The latest generation change led to some serious doubts for me, which led me to do some internet searches for jw stuff, which led me to jw facts. I read a little on there but wasn't fully swayed until I saw the misquotes in the creation book. Once I had definitive evidence that I'd been systematically led to for my entire life - it was like a switch flipped in my brain.
OneEyedJoe
JoinedPosts by OneEyedJoe
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39
What Made You Finally Wake Up?
by Tenacious inhello to all.
i've been on this site for a couple of weeks now posting here and there but have not had the opportunity to read about many of the regular members and what led up to their leaving the wt.. i understand that some of you (i'm part of this club) may not be able to disclose many details and i can appreciate that.. i'd love to hear what was it that finally made you renounce what is and hopefully soon to be "was" the wt.. i truly look forward to having good discussions.. thank you to all for your kind participation.. .
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16
"The governing body at that time..."
by OneEyedJoe inso i'm listening to the regional manager give his mid week talk and he's going over acts 15 where they're dealing with the issues that arrose from the jewish christians wanting the gentile christians to adhear too the mosaic law, so some of the apostles gathered to hash it out.
it struck me, though, that he kept using the phrase "the governing body at that time" to describe the apostles and older men who decided on the matter.
once he even slipped up and said apostles, then corrected it to the gb.. i'm thinking that they've actually gone so far as to put it in his outline to make sure its beaten into the r/f that the gb's power is somehow based in scripture.
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OneEyedJoe
Oh here's another doozy - he just related the story of his mother who was a smoker trying to quit when the elders gave the 6-month smoking ultimatum. She was still smoking 3 packs a day when the deadline was 2 weeks out, but she finally got serious because she realized "I'm going to lose my relationship with Jehovah if I don't quit."
ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME? So she's been smoking her entire life and presumably believed herself to have a personal relationship with the big J all that time, but suddenly she's in danger of losing that for failing to quit on some MAN'S schedule?
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"The governing body at that time..."
by OneEyedJoe inso i'm listening to the regional manager give his mid week talk and he's going over acts 15 where they're dealing with the issues that arrose from the jewish christians wanting the gentile christians to adhear too the mosaic law, so some of the apostles gathered to hash it out.
it struck me, though, that he kept using the phrase "the governing body at that time" to describe the apostles and older men who decided on the matter.
once he even slipped up and said apostles, then corrected it to the gb.. i'm thinking that they've actually gone so far as to put it in his outline to make sure its beaten into the r/f that the gb's power is somehow based in scripture.
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OneEyedJoe
So I'm listening to the regional manager give his mid week talk and he's going over acts 15 where they're dealing with the issues that arrose from the Jewish Christians wanting the gentile Christians to adhear too the mosaic law, so some of the apostles gathered to hash it out. It struck me, though, that he kept using the phrase "the governing body at that time" to describe the apostles and older men who decided on the matter. Once he even slipped up and said apostles, then corrected it to the GB.
I'm thinking that they've actually gone so far as to put it in his outline to make sure its beaten into the r/f that the GB's power is somehow based in scripture. It's clear that this cult thinks of its literature as equal to the bible since the GB is supposed to be the continuation of the folks who set doctrine in the first century.
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Two pet peeves of mine
by Sour Grapes inthere are two things that just drive me crazy.
one is that the art work in the watchtower is treated like they are actual still photo's taken thousands of years ago.
your will hear comments about look at the smiles on their faces or the sadnees or happiness in their eyes, or notice the reaction of the crowd, etc.
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OneEyedJoe
THANK YOU! I hate how people at the WT study act as if something being illustrated makes it fact. Like when they do a comic strip style sequence depicting what will happen if you do what the cult wants you to do vs what a normal person would do. Some idiot invariably makes a comment like "if you look at the picture on page 13 you can see that when you follow the WT's guidance on this things turn out much better than when you follow the 'wisdom of the world'"
The first time I noticed this happening I was shocked at how superficially it was - when did simply drawing a picture of something and asserting it as fact replace a well-reasoned argument?
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Even when you're right - it's still possible to make bad arguments.
by Coded Logic induring heated debates people - who are normaly quite rational - often start employing bad reasoning.
it's important that when we're emotionaly invested in a topic we don't let our feelings destroy our ability to put forth valid arguments.
the best way to bring people to our side of a debate is by using good logic.
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OneEyedJoe
I'm glad this bothers someone other than myself. When people are debating something (this usually happens in online forums), and the person that I agree with most uses deeply flawed "logic" in support of his argument, it always makes me want to switch sides on principle. I actually touched on this in my opening post here - the rampant fallacy used by the WTS always had the same effect on me - I often found myself playing devil's advocate (I love the irony of that phrase when applied to considering the case against WT doctrine) in my head and finding that the argument against whatever was being said by the speaker seemed much more logical. This made me wildly uncomfortable during many a meeting and convention while I was still mentally indoctrinated.
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Another subliminal picture in the WT!!!!
by DATA-DOG ini just happend to wonder if the current issue had any hidden goodies.
imagine my delight!.
a gold star to the first person to correctly identify the image!.
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OneEyedJoe
I can't see your pic.…which WT and page is it in?
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shortsighted subjective thinking...
by purrpurr ini overheard a comment recently at the meeting.
it was said how beautiful jehovah had made the earth and how awfull would the earth be if we didn't have the green plants and vegetation?.
but surely as an indigenous species of this planet we would always find our home beautiful?
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OneEyedJoe
You're absolutely right. Going further: we are designed by evolution to find green landscapes to be beautiful - any potential competing species that lacked this would've been less drawn to areas with plenty of food and were therefore less likely to have reproductive success.
Indeed many of the things that are so often cited as evidence of a loving creator are similarly explained away by the inevitable compatibility that life would have with it's environment.
A little different one is when people use our ability to see in color as evidence that good loves us. We would be just fine seeing in black and white, but good saw city to give us the ability to see in color so we could appreciate the beauty of creation, or so the argument goes. First I would argue that we would not be "just fine" without color vision - the ability to quickly identify predators, ripe fruit, poisonous insects, and potential prey are all heavily dependant on or ability to see in color. Second, if god is so loving that he wants us to see the beauty of creation, why not extend or vision into the infrared or ultra violet? Surely this would enhance our appreciation immensely. Or why not gov us the ability to see xrays, after all, much of our cosmos is only observable on that end of the spectrum. Third, similar to your point, of all we saw was black and white, surely we would learn to appreciate the beauty of our surroundings anyway, being completely ignorant of all that we are missing - exactly as we are ignorant of what we are missing in the rest of the EM spectrum.
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Reject "worldly" fantasies, pursue Kingdom "realities"!!!
by DATA-DOG inhave you had the pleasure of hearing this doozy??
i believe it was presented at the circuit level first, it has filtered it's way down.. the poor eldub opens with this definition of the word fantasize:.
"to conceive fanciful or extravagant notions, ideas, suppositions, ect.
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OneEyedJoe
Yep, the WTS never have me anything real, but my evil university education has already paid for itself several times over by my 30th birthday.
It's sad that the irony is lost on them - they're essential fantasizing about being that baby. Completely mindless, but having every need satisfied for them in paradise. That is the fantasy that fuels them all.
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11/30/2014 WT Study - take care of those who are all used up.
by OneEyedJoe inwas bored during today's indoctrination lesson, and you guys weren't generating enough content to keep me entertained, so i looked agreed at next week's a bit.
basically the point of the hour lesson is that once the society has completely used someone up, they're to be dumped on next of kin (or anyone who'll take 'em) to take care of 'em.
obviously the wts can't dip into any of the millions/billions that they're sitting on to pay for the support of ailing missionaries - they've got that money earmarked for new cult compounds and paying off victims of the pedophiles that they've protected over the years.. just another in a recent string of articles paying lip service to taking care of those that have given their life to the cult while they do absolutely nothing from their ivory towers.
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OneEyedJoe
Was bored during today's indoctrination lesson, and you guys weren't generating enough content to keep me entertained, so I looked agreed at next week's a bit. Basically the point of the hour lesson is that once the society has completely used someone up, they're to be dumped on next of kin (or anyone who'll take 'em) to take care of 'em. Obviously the WTS can't dip into any of the millions/billions that they're sitting on to pay for the support of ailing missionaries - they've got that money earmarked for new cult compounds and paying off victims of the pedophiles that they've protected over the years.
Just another in a recent string of articles paying lip service to taking care of those that have given their life to the cult while they do absolutely nothing from their ivory towers. This time, though, they didn't miss a chance to make the r/f feel guilty for not doing enough for the cult.
Absolutely disgraceful.
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Congregation "Bible Study"
by Blackfalcon98 inso i was riding along with an uber dub.
the conversation veered to mentioning how one elder gave a very encouraging comment (he is the of loving type).
the issue was no one remembered exactly what the comment was, so i said "i know it was during the book study, i mean the congregation bible study.
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OneEyedJoe
On the subject of their taking scriptures out of context, I wonder if that's part of the appeal of their recent push for everyone to have tablets - their epub literature links to the cited scriptures with out the context. They could link to their app so you could see the scripture in context, but they're all too happy to give you just the neatly selected excerpt that seems to support whatever they're selling at the moment.
I can definitely relate to feeling like you're going to explode holding in TTATT. It's only natural to want to stand up and say/do something once you know what's going on, and I think that the system is, to a certain extent, designed to make you do just that upon awakening so that you'll play right into their definition of mentally diseased apostates.