OneEyedJoe

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Posts by OneEyedJoe

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  20

  Did the society official track each member of the 144,000?

  by Bob Loblaw in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  when i left witness land in the early 90's, i remember hearing that out of 144,000 anointed members that there were only 8 to 9 thousand left and then the end will come.. i'm suddenly curious.

  the jw organization is one that puts emphasis on tracking, i.e., regular meeting attendance, current standing, field service hours, territory tracking, return visits, etc.

  therefore, did the society ever try to track each and every member of the 144,000?

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  OneEyedJoe

  Wouldn't surprise me. I think the publisher records include whether they profess to be anointed or not.
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  22

  Is it Wrong to Doubt or Even Disagree With the GB? The Watchtower Reasoning....

  by freemindfade in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  this would be a good one for jw apologist who scream and panic with anyone who feels the moral direction of the wt publishing company has gone astray.

  a comment at the bible highlights last night blew my mind, here is the article that was referenced.

  btw this account always bothered me, remember when it was in a drama?

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  OneEyedJoe

  Sticking with Aaron, it was he who made the golden calf and altar, yet 3,000 people were murdered as a consequence when Moses turned up.
  

  There are dozens of biblical accounts that make this point, and I've used a few of them when discussion with my wife and father in law.

  Who died when David took a census? (hint, wasn't david)

  Who always seemed to die when an Isrealite king made an alliance with a nearby nation without god's approval?

  Who paid for it when the Jewish leaders of Jesus' day rejected him? Lots of loyal Jews died when Rome invaded Jerusalem - they were all merely following what they were told was "god's organization" of the day.

  Time and again, people in the bible are punished for who they're associated with, regardless of their good intentions. This should be a frightening fact for any JWs with doubts or any who know details of the child abuse issues or the UN membership, etc.
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  19

  Will the Watchtower ever turn against K-12 public education?

  by cappytan in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  when i was in school, you never heard about critical thinking skills...not till you started taking college level courses.. i work closely with the public education community.

  now, the big rage in public education is instilling critical thinking skills from kindergarten on up.. and i'm in texas!

  imagine what it's like in more liberal areas.. i would not be surprised if the watchtower started denigrating and discouraging public education (k-12).. it would likely start like this: .

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  OneEyedJoe

  They already have, just indirectly. They talk constantly about how difficult an environment school is for children and how difficult it is to maintain integrity for youths under pressure. They talk about schools teaching evolution and other 'false knowledge' in school. They talk endlessly about how all children are drug addicts or gang members constantly putting pressure on kids to turn to crime. On and on and on. They may not have come out with a direct statement that JWs be home-schooled if allowed by law, but of the kids in my (former) congregation, 2/3rds were. And 100% of the homeschool kids were just weird and socially inept. Of the ones that weren't, they all seem to be sorta floating and going along with their parent's cult until they can escape.

  Pretty bad when your religion is undermined even by getting a "basic education" as they like to call it...
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  21

  People who study for years ??

  by Clambake in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  in my cong ( my wives cong.

  ) there is a lady who attends every meeting , minus the field service just like a regular dub.

  it just seems odd she has not taken the dip yet.

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  OneEyedJoe

  There was one woman in my former congregation that studied for 7 years, I think it was. Finally committed fully to the cult. Apparently the blood ban was what had held her back, so it took an extra few doses of mind control to finally commit to the possibility having to kill one of her children for her cult.

  I don't think there's much the elders can do. They can't kick someone out who's not been baptized. About the best they can do is be passive aggressive or use emotional manipulation to try to pressure them to get baptized. I'm sure whoever was studying with her got a lot of talking to about it as well, but it's not like they can DF you or take away privileges for something like that since most JWs are doing good to get someone to a meeting once.
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  20

  Why some smart people believe the JWs/Bible

  by jws in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i consider myself smart.

  go ahead, laugh.

  i have a sense of humor too.. but i grew up a jw and also believed in the bible.

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  OneEyedJoe

  Towards the end of my time in the mental prison of JWdom, one of the few remaining threads that my loyalty to the cult was hanging by was the fact that one of the elders in my congregation was very intelligent and often gave comments about how he had previously been agnostic before converting. I liked him personally, and I couldn't understand how he wouldn't be able to see all the issues that I could see. But he was still in and by all accounts fully invested.

  One day I was bored and thinking about this predicament and googled "Why do smart people believe stupid things" which lead me to an article that referenced Festinger's "When Prophecy Fails" - a well regarded book written after following around a doomsday cult to study the psychology of it all. I never actually read the book, but the overview on wikipedia hit me pretty hard. In a lot of ways it sounded like the JWs - they predicted the end of the world, and after the failure of the prediction the ones that stuck around were more committed than ever and this is when they began to attempt to proselytize. When you're uncertain of a belief that you hold, convincing others of its truth validates the belief to you, so you seek to do that. I'm not saying that's exactly what happened with JWs, but at the time I didn't know fully the history, but I knew the preaching work mainly started after 1914.

  In short, intelligence has less to do with whether you believe stupid things than we'd like to think. In many cases it has much more to do with how invested you are in the truth of an idea. If you've given up jobs, family, friendships, property or a great deal of time in commitment to it, you're far more likely to continue to hold this to be true long after it's proven false. In the case of the elder I'd looked up to, he'd given up all these things for the cult. I also later learned that he converted only after his wife had converted, and this lent further credence to the idea that he, in spite of his intelligence, may well have been fooled into holding some very stupid beliefs.
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  42

  How much damage has internet done against the The Watchtower Society ?

  by opusdei1972 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  in the beginning of internet the society was worried about the information published exposing its falsehood.

  so, i wonder how many people lost the society on account of forums and web sites like this.

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  OneEyedJoe

  On jwfacts, he makes a reasonable case that the internet has cost them 6 million publishers so far. That's including those that leave and those that never converted because of the internet.

  http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/statistics.php

  Now the internet might not be the sole factor for the sudden decline in growth, but I suspect it's the largest contributor, with the inexorable passage of time coming in second.
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  27

  Use of first names at the KH

  by Sour Grapes in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  have you ever noticed that know one uses first names at the kh?

  it is how are you brother jones?

  how are you sister smith?

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  OneEyedJoe

  Because they're not your real friends.
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  113

  New letter, re: Fully Utilizing Kingdom Hall Auditoriums

  by suavojr in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  let the merging begin!!!.

  to all bodies of elders in the united states branch territory.

  re: fully utilizing kingdom hall auditoriums.

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  OneEyedJoe

  I can't imagine a better place for them to do this than my (well I haven't been in months, so I guess now it's my wife's) congregation. They meet in a 2-auditorium KH with 5 congregations. When the CO comes to a congregation that normally meets on thursday, they already cram two congregations into one auditorium instead of changing the midweek meeting for the tuesday-nighters to a different night. It's a little full, and I know a number of JWs that intentionally skip those nights because it's uncomfortable, but they all fit just fine. I can easily see them dividing one congregation among the others and taking on the two congregations from a (recently remodeled) KH that's about 10 minutes away. That little shell game would leave them with 6 congregations meeting in the double auditorium hall (they were doing that at one time a few years ago) and sell off the KH that they just got finished fixing up on the congregation's dime.

  Actually, if they do this right and divide up the congregations that are getting reassigned to new halls slowly and evenly distribute them among the surrounding congregations that aren't moving halls they'll even leave most of the R/F with a vague impression of growth. They'll notice that the KH is more full, but won't look around and realize that everyone's been a JW for 20-30 years and just got reassigned. Only the ones that actually have to change their routine will really notice anything, and most of them will probably think "wow this new congregation that we moved to sure is full, they must be growing quickly."

  From their letter, it seems to me that they know exactly what they're trying to do - manage decline while selling it as growth. They start of talking about all the growth, but spend the entire rest of the letter talking about consolidation. I so hope they do this in my area, as my wife will likely be missing a lot more meetings if they add 20-30% more people to her congregation's roster.
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  13

  Were we meant to live forever?

  by konceptual99 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  so i believed for years that humans will one day revert to being able to live forever.

  i was told the only reason we don't already is because adam and eve sinned.. if this is the case then why is nothing else in the universe capable of the same thing.

  everything else has a finite lifespan.

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  OneEyedJoe

  Yeah, I often wondered what would happen when our sun ran out of hydrogen and consumed the earth. Perhaps we'd have the technology to leave by then, but doesn't the bible say "the earth will endure forever" or was that not true? What happens to us when our galaxy collides with andromeda? Or when the universe has expanded to the point where stars can no longer exist? Sure, that's all a long way off, but not as far off as forever. It was deeply unsatisfying to imagine that god would have to intervene periodically to keep things running.

  The funny thing is that the 2nd law of thermodynamics (the same one that they love to use to "prove" that life cannot form without divine intervention - forgetting that the earth is not a closed system) proves that nothing can last forever. Eventually everything will reach a state of maximum entropy.
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  8

  DC ooopps I mean RC

  by tresdecu in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  so, i gotta go this weekend.

  ugh!!!

  fml!!!

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  OneEyedJoe

  Ostensibly the brochure is to show the GB's (oops I mean Jehovah's) love for those that are inactive, but the real reason is to pigeonhole inactive people into a few categories to explain to the R/F why people are inactive. This just shores up in their mind 1. inactivity is "leaving jehovah" and 2. there is no valid reason to become inactive.

  The brochure won't change anything. Actually, if anything, it'll make things worse once they try to use the brochure on someone and they don't respond - now they're inactive and ungrateful/obstinate.