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Even though we're not supposed to be political, I've noticed that I can still detect leanings in the friends. But then again, it's not as if god's kingdom isn't a government with a history behind it's development and an agenda for the future, but I do see some who cherry pick ideas here and there to support their wankish condemnations of others, often while doing so betraying more of the issues they'll eventually have to deal with than those these look w/either an envious or jaundiced eye down upon.

Reading through various histories, what seems to be absent is what was actually done to convince illiterate people that Christianity was true. Lots of talk about conversions, but really light on the processes involved.

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Found this. Interesting take. Of course Bart is an atheist. Now in all t

We'll never stop needing to get together as far as I can see. A physical inspection of the sheep and how the sheep interact with each other in groups is essential to knowing if they are physically, spiritually and emotionally healthy. People can easily hide and even in meetings, but it's hard to hide in perpetuity if you're regular in meeting attendance IN PERSON.

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It doesn't surprise me. I've been for years meditating on the kinds of personalities necessary to generate a new religious group vs those required to grow the religious group vs those who wish to maintain the status quo. I realize that I don't have the kind of personality which would gather a group for any purpose. I've always had the attitude of "Go about your affairs. Pursue your interests. The ones whom you run into along the way who are motivated will join in the manner of their choosing." - Clearly we wouldn't have the Bible or any religious organizations if everyone were like me.

There's a Ted Talk I saw that suggests something along these lines as a sub current to all this ...."How does it feel to be wrong?...ans "It feels like being right." We never feel like we aren't being unreasonable or unbalanced if we think we're right, but we could be.

One wonders if the videos the WTBS published allowed for comments and ratings what this would do for the I think Mr F is doing commercials for IKEA.

I've been trying to read Edward Feser, but he's a terrible speaker, and he doesn't appear to understand the most important parts of his arguments.

Speaking of retrospectives....I was reminiscing on a place I lived as a kid and found this This is the sort of thing a lot of people don't get about Mexican culture. They look for and see magic everywhere. What's interesting to me is that you have JW's who aren't that different from these people. I'm not sure what's worse - seeing God acting everywhere or never seeing his hand in anything at all. (This is what I grew up around. My parents hired a sitter for me and my sister before we went to school and they later told me that she was a curandera)

I'm suspicious of people who actively dislike cats and preferring dogs over cats.

I see a problem in isolating ones thoughts from those around us, however. On the one hand we could be exploring areas which are faith-building to us, but not touched on in any depth by the society and there are some who have controlling personalities who view with a jaundiced eye this sort of thing. I remember years ago when I took the Bible tapes the society produced and with the aid of the Aid Book and the societies other materials, I spliced the recordings of all the synoptic gospels into one long, but completely chronological account. Then when I was running or driving about I'd liste

Of course voting even from a secular perspective as an individual is statistically meaningless. You'd be better off becoming your own lobbyist, influencing through campaign funding efforts and the like, and even that is generally not worth the time unless you're going to try to make a living off being a parasite on the beast.

Then there was crusty, cranky old Bro Manera. I remember being at an elders meeting w/him and floated the idea of turning unassigned territory into telephone territory that congregations could GET assigned and these could then work them any way they'd like - phone, physical, letters - the closest to in person was best, but the point would be to get to these people more frequently. He didn't get it. He said "I think it would be confusing to the ones who were working it.". I blurted out "I don't think you get it. No one's working the territory because it's not assigned. Why not just assign

I'd like to know more about him and his background (or have a zoom chat). One thing I've had to navigate, as have many others is that there's often this misunderstanding that being interested in exploring subjects such as the ones that we as JW's profess to be interested in (like Jehovah and the Bible) is somehow disloyal if we decide that we on our own wish to explore further. A person can be faithful and quite frankly bored by material which is repetitive and containing nothing novel. It's not surprising that when you are truly interested in the material, that you eventually "make the t