Posts by Alpaca

12

If you love google and other search engines...you might want to re-think that?

by Alpaca in

jw
friends

we have arrived at a time & place where we take access to information for granted.

easy, right...you type your query into the search engine and bam, you've got 100 gazillion hits on your subject.

and, most of us are saavy enough to know that a preponderance of the info is total bullshit.

Alpaca

Thanks for all of the input.

What scares the shit out of me is this...the founding fathers recognized that one of the ingredients of a healthy democracy is freedom of the press...ie., to allow the free flow of information without governmental constraints.

We have entered an era that will probably witness the demise of most, if not all newspapers and news magazines. If electronic forums become the primary (only?) source of information available there is will be no way to know how information is being filtered at the behest of a government's "requests." The reality of "1984" can no longer be dismissed as remote or "quaint" in the way that it once was. I don't know about you guys, but I trust the American government to do the right thing only slightly more than I do the Chinese government.

Dissenters might have no other choice but to go back to hard copy and share information through their networks the old fashioned way. Ironically, maybe new newspapers would flourish???

In any event, I think it safe to say that we should question everything, and accept nothing at face value.

19

another newbie

by Adrianoblue in

jw
friends

i`ve been "hanging around" on this jw.net for a while, so this is my very first posting.

i`m a former jw from germany, learnt the truth at the age of 20, got babtized 3 years later, and left the wt (for various reasons) about 4 years ago.

so i just like to say a warm friendly "hello" to everyone.

Alpaca

Welcome to our international non-Brotherhood.

Not that we're not gonna' love ya' like a brother....

12

If you love google and other search engines...you might want to re-think that?

by Alpaca in

jw
friends

we have arrived at a time & place where we take access to information for granted.

easy, right...you type your query into the search engine and bam, you've got 100 gazillion hits on your subject.

and, most of us are saavy enough to know that a preponderance of the info is total bullshit.

Alpaca

We have arrived at a time & place where we take access to information for granted. Easy, right...you type your query into the search engine and bam, you've got 100 gazillion hits on your subject. And, most of us are saavy enough to know that a preponderance of the info is total bullshit. Then it becomes a process of winnowing out the truth or at least the most accurate info you can find.

But, what if the truth wasn't even in the returns? What if it had been deliberately removed so that all you had access to was the bullshit? Being human, you would end up winnowing and you would begin to draw conclusions based on the info you had available to you, but your conclusions would be irrelevant in the overall scheme of things, because the "truth" was unavailable to you.

That is exactly the agreement the Chinese government has extracted from the search engines, like google or yahoo, that want to provide their services in China. The Chinese internet is connected to the rest of world across an electronic "gate" that has been deemed the "Great Firewall of China." It is literally a set of huge cables that convey electronic data between China and the rest of the world. Anything from outside the borders of China is highly censored at the "Great Firewall."

I experienced this for myself when I was in China in 2006. If you type "Tianenmen Square" into any search engine all of the returns are about happy tourists and history, blah, blah, blah.....or if you type "Tianenmen Square Massacre" into the search engines, it will give you a message that says "your search returned no results." Any of the search engines that operate in China do so with a version that is distinguished by a ".cn" extension. All of the search engines are whores and they agreed to it because it meant they could make money in China if they agreed to the government's censorship standards. BTW, they had to create new programs and softwares that would automatically insert the Boolean operators that would restrict the results.

Think it can't happen here?

45

Atheists/Theists: What is the best argument FOR theism (a God's existence) you have heard?

by Spook in

i have lived for the last 3 years with two phd philosophers as roomates, both in the last year of their dissertation at reputable institutions (notre dame, penn/uic respectively).

they are both moderate semi-christian theists after having been fundamentalists as youths.

i have a sceince and engineering background and am a naturalist atheist former jw.

Alpaca

First I will say that on the scale of 0 (no doubt about God's existence) and 100 (complete doubt in God's existence) I am at about 98.5. I cannot go all the way to 100 because the atheist is just as dogmatic as the believer.

Some of the new things being discovered in physics and astrophysics that cannot be explained with the knowledge base we currently have seem to suggest that there are other dimensions beyond our ken. What makes it bizarre is that the effects of the events that happen in those dimensions can be observed in the dimensions we know and can observe.

For example, one of the things all of us have come to accept as "immutable fact" is that nothing in the universe travels faster than speed of light. Now, astrophysicists have discovered that there are action-reaction events that can span significant distances of the universe, even across the entire known universe. How does that happen?

And there are lots of other similar discoveries that, at the very least, give pause to the assumption that we can know one way or the other whether God exists.

Science marched forward at an astonishing rate since the 17th Century with one phenomenon (often attributed to God) after another being stripped of the mystery that shrouded it from the beginning of human existence. Now, we have entered a period when the answers are not coming so easily or quickly.

So, it is the complexity of the universe and the unknown dimensions of space and time that make the belief in God (who must have no limitations imposed by the dimensions we know), at least, reasonable. On the other hand, humans have plenty of experience with scienctific explanations eventually triumphing over supernatural explantions, that persisted from time immemorial, for observable phenomena. Therefore, it would be premature to jump to any conclusions about "proof" for God's existence.

One thing is pretty clear...if God does exist the unmistakeable evidence is not being volunteered.

11

Any Evidence WT has published material for other religions/societies?

by cameo-d in

just curious.

after all, they are a big publishing company.. i would think they might have other divisions where the same equip.

is used for publishing literature for other groups.. surely, there is better money in paid contracts.. and other religions as well as societies and organizations have a lot of literature to be printed as well.. has anyone else ever been curious about wt publishing "outside jobs"?.

Alpaca

I recall reading about a scandal a few years back in which the BORG printed some Bible for another group that distributed free Bibles (and if I remember correctly, it was the KJV Bible).

Unfortunately, I don't remember any of the details.

27

Hi from wary

by wary in

jw
friends

nice to be part of the board at last.

been reading here for around eight months.

very warily at first, but now my mind is out of the org.. i was raised in it and never would have dreamed at looking at internet sites for fear of being misled.

Alpaca

Welcome wary.

7

Is the Watch Tower a reverse Ponzi scheme?

by garybuss in

jw
friends

startfragment .

is the watch tower a reverse ponzi scheme?.

isn't a ponzi an affinity scam?

Alpaca

The "investment" I am referring to is the ultimate investment of lives, hopes, dreams, emotions....until there is nothing left to give...and no hope of ever receiving anything back for the effort.

7

Is the Watch Tower a reverse Ponzi scheme?

by garybuss in

jw
friends

startfragment .

is the watch tower a reverse ponzi scheme?.

isn't a ponzi an affinity scam?

Alpaca

This from a thread I started a few months back on the very same topic:

http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/170497/1/Spiritual-Ponzi-Maddoff-has-nothing-on-GB-for-destroying-lives

Over the past couple of weeks as the Bernard Maddoff scandal has been unfolding I couldn't help but see the parallels between his ponzi scheme and the WT Society's behavior over its history. The WT Society and the Governing Body have perpetrated a scandalous spiritaul ponzi scheme on some of the most vulnerable members of our society and others who were just good hearted, idealistic people wishing to see a better world.

Just like Maddoff, the WT Society (and by extension the Governing Body):

1. created an "elite" club that could only be joined if you met certain very high standards and were invited to join

2. has always sought the implicit, blind trust of its "investors"

3. encouraged "investors" to invest all the fruits of their lives in the scheme

4. has known in their "heart of hearts" that the whole pitch was/is based on empty promises

5. has kept moving the "prize" so that it is always tantalizingly within reach

6. like many ponzi scheme perpetrators, perhaps started off with honest intentions but then had to twist, distort, and lie to keep the whole thing afloat

7. is remorseless for the uncounted ruined lives, shattered dreams, and stunted potential they have mercilessly imposed on the rank and file

8. will escape adequate justice for the swath of destruction they have left in the wake of their scheme

Yup....Spiritual Ponzi....ya' gotta' love it ......NOT!!!!!

19

Just in case you missed it -- great comment by "easyreader" from another thread

by Alpaca in

on metatron's thread about dubs going mainstream easyreader said this:.

another issue causing the decay is the lack of a "date".

in order for a cult to work, there has to be a date where everything will culminate.

Alpaca

On metatron's thread about Dubs going mainstream easyreader said this:

Another issue causing the decay is the lack of a "date". In order for a cult to work, there has to be a date where everything will culminate. Even after 1975 came and went, there was a specific time period even though there was no specific year. The system surely would not last another twenty years, no youths in the organization would reach adulthood before the end came, definitely things would have changed before the turn of the century.The turn of the century happened, people who were in their teens, twenties, and thirties are now older, some working in terrible fields or are unable to change their professions because they were herded into window washing or sand blasting.

With no date, you've got no cult. People aren't storming out of the kingdom hall doors in disgust; they're just slowly slipping away. The money problem just makes it worse.

15

The 7th creative day and the 1000 yr. reign--isn't the BORG still on the hook with 1975?

by Alpaca in

the borg has simultaneously used several lines of reasoning in conjunction with one another to argue that we are "in the last days" period of time.

the sequence of events is supposed to be: "the last days," armageddon, and then immediately christ's millenial reign (1000 years).. as i recall one of the pieces of evidence the borg used to bolster the argument for armageddon coming in 1975 was that the period of the 7 creative days was supposed to end up spanning 49,000 years.. according to the "paradise" book and other 50s and 60s publications the 7 creative days started after the earth had been here for a very long time.

each of the 7 creative days was supposed to be 7,000 years long.. god created adam & eve at the very end of the 6th creative day.

Alpaca

Thanks undercover!

Doesn't this "noo light" create some other problems for them?

Such as the fact, according to Bible chronology, humans have only been here for 6,000 years and the next youngest species are all millions of years old. So, one of two things has to be true, but not both...either the geologic/paleontological record can really only be applied to non-human life or the Bible's chronology of human lifespans is wrong/figurative. If it is figurative, then so is the date for the Flood... and on and on and on....with every other date.

Also, the fossil record clearly shows that many species appeared and disappeared relatively quickly in the geologic record, some persisted for 100s of millions of years, and others have persisted from the time they first appeard.

While God was still in the process of creating were some species going extinct before Adam could name them?

The BS in the WT article above is just one more excellent example of the BORGs feeble attempt at explaining anything. There whole belief system is just a house of cards.