Canopus
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Posts posted by Canopus
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May I be so bold as to suggest that it just might be because Jesus doesn't get a mention in the OT?
You are distantly thinking along the same lines as I am. There are two religions (not counting small cults founded after 1800) which feature Jesus, one of which currently or previously has depicted Jesus in different ways.
The New Testament as a single compilation did not exist until the 4th century after the Council of Nicea in 325. It is believed that Athanasius compiled the New Testament in 367 and it was commercially available around 390. Prior to the Council of Nicea, Christians used many books and documents in addition to the Old Testament and only a small fraction of them made it into the New Testament.
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The media cannot survive without there being at least one collective group of people who are the bogeymen of society. For decades on end large sections of the media were fuelled by communism which they portrayed as the enemy of society with all the reds under the bed propaganda. Since 9/11 Islam and the Muslims have become the new enemy for journalists to spit fire and brimstone at but they also take a swipe at other groups who aren't quite in tune with the assumed mainstream way of thinking and doing, such as people with AS.
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A Year 7 student with AS raised this question during an RE lesson. Why are there hundreds of sects of Christianity that use the New Testament but Judaism is the only religion that uses just the Old Testament? Nobody could intelligently answer the question. Any ideas?
I came up with a bold explanation but I'm a bit reluctant to repeat it here.
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Do any of your kids have mercury amalgam fillings? If not, then would you be happy to have them installed or would you pick the white fillings instead?
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I'm convinced that the media has it in for people with AS in a similar way that the media has it in for Muslims.
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You don't. When I was about the same age I had an obsession with wanting to know which switch operated which light, so whenever I ventured into a hospital or office building I insisted on having to switch every light on and off. In a local leisure centre was an unattended 12 way light switch panel with none of the switches labelled. A light show resulted.
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What is the best way to teach kids with AS music? Assuming that their parents can't play any instruments.
Are there any recommended musical instruments?
About what age should they learn to read music?
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The anti-semitism stops now.
Is the discussion of certain traits commonly associated with Ashkenazi Jews and whether it is down to nature or nurture, along with Jewish history not permitted on this forum because it is deemed anti-semitic?
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If it's nature rather than nurture then most of the ideals about equality developed since the late 19th century will be discredited if a person's, or a tribe's general, strengths weaknesses virtues and vices are literally hard wired into their genetic code.
This is a very contentious statement but IF the phenomena of underperformance of black people academically and their propensity of them to engage in street crime in Britain is largely down to genetic traits then it will completely overturn prevailing theories supported by establishment political parties and academia since the 1960s that they are the result of poverty, ingrained racism, and lack of positive role models. It will also discretic the Scarman report of 1981 following the riots in Brixton.
Something I have noticed over the years is an almost complete absence of black people with AS and HFA. It is possible that AS and HFA does not natively exist in certain races - possibly Native Americans and Pacific Island races as well as sub-Saharan Africans.
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I think that sports days, and competitiveness is not something that should be done away with.
There have been huge implications on the lack of exercise that children undertake each week in school.
There have been massive implications of children not learning how to deal with failure and thinking that they are the centre of the universe.
Competitiveness is not a bad thing in itself.
Being good at sports is something that should be celebrated.
There are many autistic children and disabled children that are good at sports.
Your comments echo the traditional, and often current, situation where almost all competitive activities at school are of a sporting variety. This has implications that students who dislike participating in sporting activities - because they are bad at them - are often erroneously assumed not to be competitive. In the real world competitiveness manifests itself in countless ways. For a start, business is competitive but good sportsmen do not necessarily make good businessmen and vice versa.
However, that being said, teachers need to realise that not eveyone has that ability or potential - in the same way that some children do not have the academic skills or potential [but no-one suggests doing away with education.
Should parents be allowed to watch sports days. Yes I think so.
It is not the concepts of sports days that I'm opposed to. It is the fact that they are one of the very few school events (plays are another) that parents are allowed to attend and watch the performance of the participants, and this factor has the potential of turning sports days into public humiliation exercises.
I think that every child should be encouraged to take part in sports. My own son is not good at ball games, or athletics etc. But now, at age 14, we have found that he is good at Judo - and he likes going. THAT is what we have to keep alive in all our children. To persevere and find their 'niche'.
Schools need to find something that every child is good at and make sure that is celebrated.
Traditional sports days with parents watching almost always comprise of races and track events. Sometimes there are other field events like shot, javelin, long jump, and high jump, but these tend to be reserved for secondary schools rather than primary schools. I'm not aware of any schools holding sports days with parents invited to watch that comprise of events like basketball or tennis, or martial arts for that matter.
But at the same time all children need to learn how to deal with not being the best. That there are things you might not be good at. Things you might be average at. Afterall in traditional athletics there is only 'one' winner out of a field of maybe 20 of the best athletes from around the world.
As a child I have seen other children humiliated by teachers because of their lack of athletic ability, and that is totally unacceptable.
This gets back to the situation of sports days with parents watching being public humiliation exercises for some, but students who are bad elsewhere are not humiliated in public. Unless schools are very large, then it's convention to make ALL students participate in every event rather than the 20 best athletes in the school.
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I agree with you completely, Canopus.
The whole area of Jewish origins and genetics is a minefield, a hopelessly tangled labyrinth - even though an enormous amount of research is going into it. It's complicated by Jewish marriage traditions and migration, and the fact that there are many different Jewish 'races' that all share the same very ancient origins. Much of the research is aimed at preventing various medical conditions - quite a number, and found largely or exclusively among Jews. Ashkenazim show skewed IQ results - e.g. they're better than average on verbal and numerical than on spatial abilities. The cause of their much higher average intelligence are still debated, and are not properly understood. Another racial group with high intelligence are the East Asians.
The question is whether it's nature or nurture.
Israel is one step away from being an apartheid nation. Jews of Middle Eastern and north African origin are overwhelmingly employed in petty jobs like driving taxis, retail, and agriculture. Ashkenazi Jews take almost all the top jobs in government, the armed forces, finance, media, and scientific research. As for Ethiopian Jews, they are barely worth hiring to clean floors. If Israel was a Jewish nation comprised only of Jews from in and around the Middle East then it would be a very different place. There would probably also be very little conflict or tensions with the Palestinians and other neighbouring countries.
Local cultures are capable of determining intelligence and Ashkenazi Jews are unlikely to be an exception. For example, students in Britain of south Asian origin perform better in maths and science at secondary school than indigenous British students do and they usually tend to perform better than in arts and humanities subjects. Reasons are as follows:
1. They are culturally neutral subjects. Some subjects can only be properly comprehended by people who are 'fluent' in the popular culture of a particular nation.
2. It is possible to achieve high grades with a lower level of verbal fluency than with subjects like English or history. This is an important factor if English is not their first language.
3. British popular culture considers maths and science to be hard subjects and there is no sin or stigma if one is useless at them. This reduces the incentive for indigenous British students to excel in these subjects. In south Asian cultures high value is placed on excelling in maths and science and these subjects are valued for entry to professional careers.
4. There is a greater belief amongst south Asians that education is for the purpose of obtaining a professional career than amongst the indigenous British. South Asians struggle to make sense of the concept of a liberal education. A much smaller fraction of south Asians go to university but they overwhelmingly study subjects like medicine, law, engineering, financial subjects, or pharmacy for the purpose of a professional career. They say that figures for indigenous British people are bloated by soft subjects, arts, and humanities with most students not knowing what they want to do when they graduate.
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High achieving Jews is a phenomenon that only emerged after about 1800. Throughout most of history the Jews achieved very little when it comes to science, engineering, art, literature, architecture, and medicine compared to the achievements of the ‘gentile’ nations and societies over the centuries. The space of time since the Ashkenazi Jews first started to rise to intellectual prominence appears to be too short for it to be primarily the result of genetic traits so other factors must be at play. A question is whether the rise of intellectual prominence of the Ashkenazi Jews was tied in with the so called age of enlightenment. This question is further complicated because during the period from the late 18th century to the late 19th century, the western European nations were the most advanced and economically developed but only a small fraction of Ashkenazi Jews lived in these countries with the majority living in the underdeveloped and backwards central and eastern Europe that missed out on the industrial revolution and colonialism.
In the early Christian era it was difficult to sell Christianity simultaneously to Jews and Greeks. This was because the Jews were most impressed by miracles whereas the Greeks were only happy if they had a rational scientific explanation for something happening. Jews weren’t interested in rational scientific explanations and Greeks didn’t believe in miracles. From this situation it is clearly evident that the Greeks were the intellectual types and the Jews lived in a world of mysticism.
Another interesting fact is that many of the communist's 'greatest' minds were inside the heads of Ashkenazi Jews despite it being a concept that is completely incompatible with the Torah and traditional Jewish beliefs. Considering that communism is totally and utterly discredited today, then it raises the question whether the ideas and achievements of Jewish capitalists are also destined to be discredited in the future. A certain faction of Ashkenazi Jews appear to be in games for themselves and concepts like communism, and possibly Thatcherite style capitalism, are merely tools they use for as long as they require to further their cause and are then discarded when they are no longer of use, whilst the vast majority of ‘gentiles’ who support such ideologies are actually being taken for a ride without realising it.
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Thanks for the compliment LL, but I was only stating a fact. It's also a fact that Ashkenazi Jews have a higher average IQ (115) than non-Jews. Sephardim score 10 points lower, but are still 5 above the non-Jewish average. Over five times as many Ashkenazim are eligible for Mensa. The reasons are complex, but purity of the bloodline is one of them. None of this is racism.
Is the term Ashkenazi used to describe a large collective group of people in a similar way that English or Italian are used or does it extend down to genetics? What is the genetic origin of the Ashkenazi Jews and why weren't certain social and psychological traits commonly associated with Ashkenazi Jews found in their ancestors living in Europe?
Genetic testing has revealed that Jews living in the Levant are genetically indistinguishable from Muslims and Christians living in the Levant, which means that originally there was no such thing as the Jewish race (as a genetic entity) only a Jewish tribe (as a social, cultural and linguistic entity).
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for a disproportionate number are Jews.You must have had courage to write this because a few years ago such a statement would have incurred the wrath of a particular moderator. There was also a Jewish member of this forum at one time and I suspect that his presence swayed the attitudes of the moderator team although he may not have always agreed with their approach towards the moderation of comments.
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An increasing number of primary schools no longer allow parents to attend sports days due to potential issues with security of the premises during the events and the impact it could have on child protection and welfare.
I uphold this policy because traditional sports days with parents watching are a massive public humiliation event for kids that are hopeless at sports and physical activities who, more often than not, are forced to participate in events under the banner that everybody must take part. Sports days are often video recorded by parents then the video clips uploaded onto the internet for everybody to see.
If the same schools held maths tests with parents attending, then allowed them to look at all the exam scripts side by side, followed by the highest and lowest scoring kids having to stand up on the stage and announce their score then that would be deemed child abuse and unfair on kids who are not academic or mathematically minded. Imagine the reaction if parents say oh x doesn't know this, or y gets this wrong, or z has scored so badly on this test that his parents should be told that they are wasting the taxpayer's money letting him go to school. So, why should sports be allowed to be a public humiliation event?
Quite a lot of middle aged people I have discussed the issue with vehemently oppose the ban on allowing parents to attend sports days saying that sports should be fun and that it's British tradition. Do you agree with them or do the interests of kids come first?
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What the JW like to keep quiet about on the doorstep is that they use their own special Bible - The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures - that no other sect or version of Christianity uses, so it's technically a different Bible from that found on the bookshelves of the residents of the houses they call at. They also hold a copyright on it, therefore preventing anyone else from using it as their own Bible.
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The fact is that most religions or cults are not devoid of funds is due to the greed of people usually the ones at the top of the organisation.
Whatever the religion you will have the genuine people who believe and those that use it as a method of control and gathering wealth. The JW are not alone in this it's a fact of life more to do with human nature rather than any religious beliefs at least from those that hold the power within the groups.
Fair comparisons between religions when it comes to funding can be tricky due to large differences in their organisational structures. The JW is a very centralised religion whereas other religions have more devolved or localised structures resulting in a possibility that very little money collected locally finds its way to the top.
The phenomenon is not unique to religions or cults. Look at the NAS for a start.
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Exactly the kind of questions I would like to ask! If only such organisations conducted membership surveys, but due their very nature that would be considered heretical. I'm not sure how accurate this US survey is but the results don't surprise me: http://freeminds.org/psych/pew_survey.htm
The Witnesses had one of the lowest levels of education of all the religions surveyed. Nineteen percent had only a high school education or less, the lowest education level of all religions surveyed. This compares to eight percent of atheists and only three percent of all Jews. About half (42 percent) of the Jehovah's Witnesses had incomes below 30,000 and only nine percent had incomes above 100,000 dollars. Only those involved in historically black churches had incomes below the Witnesses. Of the Jews, a mere 14 percent had incomes below 30,000 but 46 percent had incomes above 100,000 dollars
Take into account that the article is American so does not properly represent the situation in Britain. Only a high school education could be interpreted as 12 A* grade GCSEs. I'm still trying to get to the bottom of the level of education of JW. Some sources say that JW are overwhelmingly uneducated and not very bright, but other sources say that the majority of members born into the religion have mastered the primary school basics and have a reasonable to good level of secondary school education - so rarely struggle with reading, grammar, comprehension, and everyday maths - although few have gone on to FE or HE.
Comparisons with other religions in the US and Britain can also be misleading. For example, Hindus are a relatively recent arrival to the US and most are professionals or technically educated, whereas a sizeable fraction of Hindus in Britain are unskilled and uneducated people who work in menial jobs and retail. As for Hindus in India, there is a huge underclass.
Other clues come from the many stories of disaffected (or 'disfellowshipped') members. There are even several forums for ex-JW and ex-LDS members - very interesting posts too... I'd say that the members fall into two main groups: those whose personalities already mirror the ethos of the cult, and those who are vulnerable, insecure, lonely, or seeking guidance - whose minds are manipulated and moulded into adopting the views of the first group.
Be cautious with what you read on ex-JW forums because people might not be who they present themselves to be, or telling the truth. There are plenty of agent provocateurs and deceivers on these type of forums who post propaganda and misinformation that appears fine and dandy to the layman, but the trained eye and knowledgeable brain identifies that it is untrue or grossly exaggerated.
The best sources of information are people who were previously JW.
At least one thing we can be sure about is that the elders and the puppet-masters at the top are not short of money.
Very true. I read somewhere that the majority of rank and file JW in the US are in the poorest quartile, and a high proportion of them are black or Hispanic, but the senior officers are overwhelmingly wealthy people and WASP in origin. I'm not sure what the situation is in Britain but there certainly are some JW who have quite a bit of money in their bank accounts plus investments.
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So their members just do as they are told and sound like robots when you speak to them at the door. They either walk away or just remain speachless when i point out the above. They dont have answers. But i am sure poeple with low self esteem would join them or even some aspiesI'm intrigued to know who exactly joins the JW nowadays? What are their most and least common levels of education; socioeconomic status; previous religious beliefs; and race and countries of origin? Do they have more success with people from a Christian background than from a non-Christian background? Are people who are poorer or in unskilled low paid jobs more likely to join up than people who are middle class or professionals? Are ethnics more attracted than white British people? Are people who are at a low point in their lives more or less likely to join than people who are dissastified with their existing religion or seeking spirituality but are otherwise happy with other aspects of their lives? Are people with certain hobbies and interests more or less likely to join?
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They ask you to read their leaflets and come to their church but if you invite them to attend your local church first or read your leaflets they refuse to.
The JW has a policy that its members do not read publications from other religions. Many JW kids are withdrawn from RE lessons at school as a result of this because their parents do not want them to know about other religions. The former JW told me that JW are very closed minded people. Her own parents refuse point blank to read any publications about Islam but then go spouting off baseless comments that appear to have originated from the hostile right wing mainstream media. They even refuse to accept that statistically the majority of terrorist attacks in Europe since 2000 have been committed by anarchist and separatist groups rather than by Muslims but they are rarely reported in the British media.
Even more interesting is how the JW own publications regularly come back to them and bite them in the butt. The JW is a religion of unfulfilled predictions and their members squirm when showed articles about them out of editions of Watchtower or Awake from many decades ago despite their magazines being dished out to the public in their millions. They often just hope for the best that old editions of Watchtower or Awake with such articles in have all been thrown away but there are people out there - including critics of the JW and members of other religions - who save and archive these magazines for future use. The JW have also taken much effort to dispose of their own publications from before the 1930s (when they were called Russellites) so they are no longer officially available to members but copies of them still exist from individuals who have saved them.
They are not allowed to take part in any form of political activity or public demonstrations, or union activity.I have pointed out to them that what if they worked in unsafe enviroments by profit chasing management looking to cut corners? they are not allowed to campaign against it?
If Dr King or Nelson Mandela were JWs and the majority of people living under apartheid or in the segregated south of the US, the said men would not be able to achieve what they did and those oppresive conditions would still be there today. JWs believe not to get involved with anything and wait till god returns. That is a cult.
The JW policy is that its members do not get involved in politics or campaigns, even if they are as innocuous as saving a local hospital from closure or preventing an industrial estate from being built in a nature conservation area. Their members are told to take everything on the chin.
It could be argued that given that there is no country where the JW are a majority combined with a refusal of JW to involve themselves in politics and campaigns, then the mere survival of the JW is at the mercy of sympathetic governments. Some countries including Singapore have outlawed the JW. In the JW yearbook statistics are provided for JW membership on a country by country basis plus another figure for the '30 Other Lands'.
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Services and publications for younger members is an area of JW which is found to be severely wanting. Another criticism of JW is the policy where their members are prohibited from attended social events with people who are not JW. This applies to sports clubs, and presumably to AS support groups as well. I'm not aware of the JW having its own internal facilities for people with AS so it makes me wonder where do members obtain support and advice from. Do their senior officials deny that AS even exists?
The former JW told me that JW can be quite mean as they do not give money to charity apart from a few dealing with victims of natural disasters. Rarely do individual members of the JW give any money or material resources to poorer people because the JW priority is ministry and preaching. Despite the generally stingy nature of the JW and its members, the movement tends to be more successful at attracting poorer people as opposed to the middle classes.
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A former JW, who is now a Muslim, told me that JW are very poor at providing products and services for children. The range of children's publications by the Watchtower are extremely limited and despite requests from members nobody in authority is doing anything about it because the Watchtower prefers to focus on publications for adults. As the Watchtower holds a monopoly on publishing then no independent publishers are able to fill this gap in the market. Neither are there any specific services for children in kingdom halls and they are expected to sit through long and technical religious talks that are beyond their level of understanding at a young age because the JW stubbornly sticks with a one size to fit all approach regardless of age and ability.
In contrast, thousands of books and educational resources about Islam have been published for children of varying ages and abilities. Most mosques run kids clubs and religious education classes and events that totally eclipse anything that the JW have to offer. Instances of child abuse do occasionally happen in such settings but it is much rarer than that which occurs within the JW, although the media chooses to ignore JW child abuse so few people know what takes place unless they have inside knowledge.
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The question of JW and people with AS was raised many years ago at my local support group but nobody knew of any JW families that had people with AS.
I strongly hold the view that JW could only have been founded in the United States at the time it was founded in the late 19th century because it was the only country on earth with the right political, economic, and social climate that would allow such a religion to flourish. Even today JW is a very American centric religion where much of what the Watchtower authors write about is biased towards the US and American people. I'm also convinced that the JW would not have existed without the Protestant reformation in a world where the territories that are now the US would have been Catholic nations.
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All slaughterhouses are revolting places that stink like hell and everything is covered in blood. I have seen numerous slaughterhouses and meat factories in real life. One in Uzbekistan built in the days of the communist Soviet Union was particularly disgusting. It made me wonder what animal welfare was really like in the communist world behind the iron curtain.
What book are you reading at the moment?
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I know this sounds contentious but has anybody apart from myself read Secrets, Spies and 7/7 by Tom Secker?
It is a comprehensive piece of independent research into all aspects of the 7/7 bombings along with references to original sources of information including that later released by FOI requests etc. The author also debunks many of the popular conspiracy theories in circulation as well as condemning the official narrative - which is contained in three government reports - as being falsehood and full of factual inaccuracies that the government refuses to correct.
After you have finished reading the book you will be left with more questions than answers as to what actually happened on that day and in the years proceeding it. This is despite 7/7 officially being a closed case as far as the government is concerned and a public inquiry steadfastly refused.