an easy example is beards.
i hear they're not unusual in places like europe, even on appointed brothers.
it also seems like they're becoming more accepted in more liberal parts of the states.
Sisters wear trousers in Norway.
Brothers commit fornication more regularly in Brazil.
They fly flags on Kingdom Halls in Chile.
Some JWs are nudists in Germany. (Really? Maybe I made that one up)
In Mexico they called themselves a "cultural group" for years and curtailed prayers, songs and Bible use.
In some countries JWs can vote or pretend to vote if it makes life easier.
In Brooklyn they dance to pop songs on the roof and post it on YouTube.
hello to all pomos, pimos and lurkers!
i would firstly like to introduce myself, as i should have done in my initial post.
i will remain anonymous for this website.
Yes it's still strange that he never apologised or really acknowledged there was anything wrong with what happened with AAWA on facebook.
hello to all pomos, pimos and lurkers!
i would firstly like to introduce myself, as i should have done in my initial post.
i will remain anonymous for this website.
Are there any Bible Students who meet regularly in the United Kingdom? I am not aware of any, and I have been looking.
Way back in 2001 I was in touch with an elderly Bible Student in England, but I suspect he may have since died.
I am doubtful there are any active Bible Students left in Britain but I'd be happy to find out if there are some.
i recently learned of the term "hanlon's razor".. wikipedia defines it as: .
hanlon's razor is an aphorism expressed in various ways including "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
" it recommends a way of eliminating unlikely explanations for a phenomenon (a philosophical razor).. so could it be said that this applies to the gb / society ?.
Yes, definitely. With a few sinister exceptions, such as Jaracz.
2 pioneers of the opposite sex.
the brother is in his mid-20s, sister is in her late 20s.
both are alone in car as the only 2 out in field service.
"Could you direct me to the euphemism please ?"
One time a nurse asked me for a euphemism. So I gave her one.
at one time scientists believed that living things and non-living things were made of different material, accounting for the unique properties of living things.
this idea is called vitalism and is no longer popular.
what does remain popular (in fact is still the dominant view) is a similar idea that things that experience the world (humans, frogs, mice) are different from things that don't experience the world (potatoes, rocks, snowflakes).
We don't know and may never know for sure. Radical emergence is an explanation that results from a commitment to reductive materialism. Panpsychism is an alternative way of understanding how consciousness relates to the material world that rejects both dualism and reductive materialism. The arguments on either side don't appear to relate to something called "woo". As far as I can see this word "woo" is a rhetorical way of dismissing something you disagree without going to the bother of explaining why.
at one time scientists believed that living things and non-living things were made of different material, accounting for the unique properties of living things.
this idea is called vitalism and is no longer popular.
what does remain popular (in fact is still the dominant view) is a similar idea that things that experience the world (humans, frogs, mice) are different from things that don't experience the world (potatoes, rocks, snowflakes).
I've certainly come to agree with whoever made the comment that the world is "not only stranger than we suppose, it's stranger than we can suppose". So that, for me, leaves open the possibility of things like panpsychism. I also have a commitment to the idea that nothing should be ruled out. This on both empirical and ethical grounds. The fact is that knowledge is not simply linear and accretive. There are too many examples of unexpected twists and reversals for that. Plus the practice of ruling out solutions is essentially authoritarian and ethically suspect.
Sometimes this can be misconstrued as simply saying: "who knows, maybe evolution is wrong and creationism is right, or maybe the earth is flat after all". But it's actually much more radical than that. It's more like saying: "maybe in time we will discover that the Earth and the history of life are so completely different than how we currently conceptualise them that the vocabulary of description will need to be utterly revised in ways we cannot currently imagine". This doesn't envisage a regression into creationism or flat earth perspectives, but leaves open the possibility for new and unexpected perspectives.
I would place the growing interest in panpsychism in the category of unexpected twists in intellectual thought worthy of contemplation. Because fundamentally the roots of experience in an (apparently) material world are deeply mysterious. Reductive materialism doesn't appear to offer very compelling answers, and dualism has its problems, so it's worth considering alternatives.
i think i made a thread like this a couple of years ago but i can't remember what was said and i'd rather have a new discussion anyway.. what's different in the wts since i left it behind in 2006?.
What changed since 2006? Don't trust apostates for the answer to that one! Best bet would be for you to go back an attend your old book study group. They'll tell you what's changed over tea and cake in a cosy informal setting.
seen in the 03/2018 watchtower study :.
"during the 2017 service year, more than 284,000 “rightly disposed” individuals symbolized their dedication to jehovah by water baptism.".
https://www.jw.org/en/publications/magazines/watchtower-study-march-2018/baptism-requirement-for-christians/.
See the graphs 5th and 6th down. Baptisms are trending down long term, and are well below their 1990s peak, especially in percentage terms.
https://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/statistics.php
In the mid 1990s baptism numbers were almost 8% of the publisher number, whereas in recent years it dropped to nearly 3%. That is a huge reduction that makes real growth pretty much impossible.
seen in the 03/2018 watchtower study :.
"during the 2017 service year, more than 284,000 “rightly disposed” individuals symbolized their dedication to jehovah by water baptism.".
https://www.jw.org/en/publications/magazines/watchtower-study-march-2018/baptism-requirement-for-christians/.
Yeah but the push for kids to get baptised has been going at least four years, so strange to have a bump now, I think it's just random fluctuation. In historical perspective baptisms are well down from their peak in the 1990s, especially in percentage terms.
