Posts by OneEyedJoe

15

Freedom of Relgion has been taken away.

by Jeannette in

when a person is disfellowshiped by a religion just because he or she doesn't believe it all is very serious.

some disfellowshiped ones have even taken their own lives because they have been made to feel so bad.

it's down in black and white that parents and friends are supposed to shun them, shunning is acting like someone is dead.

OneEyedJoe

Yeah, it's something of a catch-22 though. In order to ensure that individuals have freedom of religion, the government would have to infringe upon the freedom of religion of those shunning them.

16

crazy analogy question regarding Jesus' divinity [or lack of]

by TTWSYF in

i heard a preist pose this question and i'll admit, it made me think.. if your neighbor had a dog and a monkey and his dog bite you.

would you accept an apology from the neighbors monkey?.

just asking.

Regardless of how much of an oversimplification or how out of context the analogy might be, it remains incomprehensible to me. But then, I've been an atheist for years (though still in the cult currently, and learned TTATT like 8 months ago - my life is fun) so I find that I have little patience for the sort of mental gymnastics it takes to make sense of something like this. Meanwhile there's so much about the universe that can be well understood and we can bask in it's beautiful and elegant simplicity.

In all honesty, I'm not really sure of the purpose of this thread (was the preist trying to explain things, or trying to demonstrate how absurd it all is?) so I'll leave you fine folks to it...

24

No words

by mikeypants in

so, i'm visiting family this week who are all jws.

yesterday, it started with one of them talking about a co giving her some points on time keeping for service.

she is now writing a letter before she drives to service, so she can count her drive time.

OneEyedJoe

If it wasn't about the time then there would be no reason to write out notes to Not-At-Homes. Write it ONE TIME on the computer and print 100. Next month print 100 more. OH! But then you can't count the time for writing out 100 notes.

1.7 BILLION HOURS OF ACCOMPLISHING NOTHING.

Doc

Yeah, no kidding. That was one of my longest held frustrations with the time counting system - it promotes inefficiency. If people used a similar system for their jobs in which they merely counted their hours on the job and no one ever actually looked at individual results, we'd still be living in the dark ages.

54

How do you overcome this JW excuse?

by EdenOne in

during one of those meetings that took place before my jc, one of the elders, who was a good friend of mine back then and used to come up with a few outlandish personal views about some teachings, attempted to counter one of my arguments like this:.

eden - "well, if the truth doesn't change, why is it that what we teach as 'truth' has changed over the years (several examples given)?

how can we dogmatically claim at any given moment that we have 'the truth' if our teachings keep changing?".

OneEyedJoe

Thinking about this a little bit more, I feel like part of the problem is that the word "truth" is so loaded by the cult. "Truth" to a JW means "JWism" so arguing that JWism was not true at some point causes them to do some mental gymnastics to defend JWism because their brain hears this sentence as "the truth isn't true" and it doesn't make sense to them.

Perhaps a better way to approach this is to use a synonym of truth (fact/accurate/etc) that doesn't fire off the same rigged mental pathways the way the word "truth" does. Unfortuantely even that's somewhat of a minefield - words like accurate can be quickly associated to the oft used phrase "accurate knowledge of truth" which leads you right back to where you don't want to go.

24

No words

by mikeypants in

so, i'm visiting family this week who are all jws.

yesterday, it started with one of them talking about a co giving her some points on time keeping for service.

she is now writing a letter before she drives to service, so she can count her drive time.

OneEyedJoe

All this is shared under the rationale of “making your time count”

There's nothing inconsistent there. You just assumed that the object of the sentence was time (as in make your time as productive as it can be) when in reality the object of the sentence was "time count" - make (fabricate) your "time count" i.e. the numbers that you put on the timeslip. That's exactly what they encourage you to do.

The odd thing, though, is that ALL JWs know that they do this, and know that most other JWs do this too. But somehow when they see the yearly report for all the billions of (fruitless) hours spent "in the ministry" (which somehow also includes building compounds for cult leaders) none of them realize that the numbers are the sum of fabrications, and therefore fabrications themselves. Aggregating meaningless data doesn't somehow impart any meaning to it.

54

How do you overcome this JW excuse?

by EdenOne in

during one of those meetings that took place before my jc, one of the elders, who was a good friend of mine back then and used to come up with a few outlandish personal views about some teachings, attempted to counter one of my arguments like this:.

eden - "well, if the truth doesn't change, why is it that what we teach as 'truth' has changed over the years (several examples given)?

how can we dogmatically claim at any given moment that we have 'the truth' if our teachings keep changing?".

OneEyedJoe

When people start making arguments like this, there's no counter argument that will sway them or make any point. Anything you say at this point will just be interpreted as belligerence and proof that you don't have the "right heart condition" and therefore need to be cast out.

The only thing that I can think of that might make some kind of impact is something like the organ transplant ban where you can basically say that either the organization isn't always right, or god wanted it to be bloodguilty.

16

crazy analogy question regarding Jesus' divinity [or lack of]

by TTWSYF in

i heard a preist pose this question and i'll admit, it made me think.. if your neighbor had a dog and a monkey and his dog bite you.

would you accept an apology from the neighbors monkey?.

just asking.

OneEyedJoe

That seems like a flawed analogy. If "you" in this analogy is God, then the neighbor is... who? Who owns the dog and monkey and is therefore responsible for them if one of them bites someone?

This.

A more fitting (and even more incomprehensible) analogy is: A man has a dog that craps on his lawn so he kills his son.

17

2nd and 3rd Genners -- Did the passing of the 1st/2nd Gen. cause doubts for you?

by Apognophos in

i can't discuss my family history here in detail while i'm still fading, but suffice to say that i'm a third-generation witness.

my grandparents' generation of witnesses expected the end to come in the middle of the 20th century.

they led spartan lives and largely went without having kids, as they awaited the imminent new system.

OneEyedJoe

More than once now I have heard the expression "getting into the New World via the Underground" .

'round here, I've only heard this from COs and on convention/assembly programs. (I'm sure some local JWs have used it as well, but i'm neither old nor zealous enough to be having deep conversations with the ones who are likely using it). I think they're trying to coin the expression as a way of preparing people to expect their older loved ones to die before armageddon.

29

Could the allowance of blood fractions be curtailing the growth of the religion?

by Apognophos in

so, imagine that you're just a regular joe who's not familiar with the witnesses and is looking for the answers to life, the universe, and everything.

you hear a knock at your door.

before long, you are studying with a jehovah's witness.

OneEyedJoe

I suspect that most anyone who makes it that far in the "study" is already sufficiently indoctrinated that the relatively remote chance that they'll need a blood transfusion allows them to dismiss any questions they might have regarding the implementation of the blood ban. They've already invested so much time into the cult that their CD will prevent them from raising questions at that stage. Combined with the social pressure of having 2 JWs explaining this to you like it's the moist rational thing ever it's probably only going to raise questions of they or a family member has needed blood in the past.

The blood ban in general I'd probably losing them recruits, but nowhere near what they're losing just by being exposed for what they are on the internet.

21

Did you know about the organ transplant ban when you were a believer?

by Apognophos in

back when i was learning ttatt, i was shocked to read on jwfacts about the organ transplant ban from 1967 to 1980. this was a large piece of evidence for me that the society could not be god's organization.

growing up as an earnest witness, and living near the headquarters, i knew a lot of the organization's embarrassing history, and it didn't faze me, but i'd never heard of this ban before, and it shocked me.

it's gotten me wondering why no one i know ever talks about it, when it must have affected many witnesses during that time (or were they getting transplants on the sly?

OneEyedJoe

I was the same as you...I never heard an inkling about the transplant thing. To be fair, it wasnt in effect during my lifetime, but I had heard whispers of 1975. I think that it's likely that the only people that knew of the ban were people that needed a transplant ( and thought to investigate 'mother's' thoughts on the matter) and some elders. When I found jwfacts I actually ignored the section about organ transplants because I assumed it was ancient history - in my still somewhat indoctrinated mind, I assumed it was a relic from the 40's or something because transplants were too risky at the time. When I finally looked at it, I was shocked at how recently the ban had been in place.