Posts by OneEyedJoe

39

OMG! The world is worse than ever! This system can't last! Violence is increasing! Wait, what's that you say?

by sir82 in

jw
friends

if you read jw literature, the world has been progressively getting "worse and worse" since 1914.. is that really the case?.

for a more rational analysis, look here:.

a few highlights:.

OneEyedJoe

He said, "Well, you know, the Bible does say that things will get better right before the tribulation."

It always amazed me (even as a more or less believing JW) how people could say things like this and not realize that it's just hedging against any eventuality. Whatever happens, they'll say Ha! the bible predicted this! the end must be so close! This hedging was actually one of my principle doubts early on.

In any event, the bible says nothing about the gradual improvement we're seeing. It says there will be a widespread cry of peace and security and then the end will be INSTANTLY upon them. I guess that wouldn't make a difference, though...if "soon" encompasses the last 130 years, then "instantly" could well last long enough that everyone forgets the cry of peace and security anyway.

Even without that, though, this sort of long-term trend completely disproves the WTs basic premise - that mankind cannot solve their problems or make anything better and we NEED god's intervention. Meanwhile, humans have been solving their problems left and right for centuries. I just can't wait until 1 Corinthians 15:26 sees fulfillment: " And the last enemy, [religion], is to be brought to nothing." (sorry, my desire for intellectual honesty won't let me remove the brackets on the changed word)

114

What is truth?

by Heisenberg in

jw
friends

well, i have been lurking on this site for several months and i recently decided to join as a member.

i have made several observations and would like to make a few comments.. first, i am perplexed by the attitude of many on this site that are either former or active (but apostate) jws.

they seem to have a strong hatred for the wts and also for rank and file jws.

OneEyedJoe

Also, let me add: If you're up to the challenge, please head on over to the thread linked below. I think we're all very interested to see if an active JW can successfully defend the "truth" without resorting to rampant fallacy. Best of luck to you should you try it yourself.

http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/275576/1/Active-JWs-can-you-defend-THE-TRUTH

114

What is truth?

by Heisenberg in

jw
friends

well, i have been lurking on this site for several months and i recently decided to join as a member.

i have made several observations and would like to make a few comments.. first, i am perplexed by the attitude of many on this site that are either former or active (but apostate) jws.

they seem to have a strong hatred for the wts and also for rank and file jws.

OneEyedJoe

LG beat me to what I was going to say about your claims that exJWs are hypocrites for criticising JWs. It's a pretty common sentiment around here that we're all ashamed of our behavior when we were believing JWs. If a drug addict cleans up his life and proceeds to insist that his friend do the same, is he a hypocrite or a good friend?

So much of what you've said reminds me of how I once thought - if there's a god, then the JWs must be the truth. Unfortunately, I came to that conclusion after being born into the cult (I'll get to that in a second) and never really caring enough to do thorough research into the true doctrines of the bible (and certainly never considered that the JW bible had been tampered with in order to better fit their doctrine) - but why would I? The JWs were kind enough to provide their doctrine all laid out for me, complete with cherry-picked and out-of-context scripture to legitimize it. There's no room for dissent in JWdom so why research if there's the possibility that the research may reveal a flaw in your belief system?

On the topic of it being a cult, you'll want to investigate your definition a bit. I think most here don't necessarily refer to any religion that has an authority structure as being a cult. While it could be thought of as something of a spectrum (in which all organized religion would have some degree of cultness to them) I think it's usually pretty clear when a religion crosses the line into being a cult. For a good start on a better definition of a cult, try reading the information at the link below. This model of a cult was written by a man who had no exposure to JWs (but was, for a time, in the moonie cult). He identified common traits that all cults feature. See if anything seems familiar to you:

https://freedomofmind.com//Info/BITE/bitemodel.php

I'll offer you the advice that I wish someone had given me when I was at your stage - take things with a grain of salt, and be wary of making ad-hominem attacks in your head. There's no one path that you'll be forced to take. If you find that someone is an atheist, it doesn't mean that their biblical refutation of the JW doctrine is invalid. If someone became a satanist (a bit of hyperbole, but you may run into one or two), it doesn't mean that they were never a genuine devoted JW that left for legitimate reasons.

26

Campaign to Israel

by humanperson in

i have been wanting to introduce myself but i don't know where to begin.

my husband and i are enjoying our third guilt-free weekend of our lives (both born-in, almost 30).

he has been out mentally for the last year and a half but patiently waited for me to come around.

OneEyedJoe

like OneEyedJjoe i'm interested in knowing how your husband touched You

Hey, whoa there. don't put words in my mouth. How her husband touches her is none of my business.

sorry, i'm a 12-year-old sometimes.

26

Campaign to Israel

by humanperson in

i have been wanting to introduce myself but i don't know where to begin.

my husband and i are enjoying our third guilt-free weekend of our lives (both born-in, almost 30).

he has been out mentally for the last year and a half but patiently waited for me to come around.

OneEyedJoe

Welcome!

There's a couple threads on the isreal thing (one is linked below, I can't find the other right off) floating around that you might be interested in.

www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/287573/1/Didnt-the-Governing-Body-tell-us-Israel-is-safe

Speaking as a born-in husband that's woken up to TTATT about 8 months ago (I was disillusioned for a long time prior and just sort-of on autopilot) with a wife that still believes, I'd love to hear your account of how your husband was able to reach you through all the mental blocks that the cult puts in place. So far I haven't gotten very far with my wife - nothing seems to phase her since she doesn't really have a grasp on what it is that she's a part of. She's just in it because all her friends are, and it's all she's ever known.

Edit: Found the other thread for you:

http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/285095/1/Watchtower-encouraging-members-to-go-and-preach-in-Israel

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.

OneEyedJoe

Haha, I'm glad you guys enjoyed that.

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.