Posts by kaik

31

"the world has never been worse" - not according to this website..

next week's wt is full of helpful encouragement not to believe satanic propaganda that might tell us that the world is getting to be a better place to live in.. .

well, i stumbled across this article here, that contains lots of so-called 'facts' and 'figures', i'm sure glad i read my wt first so i can recognise that this is nothing but lies, all lies.. .

.

kaik

My grandparents lived almost through entire 20th century. They say the life after 1945 got easier, but they longed for the world that was long gone. I remember my granny mentioning switching from horse dragged tram to electric, the first time she sit in car, when they had el. power installed in the house. My grandparents said that life in the early 20th century was hard. They lost many children to banal diseases, from 14 possible uncles and aunts, only half made it to the adulthood. My parents are pushing 80 and they say the quality life is better today than they ever had, but they wish they had health and the strenght of the youth.

I wonder how many people would love to abandon present comfortable life and return to lifestyle before 1914. No internet, 16 hour workdays, no antibiotics, human rights, horrible living conditions without sanitation...

42

Are all JWs united in their beliefs?

by enigma1863 in

so i used to think that all witnesses believed the same exact thing but i have heard some claims that they believe things i'm not familiar with.

do you know if it's true?

kaik

No JW are not unified in their beliefs. I met liberal and orthodox JW who had diverse opinion on numerous issues ranging from resurrection (would be Sodom resurrected? What a JW that own answer) to issue of gender identity to dealing with autistic children. When I moved around the world, JW outside my native country were even more crazy and weird. In a general JWs are hesistant to express their own opinion, they go back to WT and KH to ask what is momentary important and explained by current light.

85

Jesus had to die? Really?

by punkofnice in

i admit i no longer believe in god and holy books.. thinking of the made up 'universal sovereignty' thing, surely if god existed in the way the holy books describe him then he could have thought of something better than humankind suffering thousands of years and the slaughter of jesus?.

couldn't god have said: 'well, satan is a very naughty boy but you all know how great i am so we can end it now.

i will lovingly kill satan and his mates and that's that.

kaik

No BOTR, my orthodox jewish in-laws do not care what Christians believe, but are familiar with Christian faith. I knew religious Jews in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary who had the same attitude, they cared very little on beliefs of the dominant Catholic church there through the years I lived there. My Jewish friend was for the first time ever in Catholic monastery with me when we went for trip, and was not whatsoever familiar with Catholic doctrine or beliefs even in country where he was born and lived entire life. It was not medieval times when it matter and National socialism was think of the past and people really do not care about WWII since 1960's. Bolsheviks had official doctrine of non religious affiliation, but again, I lived under communist rule for 20 years and I am very much familiar what was official or not, and what really mattered.

Jews do not believe in Devil. It was an invention of Christianity. They do believe in Satan, but it is not antipole of God, but someone who is in God's service. Bible is irrelevant to billions of people. Islam has own religious book yet very a few Christian are vocal and whine about it. Two and half billion of citizens in China and India are not Christians and would not consider Bible as authorative text for their day to day living.

The temptation of Jesus never made much sense to me. First how in the round 3D world could Jesus and Devil observe all the kingdom of the world. Additionally why would Jesus accept invitation of Devil to go on hike on top of mountain or rooftop of the temple (did anyone seen two dude standing on the roof?). If Devil had power to transfor and transport anyone supernaturally, from where he would derive such power?

11

Huge Rise In US Religious Disaffiliation

by metatron in

jw
friends

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/526111/how-the-internet-is-taking-away-americas-religion/.

an interesting analysis of the view that the internet is killing off religious affiliation.

at any rate, the trend is there, whatever the cause.. .

kaik

225 years behind France, 166 year behind Germany, Austria, and 97 year later after Russia. USA is the only Western, industrialized country where faith and religion defines social, cultural, and national identity for majority of its citizen. France went through dechristianization in 1789-1795, Germany and Central Europe during the bourgeois revolution in 1848, and Russia after the defeat in WWI. Majority of continental Europe had no christian affiliation after 1918. In Czechoslovakia went this process in 1920s as did Baltic states and Germany. The religious disaffiliation has little to do with Web as it started century ago. USA is only catching up.

85

Jesus had to die? Really?

by punkofnice in

i admit i no longer believe in god and holy books.. thinking of the made up 'universal sovereignty' thing, surely if god existed in the way the holy books describe him then he could have thought of something better than humankind suffering thousands of years and the slaughter of jesus?.

couldn't god have said: 'well, satan is a very naughty boy but you all know how great i am so we can end it now.

i will lovingly kill satan and his mates and that's that.

kaik

BOTR, I have not seen that someone had bashed Christianity in this threat. Only some people are skeptical on the values and existence of the main proponent of the Christian faith, Jesus. There are billions of people around the world who do not believe in Jesus, nor care whatever Christianity had to say from China through India to utterly secular Europe. Jews do not believe in Jesus nor care what Christianity teaches. Christianity is wanning in the region of its origin, in the Middle East and through of entire Europe. Only USA is the country in the history of humanity that equates christianity with national and personal identity (nation concept did not originated until 18th century under influence of Englightenment and French Revolution), and produced after four religious awakening dozens of crazy religious groups from LDS to JW to Adventists. It is also the biggest donor and financier of Christian churches around the world, including Catholic, the biggest exporter of preachers, bibles, and religous publication. However, outside USA they reach on limit of people who would believe in religous dogma and nonsense. Almost all American based religious groups after innitial success reached plateau from which they do not grow. This is certainly issue with JW who are the same number in my native Eastern European country as was 30 years ago; the same for LDS and 7DA.

Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Robespierre were all dictators. Hitler and Robespierre were religious people, yet it did not prevent them to send thousands of people into their death. Stalin was rised to be a priest. There was a strong belief under communism that he was secretely still religious. His mother refused to ever talk to him for abandoning his priest career and refused to talk to him even when he became a dictator of USSR. Justinian is considered as the most christian ruler of the late Antiquity. He is almost venerated as a saint for Greek Orthodox church. Yet, very a few care that he was before Genghis Khan the most blood thirsty ruler ever, surpasing such monsters as Nero, Caracalla, Domitian, or Diocletian. In his reing he exterminated about 5-10% of world population, something that was only matched by Genghis.

84

Want to know why people accept evolution ?

by snare&racket in

jw
friends

do you have questions about or want to understand evolution?

it is a difficult concept to communicate and so if it is not explained well , it is understandable that we would dismiss it.. i sincerely want to talk with people who want to learn more or see what all the fuss is about.

we are all learning and increasing our knowledge all the time and it is good to go over facts with critical eye.. evolution we can discuss, looking at the foundational facts and evidence, one at a time for you to go and check, agree or disagree with and return.. no pressure to accept it, you can decide for yourself, also no mocking etc of what you have to say.. .

kaik

"In between" fossils for some point species on its own, sometime for million years. Humans, monkeys, and other primates share common ancestry. Darwin did not know that because in the 19th century lacked understanding evolution as we have it today. Today we know that human race came from various migration pattern of primates from Eastern Africa. Back during Darwin era, the science did not know DNA nor molecular biology. They did not know that humans and neanderthal coexist and even interbreed. What we see as today in human species is a result of process that started 2.2 million years ago. We as people happened to win in the process around 70,000 due bottleneck pressure which was result of Toba volcanic explosion. However, this was not only the genetic bottleneck in the human's past, nor it affected only people. Similar bottleneck pressure around the same timeframe affected other large mamals.

As a vivid gardener, I know that evolution happened in vegetation and can detected by tracing original ancestry of present trees and shrubs. Look into apple tree which originated in Central Asia. The DNA analysis showed that all present apple trees can be detected to one region in the world, from there they were cultivated and distributed world wide. It was a process that took about 7000 years. This altered a behavior of bees, aphids, fungus, and bacteria that need apple fruit. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2684696/pdf/rspb20090355.pdf

The same process affected all flora, especially after the last Ice Age. You can still go to various spruce parks around USA Eastern coast that are the leftover the glaciation. In northern hemisphere due extensive knowledge of glaciation we can trace ancestry of many flora that were left from interglaciation period and how they differed from ancestral plants. Some of the flora evolved so much that cannot even hybrid together from its ancestral plant. As the flora evolved, so did births, insects, fungus, and bacteria.

Genesis is myth where according to it plants appeared on the third day yet sun was created on the fourth day. How plants made photosynthesis without sun?

85

Jesus had to die? Really?

by punkofnice in

i admit i no longer believe in god and holy books.. thinking of the made up 'universal sovereignty' thing, surely if god existed in the way the holy books describe him then he could have thought of something better than humankind suffering thousands of years and the slaughter of jesus?.

couldn't god have said: 'well, satan is a very naughty boy but you all know how great i am so we can end it now.

i will lovingly kill satan and his mates and that's that.

kaik

I honestly never understood how can death of Jesus as an innocent man could be a payback for the sin of the humanity. I never understand the equation. The closest model I could understand was Catholic where Jesus showed as a bridge above the bottomless pit of hell where the sinners would otherwise fall. I do not get the concept of original sin versus a death of one person who supposed to be a Son of God to save humanity and how it is fair.

Kassad, I am not sure where in NT is written that Jesus confronted Satan. Satan tempted Jesus, but again here in Matt 4:8: "Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor". Did they went to hike togehter? Did Satan kidnaped Jesus? Did Jesus agreed to go with Satan into the mountain and temple? Also it is a crucial to mention that Jews do not believe in Devil. This is much modern invention by Christians. In the OT, Satan is employed by God to gather evidence against accused one. Satan is nothing more than a modern version of prosecutor or procurator. Jesus would know it and would not accept gift of kingdoms of the world that he knew Satan did not possesses.

32

How Many Here Have Ever Been Reproved or DFd?

by minimus in

jw
friends

so far, not me.....

kaik

My mom, cousins, sibling, and uncle were all reproved. My two cousins are (or were - I have not talked to them for 15 years) elders and they tried to defraud taxes and loans from the bank because Armageddon was about to happen and they hoped to not paying it back, but worldly justice got them and they lost their positions only to get it back. They had too many kids in WT religion and the KH was pretty much made of their families, relatives, and friends. I think being reproved is like brownie point in the organization.

24

No more WWI veterans... Only 5 people born before Jan 1st 1900

by ILoveTTATT in

jw
friends

we should keep watching this list: http://www.grg.org/adams/e.htm.

this list shows the list of verified oldest people alive.

technically, articles in the 1960's and even in the 1980's indicated that "this generation" meant people born before 1900.. 5 more people, and we can officially celebrate another failed wt prophecy.. when i was "in" i thought that the wwi veterans had to die.... they're all dead... all of them... not a single person on earth now can tell you what happened when they served in wwi.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/list_of_last_surviving_world_war_i_veterans_by_country.

kaik

Yeah, my in laws parents were born in the 1920's. WT can play with a some changes for the last generation and postpone it from 1914 to 1929 or 1935. But I would guess they will go for huge leap, maybe generation of 1948 related to creation of state of Israel. Russell used to teach until his death that the last generation started in 1799 and the presence was in 1874. So he was unto that nonsense 117 years after the fact. The last war of the French Revolutionary wars died around 1890. Russell was 26 years late and it was Rutherford that moved it from 1799 to 1914. I do not think the teaching of the generation(s) will not change before 2034.

21

The tower of Babel

by Crazyguy in

in the bible story nimrod is having all the people build a tower to the heavens and god didn't like it so he caused there to be different languages all a miss so no one could understand one another.

so thats the bible story anyway, what about reality.

in my limited research of ancient history its come to my attention that the main language written and spoken was akad or akkadian.

kaik

The Tower of Babel is a story, nothing else. It is not a description of real event. We certainly know that god does not live above the clouds in stratosphere that could be reached by tower. It was interesting stories around the tribal fire to explain various nationalities, but Tower of Babel is a myth.