Posts by Jeffro

172

TESTING the results of two different ways of thinking

by Terry in

jw
friends

mankind has had a pretty good track record of tackling the problems of life on earth.

different folks have tried different strokes.

you might say that life has been the crucible for testing an idea as to efficacy and the legacy of any idea is how well it worked.. .

Jeffro

new light:

I'm not saying "you'll be amazed" or anything else prematurely, but I can say that, in my own personal experience, the results have forced me to question my previously iron dismissal of the value of prayer. I have no reason to believe I would be fooled by a "placebo effect", nor do I believe that simply saying things causes them to happen. I am saying that in the last two months or so since starting to pray, I have seen dramatic effects in ways that really make me sit down and rethink my atheism. Assuming there is a being that answers prayers, it would naturally follow that you would receive all the confirmation you need to satisfy your intellect, should you decide to ask.

The affects of prayer are not exactly placebo-like. Prayer offers the faithful person a hope, a sense of optimism that things will improve. The adjustment in the person's state of mind is achieved not by some external spirit forct but by the person by focussing their thoughts on their own hope that God will help them.

Consider people with depression - while depressed, they think of something negative, and then start to dwell on that negative, and start to call to mind every other negative thing that has happened to them, and so their state of mind is completely geared to seeing everything in a negative light - as a direct result of the chemistry of their body being enforced by the physical affects of their fear, anxiety, and hopelessness, which are both triggers for, and reactions to, the downward-spiralling depressive state.

When the faithful person prays regularly, they have a sense of hope and optimism, and they start to dwell on positive thoughts. People can see that they are more positive not because some external spirit creature has blessed him, but because his own body chemistry is being brought back into balance by his own thoughts.

46

IQ Test, Have you ever taken one ?

by oldflame in

there are many online iq test to take, i did one and zoomed through it without trying very hard and got a 128. whats yours ?

be honest

Jeffro

I always get in the 140s in the online tests.

The accuracy of online IQ tests is questionable, but when I have taken the online tests, I have seen the results of people I know on the same tests, and they generally get lower. Though the actual results may not be accurate, they seem to give some kind of relative indication.

My not-so-bright at-the-time-step-brother-in-law-to-be confirmed my suspicions and got around 90. (The same person who tried to tell me that Calais is pronounced 'kal-ace'.)

19

Anointed Sealed...

by zeroday in

jw
friends

it has been over 70 years since the anointed number has been sealed.

assuming those anointed were of reasoning age when the number was sealed and the great crowd came into play, how long will the fds stick to this reasoning that the anointed still exist.

or will there be "new light" as in the 1914 understanding.

Jeffro

I've heard Stephen Lett give a talk. (Beware the Voice of Strangers at an international convention.) He sounds genuinely delusional.

19

Anointed Sealed...

by zeroday in

jw
friends

it has been over 70 years since the anointed number has been sealed.

assuming those anointed were of reasoning age when the number was sealed and the great crowd came into play, how long will the fds stick to this reasoning that the anointed still exist.

or will there be "new light" as in the 1914 understanding.

Jeffro

The WTS is approaching a wall they can not climb. The 1914 and this generation debacle was every so artfully dodged. This they can not dodge. They will hit a wall that will destroy them. The sooner the better.

Indeed. But there will for a long time yet be enough nutters who think they're 'anointed'... even if most of them are "replacements". Maybe they could justify it by saying that some of the deceased anointed didn't make it to heaven because they were stopped by demon princes or something (compare the Society's interpretation of Daniel 10:20,21), then they can keep needing 'replacements' indefinitely.

349

The 1914 Doctrine and The Threat of the Egibi Business Tablets

by VM44 in

could the watchtower and the jehovah's witnesses survive the discarding of their 1914 doctrine?

the doctrine that in 1914 the end of the gentile times took place, jesus took up rule in heaven.

for some reason the jws think the outbreak of world war i in 1914 is proof their prophetic calculations were correct.

Jeffro

The real fun will be when the "celebrated watchtower scholars" decide to drop it, and the "scholar"-types -- that know the current doctrine inside and out, complete with secular references -- have to change their thinking overnight or be disfellowshipped for apostasy.

But that naughty 'scholar' should be disfellowshipped anyway for flagrantly disregarding, for the last 4 years, the Society's counsel to avoid 'apostate' websites.

157

Evolutionary establishment tactics

by hooberus in

wednesday evenings (august 24th) fox news program "the oreilly factor" featured an interview life after "intelligent design" with dr. richard sternberg, editor, of the peer-reviewed journal "proceedings of the biological society of washington.

" dr. sternberg's home page discusses the recriminations he faced by certain members of the evolutionary establishment after publishing an arcticle by another person advocating the possibilty of intelligent design in the peer reviewed journal.

http://www.rsternberg.net/

Jeffro

You ask why God made the ville predators and I hate those wiley alligators. Your question is part of the divine mystery life, in time our knowledge of the world past and present will increase and we will understand much that is now beyond us. Such intellectual questions are part of life's wondrous journey. In the Garden of Eden such predatory behaviour did not exist but became manifest after the Fall with man and beast living in a now cursed earth present with sin, evil and death. Scholar should have a Bible Study with you in newly released book on Bible Teachings and then I can explain many things to you.

Scholar alleges that animals became predatory after Adam and Eve's 'fall'. However, according to the Society, it is man that sinned and was cursed, not the animals. According to the Society's 'pattern of healthful words', animals died even in paradise, so apparently they were pretty much cursed from the beginning anyway; there is no reason why some of them would not be predatory. (Awake, 22 March 1976, page 17 - "it is clear that the Creator never purposed that individual animals live forever. For them death was natural.") Apparently then, death was always an intrinsic part of god's plan anyway, irrespective of what people did. Feel the love!

What is more likely? That a system developed through biological processes that results in animals dying, or a 'loving' god came up with the idea of killing animals because there was no other possible way that an all-powerful god could manage things.

349

The 1914 Doctrine and The Threat of the Egibi Business Tablets

by VM44 in

could the watchtower and the jehovah's witnesses survive the discarding of their 1914 doctrine?

the doctrine that in 1914 the end of the gentile times took place, jesus took up rule in heaven.

for some reason the jws think the outbreak of world war i in 1914 is proof their prophetic calculations were correct.

Jeffro

The Society derided Darwin's implication that the fossil record may eventually turn up evidence in the future that filled the missing gaps ("Life - How Did It Get Here By Evolution or by Creation?", ch 5 pp. 57-58 ¶11):

Darwin attempted to explain these huge problems by attacking the fossil record. He said: “I look at the geological record as a history of the world imperfectly kept, . . . imperfect to an extreme degree.” It was assumed by him and others that as time passed the missing fossil links surely would be found.

Yet the Society uses the same reasoning, with an almost identical 'attack' on the available information, for trying to explain away its problematic 20-year gap. ("Let Your Kingdom Come", Appendix to Chapter 14, p. 187):

From a secular viewpoint, such lines of evidence might seem to establish the Neo-Babylonian chronology with Nebuchadnezzar’s 18th year (and the destruction of Jerusalem) in 587/6 B.C.E. However, no historian can deny the possibility that the present picture of Babylonian history might be misleading or in error. It is known, for example, that ancient priests and kings sometimes altered records for their own purposes. Or, even if the discovered evidence is accurate, it might be misinterpreted by modern scholars or be incomplete so that yet undiscovered material could drastically alter the chronology of the period.

So which is it? Apparently the only determinant in whether a point of reasoning is valid is whether it fits the Society's doctrines. And why would the entire body of modern scholars make exactly the same errors in interpreting all of the records, when all of them are better scholars than the ~~celebrated~~ salivating WT scholars?

I was beginning to think that 'scholar' had disappeared completely, but lo! he's popped up here. Apparently my requests for a complete Neo-Babylonian chronology that is consistent with the Society's views on another thread were too much for him (although he told another poster he would provide same after someone else provided a complete chronology for the entire Divided Monarch consistent with the bible - which I did). So scholar, where is it...

40

Why are there more JWs on Social Security Beneifits than any other Religion

by MARTINLEYSHON in

jw
friends

on a per capita ratio jws ethos for claiming off the state is higher than any other religion.

does anyone have the answer?

i remember in the late 80s the borg came out with an article "uses and abuses of the welfare system".

Jeffro

Perhaps this thread should be named "Are there more JWs on Social Security Beneifits than any other Religion?"

No evidence has actually been given for the alleged "more", and if there are, the answers are obvious anyway.

Is there a point to this thread apart from hackle-raising?

87

My undisfellowshipping

by kwintestal in

revised statementhere's the sound byte.

(i hope it works!

kwin

Jeffro

Kwin, maybe you are the wild beast from Revelation 17:8: " the wild beast was, but is not, and yet will be present".

40

Why are there more JWs on Social Security Beneifits than any other Religion

by MARTINLEYSHON in

jw
friends

on a per capita ratio jws ethos for claiming off the state is higher than any other religion.

does anyone have the answer?

i remember in the late 80s the borg came out with an article "uses and abuses of the welfare system".

Jeffro

Steve2:

It depends on whether you mean the word statistic in a literal number-sense (e.g., I had 10 visits to my doctor in the past year) or in a wider sense that is used in the media (e.g., here's an off the cuff example, my friend Fred is three times more likely than me to go exercising during the week). There are other uses of the word statistic, as you'll see in the dictionary. Both the literal number-based one and the other ones are acceptable among statisticians, as any elementary statistics book will show. By the way, I never introduced the word statistic into this discussion - it may have been an earlier poster. My response simply said I'm awaiting corroboration of the initiating posters claim that JWs use social security more than members of other religions.

By statistics I meant "a table of information ... which sets out the different religious groups and their ratio of receiving social security or welfare benefits" in contrast to the extremely specific "more" as stated in the original post.