Posts by OneEyedJoe

149

Evolution and spirits

by Chris Tann in

as of now iam making an unbiased examination of evolution.

however one thing keeps me hanging on to the belief of a supreme spirit being; the existence of spirits.

i have heard countless accounts of people who have experienced frightening encounters with evil forces.

sowhatnow - sounds like your mother, and probably you, experienced sleep paralysis. It's a pretty well understood phenomena that is probably responsible for a pretty significant number of so-called supernatural experiences. In short, your body is either gearing up for sleep, or not yet fully out of sleep mode (in the evening or early morning respectively) and the body is still paralyzed and the visual centers of the brain are still highly active. Your body is usually partially or fully paralyzed when your asleep (that's how you keep from running around the house when you have a dream about being chased) and sometimes this can start to take hold a bit before you fall asleep. you probably inherited a predisposition for the condition from your mother.

When you're falling asleep, your brain is also gearing up for some wild, crazy and realistic visual and auditory hallucinations. Most folks call them dreams. Just like the effects that keep you paralyzed in sleep, this can sometimes start a little bit earlier or last a little longer than needed causing waking hallucinations.

Effects like this also explain why some families seem to be haunted, with many generations reporting similar visions in the moments just prior or just after sleep.

23

What I really fear about JW.ORG

by StarTrekAngel in

much has been written, twitted and youtubed about the extent to which the wtbts may go in order to keep its members from peeking out of the box.

from name calling, constantly telling members about the dangers of apostasy, all the way to dfing anyone who dares to look outside.

many tools and theories have been brought forward.

OneEyedJoe

I just thought of another tactic they're using with the app to keep people in the dark. We're all well aware that there are a number of scriptures that the WTS essentially never references because they contradict their doctrine. By the same stroke, they rely heavily on a small subset of the Bible.

Well, when they released the jw library app on feature that they seemed proud of was that the Bible search automatically orders the scriptures in the search result by frequency of use in the publications. The website also seems to do this. Theres lots of little nudges like this that they can use to make stumbling upon TTATT a little harder. Often lots of little nudges are far more effective at controlling people than one big push.

23

What I really fear about JW.ORG

by StarTrekAngel in

much has been written, twitted and youtubed about the extent to which the wtbts may go in order to keep its members from peeking out of the box.

from name calling, constantly telling members about the dangers of apostasy, all the way to dfing anyone who dares to look outside.

many tools and theories have been brought forward.

OneEyedJoe

I agree with your assessment 100%. They've already "updated" magazines and books that are available online, with the old versions nowhere to be found. They're only going to continue to push the electronic stuff so that they can scale back the printing and cut costs. This will definitely have the effect of making it more difficult for the R/F to have access to the old documents that they need to confirm that sites like jwfacts are, indeed, telling the truth.

In the future I see dubs who stumble upon jwfacts looking at all the citations of old documents going to jw.org to confirm only to find that anything older than 10 years is unavailable. They'll then decide that jwfacts is just a lying apostate site out of shear laziness. Even in my case, when I found jwfacts I decided that I'd only believe any of the quotes that could be verified from the WT library, which only goes back to 1950 for WTs and 1970 for awakes. Much of the most damning evidence is older than that, but luckily there's plenty in that timeframe that I woke up. Trying to prove the WTS is a cult using only the last 10 years of publications would be much more difficult.

149

Evolution and spirits

by Chris Tann in

as of now iam making an unbiased examination of evolution.

however one thing keeps me hanging on to the belief of a supreme spirit being; the existence of spirits.

i have heard countless accounts of people who have experienced frightening encounters with evil forces.

OneEyedJoe

I would encourage you to examine evolution and the potential existence of evil spirits as two seperate topics. They really have nothing to do with one another and your belief in spirits should not influence your examination of the evidence for evolution. Once you confirm that evolution is indeed well founded in fact, you may need to revisit your belief in spirits. That's not to say that the two are mutually exclusive, but once you start letting the evidence guide your beliefs you'll likely want to continue.

32

Scared of Armageddon?

by naja in

in the light of the following promises made by jehovah, how can there be an armageddon?.

genesis 8:21: ... so jehovah said in his heart: never again will i cursethe groundon mans account, for the inclination of the heart of man is bad from his youth up;and never again will i strike down every living thing as i have done.. genesis 9:15, 16: and i will certainly remember my covenant that i made between me and you and every living creature of every kind;and never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all flesh.and the rainbow will occur in the cloud, and i will certainly see it and remember the everlasting covenant between god and every living creature of every kindon the earth.. does it make sense to say "i will never kill you by a flood, next time i will use fire?

just asking.. .

OneEyedJoe

Does it make sense to say "I will never kill you by a flood, next time I will use fire? Just asking.

Makes about as much sense as a talking donkey, a talking snake, God killing his son to pay a debt to himself, etc. etc.

So, no...it doesn't make sense.

40

news item...9 yr old baptised

by returnvisit in

grrrrrrrrrrrrr!.

check out website for dunedin, nzs newspaper www.odt.co.nz re the 9yr old that got baptised at the convention in dunedin this last weekend... can't you just hear everyone there gushing about it??.

as i said grrrrrrrrrrrrr .

OneEyedJoe

It would be worthwhile doing some research to test whether people's baptized status (yes=baptized;no=not baptized) is more likely to influence decisions to subsequently leave or stay in the organization.

You could argue that, once baptized, the consequences of leaving change (i.e., you can now be disfellowshipped if you break any of the organization's rules), but it may well be that an individual's baptized status doesn't influence decisions to leave. That is, just as many ultimately leave who are baptized as are not such as those who study, go to meetings, go out in field service but who never take that step.)

I suspect that the push to get kids baptized before they know better is more about retention of those around them. If they get baptized and later DA or get DFd for being appostate or whatever, there's organizationally enforced shunning to protect the org's other assets (i.e. the r/f jws that might otherwise talk to them) but if they never get baptized and leave the cult without ever being baptized, there's less justification to keep people from communicating with them (especially for family). If there is communication between cult members and ex members (even if they're not baptized) it increases the odds that someone will see that a rewarding, happy life is possible outside the org.

In short, I think the shunning policies are more about preventing active JWs from learning TTATT than they are about punishing those who leave.

59

September 24, 2014 BOE

by wifibandit in

.

OneEyedJoe

Bttt any video leaked yet? Trying to decide if I want to go to the meeting to see it.

I can't imagine any scenario in which it would be worth it to go to the meeting.

24

Let's Say 1914 Was The Establishment of God's Kingdom....what is the significance?

by minimus in

jw
friends

as hillary clinton might say, what difference does it make???.

even if god's kingdom was established in 1914, why is that such a big deal?

other than unprovable actions in heaven, what can jws say is the significance of it all...with a straight face?.

OneEyedJoe

AFS - wikipedia has numbers on the mormons. One of the biggest differences between lds and jws, though, seems to be that the mormons aren't really obsessed with stats

If I remember correctly, there's roughly 15 million that identify as LDS/Mormon but only 5-6 million regularly attend mormon services. Since mormons are more family oriented (with many having only family services or setting up small groups hosted in homes) it's difficult to make a direct comparison. For your purposes, though, I'd just go with the ~15 mil number.

59

September 24, 2014 BOE

by wifibandit in

.

OneEyedJoe

This makes me think of Winston Smith out of 1984 with the TV on his wall.

Just wait 'till they start having public talks by GB members played. Not to mention the tie-ins at the convention this year. Sadly, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the parallels to 1984.

7

No longer angry or bitter.

by quellycatface in

jw
friends

i saw some jw's in my neighbourhood today from my ex kh.

they were on the ministry and happened to call at my door!!.

i calmly explained i had da'd and now went to a regular church.

OneEyedJoe

Well done. As was wisely said, harboring resentment is like taking poison and hoping it kills your enemy. I envy your freedom, go live life for all those who are still trapped!