gitasatsangha

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Posts by gitasatsangha

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  101

  Bush Bash, Anti-gay marrige.

  by SC_Guy in

  1. social
  2. current

  .

  i think bush is trying to screw this country one more time before he's voted out of office....

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  gitasatsangha

  When fascists like Bush denies rights to gays, it willl be ok to most people, because they aren't gay, themselves. And when their neighbors get arrested but are never given a trial because they are immigrants from a muslim country, that will be ok to their neighbors because they aren't immigrants. And when the fascists take away a woman's right to decide what happens to her body, that will be ok, because they've never had to face that issue. And when the environment is totally looted and destroyed, that will be ok, because it's nice and warm this winter. And when Preemptive Defensive Invasion becomes a normal idea, that is ok, because the television tells us its making us safer. And when our tax dollars go to churches for some vague "Faith Based Initiative" that will be ok, because they at least we get a tax break this year.

  Sorry for the rant. I am sick of this regime.
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  30

  The lure of paradise earth?

  by little witch in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  can someone explain to me what the excititment is concerning paradise earth, as the dubs see it?

  paradise seems to be the carrot on a stick for witnesses, but little information seems to be offered.

  from what little discription they do give it seems to me to be a boring place to be.

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  gitasatsangha

  Tradition might work. Religions tend to have amazing longevity once they get started. (for instance liturgical langauages like Latin, Slavonic, Ge'ez, Parsi, Sanskrit, Pali, Aramaic, typically continue in use long after the languages and nations that used them have dissapeared) Most people don't like to question things too much.

  So Jehovah's Witnesses, as a sort of offshoot of Russellism, are well over 100 years old. Not bad for a doomsday cult founded by a looney tune. To survive they might need to get their adherants into localized communities, like the Amish, Parsees, or Hassidics, because the more modern method of community, the Internet, can only harm them unless they change radically.
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  30

  The lure of paradise earth?

  by little witch in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  can someone explain to me what the excititment is concerning paradise earth, as the dubs see it?

  paradise seems to be the carrot on a stick for witnesses, but little information seems to be offered.

  from what little discription they do give it seems to me to be a boring place to be.

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  gitasatsangha

  You're right. It is loosing its luster, quickly. That's why young people are abandoning the Org or just putting in token time to make their parents happy. When the old generation and baby-boomer witnesses die out iin North america, the JW machine will run out of fuel, as it is rapidly doing already in Europe. They may get big results in third world countries, but that won't pay the bills.

  All they can hope for is the occaional 9-11 type crisis to get scaredy cats back to the meetings for a little while at a time. They are probably salivating over the odds that North Korea will go ballistic.
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  45

  Smokers of the World, Unite and Take Over

  by gitasatsangha in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  ahh.. nicotine.

  since leaving the jdubs, i find i enjoy lighting up a pipe in the evening, or sometimes the occasional cigar.

  tried cigarettes but i don't care for them much, myself.

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  gitasatsangha

  I thought of smoking a pipe to ween myself off of cigs,,,,,,,but only sit outside to do this. But the local cops would probably stop and check my pipe , thinking I am smoking weed in it.

  I haven't found that a problem, so far. Just don't put it in a glass pipe. :-). Pipe tobacco, even the expensive stuff, is much cheaper then Cigs, and I think the tobacco is tastier.
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  24

  Would you allow your children to see the Passion? What age?

  by LyinEyes in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  after reading megadudes review of what he thought of the movie, i really want to see it now.. gore doesn't really bother me in movies, like braveheart, saving private ryan etc.

  i hate the slasher movies for the sake of gore thou.. i guess i am the type of person that is so curious about everything, that even if it is gorey, i would want to know what jesus went thru, as painful as it may be to watch.. but should you let your children see it........ since i havent seen it , i was wondering for those who have seen it,,,,,,,,would you let your kids see it?.

  what age,,do you think is appropriate ?

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  gitasatsangha

  With a name like Passion I'm afraid I'll walk into the wrong theature and find myself with the raincoat crowd.
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  8

  Jay Leno tonight Plus Prince and Mel Gibson

  by Sassy in

  1. social
  2. entertainment

  jay leno .

  60 mins.

  mel gibson; prince; ?mad scientist?

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  gitasatsangha

  Why not. He already changed the song "The Cross" into "The Christ".
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  21

  Is it respectful to call God by name?

  by woodland in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i was just wondering what your views were about calling god jehovah.

  i appreciate that there is scriptures that says to call on his name, but if i were to meet the queen or president bush it would grossly disrespectful to say hi there elizabeth or how you doing george.

  if this is the case with mere men and women in positions of power, is it not imaginable to address god on first name terms?

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  gitasatsangha

  I choose to call God by his real name, Fred Schneider. He likes to be called by his real name.

  a member of Fred Schneider's Witnesses
• 
  30

  The lure of paradise earth?

  by little witch in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  can someone explain to me what the excititment is concerning paradise earth, as the dubs see it?

  paradise seems to be the carrot on a stick for witnesses, but little information seems to be offered.

  from what little discription they do give it seems to me to be a boring place to be.

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  gitasatsangha

  And why is the vision of paradise earth not more fully understood since god is speaking directly to witnesses? Should we not have a better picture of what things will be like? Why the emphasis on armeggedon with all those cool pics of distruction, and not on paradise?

  There are several thousand sects of Christanity right now, and JW's are one, though the argument could be made they are too distinct from Chrsitanity to be considered Christian. Anyway, selling fear get's em to stay. People don't go to the door selling armageddon. It doesn't work. If you want negative enforcement to get people to believe in you, burning hell is much more unplesant then nonexistance. And hellfire is something the Witness theologians can't fall back on, as they've never taught it.

  But this paradise earth thing was a big seller for people because of the never dying aspect of it. Almost every religion teaches something or other about what happens after death, be it heaven, hell, transmigration, purgatory, rapture (which does involve death of the body), samsarra, or some other form of reincarnation. The Witnesses are pretty unique in that they still teach that the majority of their followers will NEVER die. That's really their only selling point. I think the concept of paradise earth did once appeal to people, especially in the industrial age, and probably still does in some third world countries, who long for clean places to enjoy that they never have before. However, the religions of the east offer basically the same thing (in a very crude view) in reincarnation, so the Witnesses aren't the only heaven-alternative these days.

  But I think that the never-dying thing is still their modus operandi. They won't depart from it easilly, beacuse without it, they will be just another religion.
• 
  8

  Jay Leno tonight Plus Prince and Mel Gibson

  by Sassy in

  1. social
  2. entertainment

  jay leno .

  60 mins.

  mel gibson; prince; ?mad scientist?

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  gitasatsangha

  You got to feel sorry for Prince. His career is down the toilet. He can't make a decent song to save his life. His idea of making a proffitable record company bombed. He embarassed himself begging Madonna publically to try and help him get the rights to his songs back. His wife left him for Kid Rock. He got used by Larry Graham to make Graham's "comeback" CD. He got converted by Larry Graham to a cult. He now has to spend his weekends knocking on doors in the Minnesota area identifying himself as Prince Nelson and offering Watchtowers. How low can you go.
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  30

  The lure of paradise earth?

  by little witch in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  can someone explain to me what the excititment is concerning paradise earth, as the dubs see it?

  paradise seems to be the carrot on a stick for witnesses, but little information seems to be offered.

  from what little discription they do give it seems to me to be a boring place to be.

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  gitasatsangha

  It's the lure of the myth of permanence. JW's have their natural reasoning flipflopped in favor of their aversion to impermanence. In other words, we know that everyone who has ever lived as died, and we will die also. Some persons try to get around it.. freeze their bodies in liquid N2 and hope for the future. Witnesses don't have that kind of money to throw around, but they want the same thing: immortality.

  And immortality rarely has anything to do with quality of life. Look at how wretched medicine allows us to become, just in the name of living another day, making euthanasia illegal. It is just this grasping after what cannot be had. It's as natural to die as it is to be born, but Witnesses are corrupted into thinking otherwise. They are told that in fact dying is NOT natural for human beings, but is in fact the result of two distant ancestors eating some fruit a talking snake conned a woman into munching. That in itself should have thrown up big signal to us at some point. But it goes further. God had to make us Unpermanent because of the whole fruit thing, but he's made a way out of it, in some complicated formula involving a sacrficice (and if you get right down to it, Christianity really is a cult of human sacrifice) of God's son, selling Watchtowers etceter until you get to survive when God get's medieval again and kills most everybody else. But after that (and Armageddon's dissapointing sequal a thousand years later), you get to live forever, like you were supposed to.

  And we put aside our wonderings about what the hell we were going to do for a trillion billion years eating fruit and living in the Southern Alps, playing Rummy with Brother and Sister Jones for the billionth time, or whatever they always paint Paradise as being. We put that aside, because we've already given up our sanity to this desire to never die. Some people come up with fantasies of colonizing the universe, not that that wouldn't be boring after awhile too. Oh look.. wow.. another nebula. Great. Wish I could have sex, but Jehovah lovingly took that away after Armageddon. Oh God I wish I could die.

  But we put those thoughts away.