aren't life-changing decisions, but which make life enjoyable from day to day, like laughing at a movie, or snuggling with your mate.
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  29

  How good a commincator are you on this site?

  by new hope and happiness in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  me i try my best but my spelling is bad and some times i get missunerstood...any funny exsperiences?.

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  Apognophos

  Really? I'm sorry to hear that. I wasn't aware it led to such spelling difficulties, I guess because I don't know anyone who's told me they have it. I know some people here use spell checkers, you should see if you can get that working for you.
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  29

  How good a commincator are you on this site?

  by new hope and happiness in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  me i try my best but my spelling is bad and some times i get missunerstood...any funny exsperiences?.

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  Apognophos

  To be honest, when a post is full of spelling mistakes and weird punctuation, I generally don't read it. If the person writing it didn't care about their message, why should I? I spend large amounts of time composing my posts before I consider them fit for others to read. I re-read and re-consider them, move sentences around to flow more logically, and sometimes delete whole paragraphs.

  Surely you can do better than "commincator", "missunerstood", and "exsperiences"? It was a short post, so I was able to slog through it, but the thing is, you spelled "unscrupulous" right, so why couldn't you have put more effort into the rest of your post? I'm not trying to antagonize, just genuinely curious.
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  90

  Killing In Self Defense

  by Cold Steel in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the man was moving around in the darkness of j's home with a gun.

  he was certain j. and his family weren't there, but he was wrong.

  when a door suddenly opened and a dark figure fumbled for the hallway light, he had only a moment to act.

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  Apognophos

  That was a poignant story, thanks Cold Steel. Hard to believe that someone could follow it up with such a foolish remark. Really? Are there no thugs in the U.K.? What a utopia it must be to live there!

  The fact is, a person may only need a gun once in their life, but that one time can be life-changing.
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  16

  New methods?

  by manda63 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  hi, had some strange things happen this week that have made me ponder what on earth is going on with the man made organisation.. 1/ while picking up some train tickets i was approached by a young man with an ipad of sorts who engaged me in a chap and then asked to show me a new website i asked what he was trying to sell or promote he assured me that he was selling nothing the website he showed me was jw.org so i quickly said so you are promoting an organisation with a brand name similar to how a christian would promote jesus and the bible he looked confused but then said yes, so i said that i thought that to be quite shamefull, he froze for a bit and didnt comment so i asked is this new symbol a trade mark of some marketting firm to which he said "no we are jehovahs witnesses" no one else was around so not sure of the "we" but anyway i said if god has given us the bible whats with a website that produces snippets out the bible with an opinion on the meaning he avoided the question and asked me what i believed in so i said my religions leeders dont let me discuss belief with anybody so i obey,listen to them and dont question he said "you have been blessed by j with a brain and freedom of thought to look and question" i said ok but i think its strange that you use a name for god thats perhaps made up by man, blindly follow and dont question a group of self appointed men as well as showing signs of idoatory to an organisation that has pushed jesus to one side, at this he suddenly he had to dash off.

  2/ when out shopping i was apprehended by a group of people with a stand giving free literature and promoting the jw.org website so i had had to ask whats with this name change after all these years and are you a similar religion to the catholic church which led to a chat about how the catholic religion is false and how they wickedly have covered up sex abuse!

  i didnt bite on this one but asked if birth control was banned in the jw.org religion a lady stepped forward and explained that it was cruel and not biblical to ban contreception i said i had been shown a bit in the bible that gives rise to this ban and she said they(catholic church) dont understand the bible and use it to control and miss inform people so i replied similar to how your organisation bans blood and birthdays by misinterpreting the bible i went on to say that i believe the organisation to be hypocritical,false , cult like and shamefull how it covers up sex abuse i also got in that the organisation had totally corrupted its self with its un membership and also with the sheer amount of false prophecy over its relatively short history at which the senior man at the table politely told me if i wasnt interested in the literature to be on my way and that hopefully i would mature enough to let jehovah into my heart before it was to late and that he felt sorry for me and the people i obviously associated with.

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  Apognophos

  I set out with every intention of finishing reading that post. I failed.
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  16

  Letts shows up noo "generation" teaching

  by hamsterbait in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  in his preesentation, he speaks to "you the young ones".

  "you are the next generation of " adult witnesses.

  this one sentence using generation in the normal way, at a stroke, shows they just made up the overlapping teaching to get themselves out of a hole.. .

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  Apognophos

  This is interesting, but a tenuous conclusion is drawn. Specifically jumping on the word "generation" is not productive because the overlapping generation teaching has to do with the anointed ones who will not die before the end comes. Whereas, whether it's in this system or the next, the kids Lett is speaking to will grow up eventually.
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  4

  Question about rules within the jw world

  by All for show in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the rumor mill and insight from this website has me dreaming of slipping out some, " my friend at bethel ( i have a few but their nobodies) told me coming up they are changing 144k, our name thus the logo changes, and the number of gb members".

  would i get in trouble, could elders legitimately talk to me?

  who are they if i have info from someone higher up and in new york?

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  Apognophos

  That's stuff totally hearsay; it will just make you look bad if you're wrong. More importantly, I think you need to consider why you're resentful of the way you're viewed amongst an inconsequential community of people. Move on. Make new friends.
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  6

  IS IT TOO MUCH TO EXPECT?

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  is it too much to expect from the jehovah's witness governing body that they train their members.

  not only to interpret, but to criticize; that , to discriminate what is sound from error and falsehood,.

  to suspend judgement if they are not convinced, or to judge with reason if they agree or disagree?.

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  Apognophos

  From a religion that tells its members to be sheep? I would say that it's not too much to expect, but that one has the wholly wrong set of expectations in the first place. People who do well in the org. are people who want to be led, and this includes elders, who are led by the people in the tiers above them.
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  23

  China overtakes U.S. as the the world's largest economy'--WT predictions upside down?

  by exWTslave in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  china overtakes u.s. as the the world's largest economy': imf says.*.

  again problem for writing committee of jws?

  after ussr disintegration, jws said: now we have only one world power (south king) on the world scene, and north king will appear in its own time, may be as one of the former ussr state or as some other communist country.. but now equations are now totally upside downwith a communist country replacing the south kings as the world power!?.

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  Apognophos

  didn`t the JW`s teach that the"eighth king" was the United Nations?

  Yes, my suggestion was that they will replace the U.N. with China. It's probably been awkward for the Society to label the U.N. as the wild beast for a while now, since trying to get cozier with them, and it's pretty implausible that the U.N. will ever move against religion. Whereas a nominally "godless" country taking over the world could be considered to be an overthrow of religion.
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  20

  So who knows/knew William Malenfant?

  by L3G in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  since a previous thread is getting comments that this guy may become a new gb member, the topic above is worth pursuing.

  here's what i found out by searching so far---in other words, not much.

  surely others must know something about the guy.. http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/198944/1/william-malenfant-learn-from-me-mp3-trinidad-2010-zone-talk.

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  Apognophos