Franklin you have a Pm reply
WOW. This is getting tougher II
by Franklin Massey 19 Replies latest jw friends
-
-
leavingwt
Franklin Massey: You may enjoy this essay by Robert G. Ingersoll, written many decades before you were born. It's about a 30-minute read, but I promise you won't regret it.
Why I Am an Agnostic
-
Franklin Massey
Thanks Leaving, I'll read it on my break today.
SBC, I read some Mencken articles yesterday. Thanks for the tip!
-
SweetBabyCheezits
My pleasure, FM! I'm just getting into it myself but I really dig his style.
And I hate to give you more homework, per se, but if you get 10 additional minutes to view this YouTube I highly recommend it. This video comes from one of two [biological] brothers, QualiaSoup and TheraminTrees, who are incredible teachers. With all of their videos, I walk away feeling like I've learned more in 10 minutes than in 10 years from the organization.
LWT, started reading the Ingersoll essay and I felt like he was reciting thoughts I had just before realizing I lacked belief in God... albeit eloquently. Great read!
-
leavingwt
LWT, started reading the Ingersoll essay and I felt like he was reciting thoughts I had just before realizing I lacked belief in God... albeit eloquently. Great read!
I'm glad you enjoyed it. I wonder what FM thought about it?
-
miseryloveselders
Hey LeavingWT, I printed that essay too. I wanted to thank you for that link too, but I couldn't remember what thread it was until this thread got bumped. One of the clerks on my floor was furious because on the printer that I used, it got a paper jam around page 19. I wasn't that familiar with that printer, so I missed one of the compartments where the paper jammed at. I checked every compartment except that one! So I just finished printing the document at another printer. When I came in this morning, I confessed to one of the clerks, she was furious, calling me Mr. Agnostic. I read half of it last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. I'll finish it tonight. I'd like to read some of Mencekn's works. I saw a book of his that Barnes and Nobels can get, Treatise on the Gods. I might have them order it.
-
leavingwt
I confessed to one of the clerks, she was furious, calling me Mr. Agnostic.
Did you tell her that the reality is worse? Gasp. You're one of Jehovah's Witness!
-
SweetBabyCheezits
Mr. Agnostic? She respects you. Awesome.
-
Franklin Massey
I read the Ingersoll essay. Amazing! Thanks for the link. So thorough and still incredibly relevant after all these years. The last section was moving. Why can't embrace the nobility of "not knowing?"
-
Married to the Mob
FM said
I wish JWs were "allowed" to feel this way. Bible students aren't even allowed to feel that way. How many times have you heard of a study who has been through multiple books, knows the local friends, attends some meetings, lives a good life, but never takes the dip because of some small hangup on a JW doctrinal issue. I shouldn't even call it a hang up. They have every right to their viewpoints. But not to JWs they don't. If someone disagreess with a JW, then that person is wrong because if the Society says it's true, it's true. A JW is at risk even admitting that they maybe just aren't convinced by the current printed explanation of a doctrine. If you don't believe something JWs teach, then the problem is with YOU, not with them. That is unfair, dishonest, and a big part of why I'm struggling with having to dispense this stuff on a regular basis.
What you have described is polarized thinking. Black and white mentality at its best. All or nothing, good or bad but nothing inbetween.
This is very much a cult control tool, and is used fantastically well by the WBTS to keep everyone in check and by their "them and us" statements to being saved or worthy etc..
but this thinking is one that any person can get into and have trouble getting out of this mindset.
Check out this website and consider how many other forms of "stinkin thinking" are used to control the JW mindset!