Posts by OneEyedJoe

7

To Whom Shall We Go You Have The sayings Of Everlasting Life

by frankiespeakin in

of coarse any one claiming to be god's son, is pretty heady stuff.

i look at the words that are found john 6:66-70 and picture a delusional person faced with a huge loss in followers because he wasn't able to make his words pleasing to some and he lost them:.

53 so jesus said to them: most truly i say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in yourselves.+54 whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has everlasting life, and i will resurrect+ him on the last day; 55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.

OneEyedJoe

Peter (if he and jesus actually existed, as such) was just about as important to the creation of christianity as was jesus. He was, as you say, the loyal follower who'd stick around for anything. Without him jumping up to affirm his loyalty, the other disciples would've had time to think and might've figured out that they were following a new cult leader. Humans, as the social apes that we are, instinctively rely on the valuation of others when we decide on something's value. If a friend is hot after a girl, suddenly she looks better to you too. The same thing was probably in play here, the other disciples may have had some doubts about this new guy coming along and basically throwing their entire religion in the crapper, but Peter was always there affirming his loyalty and indirectly pressuring the rest of them to go along.

Personally this scripture always bugged me. Not just because the way it was used was always sort of said to me "This religion may suck, but everything else sucks a little worse" which was never satisfying, but more because of 2 Timothy 4:3 - "For there will be a period of time when they will not put up with the wholesome teaching, but according to their own desires, they will surround themselves with teachers to have their ears tickled." Whenever they read this scripture where peter's stated reason for sticking by jesus wasn't because he was the messiah, nor was it because he was backed by god as evidenced by his miraculous works, nor was it because he spoke "truth" nor was it because his "load was light" - it was because he had "sayings of everlasting life." How is that anything other than following someone to have your "ears tickled?" So it's OK to do it as long as you follow the right guy?

26

How to make the most of wife not going to service meeting?

by FadeToBlack in

jw
friends

out of the blue, my wife told me that after this week's service meeting on friday (co visit) she is not going to anymore meetings during the week at night.

only sunday (am) meetings.

she explained that it is difficult and not safe for her to drive after dark (vision issues: i have the same problem so i couldn't help her if i wanted to).

OneEyedJoe

dont need to drive at night---take a taxi---go to a restaurant--dress up for it--make it a special night out. not every week--unless you can afford it

That's dangerous since she'll think "if I can take a taxi to do something fun, I should be able to take a taxi to meetings." At least, I'd avoid taking a taxi anywhere on meeting nights for the first few months of the newfound freedom.

45

Are you afraid something horrible will happen to you now you have left the Wt.

by Still Totally ADD in

jw
friends

i remember many years ago we would talk about those who leave the org.

something bad will happen to them.

because god was mad at them for turning away from the wt.

OneEyedJoe

Richard - you're missing the obvious thing, for someone to have come to an accurate knowledge of truth, then turn back to worldly ways leaves them as worse than a man of the nations! If you leave the cult, you're worse than anyone who's ever been in the cult, no matter what they did.

It's so disgusting to think that I once thought things like that...

26

How to make the most of wife not going to service meeting?

by FadeToBlack in

jw
friends

out of the blue, my wife told me that after this week's service meeting on friday (co visit) she is not going to anymore meetings during the week at night.

only sunday (am) meetings.

she explained that it is difficult and not safe for her to drive after dark (vision issues: i have the same problem so i couldn't help her if i wanted to).

OneEyedJoe

I guess try doing anything that she enjoys. If she's anything like my wife, I'd recomend something more active and involved than a movie, at least at first. My wife feels imense guilt anytime we so much as miss a saturday out in serve-us, so something like a movie that only requires passive involvement might allow her enough time to reflect on how guilty she feels about missing the meeting. Also, if she's a very social person, make sure she has social interaction (preferably with non JWs) so that she won't miss gabbing before/after the meetings.

If you can keep the guilt at bay and satisfy any needs the meeting might be filling for long enough, when she eventually reflects on all the missed meetings and "we miss you" comments from people, she'll have to wrestle with the fact that she's been much happier in the time away. If she gets guilty feelings right away, though, it won't have been long enough to break the indoctrination on how essential the meetings are.

Sounds like you're on the right track. Good luck!

24

BU2B comments on "Are you convinced you have the truth? Why?" WT article.

by BU2B in

i want to start doing a wt review on certain articles.

i think we need as much discussion as possible breaking down these mind control sessions.

i cannot compare with blondie, but i will do my best.

OneEyedJoe

Thanks, I enjoyed your write-up.

I'd say that the theme of this article is "typcal WT bait and switch." They ask a question in the title, then present a bunch of answers to unrelated questions, and finally tell you how you should feel about the subject.

I'm with you on the last paragraph...that always made me uncomfortable that they'd ask a question at the end like "how do you feel about X" and in the paragraph it would tell you how you felt about it.

82

Awake January 2015: How did life begin? - More misquotes

by Designer Stubble in

[quote]some might assume that a scientifically-minded person would pick evolution and that a religious person would pick creation.

but not always.. rama singh, professor of biology at canadas mcmaster university, says: the opposition to evolution goes beyond religious fundamentalism and includes a great many people from educated sections of the population.[/quote].

end-of-quote in awake.

OneEyedJoe

You guys are so cute getting worked up about this. I find it surprising that you find this so surprising. The WBTS is committing a massive fraud - that is obtaining an advantage through deception. They have been doing it for nigh on 100 years. What you have uncovered up is nothing short of standard practice. That is not to denigrate the good work in showing how brazen it is but my guess is that WBTS publicatioons are riddled with this sort of intellectual dishonesty. If they were a commercial organsation they would have been indicted for conspiracy to defraud a long time ago.

In my case (and I suspect other's) this is useful for a couple reasons.

Firstly, it's recent. You can always point to stuff in the creation book, but JWs are so focused on what's current (new light and all that) that they'll just brush it off as insignificant. Also, with the creation book there's the excuse that it was written before the internet so fact checking was more difficult for them to do, so of course there will be a few errors on quotes, etc. With this new awake, you can find the source of the misquotes in about 3 seconds online, so there's no way anyone can claim it was anything but intentional. Additionally, anything not available on JW.org is immediately questioned unless you have a physical copy. Then, if you have a physical copy of something written before you were born, they'll immediately assume that you only aquired it in order to try and create doubts, which then leads to the assumption that you found out about it in the first place from an apostate website. Once there's a hint that you might've viewed an apostate website, nothing you say is credible to them anymore.

Second, it's not open to interpretation. The WTS has totally taken the place of God to the JWs, so it belongs to them the sole ability to interpret scripture or translate manuscripts in any way that they see fit. In this case, the WTS has (and fairly recently, at that) condemned quoting out of context, and it's certainly obvious that they did just that.

Third, it's handy because this is something that you could plausibly have found and you can show to someone without them immediately asking "Have you been going to apostate web sties?" If you challenge doctrine (especially the blood doctrine or anything to do with pedophiles or a whole host of other things) the first assumption is that you had to have gone to an apostate web site to get your information. In this case, the information is clearly available from a google search and requires no apostate information, so it can get past the charecter assasination that the WTS constantly ingrains.

I'm not getting worked up about it because it's surprising (well it was a little bit, I figured they'd up their game now that we're in the information age...their last two creationist brochures did pretty good at avoiding misquotes and just relied heavily on misdirection and fallacy) I'm excited about this because it's something that might be useful to me in my endeavor to wake up my wife (or at least explain why I no longer want to be a part of the WTS).

Edit: wow that got really long. I guess I am a little worked up. I guess having a clear goal that gets me closer to freedom is exciting.

45

Are you afraid something horrible will happen to you now you have left the Wt.

by Still Totally ADD in

jw
friends

i remember many years ago we would talk about those who leave the org.

something bad will happen to them.

because god was mad at them for turning away from the wt.

OneEyedJoe

I don't worry about it in the sense that I think leaving the cult makes me any more likely to have something bad happen to me, but I do worry about it in the sense that I don't want to be used as an example to reinforce the phobia indoctrination of this cult.

82

Awake January 2015: How did life begin? - More misquotes

by Designer Stubble in

[quote]some might assume that a scientifically-minded person would pick evolution and that a religious person would pick creation.

but not always.. rama singh, professor of biology at canadas mcmaster university, says: the opposition to evolution goes beyond religious fundamentalism and includes a great many people from educated sections of the population.[/quote].

end-of-quote in awake.

OneEyedJoe

So he saw no proof that life arose spontaneously...how interesting. I suppose he expected to be out in the forest with his magnifying glass and witness a mushrooom turn into a spider and when that never happened, well obviously there's a designer with a capital D out there. Good lord.

The ironic thing is that his assessment "I saw no proof that life arose spontaneously from nonliving matter" is actually a pretty good summation of the argument for evolution! Isn't it the bible that asserts that life (adam) arose spontaneously from nonliving matter (dirt)? The evidence is pretty strong that a very simple form of "life" (that we might not even call life where we to see it today) arose gradually from observed chemical processes that occurr when energy is pumped into an environment similar to primordial earth. I hardly think that something that took 500 million years (after the end of the late heavy bombardment) could be considered as happening "spontaneously." The subsequent 3 Billion or so years of evolution that it took to get us to our current level of biodiversity and complexity is even less spontaneous. The only one that asserts that life arose spontaneously is the creationist saying that god just did it one day.

82

Awake January 2015: How did life begin? - More misquotes

by Designer Stubble in

[quote]some might assume that a scientifically-minded person would pick evolution and that a religious person would pick creation.

but not always.. rama singh, professor of biology at canadas mcmaster university, says: the opposition to evolution goes beyond religious fundamentalism and includes a great many people from educated sections of the population.[/quote].

end-of-quote in awake.

OneEyedJoe

I want to show EVERY witness I know...but how can I do that without revealing how I found out the truthful info???

Stuckinarut -

Here's what you say - you're interested in scientific topics but when you watch TV shows or read articles or whatever about biology, they always push their atheist agenda and act like evolution is a proven fact. So when you saw this article, you excitedly read it but it was too brief for you. The quotes from respected scientific literature that they included piqued your interest so you did a quick google search in a desire to hear more about how evolution is false from these scientists. What you found, though deeply disturbed (or stumbled) you....then show the quotes in their source.

Depending on how in-depth you want to get, you can then direct them to:

Job 13:7-11 - in these verses being deceptive, even if it's in defense of god, is condemned

2011 yearbook p13 - this is taken from jwfacts' article on misquotes/deception/lies and is a quote that explains how much effort the writing department puts into presenting only accurate material

2001 Yearbook p80 - this is an article in which the WTS specifically condemns quoting out of context when it's used against them (hypocrite much?)

w03 1/1 p27 - another specific condemnation of quoting out of context, even associates the practice with Satan.

w11 2/15 p19 - again, a condemnation of quoting out of context (you might want to avoid this one, though, since they claim that apostates quote out of context, and when you're challenging the WTS it might not be a good idea to bring up the topic of apostates)

This is what I plan to do with my wife, and possibly father-in-law. It's easily plausible that you found this information on your own with no help from apostates.

23

Finally Free!!!

by ADJUSTMENTS in

my wife and i are finally free of this horrible cult we will be leaving the south east for the north western part of the us to start anew!!!

our friends and family have no idea of our new beliefs and feelings on the cult so it should be a nice clean break!

hope to connect with some in that area pm me if you'd like.. .

OneEyedJoe

Congrats!!!