Posts by ChuckD

3

Athiests with a Social Conscience?

by ChuckD in

jw
friends

something said on another thread got me thinking about the assumption that many people have that religion is somehow a prerequsite for charity.

i think that it is quite the opposite.

for example, rather than believe that god told me to help out my fellow man, i feel that there is no god, and therefore it is everyone's responsibility as a person to do charitable deeds, since god isn't going to set anything right himself.

ChuckD

Something said on another thread got me thinking about the assumption that many people have that religion is somehow a prerequsite for charity. I think that it is quite the opposite. For example, rather than believe that God told me to help out my fellow man, I feel that there is no God, and therefore it is everyone's responsibility as a person to do charitable deeds, since God isn't going to set anything right himself. I am certainly much more active now than I ever was as a witness, where my "good deeds" consisted of telling people that everything they knew was wrong, and that God was going to kill them.

What are your views on charity and its connection to religion?

12

DOES WTS own Kingdom Halls?- Challenge

by Amazing in

jw
friends

recently, the bonham, texas issue was discussed and comments were made that when the jws lost the hall in 1986 that the society then took deed ownership of kingdom halls to prevent another case like bonham from happening.. i challenged this as not being universally true, because long after the bonham case, i kept congregation files and we never made any deed transfers to the society, nor change our non-profit association charter to make the society a beneficiary in trust.. what i did yesterday: i am frequently involved with courts, judges, and legal matters, property titles, etc.

i checked on a kingdom hall at random near my office.

i ran a deed search and the title came up as being owned by the local congregation of jehovah's witnesses, and no mention was made of the watch tower society or any subsidiary corporations.. further, the kingdom hall in my analysis was purchased not long ago, but long after the bonham case.

ChuckD

I thought that Witnesses believe that there is no Hell. Which is it?

7

How does a JW change a lightbulb?

by Mommie Dark in

jw
friends

he tacks against the wind from 'old light' to 'new light'

ChuckD

I thought that he just leaves the burned out bulb as it is, and attends a meeting where he is told that the light actually keeps getting brighter and brighter.

40

More Remote Viewing

by Decidedly_Unsure in

jw
friends

ChuckD

I don't for a moment suggest that any of these people are lying. I am sure that they are completley convinced of this ability, and are very sincere. But I do think that once you really buy into ANY idea, it becomes very hard to consider it objectively.

As far as the quotes and evidence being offered in support of this ability, I have no idea what the source of these are. My contention is this; the claim of remote viewing seems to be a fairly easy one to test, at least on the surface. Someone picks a target, the remote person draws or otherwise accurately describes it, and then you see how they did. Sounds easy to verify one way or the other.

So, here is what I have done. I have selected a target quite nearby to me. The target can be seen at a distance and easily identified for what it is at a very quick glance from any angle. Someone describing it would be able to do so with very few words. I am hoping that ONE person who purports RV ability will view this target and describe it for those of us who are interested, and then I will post a photo of the target for comparison.

The reason I say one person should be clear from following the original thread. Multiple people made attempts, one of them reported a single correct facet of the target within other incorrect information, and suddenly all of the incorrect attempts are no longer mentioned while the closer guess is massaged and retrofitted to seem more accurate after the target was disclosed. This is not at all different than what a fortune teller or any kind of cold reader does. And, it is human nature to play along.

29

ghosts - UFO's?

by jolly_green_giant in

jw
friends

just wondering if anyone here has ever a supernatural experience.. whether it be seeing a ghost/angel/demon, ufo encounter.. etc..

ChuckD

Can I assume that you used a flash when you took this photo, since it was indoors?

3

Fear Kept Me In

by individual in

jw
friends

does anyone remember the organisation in the 1980's, how the things that they said seemed to fit so perfectly with the world that existed at that time?

their ideas and prophecies as seen at that time seemed to be correct and everything was falling into place.

i was a teenager at that time and the 'truth' had a very profound effect on me, i saw my family leave the org.

ChuckD

Refering to the society's credibility as being "now in doubt" is much like saying that the Titanic's safety record is questionable.

536

LET'S MAKE A LITTLE WAGER

by You Know in

jw
friends

perhaps you recall the instance in the bible where samson made a wager with the philistines that they couldnt guess his riddle.

as it turned out they wheedled the answer out of him by his fiancee, but the point is that they had a wager.

since the underlying assumption of the apostasy is that we are not living in the last days of this system of things, and that this world is not facing anything remotely like the biblical apocalypse, at least not any time soon, in the spirit of such antagonism, i would like to propose a similar wager.

ChuckD

Hey, let's keep it civil here.

That's MISTER lying fuckup, if you don't mind.

536

LET'S MAKE A LITTLE WAGER

by You Know in

jw
friends

perhaps you recall the instance in the bible where samson made a wager with the philistines that they couldnt guess his riddle.

as it turned out they wheedled the answer out of him by his fiancee, but the point is that they had a wager.

since the underlying assumption of the apostasy is that we are not living in the last days of this system of things, and that this world is not facing anything remotely like the biblical apocalypse, at least not any time soon, in the spirit of such antagonism, i would like to propose a similar wager.

ChuckD

How about putting some measurable parameters to your prediction. After all, it is easy to say "the financial world is in collapse" (as you yourself have done so many times before) but what EXACTLY do you mean by "crash-down mode" or "full-blown panic"? If were to say (for example) that the Dow will be down below 4,000 by the end of October, or that the Dollar will be worth less than $.10 agaist the Euro, those are concrete benchmarks. Are you willing to put your prediction into some terms that can be objectively measured?

161

Remote Viewing

by funkyderek in

jw
friends

following on from the anybody else had visions?

thread below ( http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=10144&site=3).

i have offered a prize of 50 american dollars or the equivalent in your currency of choice for whoever can guess (or envision or whatever) the contents of a picture i have chosen.. i will be emailing the picture, in password zip format to [email protected] along with unambiguous details of what qualifies as a correct guess.

ChuckD

Julien,

WRONG! My target was the collection of angst and ennui floating above lower Manhatten.

But you were close!

cd

161

Remote Viewing

by funkyderek in

jw
friends

following on from the anybody else had visions?

thread below ( http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=10144&site=3).

i have offered a prize of 50 american dollars or the equivalent in your currency of choice for whoever can guess (or envision or whatever) the contents of a picture i have chosen.. i will be emailing the picture, in password zip format to [email protected] along with unambiguous details of what qualifies as a correct guess.

ChuckD

Folks,

I have a target in mind which will serve well for this test. It is something quite un-ambiguous, and any incorrect descriptions would be easy to separate from correct ones.

Please tell me what to do - should I take a picture of this "target" and keep it here, display a picture of the target somewhere, simply "think" about it, or provide lat/long for where it is?

Ralph & Glenn, thank you for the detailed information and for participating in this discussion. I must say that this is much different than I though it was, and it seems even more difficult to set up a test based on the descriptions I read in the training manual.

I would be less than honest if I said that I believed this to be possible at all, but I will also say that I would be delighted to be proven wrong. I hope that we can do this simple test to at least establish if there is something there to follow up on. Weather or not the government investigated this means little to me, and I am sure that no matter what their experiences were, there will also be "true beleivers" who will champion its cause. Remember, not that long ago, we had a First Lady who used the services of an astrologer to help her schedule her husband's events. I am sure she beleived that it was helpful, and if asked, could provide plenty of anticecdotal evidence of it having helped.

I also agree with Derek in that someone (not even the person who was supposed to be doing the test) tossing out "car" intermixed with several incorrect pieces of information is hardly convincing at all. If we had 1,000 people doing this, someone would have probably said "Volkswagen." Would we then consider that accurate, and ignore the 999 incorrect submissions?