Good for you, Hortensia. I know you don't want to offend your hippy-dippy neighbors, but sometimes, even if it doesn't change their mind, for your own sake you have to stand up for logic and reason.
Apognophos
JoinedPosts by Apognophos
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29
wow, shaking my head
by Hortensia inmy neighbor told me she had been talking about me recently.
"i was saying to carrie in the office i just don't see how anyone can deny the existence of a higher power.
she needed some q-tips, and found a box of them on the free table by the office.
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My Parents have gone FULL CULT MODE! Having a job is SATANIC!
by BU2B into give a little background, my parents are in their late 50s.
around a year ago, my elder dad got laid off from his job.
he worked as a auto mechanic making ok money.
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Apognophos
Any conversation you have with them is likely to be very uncomfortable but failing to have an honest conversation about their planning for the future and whether that should adversely affect your own future and those of your own family is ultimately going to hurt them more in the long run.
Yes, and this is easier said than done, but don't wait until they are running out of money and turning to you before you inform them that you can't help them out with financial support. They need to know that now, or soon.
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My Parents have gone FULL CULT MODE! Having a job is SATANIC!
by BU2B into give a little background, my parents are in their late 50s.
around a year ago, my elder dad got laid off from his job.
he worked as a auto mechanic making ok money.
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Apognophos
I am pondering the idea about talking to his elders about it... Just for the record, he is an elder too. DOes that make a difference?
Ugh, it might. It may depend how intimidated other elders are by your father, or how chummy they are with him. But if you approach them with the right tone of concern in your voice (and I don't think you'll have trouble being sincere), then it might do the trick.
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How does forum moderation work?
by Simon inwe've had a few comments lately that show that people don't seem to fully comprehend the way moderation works or the point of it.. if someone point something that other people don't like or agree with then that is a difference of opinion.
live with it.. if someone posts something that is crude, insulting, contains bad language etc.
then it violates the posting guildelines and can and should be removed.. now, sometimes we won't immediately notice a post that should be removed.
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Apognophos
I don't feel that I've personally been treated unfairly by moderation but I do feel compelled to say something on behalf of many posters here who probably do not have much forum-going experience outside of JWN.
I have, however, lost dozens of posts that were made in threads that were deleted for unknown reasons. I don't know what threads they were or what I said in them or how long I spent saying it (some of my posts take 30-60 minutes to write). I only know something happened when my total post count goes below my last post number or I see my "Topics Posted On" list shrink -- but I have no way to know what disappeared from that list, which is 106 pages long currently. So that's an example of a practical concern of mine.
It comes down to trust. You have to trust the people running any site that they are doing the best they can for the right reasons. If you don't then you really should just leave and find someplace you do.
So basically we just have to trust an unknown group of people to have our best interests at heart? It's hard to trust people we don't know, who take actions that are not documented publicly. One cannot even see if someone is banned or for what reasons they were banned. I hope that you at least have a backend way of seeing what your mods are doing.
I'm not intending to sound disgruntled over all this, but I'm not sure what I think of the response that 'People have a problem with authority after their Watchtower experience, so the way to deal with their questioning of our actions is shadow moderation, so nobody knows who to argue with'.
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Anthony Morris - AP's in August, 900%, increase, yet decrease in BS's
by berrygerry inthe only video that i've found of tomo is 39:00 minutes long - the ending is missing.. various posts mentioned highlights of the tremendous witness in august, with a 900% increase in ap's, as well as some other magnificent accomplishment that i cannot locate.. then i painfully listened to the video to verify, and at about 38:00, tomo bemoans the downward trend in bible studies.. the best august of all-time, yet downward trend.. looks like the toilet bowl is swirling.. .
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Apognophos
Baptisms were also trumpeted by one of the speakers -- something about 'a whole new congregation baptized every week' or something. He neglected to mention how many of those baptisms were of born-ins. I mean, jeez, of course there's tons of baptisms, there's 8 million JWs, and they haven't stopped having kids, last time I checked.
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How does forum moderation work?
by Simon inwe've had a few comments lately that show that people don't seem to fully comprehend the way moderation works or the point of it.. if someone point something that other people don't like or agree with then that is a difference of opinion.
live with it.. if someone posts something that is crude, insulting, contains bad language etc.
then it violates the posting guildelines and can and should be removed.. now, sometimes we won't immediately notice a post that should be removed.
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Apognophos
I don't mean to sound like a malcontent, but I have to say, I've been on a lot of forums in my day, and I've never seen one that is shadow-moderated like this one is. Posts and whole threads will disappear with nary a reason given, and the deleter is not heard from or identified. In fact, one cannot even (to my knowledge) view a list of moderators, and they are not identified by any title under their name when they post. So I don't really think people can be blamed for being curious or disoriented by the way moderation takes place here.
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My Parents have gone FULL CULT MODE! Having a job is SATANIC!
by BU2B into give a little background, my parents are in their late 50s.
around a year ago, my elder dad got laid off from his job.
he worked as a auto mechanic making ok money.
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Apognophos
You know what? I think elders might agree with you that your parents are being unreasonable, BU2B. Sorry I'm not familiar with your situation w.r.t. the religion, but could you get an elder or two to talk to your parents? They can show some scriptures to your parents (like the one about 'counting the cost') that will encourage them to be more balanced. Coming from the elders, this advice might turn the mentality of "Satan wants me to go back to work" over to "Jehovah is telling me to go back to work". Your dad isn't going to get work offers for much longer if he's in his late 50s.
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Facial Expressions And The Future Of The US Empire
by metatron inhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2829642/cold-war-shoulder-vladimir-putin-gives-barack-obama-cool-glare-beijing-summit-offering-friendly-pat-back.html.
putin is smirking as if to say, "you're just not in on the joke".
take note of the other facial expressions as well.. i can can speculate at length but i see a man who 'plays checkers' surrounded by chess masters.
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Apognophos
That's interesting about the flight test. Some people also thought that the date of Russia's FOAB test in 2007 was interesting (9/11).
As far as the U.S. focus on Russia rather than China, could it be that they don't think China is as likely to become an aggressor as Russia? That being said, I think we can be confident that they are keeping a close eye on China even if they don't talk about China a lot. But China is not making actual threatening moves like taking over the Ukraine.
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900 Top Scientists Sign Statement Skeptical of Macro-Evolution
by Perry inwe are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural .
selection to account for the complexity of life.
careful examination of the .
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Apognophos
Here's another way to answer the question of where the information in DNA came from: the environment. Most people would agree that the Grand Canyon wasn't created directly by an intelligence, even if they believe in God; rather they would agree that it was carved out by water over a long period of time.
The information in DNA is a set of blueprints which were refined in a sequence of organisms living over billions of years. As those organisms reproduced, generational mutations in their genetic code were shaped by the environment in the direction of what helped those organisms survive. The ones whose mutations were not beneficial died out.
So rather than it being an amazing thing that all this "carefully designed" data exists in the form of DNA, it's actually a natural result of the way our universe is built, every bit as natural as the way the Grand Canyon formed. The information, the complexity of that data, is just the result of long years of interaction with the outside world, much like the steady accumulation of wrinkles on our face as we age.
That's not to say that it isn't amazing that the universe accumulates order and assembles information like it does. I do think that's pretty amazing. But if it didn't, we wouldn't be here to discuss it. So if there have been a billion universes before this one, or if they exist alongside us, but they do not tend towards order like ours does, then they're just a whole bunch of non-living noise.
There's no one alive in those chaotic universes to propose that they must have been created because "Look at all this complex stuff, it must have been designed". Our universe has just enough order to allow us to exist and contemplate ourselves, but just enough disorder to show that this is not a carefully-designed universe made by a loving, attentive God.
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Facial Expressions And The Future Of The US Empire
by metatron inhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2829642/cold-war-shoulder-vladimir-putin-gives-barack-obama-cool-glare-beijing-summit-offering-friendly-pat-back.html.
putin is smirking as if to say, "you're just not in on the joke".
take note of the other facial expressions as well.. i can can speculate at length but i see a man who 'plays checkers' surrounded by chess masters.
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Apognophos
Well, I don't mean to suggest that one can't read something into the way that world leaders choose to interact during an official function, e.g., where they sit and who they talk to. What I'm objecting to is the idea that one can tell anything at all from a photo like the one of Putin side-eying Obama. Caught by a camera at the right awkward moment, anyone can be interpreted to be thinking anything. Windows are not the eyes to the soul and people cannot read each others' minds from a distance.