Posts by TheOldHippie

16

Does the August Awake! applaud illegal hiring of European JWs? Euro opinions sought.

by Open mind in

the august 2010 awake!

magazine, (cover title) "jehovah's witnesses, who are they?

", seems to be a pr puff piece aimed primarily at a european audience.

TheOldHippie

Two different things are mixed together here. Point one, in Europe as elsewhere, a person having a personally owned firm pretty much employs whom he wishes. A JW owns a firm, knows of another JW, asks him to start working in his firm, there is nothing illegal to that in Europe.

What IS illegal, is for a business that puts an advertisement asking for work force, to state that only such and such a group of persons will be considered. It is not legal to ask for only men to apply, or women, or JWs, or atheists, or married, or whatever. The thing referred to in the mentioned article, probably is the Polish firm which did such a thing a couple of years ago. How the labour legislation in the Eastern European countries are, I do not know, but in the vast majority of European countries, it would not be allowed. But please note, that the article no way says such a thing is an approvable thing to do, it just states what a company did. As far as I recall, the Polish company had to abandon the atempt, because labour organisations protested, but I am not 100 % sure about that. Anyway, to sum it up, adverts as that are illegal in almost all countries here, but the article just what told what a company had done because of positive experiences with JWs in the work force.

48

Just talked to a brother in the service department and he hung up on me!

by life is to short in

ok so last sunday was my last meeting.

i have been in contact with the service department over this problem with the child molesters in my hall, i have written many, many letters begging for help, i have gotten nothing for help from them, but to wait on jehovah and pray more study more, etc.

so i want them to know that they they win they have weeded me out from the "truth" i am a bad seed from satan as i cannot abide by how we handle child molesters.

TheOldHippie

Can someone direct me Flipper's story about rushing to the podium and telling there was an abuser in the KH? I am asking because that is what I am planning to do - the point is, a convicted refugee abuser who is NOT a JW has started showing fake interest in becoming a JW in order not to be expelled from the country, and when/if he turns up I am going to do exactly that - loudly warning the others. So please direct me to the story in question.

44

DC 2010 Release - The Origin of Life and its many misquotes

by Designer Stubble in

looking up all the references is a lot of work - one of the reasons nobody normally verifies these, but trust the writers.

as you will see, the writers are banking on this, but it is not a good thing to trust the wtbts writers.

please find the bibliography worked out for quotes 38-51, covering the heading "what about human evolution".. interesting is that many quotes are from the [u]preface[/u] of books, where the authors honestly explain the difficulties and assumptions related to evolutionary science.. [b]what about human evolution?[/b].

TheOldHippie

I have just finished reading Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" - excellent reading. I recommend it, it is technical at times but in a very entertaining and easy-to-understand way. As for the origin of life and its many molecular machines, Behe is one scientist who is often quoted by the WT, and the WT literature at times follows along Behe's lines (although Behe is concerned with the origin of life and not with later evolution, which he thinks might be more or less correct) - so why not run to Amazon and buy Behe, where you can get parallell ideas BUT without the quotes you claim to be flawed? Behe is one of the sources, one of the Intelligent Design Founding Fathers, so why not give it a try.

10

America Never Even Joined The League Of Nations!

by BluesBrother in

my knowledge of modern history might be a little thin, gained largely from the books of the wts and the "outworking of prophecy", so humour me if this is common knowledge to everyone else.. the wts has identified the characters in revelation 13 as being 1) the two horned beast = anglo american power, and 2) an image of the beast = the league of nations and later on the u.n.o.

but really it was only an image to the wild beast.. wt 1986 2/1 p6.

they did this by getting the nations to make an image to the wild beast.

TheOldHippie

It is not a lie, because it nowhere is stated that the USA joined. To the contrary, it is repetedly stated that they never joined, but that they nonetheless were one of the powers initiating it etc. So you would search in vain for a statement thay they were a member nation. And although it is some years ago that I had my history lessons in school, I know we were always taughts that the USA never joined, so it should come as a surprise to no-one.

7

New Books: The Origin of Life & Was Life Created?

by ForbiddenFruit in

so family forced me into accepting the two new pro-creation books released at the convention.

i haven't had a chance to read them properly yet, but i expect to be drilled to death by friends and family on how brilliant the book is.. anyway, i was wondering if anyone was working on a critical analysis?

or could join me in putting together a list of flaws in the books?

TheOldHippie

Books?

They are 32-pages brochures. Not books.

7

Costa Rica branch to be closed, sold. Anybody know about this??

by monkeyman in

jw
friends

just got word that the costa rican branch is being closed and the buildings sold.

ive read some things here but cant remember why.. why?.

TheOldHippie

Mexico.

34

Elder tells me Armageddon could strike during Soccer World Cup closing ceremony.

by african GB Member in

i could'nt believe my ears!.

that's 11th of july 2010.

TheOldHippie

that's 11th of July 2010

African GB is making a false statement - in other parts of the world it is 12th of July. Why should the US timetable be one for the whole world to follow? Typical US imperialism. Paper tiger.

34

Magazine Distribution--Your Area?

by blondie in

jw
friends

i found out that in a local congregation the service overseer has directed that magazines not be given by jws to:.

a) inactive jws.

b) return visits that are not coming to the meetings after 6 months.

TheOldHippie

In Europe, there is no "new arrangement", magazines are delivered to publishers according to the number they have asked for, as has been done for years. And there is no change as to what persons they are delivered to. So either these "things" are a US thng, or they are a very local thing.

67

The Origin of Life / Was Life Created - Utter Lies!

by God_Delusion in

"peter faces a dilemma.

his parents have taught him that god created the earth and all life on it.

they say that the bible's account of creation is trustworthy and that evolution is simply a theory-one not supported by the evidence.

TheOldHippie

I am with you on this one, Alice, being one who has slightly more education than the average JW. I frequently would like to see more in-depth studies when it comes to questions like this one - evolution - and also trinity, certain single Bible passages, chronology etc. - but when you are to publish literature that is to reach the African farmer and South American miner as well as the Spanish unemployed and Belgian civil servant, it all gets a bit tricky. So as you say, I find more arguments in non-JW literature. As for the evolution debate, I have found much of value in the writings of Scherer and his "basic units" theory, and also Behe and others; on the trinity there are many books out there. Etc. Of course, I would like that all JW literature was spotless when it comes to quotes. But the literature of one camp cannot gain the applause of the other camp. I find it very improbable that a book issued by the creation camp would be hailed by the evolution camp and likewise the other way around. And as for quotes, there is a difference between what the author specifically said and what his meaning or thoughts around the point were. You have this quote where an author says that the dynamics of evolution is indeed very, very improbable. Then in the next sentence he says that this is exactly what happened. Did he say what is quoted as the first sentence? Yes, he did. But was his opinion that an evolution after all had taken place? Yes, it was. Still I find no problems in giving the first sentence as a quote and the stop there, because he DID say it was very improbable. I find this quoting game very tiresome, because of the line between actual quotes and then the authors theories surrounding these quotes.

121

New Generation understanding tied to Freddie Franz

by 5thGeneration in

also don't know if this has been mentioned previously.. our speaker yesterday, gb member br.

pierce, tied the overlap theory directly to fred franz's lifetime.. did anyone else catch this?.

evidently (and i'm paraphrasing), anyone anointed after franz's death in 1992 is not of the 'generation'.. 5th.

TheOldHippie

"The first group was on hand in the year 1914 when the sign of Christ's presence first became observable."

OK, but what about the "original first group", the one that was on hand in 1874 when the first Bible Students clearly saw the sign of Christ's presence, and those who wrote to Russell around 1905 and asked if there might not be a mistake in his calculations, because in the light of the tough prevailing world conditions, they could not imagine how the world system could manage to make it thru to 1914, because surely the collapse must come before that time because everything was in upheaval? (As opposed to what is now said, that the world was such a quiet place before 1914.) Does that mean that those of the remnant who died prior to 1914 after all were not of the remnant?