WT could try French Revolutionary Calendar which attempted to erase any traces of Christianity in the I. French Republic. JWs would use Mesidor, Thermidor for months, days of weeks and other by the season...At least they would not have to invent anything new.
Posts by kaik
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45Pagan Origins
by tinker ina currently active jdub acquaintance occasionally stops by to say hello and we share a wee dram or two.
after the general small talk of new cars, exotic vacations and sports we often get into the "why" we are xjubs.
he is a well educated publisher who holds a phd in child psychology.
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Memories. .. share the earliest or most favorite childhood memory
by MissFit inmy daughter tells me that experts say children tend to have false memories.
apparently their brain tends to fill things in that may not be totally accurate.. i refuse to believe that my favorite and comforting memory might not be true.
so here is to fond memories real or not.. the earliest memory i have is being put in a crib at a preschool.
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kaik
MissFit, I think I remember my aunt's dog because we played a lot and I still recollect how we chased each other and hid under the table or bed. My aunt was very sick, so she could not play with me, so I do not think my child memory considered important to retain it. My father birth house was in the mountains in small city, but I do not think it was torn down. However, 40 years is long time for place to stay the same. I have so sweet recollection of this place, like hiking and mushroom picking in the summer when I was four years old with my dad, WWII bunkers and my father stories of shootouts between partizans and SS. With my cousins we than played as partisans and Germans, while my grandmother made delicious smoked sausages in the smokehouse and baked home-made bread. So, it must be fairly big place. I also remember when my JW aunt and uncle arrived for "vacation" in that place and started to have bible study with my parents in that summer.
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Memories. .. share the earliest or most favorite childhood memory
by MissFit inmy daughter tells me that experts say children tend to have false memories.
apparently their brain tends to fill things in that may not be totally accurate.. i refuse to believe that my favorite and comforting memory might not be true.
so here is to fond memories real or not.. the earliest memory i have is being put in a crib at a preschool.
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kaik
The earliest memory I have are from age four. It is interesting that some of the things I remember are irrelevant. My father had sister who was extremely sick and I was her favorite. I do not have whatsoever recollection of her, but I remember her dog very clearly, and her house, the carpet and furniture. My father was upset that I did not remember her. Last year I went to see my father birth place, house where lived during WWII. I have not seen that place for 40 years, so I had only retract child memories of his place. I was very disappointed that I could not locate his house and asked couple locals about it without luck. I wish I could find it, because I have still nice memory of this great-grandfather house; old well in the center of the farm yard; BBQ pit and smoke house full of delicious sausages, and a huge mountain forest in the background, and icy stream further down, where as four year old was forbidden to go. Yet I could not locate this place anymore, so I am not sure how much of the memory of my father's house is based on reality and what is just imagination. Once my father moved away and died, I lost almost all pictures and I have only one picture of him...I cannot even remember my father's voice anymore. -
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Everlasting Life on Paradise Earth - My musings of why it cannot be true
by leaving_quietly inactually, just one musing.. there are a number of scriptures that wtbts uses to support their doctrine of everlasting life on paradise earth.
the vast majority come from the hebrew scriptures.
using just one verse, i believe i can disprove this doctrine quite soundly.. the verse is john 6:68.. simon peter answered him: lord, whom shall we go away to?
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kaik
It is important to understand what paradise meant for Jewish scholars after 300 BCE, during 1st century AD, and how we understand it thanks to Catholic influence on the Christian theology. Paradise on Earth is rather modern construct, especially developed and groomed by Protestant Reformation during 16th century. There is a good book Paradise in Antiquity Jewish and Christian Views which well describe the development of this theology and how it changed through the time. From 4th century BCE, Jews started to believe that the paradise was not on Earth, but a place when the dead with depart either immediately after their death or after spiritual resurrection. Jews in the Jesus era were most likely not believing on earthly paradise, as they expected Messianic Age where there will be a peace among nations, not recreated Garden of Eden. Generally the rabbinic literature maintain that paradise existed before creation of earth and thus was a spiritual not physical place on earth.
Another point to consider that Earth and our Solar system is not infinitive, but has limited resources. Sun will eventually burn all the hydrogen, and Earth's core will cool down. There wont be any plate tectonic, and our planet will eventually die. It wont happen until in 2 billions of years, but still Earth's is not permanent place.
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Using Third-World Poverty-Stricken Witnesses To Guilt More Donations Video, Where is that Video?
by SanLuisObispoTruthSeeker ini heard about a new video where the watchtower has a single mother and her child eating millet or rice with almost no material possessions worried about donating to the world wide work.
now most religions are trying to donate to third-world countries, not the watchtower profit enterprise, they are willing to take a families last milk cow so their leaders can spend those funds fighting pedophile lawsuits!.
every place the watchtower builds you read about the angry citizens having to pick up their tax bills because the watchtower only takes!
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kaik
wannabefree, there is a huge difference between a personal initiative to help someone and versus organized charity work that KH have not done and is rather stingy on helping others. I had never seen KH helped anyone not in Czech Republic. When they had major floods in 1997 and 2002 in which large part of Prague was under water, JWs did not helped each other at all. The attitude of the aged JWs was survival of the fittest. No compassion. I knew three JW families who were flooded out in 1997, and all what the elders did were asking people to distribute more literature. Some of these people depended on Catholic charity to get food, shelter, and donation. There was not even collection for people who lost everything in the flood. I seen how Catholic charity helped extensively, I saw Catholic nuns in Prague to sandbag and clean up after the flood in 2002. I do not think it will be as hard for the KH to organize a food bank and soup kitchen for community in natural distress, because 7DA had done wonderful work and their numbers in the city is exactly the same as the number of the JWs.
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Wisdom in "the Word of God". Really? What Watchtower got wrong at this week's Congregation "Bible" Study.
by Island Man inthe congregation "bible" study (cbs) for the week of december 29, 2014 to january 4, 2015 was taken from draw close to jehovah, pages 179-182, paragraphs 1-8.. paragraph 3 seems to be using the ancient jew's fear of jehovah's thunderous voice to justify the wisdom of him using moses to record and transmit his laws to the people.
but there is an implied false dichotomy here.
since god is supposedly almighty he is most certainly capable of giving a personal revelation of his requirements to every human in a clear, concise and unambiguous manner that they can fully understand and remember - without having to use his thunderous voice.
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kaik
OT was not finalized until much later times until 300 BCE; and it was a process where acceptance of various books of the Hebrew canon was not universally accepted by all Jewish scholars at that time. I had generally encountered in various books that it was a three stage process, which started after Babylonian exile and continued until 2nd century BC. If the book of Daniel was written in 2nd century, the OT could not be completed by 400 BCE.
Illiteracy rate reminded high among all segment of population until the invention of printing press, which means that even Jews depended on oral tradition and oral literacy to recite various part of the canon from memory. A few wealthy could own book or manuscript before 1450. If Jewish literacy was twice that high of the medieval population (15%), it would still mean that 70% of them would not be able to read and write in the 1300.
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1914 to 2014: The funniest JW moments of this century.
by African GB Member Jr ini just thought we could share some of the funniest moments since its the holiday season and we are taking things easy.
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kaik
Do not forget the sexy miniskirt sister Sofia with high heels from California and her husband Caleb taking picture behind cartoon character. They moved fashion from 1940 style into the 1970's! All other is just nonsense from WT from the publishing department. -
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Wisdom in "the Word of God". Really? What Watchtower got wrong at this week's Congregation "Bible" Study.
by Island Man inthe congregation "bible" study (cbs) for the week of december 29, 2014 to january 4, 2015 was taken from draw close to jehovah, pages 179-182, paragraphs 1-8.. paragraph 3 seems to be using the ancient jew's fear of jehovah's thunderous voice to justify the wisdom of him using moses to record and transmit his laws to the people.
but there is an implied false dichotomy here.
since god is supposedly almighty he is most certainly capable of giving a personal revelation of his requirements to every human in a clear, concise and unambiguous manner that they can fully understand and remember - without having to use his thunderous voice.
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kaik
Generally oral traditions bend historical truth and context within one generation as the contemporary witnesses dies out or could not recollect details. This is much the case for entire span of the humanity. Look into the oral stories of the urban legends. We do know very little on Roman Empire in time on some of the emperors, either due no sufficient records were kept, or they were lost in history. For example during turbulent crisis of the 3rd century, there are often debate if some of the barracks usurpers to the the throne even existed. There is very little know what Atilla and Leo debated, and why he did to complete the conquest of Italy. And these were monumental events in the core of the most powerful empire of the Antiquity where imperial court had own notaries. Now transpose to the impoverished province of Judea around 70 AD where there was only small segment of literate population... and myth of Jesus was born. -
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Using Third-World Poverty-Stricken Witnesses To Guilt More Donations Video, Where is that Video?
by SanLuisObispoTruthSeeker ini heard about a new video where the watchtower has a single mother and her child eating millet or rice with almost no material possessions worried about donating to the world wide work.
now most religions are trying to donate to third-world countries, not the watchtower profit enterprise, they are willing to take a families last milk cow so their leaders can spend those funds fighting pedophile lawsuits!.
every place the watchtower builds you read about the angry citizens having to pick up their tax bills because the watchtower only takes!
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kaik
NVR2L8 and SLOTS, insidetheKH is troll who got verbal with me several times on this board; this WT cocotte called me numerous names while hiding behind the "anonymity" of the internet. I am sure that people in the HQ and Bethels would not be very thrilled if they find out that he is patrolling apostate website. He deliberately infuses lies into the discussions than retracts that word he posted was not exactly what he posted like that word NEVER...
I do not know any JW personally who starved to death, but considering situation that was during WWII in Central and Eastern Europe and in places like Lenigrad where many JWs during USSR lived - based on the statistics of the population survival in the city during the siege - at least one JW there had to die by starvation (overall 40% of population in Lenigrad died by hunger, freezing, and shelling during siege). Worse statistics were in Warsaw, which saw hungry winter in 1944 where 85% of population died between summer of 1944 and January 1945. Yet, we have here moron who used word NEVER with certainty. Extermination camps during WWII were not paradise. While there is a huge difference between suffering of JWs during the Nazi occupation where some of them suffered death, while other lived in life of idle luxury as servants for high ranking Nazi officials like Heydrich. I would still not dare to call death of 1500 JWs during that time as no single one had EVER died from hunger. I was in Terezin which was concentration camp for occupied Czechoslovakia, but served as a labor camp not extermination and there was certainly starvation at the end of the WWII. And Terezin was not Jasenovac or Treblinka. Czech JWs were in Terezin until it was liberated in May 1945.
Another lies is that someone would claim that he delivered supplies into country with wrong name. There was only Czechoslovakia. Material well being in communist Czechoslovakia was alright, and never required food banks. Social system was implemented in that country since 1926, unlike many other communist countries, which guaranteed some welfare nest. Social and economic situation in Poland was bad and very bad in Romania. I do not believe that communist regime would allow any truck deliveries for JWs there as it would not be possible. Jehovah Witnesses were illegal. Publications into Czechoslovakia and Romania were delivered through much liberal Hungary and I know personally the guy who used to do this. The idea that JW from Bethel could drive truck through Iron Curtain for illegal group with cloth and food supplies is so ridiculous that it does not have to be explained more to anyone who lived behind Iron Curtain like myself at that time. You could travel out only on permit. Travel to other communist countries was possible, but difficult and required extensive permits. I been all in that region from Russia to Balkans and I know how the travel system worked.
Food bank that was done for Romania in December 1989 was right during Romanian Revolution and had to do with overall situation in that region following the collapse of the Berlin Wall. There was no any other food bank or donations before or afterwards, not even for Yugoslavia and Sarajevo from our KH. Any case, we should ignore the WT mole insidetheKH as his sole purpose is to sow disinformation on the JWN.
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Wisdom in "the Word of God". Really? What Watchtower got wrong at this week's Congregation "Bible" Study.
by Island Man inthe congregation "bible" study (cbs) for the week of december 29, 2014 to january 4, 2015 was taken from draw close to jehovah, pages 179-182, paragraphs 1-8.. paragraph 3 seems to be using the ancient jew's fear of jehovah's thunderous voice to justify the wisdom of him using moses to record and transmit his laws to the people.
but there is an implied false dichotomy here.
since god is supposedly almighty he is most certainly capable of giving a personal revelation of his requirements to every human in a clear, concise and unambiguous manner that they can fully understand and remember - without having to use his thunderous voice.
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kaik
The book from Catherine Hezser, Jewish Literacy in Roman world does good job in analyzing the level of education and literacy among Jews, Roman settlers in the Judea and Palestine, and who the education changed through the antiquity. It is often estimated that only 1 in 7 could write and write during Roman Empire and this included soldiers who would have to at least sign their names on the official documents. What is another interesting fact her book at the page 503 that "at least ninety percent of the Jewish population of Roman Palestine could merely write own name or not write and read at all must lead to a new assessment of our understanding of ancient Judaism as a 'book-religion'".
Before the Roman takeover of Jerusalem, only handful of priests and high level of aristocracy could read. Majority of peasants in the countryside were illiterate and had to rely on oral tradition on various interpretation of the OT.