Posts by CyrusThePersian

23

educated elder or uneducated elder which was the best ?

by looloo in

the ones i know are either life long window cleaners with little education behind them or ex army /police /teacher types that are used to public talking and a bit of power , which ones did you find were the best elders ie kind and caring , i would go for the uneducated window cleaner /manual worker type by my experiance , in fact it was because the intelligent ones believed it was "the truth" that made me think well it must be true if he believes it

CyrusThePersian

I guess I was in the "educated" elder class. (I have a college degree.) However, I was not educated in the right way. I didn't know anything about how to help people in the congregation with their problems.

I remember wishing that the society would give full-blown seminars on how to help people instead of "elder schools" that emphasized Field Service! -Meeting Attendance!-Do More! Do More!

To answer your question, I don't think it really matters so much a person's level of education, but what is in the individual's heart. Let's face it, whether you love 'em or hate 'em, the job of elder in taking care of the people in the congregation is an awesome responsibility, not even counting the crap the Watchtower Society loads you down with. Most men who are appointed don't have the empathy or compassion to do what it takes-educated or not.

CyrusThePersian

26

Book Club, March 08, Short Stories by Edgar Allen Poe

by TheSilence in

welcome to the first book club thread... let's hope it works out and it's something we can all enjoy.. due to time constraints, for the first month we are discussing short stories by edgar allen poe.

the format is open to any discussion you wish to have about the topic at hand, but if you're looking for something to stimulate some discussion you are welcome to use the questions below or come up with some of your own for others to answer.. possible topics for discussion.

- which of poe's short stories did you enjoy the most and why?

CyrusThePersian

"The Gold Bug" is a personal favorite of mine, despite the offensive portrayal of the African-American character Jupiter.

I guess it belongs in the detective-mystery genre in that it involves breaking secret codes and finding buried treasure.

What I liked about it was the detailed method used by Legrand to break the pirate's code and then interpret it to locate the booty.

Cool story, and still entertaining over a hundred years after it was written!

CyrusThePersian

16

Stephen Hawking

by lisavegas420 in

jw
friends

what's the story on him?

i've read some of his bio, but i can't figure out how he got to be popular.

he's even had at least two guest appearance on the simpson's.

CyrusThePersian

Stephen Hawking does not have MS. He has Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a dibilitating disease that leaves him confined to a wheelchair, virtually unable to move. Despite that, he has written the most successful science book of our era, A Brief History of Time, as well as many others.

It was he that discovered many of the aspects of Black Holes and formulated many of the theories concerning the origin of the universe, a truly amazing fellow!

Like Zagor said, there are a lot of great scientists around today that are contributing much to our knowledge base. What sets Hawking apart is that he, like Carl Sagan before him, is a great popularizer of science, making science accessible to dimwits like me, who ordinarily wouldn't know a singularity from a single's bar!

CyrusThePersian

10

Any "Nova" fans?

by Dagney in

jw
friends

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/microraptor/.

tonight's show on a four winged dinosaur.. fascinating.

.

CyrusThePersian

I love all those shows! (well, maybe not so much Barney and Calliou.)

Last night's episode about the four winged dinosaur was fascinating. It sounds like Larry Martin and his Birds Are Not Dinosaurs camp are grasping at straws trying to keep alive their hypothesis that birds evolved from a different branch of the reptillian tree than dinosaurs.

Great Shows! Love Nova and PBS!!

CyrusThePersian

46

Not interested in marriage/romance?

by LtCmd.Lore in

jw
friends

okay, so the site is full of people talking about their husbands, wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, ex-wives, ex-husbands, ex-girlfriends and ex-boyfriends, childhood crushes, current crushes, future crushes, favorite positions, etc.. .

by the very nature of rejecting marriage, there's very rarely an occasion to voice our disinterest in romance.

we just kind of sit their silently while everyone else talks about their sexual and romantic preferences.. i'm sure i'm not the only one here, so how about it?

CyrusThePersian

Flying High Now, Hortensia, and White Dove,

I'm a guy and I can tell you that I agree with you totally!

I have my own house and I love the ability to do things on my own, without having someone tell me what to do or how to do it.

That said though, I wouldn't mind a little romance here and there. No marriage though; at the end of the day I just want to go home to my own house and my own bed.

I wonder if this attitude is a middle age thing, or is it an effect of the era we were brought up in?

CyrusThePersian

11

Number of brothers to sisters

by is there help out there in

jw
friends

can some one tell me how many brothers and how many sister there were in your cong.

or does any one know total world wide.

CyrusThePersian

You young sisters should have come to Memphis Tennessee. When I was young the brothers vastly outnumbered the available sisters.

I remember that Circuit Assemblies were like a sea of suits, with just a few dresses here and there. District Conventions were better, it was about even. The few available single girls either went for the gung-ho elders-in-training or left altogether (the smart ones!) Most of the young horny brothers (like me) went to out of town congregations to scope out the ladies. (Yes, I know - it's pretty lame, but we were desperate!)

Ironically, my daughter, who still goes to a congregation in Memphis, says that the situation is still pretty much the same. The brothers still outnumber the sisters.

CyrusThePersian

30

The book of Matthew, what is the importnce of it?

by bite me in

hi, just lil ole me with one question.

what is the importance of the book of matthew?

if this has already been discussed, please lead me to the thread so i can locate it.

CyrusThePersian

Rub-a-Dub:

The bit about the water into wine is in John -not Matthew.

Burn The Ships:

The interesting thing about Papias, as quoted by Eusebius, is that he calls Matthew's writing an "oracle"(logia). The work we today call "Matthew" is not an oracle, which would be a collection of sayings, similar to Proverbs. Instead, Matthew is a gospel, a term that was in use at the time of Papias, yet he did not use it in reference to this Matthean work, which leads some -but certainly not all- Bible scholars to speculate that Papias was not talking about the book we today call "Matthew."

CyrusThePersian

17

Arguing With a Believer Is Like Playing Chess

by What-A-Coincidence in

jw
friends

nice metaphor for religion and how impossibly difficult it is to influence the actions or beliefs of some people with deep seated faith.

.

digg it: http://digg.com/comics_animation/arguing_with_a_believer_is_like_playing_chess_comic.

CyrusThePersian

What I try to do when I'm discussing something with a believer (which is often, since I live in a small southern USA town) is I try to explain the rules as we go along. For instance, I'll stop the discussion and say, "That's a Strawman argument." then explain what a strawman is and why it's fallacious.

Doing this sometimes slows down the conversation and makes the other guy flustered, but hey, if we're "playing chess" we are sure as hell going to play by the rules!

Your move...

CyrusThePersian

88

Paul's Letters: Part of "All Scripture ..." ?

by compound complex in

greetings, friends:.

a friend - a former jw - gave me thomas paine's the age of reason: being an investigation of true and fabulous theology.

the mind boggles as i begin, haltingly, to fathom what many of you have already learned and shared here on jwd: the authenticity of the bible is seriously in question.

CyrusThePersian

I had never thought about this before- What was [Paul] referring to? Obviously, [he]
was not thinking of the letters and the (as yet) unwritten Gospels. Such a simple
thought that JW's got right past me.
If further writings would be included, would that include the Gospel of Thomas or the
other "lost" gospels? Would the Maccabees be included?

OnTheWayOut

Those are all good questions, but unfortunately the answer is we don't know what 'Paul' meant by "all scripture..." Did he mean the Apocrypha? (evidently so, re. his reference to Jannes and Jambres) But what else did he mean? We'll never know. Bertrand Russell is right when he said, "The Bible is known for many things, but clarity is not one of them."

CyrusThePersian

88

Paul's Letters: Part of "All Scripture ..." ?

by compound complex in

greetings, friends:.

a friend - a former jw - gave me thomas paine's the age of reason: being an investigation of true and fabulous theology.

the mind boggles as i begin, haltingly, to fathom what many of you have already learned and shared here on jwd: the authenticity of the bible is seriously in question.

CyrusThePersian

OrangeFatCat,

If you're interested in the Gnostics and their writings, may I recommend Lost Christianities by Bart Ehrman. It's a good, easy to read exposition of how divergent early Christianity was. I think you'll like it!

CyrusThePersian