by proplog2 23 Replies latest jw friends
Well, Cygnus, since proplog is clearly incapable of explaining himself in a way that "these people who are too quick to judge his motives and point of view" can understand, why don't you do it for him? Perhaps you can also explain why his point of view on cults is correct, unless you disagree with him.
AlanF
Proplog2:
Who said it was about Jehovah's Witnesses? :-)
Ros
"A religion that teaches lies cannot be true"--The Watchtower, 12/1/91 pg. 7
Hey AllanF,I always enjoy watching you shred bullshit with truth and intellect...OUTLAW
ros:
Are you denying some kind of intent when you began your post on the Moonies?
<<We know the Unification Church (“Moonies”) are a real cult. But how <<can we say Jehovah’s Witnesses are a cult?
How can YOU say Jehovah's Witnesses are a cult? Oh that's just some casual musing you didn't intend?
ROS you have drifted from a crazy religion into a sea of mediocre thinking at best. We ALL repeat pretty much the same stuff. But your stuff appears too "same".
I really like what you have done generally. I also admire AlanF for some of his writing. I even respect Bill Bowen for putting his "ass" out there in the public. I just think that some of the issues you use against the Watchtower while significant to YOU are totally impotent to accomplish your goal of toppling the Watchtower.
SYN:
For your information I have seen segments of the Photo Drama. Also I am closer to being an atheist than anything else. I don't believe there is any entity that is all knowing or all powerful. I do think it is possible for a civilization "out there" to have evolved with a head start on us. They may be able to do a pretty good job as "god" to our fledgling world.
My lack of belief in god is the core of my attacks on anti-cultism. ALL religion is pretty much bullshit. Where do some bullshitites get the nerve to demean chickenshitites.
From a evolutionary view I think there is a social benefit that may be derived from organizations that have developed on the edges of mainstream society. These little isolated populations are essential to the evolution of society in general just as small business is to economics. The big religion's want you to forgive "their" sins and allow them to maintain a monopoly. Cult is a term that fits nicely into their program.
Hi Proplog2:
"There are laws that could only be changed by Civil Disobedience. That's why Blacks and many whites in the USA admire Martin Luther King."Civil Disobedience is one way, but not required. It is often used to speed up the process ... bring in media attention. AND ... MOST OF ALL ... Civil Disobedience is a recognized and even an accepted means of constructive change. Contrasting this to a JW who wuild chain himself to the Kingdom hall to make a point would result in being DF's and loss of one's eternal life by JW standards.
"There are ways to change JW teachings also. Sometimes it may require being disfellowshipped. Religious groups are harder to change because it is generally less of an inconvenience to leave a religion than to move to another country."The WTS has been DFing since at least the 1940s. They show no signs of change or being moved to make any substantive adjustments. The only way for them to really change would be for about 5.9 Million JWs to walk out. There is no honorable way to cause changes unless one sits on the Governing Body ... and even in that situation change is most unlikely because to get to the top of the Organization your have to prostitute yourself so much that you lose any sense of mission. You become a cog in the wheel of blind machinery.
Try to get the Catholic Church to change their position on birth control! or to have women priests - or to allow priests to marry.Catholics routinely ignore the Pope and regional Cardinals and Bishops. Catholics use birth control in spite of Rome, and they still go the Church - and they are not shunned. As for women priests, well ... the Church is working on it ... and in about another 500 years might get there. Catholics can openly bitch about it and not get excommunicated. There are preists in the Church who write boo0ks against the Church and they do not get defrocked or excoimmunicated ... BIG difference!
"Don't give me the BS that I don't understand cults."Its not BS ... you seem to not understand or you wouldn't say what you are saying.
"Cult is just a label and you can slide the criteria around to match any organization you want to harm."[.quote]JWs are taken captive with fraud, deceit, con-artistry, emotional blackmail, and mind-control ... so, my parody about being out to sea is designed to convey the point of being virtually helpless to leave the JW religion. There are many lucky individuals who are able to escape using a "life-raft" or "life-boat" ... but like the Titanic, I am afriad that many JWs will drown spiritually long before they wake up and stop listening to the Watchtower music and ralize that their ship is sinking.Lifton, Hassan, and many others expert in the field of human behavior have found common denominators that are used to identify cults. The Jehovah's Witnesses fit ALL these criteria ... some to a lesser degree than others ... so they are not as immediately dangerous as would be David Koresh and the Branch Davidian, or Jim Jones Peoples Temple ... but they are not too far behind these groups. The Jehovah's Witness religion causes serious emotional, psychological, social, and physical harm to its constituants. That is a PROVEN FACT ... we can start with shielding Child Molesters ... and they do that for a FACT ...
"What is the "line" that marks acceptable human interraction. You choose to draw that line based on YOUR discomfort.The line for me became when I saw not only harm in the JC system ... but shielding Child Molesters ... That is when I begin to realize how dangerous they are as a cult. Prior to that, if you have followed my Exit Series ... I arrived at the conclusion they were cultish not long after I wlked away from the organization ... The issue is not about discomfort ... it is about the Organization being so in love with its own self that it shoves children of molestation and other kinds of abuse under the rug ..."The six million JW's draw the line somewhere else."The numbers of people fooled does not meet the criteria of where one draws the line. Millions of people in Germany supported Adolph Hitler ... a classic political cult leader ... they were all seduced by the system or they were duped into trusting Hitler. 6 Million JWs are just as duped."A billion Catholics draw the line in another place."The Roman Catholic Church during the Middle Ages had both civil and religious empire. They were a cult Par Excellence ... and we can start with the Inquisition to name but a few of their own atrocities. Today, the same Catholic church still bares some cult features, but they have moderated to a much more benign condition. Where Catholics draw any lines is the same as the duped JWs or the duped German citizens during the Nazi era ..."I can't defend stupid doctrine like "blood transfusions" nor can I defend the inquisition or the fighting going on between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. I can't defend the forceful enslavement of Blacks by the writers of the American Constitution or the prohibition against women voting. I can't defend the ritual mutilation of little babies via circumcision. All of these things are REAL EVILS committed by organizations as they evolve."And the conditions under which these evils happen may well dictate a state of being a CULT at that time in their history. But not necessarily. The criteria to determine a cult has best been defined by Hassan (Material accepted by UCLA) and Lifton (material accepoted by UC Berkley) ... and whena group meets all these criteria, and to the degree they exercise each criterion ... that defines them as anything from a moderate to dangerous cult. The Jehovah's Witnesses are between moderately harmful to dangerous. They ARE a cult."These things don't define them as cults. There is NO scietific way to validate the term."Yes there is. Start with hassan's works and go to Lifton. When you are done, lets go into other works on the topic ... and in time you will see a clear definition."You can define something as a cult for YOUR purposes. You can talk about your BAD experiences. But this is not scientific enough to translate into public policy."Wrong again. I have never defined cults. I have studied the experts in behavioural psychology ... and people like Lifton and Hassan jump off of the page. They provide DEFINITIONS and CRITERIA that smack us upside the head ... and only one who is in DENIAL would debate these ... like an Alcoholic debating the Criteria for his own disease."How can you prove that people who became JW's or any other religion were misinformed - unless you are an Atheist and conclude that "all" religious membership is a consequence of misinformation."Prove the JWs were misionformed! Have you been reading these ex-JW sites? There is so much PROOF that JWs are duped that one cannot read it all!!! Jesus flipping Gawd!!! Where have you been the last 20 years!!! Ray Franz' books, Freeminds.org, H20, JWD and on and on ... the proof is so overwhelming that to deny such proof is to deny all aspects of reality itself.[quote]"Your analogy of the ship is absurd and has no homologue in anything we are discussing."
Parody, illustrations, analogies, Metaphorical points and symbolism are used not to be exact and literal ... but to convey concepts. Defenders of the indefensible strike back by picking at the illustration rather than address the serious reality.
Amazing:
Do you mean to tell me that there is general agreement among socioligists as to what a cult is or isn't?
I can set up a system of criteria where everyone is "crazy" to some degree or another.
We are not just talking about defining a word or general usage of a word. "Cult" is used AS IF it represents some objective scientifically verifiable "thing". A few minutes search on the internet and you will find that there are a lot of sociologists that don't agree with calling any religion a cult because its intended purpose is to demean a new or unconventional belief system.
What do you call that upstart bunch of fruitcakes that sold their belongings and clustered in communities to lauch their new found religion based on some supposed resurrection of their leader Jesus?
Howdy proplog,
You do set yourself up for an argument, don't you? Takes a lot of gumption to do that - give you credit!
* In some cults, members are systematically made to be phobic about ever leaving the group. Today's cults know how to effectivelyJust because Catholics, Moonies, Jehovah's Witnesses, Taliban, Nazarenes, Baptists --- whoever ----- do that, doesn't make it right. It just means a lot of people do it.
implant vivid negative images deep within members' unconscious
minds, making it impossible for the member to even conceive of ever
being happy and successful outside of the group. [p.45]The same can be said about devout Catholics. Study Irish family
life. Everyone is motivated by maximizing pleasure and avoiding
"pain". Pleasure or pain can be imagined. Remember "hell-fire". - proplog
And btw, I was raised Irish Catholic, 12 yrs of schooling by nuns. When I studied with jw's, I was encouraged to write a letter to my parish to renounce my membership. I did and was quite vocal about my new-found Truth with my family & friends. I was never ex-communicated and no family member or friend ever stopped talking & visiting with me.
Of course, as I became a stronger jw - I stopped association with them as they were *worldly.*
waiting
Amazing and other anti-cultists:
Please tell me what is going on in Acts 5:1-11. You know the account of Ananias & Sapphira. They had a nice little commune going. (Acts 4:32-37)
Talk about cult. What was the cause of Ananias & Sapphiras death? I think those early Christians either invented this story or it was a double homicide.
Acts 5:11 "Consequently great fear came over the whole congregation over all those hearing about these things" HOW CONVENIENT.
Let's talk about the Christ "cult".
Proplog said:
: Do you mean to tell me that there is general agreement among socioligists as to what a cult is or isn't?
Depends on what "school" the sociologists belong to. One school as a matter of principle claims that cults don't exist. They invented the deliberately obscurantist term "new religious movement" to describe what most people consider nutty religions. The term is obscurantist because it is designed to lull listeners into thinking that cults like the Solar Temple aren't so bad after all. But the worst thing about many of the people in this "school", such as J. Gordon Melton and Massimo Introvigne, is that they take money and other favors from cults like Scientology in order to help them do their "research". Obviously if you take money from a cult you're not going to be objective about them, because as soon as you voice a criticism they'll take the money and other perks away.
Another "school" of sociologists acknowledges that cults exist, and they take some pains to define exactly what they mean. They're a lot more objective in their writings, so far as I can see, than the sociologists who have become apologists for the cults. That's because they don't take money from them.
: We are not just talking about defining a word or general usage of a word.
Not "just", but it is necessary to give clear definitions so that everyone knows what is being discussed.
: "Cult" is used AS IF it represents some objective scientifically verifiable "thing".
All sorts of words are misused and are poorly defined. But competent sociologists and other workers take great pains to clearly define what they're talking about. "Cult" is clearly defined in certain books and research papers. For some reason you refuse to see this.
: A few minutes search on the internet and you will find that there are a lot of sociologists that don't agree with calling any religion a cult because its intended purpose is to demean a new or unconventional belief system.
Ah, so you've thrown in your lot with the people who get money from cults. I suppose you think that a meaningless term like "new religious movement" is better and more descriptive.
: What do you call that upstart bunch of fruitcakes that sold their belongings and clustered in communities to lauch their new found religion based on some supposed resurrection of their leader Jesus?
A cult.
AlanF
