Pudgy

There are at least nine types of people in the world.
Those who can't connect the dots.
Those who can but won't connect the dots.
Those who connect the dots, but connect the wrong dots.
Those who can't even see the dots to bother with the question of connecting them.
Those who can and do connect the dots.
Those who imagine there are dots to connect and connect these.
Those who imagine there are dots, but perversely refuse to connect the dots in their imagination.
Those who imagine there are dots, but connect the wrong ones in their imagination.

...and if you could think "Let me do it Hemingway-style while I do it. Better yet, in the form of a short equation, like E = MC**2."
Remember Paul said "if the trumpet sounds an indistinct call, who will get ready...?"
Also you have to steel-man your opponent. If you can't do that, you're less convincing as you appear to not understand the opposition.

It's all about being politically correct. Some nations are more sensitive to justified criticism than others. In some European countries it's ok to tell your best friend she's fat and needs to lose weight.. in other countries that would be called fat shaming and is a no no. The other thing is than some people think that "false humility" is ok. It's nice to be honest, but many people can't take it. Today's society has become a bunch of snowflakes as JTR  (a former  member of the forum)  used to call them. And he was right. 

Once again this becomes a comedy forum. Is someone actually paying for this web space. I've no idea how forums are 'paid for'. Maybe by the advertisements ? 
It is a shame how xero has to keep showing his inner self to the world, and it is a shame how CC = Billy the kid has to keep spewing acid.  I thank you Tom for making it all so amusing... I'm only on here this morning as it's raining outside and i need to think of things to do.  Have a nice day everyone.  Oh, I note there is a new topic about a 'new book' = new light  
 
 

I think they should have the right to do this... 
And they should (and hopefully will) give the money back to the innocent guys.
I hope to see a follow up news item about how this all worked out someday with the bad guys losing and the innocent being made whole again.

Yes, true indeed. On the other hand one has to use the head to be able to distinguish the truth from non truth. Evangelicals are led by the heart, but they are obviously misguided. 

I've been told that. It's a baked-in personality trait. I have high-low self esteem. My biggest fear is that people will be too stupid to realize how brilliant I am.
This reminds me of an elders meeting where one brother said to me "Other people have ideas too!" and my response was "Well if we could knock it off with the fake humility and speak as men, maybe we could get these meetings done more quickly. Just spit it out already."
Edited to mention
I remember one brother (was it me?) who said in a meeting in response to the phrase "speaking as men" ..."Oh, you mean like now when we're being rude and tactless?"

I know where you’re coming from, but I agree with Anna. I think it is not good to describe the brotherhood this way. I think it because the scriptures lay no emphasis at all on this “deficiency,” if it is one. Instead, they goes out of their way to show favor to such ones. They pay no attention to the head. They only pay attention to the heart. 
“Wisdom cries aloud from the street,” the Bible says. “Hogwash,” comes the answer from the learned ones. “It cries aloud from the quadrangles. Only ignoramuses are to be found in the street.”
It is their bad, for it cries aloud from the street. 
I like the counsel to Philippians to keep regarding the other as superior. If it seems to me that I truly am superior towards another with regard to smarts, I look for another way in which he truly is superior to me. I usually don’t have to look too hard.

You are a little condescending here, but I know what you mean

I completely agree with what was said .... 
... also, I am of the opinion that “blood fractions” cannot enter the realm of conscience. Because of the "do not eat blood" itself, as a commandment, it is essentially set as a prohibition, not as a moral dilemma. "Blood transfusion" has become a dilemma (religious, doctrinal, moral dilemma, etc.), because the question arises whether receiving blood for the purpose of a medical procedure can be reduced to just "eating" something that is prohibited in Bible .
“Blood fractions” are not a matter of conscience because there is currently no religious dilemma about it in the WTJWorg official position. (Same is with blood transfusion. This is not matter for conscience of JW member, but only matter of obeying WTJWorg doctrine)  The question of "blood fractions" is a question of the desired choice, similar to the example of "what color of carpet" do you want, or do you not want a carpet in general, but you want ceramic tiles.
The question of conscience is not just a question of whether we will be guilty of something or not. Or, will the social environment accept or reject us. It is also a question of how we will feel ourselves if we do or do not do something.

Well there are certainly mundane things pertaining to conscience. Like minor blood fractions. Quite mundane as the term applies to the earthly realm. One could imagine all manner of things there. Suppose one were to imagine that it would be possible like a Ted Talk I saw, where they were able to manufacture or culture meat, that they were also able to manufacture all that blood is. Would this be allowable, if it were completely indistinguishable from actual blood?
Also, it would seem that IQ and conscience are also related. I would imagine that certain nuance in the exercise of one's conscience might get a jaundiced look from low IQ brothers and sisters. Let's face it, some of our most faithful brothers and sisters have IQ's about the level of a hamster.
I was thinking that once when my wife and I were giving a ride to the circuit assembly for a sister and her daughter. They sat happily in the back eating chips offering nothing in the way of conversation or adding anything to the discussion until they ran out of chips and fell asleep until we got to the assembly hall.
I can't imagine these could ever get stumbled out of the truth by some fancy-pants discussions surrounding relative vs absolute dates in the Hebrew scriptures.

But it was OK for the WTS to use Oracle and Delphi when they set up their accounting systems using an IDE with Object Pascal?

I liked your KH building experience. We've all had that experience when we would have made different decisions if we were in charge, and then we are glad we weren't.
But I can't seem to fit your musing on conscience into what I thought was the most common use of the term "conscience" in the Bible. Of course, it might be right anyway, depending on what you mean by consequences. For example:
Let's say that you would love the experience of eating roast beef a couple times a week, but depending on your location (and your time in history) the only viable source is the meat shop just outside the local pagan temple where they sacrifice animals and then sell the meat. In this case, the consequence of eating meat is something you would want to experience, but perhaps you'd rather not experience the consequence of spiritual brothers and sisters who react to your attitude by:
their own revulsion that you would dare be associated with idolatry. talking behind your back and gossiping that you are not a serious Christian because you would dare go against the counsel of the Jerusalem body of elders who declared that you should not eat meat that had been sacrificed to an idol. their being shaken in their faith or even stumbled that you would do this openly in front of them and even defend it as no big deal (because idols are no big deal). Or perhaps you are not truly convinced in your own mind that eating meat sacrificed to an idol is OK. Therefore you think it might be a sin, and are therefore going to suffer the future consequences of judgment against yourself for continuing in sin.
This is probably the way most Witnesses look at blood-sourced medical therapies. Most Witnesses will accept the full range of "allowed" blood products (smaller fractions) that the WTS has identified as OK "if your conscience allows it." What the WTS has currently identified as "not allowed" (whole and larger fractions) are not considered to be a matter of conscience. They are simply not allowed without the potential consequences of disfellowshipping.
But as regards the "conscience" matter of those allowable fractions, the Witness wants the consequences of the therapeutic medical advantages including longer and healthier physical life in this system. You will not be gossiped about behind your back nor will brothers and sisters be shaken in their faith by your decision to take these blood products, because there is trust in the WTS decision that you have made a decision that properly falls under the range of decisions that are allowed by your own conscience. One could argue that this really has nothing to do with conscience, and comments from HLC elders (including one of my cousins) would appear to bear this out.
There have been several comments in this thread where the subtext, at least, shows that we might be confusing conscience at times with guilt or "reasonable" choices regarding sin, or just "reasonable" choices regarding not wishing to offend people.
It occurs to me that the apostle Paul would rather eat vegetables (instead of meat) in front of brothers who might be offended/stumbled. Yet he was willing to write a letter that publicly declared that it was OK to eat meat sacrificed to an idol. Which is worse, eating in front of one who might be stumbled, or writing a letter that offends 10,000 brothers who might be stumbled at hearing your flippant attitude about meat sacrificed to idols.

And you're right in may ways these ARE superior, but then again no one is superior, just different. Satan knows scripture as well no doubt and although I think the IQ of angels is a bit overrated, as I think their abilities to do certain things may be instinctive like our digesting our food or elements of our autonomic nervous systems I'm sure he's not a low IQ moron. Of course none of this was any value to him was it. Power is neutral, but the purpose to which it's employed is key the same as intelligence. Intelligence wrongly used or in the hands of a moral pervert is a dangerous weapon whose use brings nothing good to its holder or to anyone else for that matter.
Opposers strike me as the kinds of people who have imagined their (arguable) superior intelligence makes them right in all things. They mistake the ability to argue a position with being correct.  (1 Cor. 1:19 comes to mind)

But the funny thing was, i wasn't sugesting CC was you Tom.  I was suggesting CC was xero.  
I am now thinking that CC is not good with English. 

Ah CC so you are xero. Ok fine.  That is why you are so upset with my 'thinking aloud'.
 
I note here that you say I make accusation. That in itself is an accusation aimed at me. 
As for me, I only use one name or one aka on this forum.  One is enough. 
I'll put the kettle on then to make tea for the Police you pretend to be sending. 
 

I English your second language CC?

I English your second language CC?

Xero gets more childish by each comment. His low inteligence level would have been just right for an elder. I wonder if he commited CSA ? He must have been removed for a reason. 

????????

Cesar Chavez is apparently as good a comedian as Lewis Black, whose comedy is partially based on him being angry at everything, all the time, and being seconds away from a detonation stroke.
 

Matthew 5:22 "....... But I say to you, whoever shall say, ' You fool,' shall be subject to the fire of Gehenna."

Matthew 5:22 "....... But I say to you, whoever shall say, ' You fool,' shall be subject to the fire of Gehenna."

I like this. Same here. Several times in my life I have run across people—for the most part, not in the truth, but sometimes they are—who I disliked intensely. But I forbid myself to say it. In time, I came to have regard for some of them, even becoming friendly with some.
One is a non-JW supervisor I sometimes worked under, a real dragon, but she had other struggles. I got away with a lot on a part-time gig at a certain company, because I was overall a force for cohesion. “Don’t worry about Gladys,” I told one newbie leery of her reputation. “She is a horrible shrew, but if you just do your job, you should have little problem.” She was right behind me! 
I didn’t back down. “Well, come on! Gladys—you know how you are!” In time we got along, even if I didn’t work under her very often.

@PudgyHe also came across as damaged, but never hateful. He didn’t forgive, but at the same time he lauded almost brothers as upright and honorable. In the end, I think he came to forgive even those ones he thought were not—individually, if not collectively, and maybe even collectively..
He is an example of Proverbs 19:3 - It is the foolishness of an earthling man that distorts his way, and so his heart becomes enraged against Jehovah himself.
And yet, not entirely, because he felt it was the organization that had run him over roughshod, not Jehovah. It calls to mind a statement of the Memorial speaker, a circuit overseer, in the talk I linked to above and will so again because it fits. (Oh, wait—I didn’t put it in the post, but he did say it)—he said it later, in the ‘men—what should we do?’ concluding section...wait, I’ll insert it): “If you’ve been hurt, and you know that you shouldn’t have been, but deep down inside you know it wasn’t Jehovah...”
https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2021/03/object-lessons-at-the-memorial-talk.html
People get hurt. It is what happens in any large assembly of people. Most humans handle matters in the Abraham/Lot manner: “you go this way and I’ll go that way.” JWs continue to bond together as a family, however I note that two separate circuit overseers have recently used such expressions as: “one large, happy, united, somewhat dysfunctional, family.” Nobody in the faith for any amount of time would ever say that we are not. But the entire human family is dysfunctional, and the Witness organization strives to address it, overcome it, and has succeeded to a far greater degree than most.