Posts by OneEyedJoe

28

How Cultish are the JW's?

by xjwsrock in

first off, i certainly agree the jw's are a cult.

but i'm sensitive to black-and-white thinking now.. so, where do they rank on the scale?

think of a cultish religion scale from 0-10.. consider the likes of unitarian universalism vs baptist vs amish vs charles manson.. where do you think jw's fall on the scale?.

There are a few different ways of measuring how damaging the cult is. It's definitely not as controlling as scientology from what I understand, so in that way I don't think it could be ranked a 10. Maybe a 7.5 or 8.

As far as cost in human life, I still don't think they're quite a 10. With the heaven's gate cult it appears that essentially all the members eventually died. With People's Temple (Jonestown) they had a membership at one time from somewhere between 3-5k people but a few less than 1000 died from the cult. While JWs definitely kill more and have a much greater absolute cost in human life, they aren't as bad on the cult scale because relative to their size they don't cause as much damage.

Now, where I a humanitarian or government entity looking at which cult to focus on in order to keep people safe - JWs would 100% be at the top of that list. Their size, absolute death toll and relatively benign public image (though that seems to be changing a little) make them the most important priority as far as shutting down dangerous cults goes.

11

One of the biggest complete 180 contradictions in the SAME ARTICLE, in the 9/15 study wt "Is your conscience a reliable guide?".

by EndofMysteries in

if you actually turn your brain on and process what is being said, this article keeps contradicting itself.

"jehovah god created humans with free will, that is, the liberty to choose between one option and another.neither a branch office nor the local congregation elders are authorized to make health-care decisions for a witness.

a christian needs to remember the biblical command to keep abstaining from .

OneEyedJoe

This is pretty much how all articles they write on having a bible (read WT) trained conscience go. God gave you a conscience, but there's something wrong with you if that conscience doesn't tell you do do exactly as we say.

It's their SOP - twist the meaning of things by adding qualifiers. To someone in the cult "christians" and "true christians" are two completely separate groups of people. They do the same thing with "conscience" and "bible-trained conscience." The first could be wrong (i.e. it probably wouldn't lead you to shun someone who left due to their own conscientious decision) but the second is always right. How do you know it's always right? Because it tells you to do exactly what the cult says to do.

28

Scale of 1 to 10. How did/do you rate the meetings!

by Truthexplorer in

1. boring as s***e 2. extremely boring 3. boring as hell 4. boring.

5. slightly boring 6. not bad.

7. fair.

OneEyedJoe

When I fully believed it was somewhere between 1 and 5 at best. Average was probably a 2.

34

Earliest Life on Earth Pushed Back Another 300 Million Years

by cofty in

researchers have found evidence of ancient microorganisms that lived in what is now western australia at least 4.1 billion years ago.

if confirmed, the discovery suggests that life originated on earth 300 million years earlier than previously thought.

.... the ancient microorganisms in question were found trapped inside zircons formed from magma in western australia.

OneEyedJoe

Very interesting. I'd love to know if life somehow survived the late heavy bombardment or if it was wiped out and started again.

I suppose this could also be considered (circumstantial) evidence for the idea of panspermia, since the timing coincides pretty closely with the beginning of the late heavy bombardment. While that idea is a little less exciting to me, it is interesting to think that we may have distant relatives living elsewhere in the galaxy.

20

"..Witnesses suffer from anxiety, depression, addiction...many have been lost to suicide. After reading this story, you may understand why.”

by Penelope1 in

jw
friends

from the book, the least of gods priorities, by bo juel.

please support bo in his efforts to expose the truth about the watchtower organization a secretive and destructive cult posing as gods organization on earth.

his publication is now available in paperback or kindle through amazon.com.. check out chapter two--but grab some tissue first!.

OneEyedJoe

My therapist asked me a while ago if there was any equivalent to therapy that the JWs provide. When I explained the way that sort of thing works - ask the elders and get told to have more faith, read your WT, basically throw yourself more into the cult, and then no continuing support - he said "well I guess that helps to explain something. A friend of mine works in a mental hospital and told me recently that they see a lot of JWs there."

11

New meeting answer sheet

by Saltheart Foamfollower in

hi all - thought you might be interested in the instructions for the answer sheet for the new meeting - full document to follow:-.

"our christian life and ministry meeting answer sheetfor use by meeting chairman for weeks of january 4-25, 2016source material: new world translation of the holy scriptures [nwt] and thewatchtower [w].instructions: these review questions correspond to material found in treasuresfrom gods word.

well in advance, the meeting chairman should ensure that theelder or ministerial servant assigned a part during treasures from gods word willconsider the question and answer for the week.

OneEyedJoe

They appear to be thoroughly convinced that JWs are astoundingly stupid and could not possibly determine the "correct" understanding unless it is pre-chewed, regurgitated, mashed, and macerated into a thin gruel.

Well that's not necessarily the reason for their concern here, and they tacitly acknowledge the problem:

Of course, any answers given by the audience that are appropriate and in harmony with our present understanding are acceptable

The fact is that they change doctrine so damn often that a lot of JWs just can't keep up with it all and fall back on "past truths" that are apparently no longer true.

But there's definitely a fair amount of just genuinely not being able to keep up with the nonsense doctrine without the constant changes. One of my favorite examples was when an elder referred to peter as "the rock on which Jesus founded his congregation" I was in the process of trying to leave so I didn't want to make waves, but I really wanted to let him know that he was parroting the catholic understanding of that scripture but the GB approved doctrine is that Jesus was referring to himself when he said "this rock."

11

Not for unthinking Christians. The OUP blog looks at the question, How Did Life Begin on Earth?

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

oxford university press daily offers thoughts on many serious topics.

in this life it examines the possibilities of a 'non-created' beginning of life.. the blog post commences:.

quote,"news broke in july 2015 that the rosetta missions philae lander had discovered 16 carbon and nitrogen-rich organic compounds on comet 67p/churyumov-gerasimenko.

OneEyedJoe

Simon - i think you're confusing this with panspermia. This is just saying that the building blocks of life have been found on comets and thus they could've been delivered to earth that way. For a long time amino acid formation was one of the things that creationists would hold up as a hurdle to abiogenesis, but now it is known that not only do amino acids form naturally on earth but they even do so in space on asteroids and comets.

112

Did an EX-JW wake you up to TTATT or did you put the effort to wake up yourself?

by John Aquila in

how many of us were woken up by some apostate yelling false prophets at a convention?.

how many of us were woken up by someone holding a sign and yelling, what happened to 1975.

how many of us were coerced to investigate the wt because some ex-jw pulled up a bunch of old watchtowers magazines and told us to read the false predictions?.

OneEyedJoe

Woke myself up.

I will admit that it's possible that some interaction with an apostate helped some. When I was ~13 I was allowed to go to a door with a friend of mine of about the same age. First time this happened, a woman accepted the magazines on the condition that we take a tract from her - we didn't know any better and did so, and later we read it with his family and ridiculed how stupid it was when it talked about how CTR sold his business for the equivalent of millions of dollars and started his publishing company. While at the time it strengthened my resolve that anyone critical of the cult doesn't know what they're talking about, it did stay with me. When I heard things at meetings that made me think "If I was trying to set up a cult, I'd definitely include that teaching" I would think back to that day and wonder if maybe that little tract was truthful after all.

In the end it was definitely 99% my own doing, and I don't think it would've happened much differently without that experience. I am, however, eternally grateful for what that woman tried to do that day.

28

Is the end of Watchtowers hated No Blood doctrine in sight?

by nicolaou in

i won't pretend to know things that i don't but just look at the incredible rate of change we've witnessed recently.

it seems that since candace conti and the australian royal commission the watchtower are scrabbling around to shore up their finances in the face of unprecedented legal action against them.. abuse settlement claims are one thing but what happens when children die as a result of your religious teachings?!

you can bet wt legal are arguing for a complete rewrite of policy to protect the organisation from litigation.. do you think their religious privilege will protect them forever?

OneEyedJoe

One Eyed Joe:
How is that going to work? They still do the "blood cards" - don't they? Their whole rant on those blood cards is about remaining faithful.

My plan for slowly backing away from the blood doctrine over several years:

Stop mentioning blood in the magazines altogether. They've already stopped doing this somewhat, as I can't remember the last time that they had the part on the service meeting where everyone filled out a new blood card and then after the meeting everyone's walking around getting someone to sign theirs as a witness.
Have an occasional casual mention about how some requirements that the 1st century christians lived by were put in place so as not to stumble those that were still very emotionally attached to the jewish laws. Again, don't mention blood here, give other examples.
At the same time they can slowly begin changing the HLC's duties to general moral support for those that are infirm and remove the focus on blood as their reason for being. They can find many scriptures to support the idea that christians should show love to those in need and everyone will think that they're just reinforcing something that was already the case.
Remove any penalties for use of blood products via a BOE letter that only the elders read. Perhaps cite legal reasons and open with "in view of the critical times in which we live..." The elders won't think anything has changed with doctrine, just that the org is avoiding lawsuits. It will be left "in Jehovah's hands" if anyone takes blood and no sanctions will be pursued against them (possibly with the stipulation that they have to stay quiet about taking blood).
After a couple years, stop issuing the DPA/blood card stuff for newly baptized ones. It will be explained (to elders only via a BOE letter) that new converts are responsible for using their bible trained conscience and should be moved to draft the documentation themselves. Most will put it off and forget.
After a certain point a new elders manual will be printed that will not include any mention of blood, or medical DPAs or any of that. It'll be forgotten.
Issue a QFR or similar stating that they don't want to get involved in medical treatment and all such decisions should be left to each individual's bible-trained conscience and all related matters will be "left in Jehovah's hands." Again, no mention of blood.
If they want to fully abolish the blood ban (I don't see why they'd ever go this far) they could write a WT article about not judging one another for their personal choices and not pushing your choices on others (obviously it will be full of doublespeak because judging each other is an integral part of JWism) and at about paragraph 17 when everyone's bored and barely paying attention they'll mention something about blood. Footnote references to articles from steps 2 and 7 will make it seem like they've always taught this. State the blood ban was only important for first century christians and is a matter for each person's conscience.

Now, all that said, I think the blood ban is probably much more important to the survival of the cult than most give it credit for. If the GB realizes this, they'll never get rid of it. It's a powerful tool for indoctrination - it seems like a low stakes thing to fill out a blood card, everyone does so thinking "it'll never happen to me" because humans have a documented poor ability to estimate the likelihood of unlikely events, especially bad ones. They fill out the card, essentially pledging to die for the cult, and that becomes a powerful tool to trigger CD in the victim. Talks about blood and loyalty remind the R/F that they've pledged their life to the cult. Any doubts that come to mind conflict with the idea that they've pledged to die for the cult because they do not want to consider the possibility that they've done something so drastic in support of a false cult. It's even stronger if they know someone who's died as a result or if they had a close call or have children who's lives they've pledged to the cult in this way. The thought that this loss or potential loss was for naught will keep them from examining their problems with the cult and they remain trapped.

34

Belief in God Can Be Turned Off Like a Light Switch

by cofty in

researchers in york used magnetic stimulation to target an area of the brain called the medial frontal cortex in a group of volunteers.

a control group received a sham treatment.. both groups were asked to think about death.

the group who experienced the magnetic energy reported 32.8% less belief in angels, god and heaven.. when faced with difficult challenges people often take refuge in ideology.

OneEyedJoe

This raises an interesting question. If something like this could be used on someone without their knowledge would it be unethical to do so in order to, say, get my wife out of the cult? It sounds like this doesn't actually change what people think, it just allows them to think about concepts that would normally be threatening to them. So you're not really changing their thoughts, just helping them to explore their thoughts more effectively.