Posts by OneEyedJoe

7

Cognitive Dissonance - Best of

by Dagney in

jw
friends

i have been explaining "cognitive dissonance" to a person (that i hope finds this site and thread) who is going though it right now.

i sent the description to them with a link to additional information.. however, from a jw/exjw perspective, i would like your assistance to build a list of the various conficting thoughts perpetuated by the wtbs that creates this condition.

for instance, i gave them:.

OneEyedJoe

A big one for me was the belief that humans have only existed for 6000 years vs all the archeological evidence to the contrary. Same story for evolution.

Another form of CD also occurs when people participate in ritual behavior with a group. For example, you go to the KH and you have some reservations - maybe someone told you is a cult or you're just not very religious. Out of respect and the social pressure to conform, you bow your head during the prayer and say amen. Because your behavior (participation) just conflicted your belief (these people might be cultists) you will subconsciously change your belief (since it's to late to change your behavior) to minimize the dissonance. The simple act of bowing your head during prayer makes you more inclined to believe what comes next. Same goes for the song. (Went do you think it's often stressed that you need to be on time for the song and stay through the closing prayer?)

A similar effect happens when you conform in other ways. The analysis of the sparlock video on YouTube (by user askreality) explains this effect quite effectively, I thought.

16

Any recent wack-a-doodle elder comments in your congo lately?

by sir82 in

jw
friends

our go-to wack-a-doodle elder moved to a new congregation a few years back.

the position has been vacant since then.. we had an elder move in a few months back.

he appears to be angling for the position of resident wack-a-doodle.. at last night's service meeting, he said (paraphrased): "as a congregation, we've been busier than ever before with our special campaign.

OneEyedJoe

Just thought of another one to add. Not an elder but positively hilarious. This guy in his early 20s, that brain-dead reformed junkie type, gets asked to give closing prayer one Thursday. About 2 sentences in he drops this gem:

"...and Jehovah, we're sorry for all the shit.....we're sorry for all the things that we do wrong..."

I don't think I've heard a more hesitant collective amen before or since.

52

Entertainment for International Delegates

by Listener in

bibl3thumper has posted a youtube of the celebrations that took place for german delegates.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvs6_q7rqps&feature=em-subs_digest.

it's hard to believe that they are now using the kingdom hall to sing pop songs and for dancing.

OneEyedJoe

I actually have no clue what the supposed purpose of the international delegates is.

The actual purpose seems to be so that they can charge them inflated prices for the trip, then book at a group-rate discount and pocket the cash. Then, combined with that they get to parade them around to make the R/F think that they're in some sort of special religion.

16

Any recent wack-a-doodle elder comments in your congo lately?

by sir82 in

jw
friends

our go-to wack-a-doodle elder moved to a new congregation a few years back.

the position has been vacant since then.. we had an elder move in a few months back.

he appears to be angling for the position of resident wack-a-doodle.. at last night's service meeting, he said (paraphrased): "as a congregation, we've been busier than ever before with our special campaign.

OneEyedJoe

Oh, we've got a few in our congregation. One elder recently said "It's a good thing they're making such a fuss about the 100 yr aniversary - It means that they're not going to change 1914 anytime soon."

That one took me by surprise.

Once at the meeting for service the conductor was taking it upon himself to reinforce the "new light" of the overlapping generation, and the other elder present just butted in, "I think they just changed it because everyone from 1914 is dead so obviously it was wrong."

Both of these elders are in for the long haul, but it was shocking for me to hear them basically say they're just making it up as they go along.

Another one that I thought was hillarious was at the last WT study (which was mostly about trying to help men "reach out" to do more volunteer work in the congregation) the conductor kept referencing the apostle peter and how rambunctious he was and saying "who would think that he'd become the rock of the congregation?" apparently he was referencing Matt. 16:18. Correct me if I'm wrong, though, but I thought the JW interpretation of that was that the rock was Jesus, not Peter. The Catholics refer to this scripture to state the Peter was the first Pope, but the JWs reject that interpretation.

147

Your views and ideas on forum areas and organization?

by Simon in

this may come as a shock to some people, but the current forum structure was kind of thrown together without much real thought and then evolved a bit over time.

there are a few things that particularly grate on me and areas where i don't think the subjects work particularly well.

'friends' is a bit vague and becomes a dumping ground, news & world events vs politics & current affairs is hard to decide sometimes, child abuse is a scandal but isn't contained withing 'scandals & coverups' etc.... with a new forum platform imminent, it's a good time to solicit ideas to improve things.

OneEyedJoe

I have a couple suggestions that would make things easier for me:

It'd be nice if there was a way to sort topics in the reverse of how they're sorted currently (especially for the "active topics" screen). I normally have the site open on one tab and just check back and refresh periodically and scan through the topics that changed since the last one that was on the screen before the refresh. That all works great, but right after the topics roll over to another page there's like 3 topics there and I have to pull up another tab with the stuff that's a little older. If the topics where sorted so that the most recently active topic was the first one on page 1, I'd never have that problem. It's a minor issue, but I'm anal about efficiency, so it hurts my soul when I have to do extra clicks

A "quote" button on other people's posts that would stick the block quotes of their post into the reply text box, maybe with their username as well. This is common on other forums I've used and it really makes it easier to consistently show who you're responding to (if you're responding specifically to someone else's post). Very handy, IMO.

If you took the quote thing a step further, you could make it so that there's no way the user can edit the text he's quoting in his post. That'd fix the editing issues being discussed as well, because everyone would be able to see what someone's post said at the time of the reply.

25

If God created complex creation - out of the mouths of babes answer!

by qwerty in

we know the wts offical answer to this but,.

if god created complex unique creation and is the amazing designer - he must be as equally unique and complexed!

surely god would need a creater too????.

OneEyedJoe

And yet it is what the enterity of the WT's creation argument is based around. It's not surprising - WT reasoning and bad logic go hand in hand.

Now, now, don't be overly harsh. Their creationist stance is also based firmly on misquotes of evolutionists, misunderstanding of the scientific method, careful exclusion of damning evidence, improper application of statistics, and it's all firmed up by some quotes taken from a paranormalist with no acedemic credentials.

17

Armageddon is only a few weeks away...

by Calebs Airplane in

"which generation is this?

why, the one that saw the beginning of fulfillment of jesus prophecy.

that means people alive in the year 1914. how many remain?

OneEyedJoe

It does seem as though it would be the appropriate time for god to act!

57

Are we starting to treat DF people differently?

by Quarterback in

some may remember the time when the private study edition of the wt wasn't to be made available to outsiders, and the df'd.. now, with the recent boe letter, sept 1, 2014, it specifically states that jw.org is making the km available even for df'd individuals.. do you sense a new trend developing?.

OneEyedJoe

DFing isn't changing. If you think it is read the Nov. '14 study WT (I think that's the one) where it says that we should think of DF'd ones (even family members) as having been executed by god. I can't think of a much more extreem view that they could take.

What this boils down to is money, and probably trying to keep people from getting their KMs on jwleaks or here (and eventually getting TTATT because of it, like what happened for myself and warehouse). Of course "We'd like to install marble tile in the showers at our new cult compound in warwick, so please stop ordering so many KMs because that's really cutting into our budget" doesn't sound as good as "we're oh so loving and want to extend an olive branch to the DF'd ones, so we're making the KMs available publicly"

25

If God created complex creation - out of the mouths of babes answer!

by qwerty in

we know the wts offical answer to this but,.

if god created complex unique creation and is the amazing designer - he must be as equally unique and complexed!

surely god would need a creater too????.

OneEyedJoe

The "life is so complex that it must have an inteligent designer" argument is a form of the "proving too much" logical fallacy. Much of the time this falacy can be somewhat tricky to suss out because the false conclusion that it eventually leads you to can be inferentially distant enough that it's not very obvioius. In this case, it's quite delicious how obviously the argument proves itself false.

32

Is new light coming again?

by justme67 in

i just turned in my resignation letter to my congregation a few weeks ago.

last week, 2 elders called me to say they received my letter and would like to meet with me to discuss my concerns.

in my letter, i said i had found out about all the child abuse cases that were going on and that i didnt agree with their policy of disfellowshipping.

OneEyedJoe

This makes me think of trying to cancel your cable TV. Only when you want to cancel and switch to another company do they bring out their "special offers" to make you stay. Though, there's one critical difference - the cable company usually actually has something to offer whereas these elders where just bluffing.