Phantom Stranger

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Posts by Phantom Stranger

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  28

  Are you going to the memorial

  by lillost in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i was asked by my mother today "are you going to the memorial this year".

  i declined most graciously and said thank you for thinking of me, and although i haven't been for the last eight years i thought no more of the ritual invitation.. then suddenly it dawned on me that my mothers response was quite abrupt and something along the lines of "well i have done my christian duty by asking you".

  it was if she was literally washing the blood from her hands and she had tried to save me yet again.. has anyone else experienced this my mother has always talked to me with all civility about the "truth", i just wondered if there is new counsel now in how to deal with daughters and family that have fallen by the wayside.. appreciate your help.

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  Phantom Stranger

  Are you kidding me? Last time I was at a Memorial, Reagan was president.
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  46

  Were you raised as a dub or did you convert?

  by BLISSISIGNORANCE in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i was a catholic all my life then in my early 30s i got baptized as a jw.

  a friend of mine when in her 20s became a dub.

  she always talked to me about the borg and troof and i listened.

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  Phantom Stranger

  Born in.
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  9

  JW's and Embargoed Technology

  by gitasatsangha in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  i've been thinking of another way to cause trouble for the watchtower.

  i don't think one silver bullet will take it down.

  it's more of a siege campaign.

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  Phantom Stranger

  Sounds like another "let's flush all the toilets in Bethel" idea to me.
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  15

  Baseball!!!

  by logansrun in

  1. social
  2. physical

  ahh, spring is in the air!

  the newly unveiled grass freed from it's snowy blanket.

  the first buds of leaves barely containing their excitement at the beaconing of all the birds of heaven.

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  Phantom Stranger

  Naw. I say the Yanks don't get past the Red Sox. I still like the Cubbies though... if K-Wood's arm doesn't fall off.
• 
  12

  Do other religons do this?

  by desib77 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  are there other religons that practice disfellowshipping type tactics?

  when i tried to explain my situation to my husband's family they mentioned that it was like excommunication or shunning.

  i just wondered if this is a common practice at other religons and what type of sin would call for such punishment.

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  Phantom Stranger

  yeah, double edge, good point that I made poorly:

  Look at two aspects of the use of df'ing: the use of the punishment ('cause that's what it is) and the severity when it's used. Even when someone gets kicked out of mainstream denominations, they rarely get the full-courst shunning - they'd probably have to have horns growing out of their head.
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  101

  Bush Bash, Anti-gay marrige.

  by SC_Guy in

  1. social
  2. current

  .

  i think bush is trying to screw this country one more time before he's voted out of office....

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  Phantom Stranger

  Funny, Yeru, the idea I got from the article was that while some are making Bush out to be a gay basher, he is actually doing this out of political expediency and not out of any strong anti-gay beliefs of his own. If this weren't in the NYT, would you be picking at it?

  I'd write more, but I have to go back to tearing our society apart.
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  12

  Do other religons do this?

  by desib77 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  are there other religons that practice disfellowshipping type tactics?

  when i tried to explain my situation to my husband's family they mentioned that it was like excommunication or shunning.

  i just wondered if this is a common practice at other religons and what type of sin would call for such punishment.

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  Phantom Stranger

  The way I would interpret you question would not be, "do other religions have the provision for some sort of excommunication/disfellowhipping action in their rules", but "do any religions exercise this provision as the kind of constant threat/punishment that the WTS does?"

  No mainstream organization uses this type of punishment with the frequency or to the degree that the WTS does. Yes, Catholics have excommunication - but they won't even use it on Hans Kung, who is way off the reservation on what he writes about theology.

  You have to go to the offshoot groups like the polygamist Mormons written about in Under the Banner of Heaven, or the Worldwide Church of God, to find groups that are as militant on this sort of thin in practice.
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  18

  The Process Starts Early in Childhood.

  by Blueblades in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the process starts early in childhood:.

  no playing with children of other faiths.. no reading of non-watch tower books.. no birthday parties.. no holiday celebrations.. no christmas presents.. no easter egg hunts.. no halloween activity.. the list goes on and on .this ensures isolation that brings almost total separation from all others for whom christ jesus died.. the feelings of "persecution" begins early in the teen years:.

  no saluting the flag or engaging in any religious activity.. no school sports, plays, or social activities.. no close association with "worldy classmates".. and before "new light", no vaccinations.. the young person stands out as "weird", "different", and this by design.. continuing in this process means rejecting of normal relations with neighbors ( fellow schoolmates ) instead of relationships, the young witness is involved in multiple indoctrination sessions and public displays of religious activity ( street corner and door to door work ), which locks him or her into the control of the watch tower system.. further, the witness must associate only with other members, date only other members ( "a chaperon" was required under fred franz ).marry only other members, ( earlier marriage was discouraged ) but if he or she does marry and has children, they must be prepared for the cycle to be repeated.. this lifestyle robs them not only of the joys and delights of childhood, but also handicaps their preparation for a normal life.. from the "four presidents", edmond c.gruss.page 71,72.. i know how true this is , having raised my children,from birth to adult-hood according to the society's process of raising families in the indoctrination of the watch tower.

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  Phantom Stranger

  Yeah, I remember hearing that in 1969 - "he'll never have to go to school!"

  There's another price we paid: not playing in sports.

  We didn't get the same exposure to:

  • Working with people that we don't like towards a common (and measurable) goal
  • Being coached, possibly by someone we don't like but who knows more about what we're doing than we do
  • Failing and losing, and finding lessons from it, and not giving up
  • Winning (at least sometimes)

  Prices that are often forgotten - but I think they're high.
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  101

  Bush Bash, Anti-gay marrige.

  by SC_Guy in

  1. social
  2. current

  .

  i think bush is trying to screw this country one more time before he's voted out of office....

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  Phantom Stranger

  On Gay Marriage, Bush May Have Said All He's Going To

  By ELISABETH BUMILLER, NEW YORK TIMES

  ASHINGTON

  When President Bush announced his support last week for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, his body language in the Roosevelt Room did not seem to match his words. Mr. Bush may have forcefully defended the union of a man and a woman as "the most fundamental institution of civilization," but even some White House officials said he appeared uncomfortable.

  When Mr. Bush finished his five-minute statement ? with reporters arranged before him in White House-assigned seats, waiting for the news conference that appeared to be coming ? he abruptly turned on his heel and strode from the room, ignoring all questions.

  "Is he coming back?" a television reporter called out.

  He was not.

  Mr. Bush was acting under enormous pressure from his evangelical Christian supporters, who had intensified their demands in recent months that the president speak out in defense of traditional marriage. His more moderate supporters, on the other hand, worried that he might look like a gay basher.

  Mr. Bush's friends say that is hardly the case and that the president is quite comfortable with gays. Laura Bush, when asked in a recent interview by The New York Times if she and her husband had gay friends, easily replied: "Sure, of course. Everyone does."

  Although the president's behavior might reinforce the view among his critics that he was acting cynically when he endorsed the amendment, the fact is that he has a record of tolerance in personal situations.

  Last spring, during a class of 1968 Yale reunion that he held at the White House, Mr. Bush had a particularly striking encounter with Petra Leilani Akwai, who in 2002 had a sex-change operation. At Yale, Ms. Akwai was known as Peter Clarence Akwai.

  "I was in the receiving line, I was dressed in an evening dress, and I was being escorted by a male friend from the Yale class of 1986," Ms. Akwai said in a telephone interview this weekend from Germany, where she lives. "And I said, `Hello, George.' And in order for him not to be confused, in case he hadn't been briefed, because our class was all male, I said, `I guess the last time we spoke, I was still living as a man.' "

  "And he said," Ms. Akwai recounted, " `But now you're you.' "

  Ms. Akwai said the president seemed completely comfortable. "He leaned forward and gave me a little sort of smile," she said. "I thought it was a sincere thing, and it was very charming."

  Mr. Bush has appointed some openly gay federal officials to jobs at the White House. These include Scott Evertz, who was the president's first adviser on AIDS. When Mr. Evertz upset conservatives by advocating the use of condoms, he was moved to the Department of Health and Human Services.

  But Mr. Evertz was replaced by another openly gay official, Dr. Joe O'Neill, who is now a deputy director in the State Department's program to fight AIDS worldwide.

  White House officials say that Mr. Bush will not speak out about the amendment banning gay marriage in his political trips around the country and will leave his five-minute Roosevelt Room announcement as his major show on the issue.

  That was obvious at a political fund-raiser in Louisville, Ky., last week, when Mr. Bush never once used the words "gay marriage" in his stump speech. His only allusion to it was a line about judges who have cleared the way for gay marriages in some states.

  "We will not stand for judges who undermine democracy by legislating from the bench, or try to remake the culture of America by court order," Mr. Bush said, to applause from the $2,000-a-plate crowd.

  While Mr. Bush's closest advisers say that he genuinely feels that marriage is between a man and a woman only ? the same position that Senators John Kerry and John Edwards take ? some of his advisers also say the president would have been better off keeping his opinions to himself.

  Last summer, Charles Francis, a Bush family friend and a co-chairman of the Republican Unity Coalition, an influential gay-straight political alliance, bemoaned what might happen if gay marriage were to become an issue in the 2004 campaign.

  "Marriage panic is not good for the political process or the country," Mr. Francis said then.

  By November, when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court made its ruling allowing gay marriage in the state, the issue was well on its way. "We're hopeful that the campaign will steer clear of this amendment," Mr. Francis said in an interview at the time. "It's an issue of tone. It's the issue of writing discrimination into the founding document. Also it's so distracting from the real priorities of the campaign, which are his leadership, the war in Iraq and the economy."

  Last week, Mr. Francis did not return phone calls about Mr. Bush's announcement in the Roosevelt Room.
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  39

  How many here use Intel, AMD, dont know what the hell they have?

  by pr_capone in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  just out of curiosity.... how many of you here have an intel processor in their computer.

  how many have amd?

  how many dont know what they are using?

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  Phantom Stranger

  I use a Celeron 500 (homemade tower), a Celeron 333 (Sony laptop), and a G4 Mac (12" Powerbook).