OneEyedJoe

Joined

• started 34 topics
• posted 2,930 times   see topics posted on
• send a message

Posts by OneEyedJoe

• 
  30

  May KM Highlight 1/Cong baptized

  by Gayle in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  at 2014 conventions (regional?

  ) 14,039 baptized.

  outstanding for 13,871 congs!

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  OneEyedJoe

  Speeding up the work indeed! Over 1000 new kingdom hall projects needed!

  Edit: I guess the formatting didn't work out...the "projects" above was supposed to be extra small haha. They don't like it when the R/F notice that little word in there.
• 
  24

  Jdub Growth In USA?

  by freein2004 in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  does anybody have any information on recent growth in the jdub religion?

  other than their own reports?

  or, can you point me to the right post here?

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  OneEyedJoe

  If they are fudging the numbers to make the picture better than it is, how come, year-after-year they reveal the number of memorial partakers is increasing? That surely is as big an embarrassment as any decrease in numbers on other variables such as average publishers and baptisms.
  

  My take on it is that it's a little easier to fudge the publisher count numbers than the partakers, while still being able to explain it away to the believers that are involved in compiling the numbers. They don't have an official policy on it, but from what I've read here from elders and such it seems to be unofficially the case that elders get a good reaming from the CO if they get a new irregular/inactive publisher, so they hound everyone to submit time and if they don't have any they're asked things like "well surely you've had a few spiritual conversations at work that added up to an hour?" and people will usually just let 'em have it. So you get publishers that aren't doing anything but report time nonetheless. Then obviously there are those that don't want to be hounded at all, and knowingly report false time to stay off the radar.

  Additionally, there's the issue with the "peak publishers" number that they essentially just count the number of timeslips that they get each month instead of what would be trivially easy (these days) to actually tally them by month according to what month the timeslip is for. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if they counted peak publishers individually in each country/branch/whatever and added them all up to get the reported peak (i.e. one country's peak might be from april while another's would be from july). This would significantly distort the figures, but to the simpleton JWs doing the stats it would seem harmless.

  Also there's the issue of 3rd world growth making up for the loss in developed countries. They've clearly tried to disguise this, though, by combining branches and then reporting the total for the new (larger) branch and comparing it to the previous (smaller) branch. I think they recently did this by including some new territories in with the US branch to hide the decline or make the growth look better than it really was. Of course they don't mention this combining when they publish the numbers.

  When it comes to the number partaking, though, it's a little more cut-and-dry. They already tell elders not to count "worldly" people who are just treating it like communion, and I think they usually talk to others before counting them if they partake. That's about all they can do. Once the numbers make it up to the branch, there's a lot less that they can do to spin them and be able to rationalize it away.
  

  I wouldn't be surprised if they dropped the count of those partaking altogether very soon, though. And maybe they'll quietly push out a QFR article about it.
• 
  46

  Groanfest. Share your daftest jokes .

  by jhine in

  1. social
  2. humour

  lots of serious stuff being discussed on site .

  i thought!it would be nice to make each other groan/ smile for a change .please share your corniest ,punniest , or daftest joke .. i will start with this shocker , borrowed from tim vine .. vandalism in a multi story carpark ....... ...................................,............................ wrong on sooo many levels !.

  come on now share yours.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  OneEyedJoe

  A few of my personal favorite, really lame jokes:

  It's difficult to explain puns to kleptomaniacs because they always take things literally.

  How many mice does it take to screw in a light bulb? Just 2, but getting them in there is the trick.

  And a couple of my favorites from the late Mitch Hedberg:

  I don't have a girlfriend, but I do know a woman that would get really mad at me for saying that.

  This shirt is dry clean only, which means...it's dirty.
• 
  15

  Feeling indifferent

  by campaign of hate in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  right now, at this point in my life, i feel like i should be angry, sad, upset, annoyed, whatever emotion that most of you guys here feel or have felt.. but the overwhelming feeling i get, and i have got since waking up, is indifference.. i think that this might be my subconscious coping mechanism.

  when i go to the meetings or take part in any other wt related activity, i don't care.

  i just really couldn't care less.. i mean, i do care, but i think it's more a fascination now about the whole thing.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  OneEyedJoe

  I think I (maybe) get what you're saying. I really don't care about any of it at this point and just want out. The only thing keeping me going (in general, not necessarily going to meetings, which I haven't been to a lot lately) is my wife but honestly now there are points where it's difficult to care about that.

  I think at a certain point you just get too fatigued from working to get out without seeing any real results and your options are to be really depressed and hopeless or just not to care. So, yeah, a lot of the time I just don't care about anything that has anything to do with the cult, including my family and cult "friends." Maybe I'm preparing myself to lose all of them when I just can't take it anymore. I don't know, and, to be honest, I sorta don't care haha.
• 
  17

  Jehovahs Witness Shunning & the Crusades

  by freemindfade in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  while discussing being mistreated by my own jw family last night with my wife, i wanted to try to make her think critically about what shunning really is, and at its root what how beneficial it is.

  earlier in the day i sent her non-apostate scholarly article on religious shunning being tantamount to psychological torture.

  and most witnesses don't think into much about why they do things, its more of a "this is the way we do it, don't over think it" process.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  OneEyedJoe

  To answer your question about the 2/3rds thing, I think you might be misapplying it. The statistic (at least the one that I know of) is that roughly 2/3rds of born-ins leave. This is inferred from a pew poll that indicated that roughly 1/3 of people polled that were raised JW still identified as JW.

  http://religions.pewforum.org/reports
  
• 
  12

  door to door

  by gda in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  some jw's at my daughters door saturday morning.

  they said nothing, nada, zip, zero, and just passed the mags to her and left.

  is there no interaction any more?

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  OneEyedJoe

  There's been a pretty steady decline in the zeal most JWs (at least in my area) have for d2d. There are a few older ones that still act like they did when 1975 was coming, but for the most part anyone under 40 is just there to count time and make the morning as easy as possible.

  When it comes to the "special campaign" stuff that they do for memorial, conventions and, apparently, the website - they're told to get in and out as quickly as possible, so in that case it comes from the top that they don't linger and talk to people.
• 
  31

  Who Will Be The Next Member Of The Governing Body To Defect From The Corporation?

  by frankiespeakin in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  while it may seem unlikely which of the currant governing body members do you feel would be most likely to defect?

  i know it is a loaded question.. what about wealthy anthony morris iii?

  or mark sanderson or geoffrey jackson?

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  OneEyedJoe

  They just don't make them like Ray anymore.
  

  The world and the cult has changed tremendously. Anyone who's got one ounce of intellectual honesty will have their crisis of conscience much earlier due to the abundance of available information. Ray defected after doing years of research that today would only take a few days or weeks to put together today. The result is that even though I'm sure there are men like Ray Franz that will pass through the cult in the future one way or another, none of them will stick around long enough to make it very high in the org.
• 
  29

  To all anointed wannabe losers, DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT, OR ELSE!!!!!

  by DATA-DOG in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  once again the beloved and loving governing body are demonstrating their utmost disdain for the rank and file members of the jehovah church.

  let us review this interesting trend, starting with some facts!

  yay, facts!!!

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  OneEyedJoe

  If they're so concerned about the rising number of ones partaking, why don't they just shoot out an BOE letter scolding the elders to be very discerning about who to officially count as partaking. That would seem to at least lower the number or slow the growth at worst.
  

  Maybe someone else will be able to confirm with more certainty than I have, but I could've sworn I read that there was indeed some procedure that elders follow in order to determine who is "rightfully" partaking. I don't know what it is, but I think at the very least they weed out all non-JWs.
• 
  102

  A couple questions for atheists on Suffering

  by little_Socrates in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  who told you that the world should be free from suffering?.

  do you find any value in suffering?.

  do you think it is possible to experience all the beauty and goodness and pleasure the world offers without also experiencing the bad?

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  OneEyedJoe

  The only people that ever told me that the world should be without suffering had a religious agenda to sell.

  Personally I don't get caught up in trying to categorize things as good or bad, they just are. I accept that the world is what it is and I can't change most of it. This frees me up to focus on the things I can change, and to do what good I can without getting bogged down with things that don't matter.

  I also couldn't speculate much on what a perfect suffering free world might look like. Our universe is intrinsically disorderly, and a permanent state of stable perfection is unimaginable in the context of the universe that we live in.

  It's also difficult to speculate on what id do were I God, since I expect omniscience would give me a bit of a different perspective on things.

  Edit:

  Theists SHOULD be the ones defending themselves, because they're the ones making outrageous claims without evidence. They also seem to be incapable of providing a description of god(s) that is both internally consistent and matches with observable reality.
• 
  65

  Will this Memorial be our last?

  by pixel in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  they just put up the march km 2014 on the private website.

  most of it is same-old-same-old, with info here and there about the memorial.. somebody here might post the march km for all to see, i wont.. i just wanted to share the paragraph from page 2 q&a anticle: will you seize the opportunity?

  upcoming memorial enables us to show gratitude .

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  OneEyedJoe

  I wish this memorial would be my last, but being realistic I've probably got 2 or 3 left to go to...