Furuli's new e-book: "My Beloved Religion - And The Governing Body"

[Top Cat O’Malihan]

Did I hear my name? Well well well! Ann O’Maly! I am told I am named after her!

Hmmm, Tom.....I’m not sure that I like her. She’s not like that blowhard AlanH, is she? What a piece of work he was! Not like us, at all, hey Tom (or at least, me)?

[Ann O'Maly]

9 minutes ago, Top Cat O’Malihan said:

AlanH

*AlanF

And while I'm at it,

16 hours ago, scholar JW said:

Steven M Ruse

*Steven M. Bryan

[Space Merchant]

That is a familiar one. How many Alans, as well as Allens have we had on here?

[TrueTomHarley]

14 minutes ago, Space Merchant said:

That is a familiar one. How many Alans, as well as Allens have we had on here?

It is like a plague of locusts. Get Kos on it.

[Srecko Sostar]

Perhaps many of us/them are just, only ... Alien 

 

[Arauna]

2 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Look to the world that scholars have collectively built—for the most part, this system of things is run by highly educated people—to properly evaluate ‘scholarship.’

If one looks at the kind of 'science' in scholarship these days - where a  person can now choose a gender despite a Y or X chromosome -  then the state of scholarship is in chaos.  

The most prestigious universities get grants from certain pharma giants and then a study appears shortly after which just happens to bring more money into the pocket of the corporation. Now that is excellent scholarship!

So much for scholarship....... although I must say one has to work exceedingly hard to get a PHD in an ancient language - three times harder than the social sciences - but this does not make you an expert on 'everything' pertaining to the bible. 

Nevertheless, Feruli's years of service and record sounds commendable and maybe qualifies him to have a negative say about the direction of GB....... but must he do it so publicly? ......So as to garner undue attention to his person and his scholarship? 

I would like to know the outcome of this.....   

2 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Does he convey any sense that Jehovah is running the show or is it all political maneuverings with him?

An important question.....

Anyone can say something " just because they think they are qualified to do so". 

1 hour ago, Ann O'Maly said:

Allen/Wyatt Earp guy (is he still posting?).

Lol......

1 hour ago, Ann O'Maly said:

(the FDS doctrine, @Arauna)? 

Thanks Ann.  I guess the older I get the lazier the eyes and brain.... 

 

[TrueTomHarley]

38 minutes ago, Arauna said:

If one looks at the kind of 'science' in scholarship these days

These are challenging times to offer nuanced views of things. Few people accept nuances. Thus, if you do not accept every premise of your opponent’s view, you are ‘Brother Watchtower’ as that silly Witness says of me. But I don’t take offense. I don’t exactly flatter her, either.

It nettles me when I see brothers gush all over ‘science’ and ‘critical thinking.’ Why should they do that? It constitutes the prime tool of our adversaries. I’m not against science. It’s great stuff. Pour me a double-shot of it. But to rely on it as the be-all and end-all is surely to court folly.

Do not scientists, for the most part, urinate all over Genesis and blood? Are we to imagine that those are the only things that they are all wet on? Yet many brothers would seem to. The GB does not, which earns them my tremendous respect. They recognize it as a tool—not valueless, but also not THE GAMECHANGER. Scientists mostly lean this way or that? Well—take note of it but don’t let it ruin your day. Tomorrow you may see the headline, “Everything You Thought You Knew About Such-and-Such is Wrong!”

38 minutes ago, Arauna said:

The most prestigious universities get grants from certain pharma giants and then a study appears shortly after which just happens to bring more money into the pocket of the corporation. Now that is excellent scholarship!

There is an ex-pharma VP online who makes just that point. ‘Nobody has any money,’ he says. ‘Universities don’t  Governments don’t. Think-tanks don’t. But Pharma has lots of money. It commissions scientists from one of those penniless outfits to study this or that new drug. If the outcome if favorable to Pharma, that outfit can expect to be funded for more studies. If it is unfavorable, that outfit will never hear from Pharma again. ‘No money has changed hands,’ he says. ‘No agreements have been entered into. But everyone knows what they must do.’

The ones who shove ‘science‘ down everyone’s throats are not necessarily even scientists, I am convinced, but are a second buttressing and uninvited layer that I call ‘scientist-philosopher-atheist-cheerleaders.’ Scientists just go about doing science, and many of them see no contradiction between science and the spiritual world—they are two different ways of examining things, and ‘one key does not unlock all.’

People who rail on about science tend to not notice when money hijacks their science, as in the Pharma example above. Scientists have to eat, too. They are also stubborn like anyone else—slow to yield to new data. They are not more so than others, but neither on balance are they less. One of the downfalls of ‘critical thinking’ is that those who espouse it most vehemently are prone to assume that they have a lock on the stuff.

As to Rulf—I’m not opposed to him. If he thinks that he will be DFed, as he has stated—well, who am I to argue? But I will accept it only when I see it. Brothers in charge have something that they did not have 40 years ago. They have a prior example to look at and to see how that worked out. They may or may not go a similar route. I’ll get my head around it regardless of how they go, but I won’t start until they go there.

38 minutes ago, Arauna said:

but must he do it so publicly? ......So as to garner undue attention to his person and his scholarship? 

Yes. And I note and agree that you put them as questions, not statements.

[TrueTomHarley]

3 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

I'm surprised how much I agree with him, on many of his doctrinal points.

I could have told you that beforehand.

[Space Merchant]

@César Chávez Agreed, that is what I was saying elsewhere. There was a collective of some kind in the early Christian churches. Even for those that broke away to formulate what currently mainstream Christendom, they have some kind of Religious order and or structure as well.

[JW Insider]

34 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

I could have told you that beforehand.

Probably true, Tom. I already knew that I would probably agree with plenty of his arguments related to his current view on the FDS and higher education. But so much more that he says, has already been said in so many words over here on this forum. Some of it very recently. The areas where many of us have long defended the Witness position with respect to war, neutrality, the two different hopes of salvation, use of God's name, identifying principles of the true religion, the value of a leadership body with respect to efficiently carrying out a worldwide preaching work, etc., etc. You'd think that he came over here and picked up a few ideas, although I'm sure he had already come to these positions through the WT publications and his own experience in defending them.

On higher education, he tends to present it a bit too positively, without enough warning about some of same dangers that have hurt Witnesses, sometimes spiritually, sometimes economically. I think he is too focused on how well it worked out for himself, and perhaps schools in Norway are more serious than some of the party destinations that attract students in the United States. To him most higher education is Biblically neutral, and he tends to promote higher education for those who can make room for it.

A lot of Witnesses (remember JTR?) have complained about the "dumbing down" of study habits and the lower levels of effort put into really learning scriptural and spiritual matters for ourselves. His issues with the NWT 2013 are also identical to things that have been said here in that regard. Furuli is not terribly consistent with his favorite subjects and pet peeves, but he has managed to explain the issues in very practical terms better than I've seen before.

[Arauna]

43 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Do not scientists, for the most part, urinate all over Genesis and blood?

The new religion is science and technology - even pseudo-science has replaced God. And science these days is without scruples or ethics.  Saw a headline yesterday....... a mouse has been produced with 4 %  human genes.  Why? Most probably they had discovered that all lab mice were too interbred to have provided proper results in the last 25 years.. Who knows why. 

The research done in China labs and by the BIG tech giants is frightening and could put the future of humans in jeopardy -  if they carry on with what they are doing.  The developments in science are so quick at present that governments are not keeping up with proper legislation... and atheist countries do not care to place restrictions on these unscrupulous people.  To them it is a race to dominate the world with a new discovery...... and in this quest there are more than enough funds available from renegade, atheist super rich capitalists and oligarchs who wish to make more money from the results.

I saw a headline recently - the earlier vaccines were grown on animal material. There is talk that pharma covered up when they found retro-viruses in vaccines that were produced via monkey kidney material.  Since most animals have corona virusses ..... there is talk that AIDS originated from vaccines.

There was a court case filed end of Dec 2019 - here's what was copied from the headpiece of the document: Case 1:19-cv-11947 Document 1 Filed 12/31/19 Page 1 of 36.

This court case results did not appear in any media. There was no settlement in this lawsuit. It was mutually dissolved by both sides (plaintiffs/defendants) but the U.S. District Judge's (Hon. Lewis J. Limon) signed a stipulation acknowledging that the defendants (The CDC) could not produce any copies of safety studies - proving that safety studies were never done on vaccines.  They only produced 20 unrelated documents.

So NO safety studies were ever done and yet these pharma corporations, through lobbying, obtained blanket immunity from congress just before the turn of the century. They are not being held accountable in a court of law and a cap of 30 thousand dollars is placed on litigation for people who have  been injured by vaccines in court.  If your child is autistic one needs thousands upon thousands for special teachers etc.  This is the level of corruption going on in the system. The safety claims are fraudulent!

I found it on another website but this was sent me by someone:

www.youtube.com/watch

To get to the meat start at 34:14. If you scroll down to around the 10th commenter, (Joe Knipp), outlines the show. At the very end circa 1:01:00 Del gives the CDC the ultimatum: Either take down the prominent declaration on their website that states Vaccines doesn't cause autism or ICAN is gonna pursue every possible legal avenue.

47 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

many of them see no contradiction between science and the spiritual world—

There IS no contradiction between science and the spiritual world if scientists follow only to where the truth leads them. Unfortunately in the modern world, science has lost the ball because they follow preconceived ideas that there is no god. So anything which may suggest design or anything hinting at God in the conclusion, simply has to be discarded and replaced with a different hypothesis and outcome.

1 hour ago, César Chávez said:

Pharisees and Sadducee

Apart from this legal entity (Sanhedrin) which had already been infiltrated by Greek oratory thinking, and was the highest authority in religious and self-governing matters of the Jews, there was a group of Christian apostles and elders in Jerusalem, according to acts 15, which took the lead.

They appointed 7 brothers of good repute to divide the food amongst the widows because these brothers had to keep busy with the commission Jesus gave the apostles, namely to oversee the Christian congregations and ensure that false teachings did not slip in. They were led by James at the time when Paul and Barnabas came to testify about the gentiles receiving holy spirit  while not circumcised.  The decision of this body (not called a GB then) was sent out to all congregations. Acts 6:1 -6 and Acts 15 "So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question."

 

[Arauna]

45 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

higher education, he tends to present it a bit too positively,

Maybe years ago one could go to university without making crippling debt and also being indoctrinated in a spiritually crippling way.

Today, one has to self-censor at all universities (freedom of inquiry and freedom of speech is curtailed by political correctness) and there is no longer a guest for truth in the humanities.  One sends a child into the class and they come out with LGBTQ indoctrination due to the fact that they have to select one of these courses.... no matter what they are studying. I have watched several interviews with students..... they are not learning to think any longer.  It is truly better to learn a vocation..

There are some sciences that are still good but most have to follow the Darwinian dogma.