Posts by Hold Me-Thrill Me

The Governing Body is unable to leave the mid 20th century. Either that or the Service Dept. keeps hiccuping. Either way the Witnesses are left to continually say the same old thing at the door: "I'm here because people are concerned about where this world is heading." (June 2015 U.S. Kingdom Ministry)

It goes on: "Do you think conditions will ever improve?"

What the householder is really thinking is: "Yeah, I hope things will improve and you stop bothering me with your religion."

There is a blindness in the Watchtower. They believe that to trample a territory to death is a good thing. They believe that to encourage more to pioneer in an area that is so overloaded with pioneers that everyone and their brother knows each householder and their views on religion is a good thing.

They believe that to force the publishers to work the same territory over and over and over several times in the same year is a good thing.

Who does this?

Robots. Robots in the Watchtower who are in fear of doing something intelligent lest it be struck down by the Governing Body!

Frank

69

Breaking News: Anthony Morris III comments on Ireland legalization of gay marriage.

by cappytan in

jw
friends

#notsatire.

thanks to wifibandit and pixel for collaborating on this.

more to come.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxce4duetw8.

Hold Me-Thrill Me

LOL, bad, very bad. ;)

69

Breaking News: Anthony Morris III comments on Ireland legalization of gay marriage.

by cappytan in

jw
friends

#notsatire.

thanks to wifibandit and pixel for collaborating on this.

more to come.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxce4duetw8.

Hold Me-Thrill Me

Cappytan: The Apost8News brand will be used exclusively for non-satire JW/exJW news and commentary.

Excellent.

69

Breaking News: Anthony Morris III comments on Ireland legalization of gay marriage.

by cappytan in

jw
friends

#notsatire.

thanks to wifibandit and pixel for collaborating on this.

more to come.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxce4duetw8.

Hold Me-Thrill Me

What the Irish people do is their business. What Anthony Morris and his wife think about it is irrelevant!

76

OMG, I’m gonna get Old and Die.

by John Aquila in

when it finally clicked,.

and you realized there was no 1914, there was no generation that would see the end of a wicked system, there was no paradise around the corner, .

what went through you mind?.

Hold Me-Thrill Me

I'm not "gonna" get old, I am old. Do I expect to die? Yes. Do I hope to see my relatives again? Yes. Why? Because I do not believe this life is all there is. The Witness religion did not define my belief in God, I did not believe in God solely because I was a Witness. I believe in God because I have not closed my eyes to him. I have not turned my head away just because there are things about God I do not know or understand.

What this does is it keeps my mind and heart open to "seeing" God in the natural world around me. I do not have the cold feeling that all around me is there only because something called "natural selection" made it happen. That the love of a child toward its mother is just natural selection, the cold survival of the fittest. That the fragrance of flowers is just natural selection. That laughter is just natural selection. That the fact that, unlike the animals, my late wife could, and did, allow her hair to grow long and beautiful was just natural selection. That I can look up at the stars and the moon and enjoy their mystery and beauty just because of natural selection and so much more!

That natural selection made my body less able to defend itself than many of the lower animals. That I have no natural body armor or hide, no claws, no hind legs able to leap myself out of trouble. In a naked state I am quite vulnerable. I do not blend in as easily as many other animals. My teeth are not made to rip open the hide of cattle as easily as an animal predator. My hearing is not as good as many animals. My ability to smell is not as good. I am in almost all respects quite inferior and should not be around if my species from the beginning lived as the animals lived and had to fight as the animals fight.

Something happened that made us different. But here's the thing that "something" had to happen rather quickly. We were comparative pieces of defenseless meat naked in the jungle waiting for natural selection to finally provide us a brain good enough to allow us the ability to invent defenses we were not naturally born with? To have all the abilities that the animals have and more but not the physical; rather the mental capacity to invent a world in which we ourselves are the top dog without actually being a dog. And all this through natural selection which decided to keep the dog, a dog, but make the defenseless piece of flesh the superior animal mentally?

This would mean that natural selection decided to make the most physically UNFIT the top dog on earth. Survival of the fittest...Not!

Truly, in my opinion, the best answer is that we were created by someone who knew in advance what we would be and what we needed. Someone who did not need to wait for natural selection to slowly cause us to be able to defend ourselves with this very vulnerable body we call home.

Yes, I believe in God because it is logical, it makes sense.

Frank

32

Prayer - The ultimate act of stupidity

by Doltologist in

prayer is the act of saying something to someone that doesn't exist.

above all else, we need to respect ourselves for, if we don't, we are not capable of respecting others..

thirdly, bow to no one for if they had any respect for you, they wouldn't ask you to bow..

Hold Me-Thrill Me

New atheism is of course nothing new. What may be "new" is the vitriol and borderline hatred that is expressed and encouraged by people like Richard Dawkins and others.

On another thread the opinion was expressed that religious people should be put in institutions for rehabilitation and their children taken away. Now, this is surely an extreme position (with good and decent motives) but it does not arise in a vacuum. It is the extreme of a tide already present in our society.

There are times when extremes become the accepted position of the majority. Fear and economic depression may cause the majority to jump on any band wagon that offers relief...even the oppression of people who have nothing to do with the problems at hand.

Prayer is a religious act. People are free to ridicule prayer. The religious are free to continue to pray. It must remain this way if we are to have a free society where each individual is free to believe or not believe. The majority must be willing to support freedom of religion otherwise what other freedoms will be at risk once that freedom is taken away?

So much for the political point of view.

-----The topic is the stupidity of prayer.-----

I can see where it may seem that way to those who do not believe.

If God exists then prayer is an attempt to communicate with a power, an intelligence, greater than ourselves.

SETI is attempting to communicate with advanced intelligent life somewhere in the universe. NASA has sent out our address and other information about us into space. Yet, they have never spoken to, or visibly seen, intelligent alien life. But no matter, they feel it must be out there and so the search continues.

There are some who believe in the possibility of parallel universes. Others believe that traveling at the speed of light can effect time itself. They are respected scientists who command the respect of many though no one has seen, or been in touch with, a parallel universe or has traveled as fast as light to check out the effects for themselves. But they trust their calculations and "see" though they do not see.

But when it comes to a search for God- an intelligent life which is not of this world and lives not on our physical plane but on another plane, perhaps a parallel plane not observed by our senses. A place free from time itself. A place and time which have had their own calculations in the ancient past...their own sightings... visible proof is expected.

God, unlike alien life or parallel universes or speed/time effects, is expected by unbelievers to provide visible proof of his existence. This makes sense because the God of the Bible requires something of men. If NASA should receive a radio signal that claims to be from a powerful intelligent alien life and they demand that all wars on earth cease and all weapons destroyed or there will be a price to pay- no wars will cease, no weapons will be destroyed. The natural response from the nations would be "show us your cards first" then maybe we'll talk.

It's the same with God. He must "show his cards" before all mankind will believe he exists.

This is logical, natural.

Frank

31

If Women were elders, would it make a difference in the organization?

by John Aquila in

imagine three single sisters who qualified to be appointed as elders in the congregation.

they qualified because they started reaching out in their early teens.

persistently and methodically they worked their way through the ranks by pioneering then becoming a m.s.

Hold Me-Thrill Me

Yes, sister elders would make a huge difference.

They would be strong keepers of Organizational law. Their natural ability to read faces and body language and their pointed verbal skills would put more of us in hot water than ever before.

I can think of one lady that would make a good elder and should that ever happen then -brothers beware- a woman has entered the ranks- run for the hills! ;)

73

God's Spirit

by Hold Me-Thrill Me in

jw
friends

what is god's spirit?

.

i ask this of those who believe in god.

Hold Me-Thrill Me

Thanks for the recommended reading Cofty. I have a few books on evolution. Some from the Smithsonian supporting evolution and a few from those who support creation.

If you want the details - and I do mean DETAILS - read chapter 4 "Making the New From the Old" in "The Making of the Fittest" by Sean B. Carroll

I will. That's exactly what I'm looking for. I have no reluctance to getting into the "DETAILS" in fact my personal interests include biology. I believe the proof of evolution or creation is in the details.

In the video above there was a segment which proposed that having similar bone structure is one line of evidence supporting evolution, But in truth, all that proves is there are similar bone structures not that evolution is the cause of the similar bone structures. Later in the video the narrator pointed out a set of bones inside the whale's body and said perhaps they were leftovers from the whales evolutionary history and connects them with the bones in the hind quarters of animals.

Note the underlined sentences in Wikipedia's Cetacea article below:

Sexual Reproduction

"Cetaceans evolved from land-dwelling ancestors and lost external hind limbs. They evolved significantly reduced pelvic bones that seemed to serve no other function except to anchor muscles that maneuver the penis. Cetacean pelvic bones are unique because they are no longer constrained by sacral and hind limb attachments or by hind limb locomotion.

Cetacean pelvic bones were often thought of as “useless vestiges” of their land-dwelling ancestors. However, they are a critical component of male reproductive fitness.

The paired pelvic bones anchor the genitalia and the paired ischiocavernosus muscles that control the penis. In male cetaceans, the paired ischiocavernosus muscles insert deeply toward the distal end of the penis, while proximally encapsulating the paired crus of the penis that anchor to each pelvic bone. The ischiocavernosus muscles appear to maneuver the penis by pulling it to one side or the other and may also maintain erection by compressing the corpus cavernosusm proximally. The ischiocavernosus muscles may work in coordination with other soft tissue innovacations to control the penis, which suggests the importance of ischiocavernosus muscles in penis movement." (emphasis mine)

To someone who believes in creation, as I do, that little detail provided revealed that the seemingly useless bones supposedly left over from a past ancestor are not in fact truly useless at all. "They are a critical component of male reproductive fitness."

I look forward to reading the book you recommended. I do not claim to know enough- not of evolution nor of the Bible. So I'm open to new thoughts but they must be backed up not in generalities but in the details.

Frank