Posts by OneEyedJoe

47

Taking bets on how long this cult will last and what will happen to it

by macys in

i wanna make a poll here.

how many years do you think the jdub cult will exist as is and what will happen to it?.

i say the growth stops this year and starts to decline.

OneEyedJoe

I guess it depends on how you measure it. If you're measuring it the way the GB probably is - in dollars and cents - they've probably already peaked. Areas in Europe (UK and Germany) are already showing decline, as is Japan and I suspect Australia has seen their peak. Areas where people have money are not growing. The US has probably peaked too, but they're putting extra effort (the US is now the US branch territory and includes other areas that have some growth yet) into fudging the numbers and picking up immigrants to hide the decline since the US is their crown jewel. They may grow in the 3rd world for some time, but they won't have the economic support that they once had.

I expect them to stop reporting the full stats in the next few years to a decade as they run out of ways to hide the decline without waking up more bethelites with overly dishonest tactics. Honestly, though, I suspect that most of the attrition of the next 10-20 years will be the older generation dying off. The average member's age is way too high for a healthy business, and they'll be forced to reorganize into a leaner cult. The thing that I think will be most interesting to see is if, as the older ones die off, we see an exodus of the next generation as they discover their reason for staying in (often the approval of their parents, it seems) evaporates.

48

Your thoughts on Halloween , yes, no or maybe ?

by Finkelstein in

well its that time again when the ghouls come out to play.

i personally think halloween is a bit irresponsible and inappropriate from a sociological perspective.. there's something about the intent of frightening young impressionable children minds with frightening objests.

and feeding them candy which most likely cause tooth decay and stomachs is irresponsible activity conducted by adults.

OneEyedJoe

I'm ok with the dress-up stuff and the candy, but I really hate people knocking on my door uninvited.

44

Need advice

by Darkknight757 in

hi.i've been pouring over this site for the past few days looking for some advice and i hope there is someone here that can help a guy out.

i'm desperate.....short bio: i came into the organization after high school and shortly after married a wonderful girl who was born-in.we have been happily married now for nearly 20 years and things were well until 2015 hit.

by the way, i currently serve as an elder and have the ""privilege"" of being the "watchtower overseer".. either here nor there, we were told we would never have children but late last year my wife became prego!!

OneEyedJoe

First off - I'm so sorry for your loss. I can't imagine the pain you two have been through.

I think you are, however, in the perfect position to step down without raising an eyebrow. You and your wife likely have a lot on your minds and I don't think you'll get much resistance if you step down as an elder in order to have more time to cope and tend to your wife's and your own emotional well being. I suspect that'll be relatively easy.

Next step is the tough one. Telling your wife that you no longer believe is a difficult conversation that no one wants to have and its impossible for any of us here to tell you the right way to go about it. You know your wife better than anyone, so I would just advise you to read what you get here and evaluate how you see it fitting with your wife's personality and her connection to the cult.

Many have had success with slowly planting seeds with their spouse resulting in an eventual awakening. Some have just come out in one fell swoop, and that sometimes leads to the spouse waking up and sometimes it leads to separation/divorce. In my case, I tried planting seeds for about a year before I had a big blow-up with the wife and came out about my non-belief. While I doubt that she would have woken up either way, I think it would've gone far better had I been up-front with her about everything from the beginning.

Whatever happens, know you're not alone in any of this. I wish you the best of luck in everything you're dealing with.

15

Grandparents take disfellowshipped daughter to court to insist on right to preach to four year old

by usualusername1 in

jw
friends

http://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.

OneEyedJoe

Where are you getting the idea that the mother was a "disfellowshipped Witness"??

Not sure where I got that...thanks for clearing it up. I think it was the frequent use of initials that made it a little trickier to work out who was who, but I was too lazy to be bothered with trying to work all that out. I don't think it ever said she wasn't an exJW, so I kinda came at it with that assumption in my head. Given the many posts you see on here about exJWs trying to keep their parents from pushing the cult on their kids, it makes sense that many would see it from that context since it's not explicit that she wasn't an exJW.

I really never understood this entitled feeling most JWs seem to have about pushing their beliefs on other people. I think, though, that I always recognized that some people had just as valid reasons for their beliefs as I did mine and didn't want to be a hypocrite and push my religion on them if they didn't want it. That made me hate the d2d recruiting. It seems like so many of them fully buy into the indoctrination that their lives depend on recruiting as many people as possible and that it's the most loving thing they can do. If you really believe that what you're doing is the equivalent of lending a hand to someone who's hanging from a cliff, you'll easily brush aside normal societal boundaries.

8

Hague court stops tax free status for Scientologists

by GoneAwol in

http://www.nltimes.nl/2015/10/22/hague-court-deals-blow-to-scientology-tax-free-status/.

from the article -"the dutch branch of the church of scientology has lost its tax status as public welfare institution, and the tax benefits that go along with it, in a ruling made by the court in the hague on wednesday.

the court decided that the sales of the churchs expensive courses and therapy sessions are clearly aimed at making a profit, and thus it does not belong on the tax authorities charity list.".

OneEyedJoe

Hopefully...but something tells me any change that this creates will be only for groups that charge for services like the scientologists. Since JWs make all their cash off "voluntary" donations, I doubt it'll extend to them.

But in the end all churches are businesses...they should all have to pay taxes. Or, at the very least, only money that actually gets spent in real charity (not including attempts to recruit) should be tax exempt.

43

Did Jesus really die on a cross?

by macys in

jw
friends

being 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.

OneEyedJoe

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).

15

Grandparents take disfellowshipped daughter to court to insist on right to preach to four year old

by usualusername1 in

jw
friends

http://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.

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.

212

Why Do You No Longer Believe in God?

by Tenacious in

i 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?

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.

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?.

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.

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.