Romans at that time historically used a cross to impale people, and the bible's own account suggests that a cross was used based on how long he survived after being impaled and there being "nails" in his hands (vs one nail as would be used if he were on a pole).
OneEyedJoe
JoinedPosts by OneEyedJoe
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Did Jesus really die on a cross?
by macys inbeing raised a catholic we had lots of crosses around the house.
when my family converted to this cult they were all removed and destroyed in case they had demons in them lol but at this juncture in my life i do not even know if jesus as the way he is portrayed in the bible was real.
yes a man named jesus did live and die 2000 years ago and probably on a cross but he was definitely not the son of god.
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Grandparents take disfellowshipped daughter to court to insist on right to preach to four year old
by usualusername1 inhttp://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/jehovah-s-witness-grandparents-ordered-to-keep-faith-to-themselves-1.3282193 .
a pair of devout jehovah's witnesses have been ordered by a b.c.
provincial court judge not to talk about religion in front of their four-year-old granddaughter.. the couple lost their bid for unsupervised access to the girl because they insisted on taking her to worship at their faith's kingdom hall despite the repeated objections of the child's mother.. the girl is identified only as a.w.
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OneEyedJoe
JW's do NOT honor personal boundaries. For most JW's there ARE no boundaries.
In talking to a few people on the forums, it seems like this is the most pervasive problem faced by those who leave. Just getting in the mindset to realize you have a right to establish boundaries with people takes a long while after leaving this cult. It seems like that may have been the case in this story too, as it took the mother a while to confront her parents who were trying to recruit their grandchild.
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Why Do You No Longer Believe in God?
by Tenacious ini know this question has popped up from time to time but i really would like to know how you guys, those that no longer believe, came to that conclusion?
was it the wts and all its crap?
was it something you read?
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OneEyedJoe
For me it's not that I have incontrovertible proof to demonstrate that no god(s) exist, it's just that in most cases I've come across the "proof" that god does exist is only really proof of anything if you're not imaginative enough and dedicated enough to come up with alternative (and in most cases far simpler and more satisfying) explanations for things that are typically explained as being due to god.
In some cases there are things we still don't fully understand, but looking at the past progression of science every time someone hits a problem and throws up their hands and says "well it must be god that's making this work!" we later find and understand the mechanism behind it. Given the trend, it seems likely that as our knowledge of the universe progresses there will be nothing left that someone can claim god was responsible for. Or at the very least, the things that people will claim god is responsible for will have to be wholly different from what they currently claim he's done.
Given the trends, I feel that I can say with a high degree of certainty that there is no supreme being out there, and if there is they certainly aren't deserving of my worship based on a few ancient religious texts. The god of the bible least of all.
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How Cultish are the JW's?
by xjwsrock infirst 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?.
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OneEyedJoe
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.
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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 inif 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 .
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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.
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Scale of 1 to 10. How did/do you rate the meetings!
by Truthexplorer in1. boring as s***e 2. extremely boring 3. boring as hell 4. boring.
5. slightly boring 6. not bad.
7. fair.
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OneEyedJoe
When I fully believed it was somewhere between 1 and 5 at best. Average was probably a 2. -
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Earliest Life on Earth Pushed Back Another 300 Million Years
by cofty inresearchers 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.
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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.
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"..Witnesses suffer from anxiety, depression, addiction...many have been lost to suicide. After reading this story, you may understand why.”
by Penelope1 infrom 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!.
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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."
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New meeting answer sheet
by Saltheart Foamfollower inhi 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.
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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."
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Not for unthinking Christians. The OUP blog looks at the question, How Did Life Begin on Earth?
by fulltimestudent inoxford 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.
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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.