been out now for 10 yrs but life is a mess.
starting to think its because i have no spiritual compass.
why shouldn't i consider going back?.
I reccommend you get professional counseling from a therapist that's familiar with cults. On Steve Hassan's website (www.freedomofmind.com) there are resources for you to find help.
You're in a difficult situation, but there are better ways to handle it than by returning to a dangerous mind control cult.
full set http://imgur.com/a/jvcla .
i put that album together so you don't have to give www.jw.borg any more traffic .
sample:.
Is this real life?
they boldly spoke against the catholics.
.
i'd love to see them rail against the muslims..
What would they possibly gain from criticizing muslims? The whole point of their emphasis on the evils of christendom is to prevent JWs from having an answer to the question "[Where] else would we go away to?" It's conceivable that a JW might leave to go to a different christian church (and based on what I've read here, that doesn't seem too uncommon) but I can't imagine that a JW, fed up with the WTS, would suddenly decide to convert to Islam.
They do have something to lose. If they encourage people to look at other non-christian religions they could find that they're really just looking at a mirror of christianity, which then leads to the realization that it's all BS. When comparing christian denominations, the similarities are easily excusable, since they're all using the same source material. However, finding certain similarities in a non-christian religion could lead someone to the realization that indeed all religion is from the same source (the human mind).
Obviously, potential retribution is another big down-side. While they'd love to play the persecution card, the WT theology has pretty much exclusively predicted persecution at the hands of governments (who may or may not be in bed with religions) but not at the hands of individual folks from another religious background.
Once you think of it as an american cult that's aimed more at retention and monitization than conversion, it makes total sense that they never give a second thought to Islam, Buddism, Hinduism, Shintoism, etc except to list some vauge criticism that (if examined further) doesn't actually invalidate the religion in any way: 'Did you know that Hindus believe in over a hundred thousand gods? How could you possibly keep all that straight!'
sorry for such a depressing question, but i was moved by a picture i saw of the consequences.
( a woman carrying her child) and i realised:-.
a) it was a civillian population.. b) i don't see how a nuclear holocaust can ever be right.. c) they could have bombed tokyo where all the generals lived but chose hiroshima.. d) the irony after the bombing america conceeded to many of japans terms.. your opinion would be valued..
Addressing the points maid in the OP:
A) It was a civillian population.
B) I don't see how a nuclear holocaust can ever be right.
C) They could have bombed Tokyo where all the generals lived but chose Hiroshima.
D) The Irony after the bombing America conceeded to many of Japans terms.
A - As others have mentioned, the firebombing of other cities also largely affected civilian populations
B - Seldom is anything done in war 'right'
C - Since Tokyo had already been heavily bombed (it's an obvious target for the reasons you gave, and for the mere fact that it's the capital) so it was never a target for a nuke. The americans purposely kept 4 japanese cities as virgin targets for a nuke, because they wanted to truely demonstrate the power of the bomb. If they'd bombed a city that was already nearly destroyed, it wouldn't have had the same effect. I agree with others here who've said that the nukes on japan where probably about 50/50 motivated by wanting japan to surrender and displaying our supremecy to the rest of the world.
D - For those that don't know the full story, the irony goes deeper than you let on. The reason for the americans making concessions to the japanese after hiroshima was because they couldn't stomach the devestation of the nuclear bombing. They wanted to make it as easy as they could for the japanese to surrender, so they tried to allow them to keep some of their pride. The irony is that the Japanese likely would've surrendered had they not tried to let them off a little bit. The Japanese saw their concessions as weakness, and therefore refused to surrender. After Nagasaki was bombed, no such concessions where made and they did indeed surrender.
I'm not sure if I'm really for or against the bombing. It's difficult to know how history would've gone without it. Maybe russia would've eventually nuked us had we not displayed our might. Maybe the japanese would've surrendered soon anyway, since the war was all but lost for them already. Maybe there would've been less loss of life without the bomb, maybe more. I don't think there's much point in speculating on all that, and am comfortable just leaving it as this - violence is to be avoided, but things aren't always black and white. All we can do is use the war as one data point, and hopefully mankind will use it to create more desirable outcomes in the future.
yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.
we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.
they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.
So its good that the infant dies because it will be instantly transported to a better place. What, then does the infant gain during its time here? Is it not evil for god to bring a child into the world only to drown in a tsunami? Why couldn't god have just birthed the child directly into heaven? What loving person could look at the choice between birthing a child directly into heaven and birthing it on earth only to be drowned a few days later and choose the latter? The baby isn't cognitively developed enough to form memories or become self aware, so it brought no benefit to the baby. The baby is, however developed enough to fell pain, and I might remind you that a drowning death is tremendously painful - so much so that merely simulating it is considered a form of torture.
So, let me rephrase the question, what is gained by good allowing a baby to be tortured to death?
yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.
we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.
they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.
If an atheist could think of a way to explain away all the problems with theism (and especially the christian god) I suspect most would never have become atheists. So, sorry, we're no more equiped to tell you what answer to give us that would be satisfying than you are to come up with such an answer.
Unfortunatly, it seems that the problems for the god of christianity are so basic as to be problems with the very axioms of christianity itself. That is what is meant when cofty says that it is internally inconsistent. Trying to come up with a satisfying answer to these questions is like trying to come up with a satisfying mathematical answer to explain away proof that 2=5. If we had proof that 2=5, the very axioms of our mathematical system fall apart and there's no way to resolve the problems without coming up with a new system.
It's much the same with christianity. Proof exists that god could not possibly be omniscient, omnibenevolent, and omnipotent. Those are the three basic tenets of the description of the christian god, therefore it is as catastrophic to the theory of christianity as would be evidence of 2 equating to 5 for mathematics.
yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.
we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.
they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.
The tsunami in and of itself is not evil, it's the fact that the tsunami killed a quarter million and god supposedly has it in his power to stop it. And since mountains are nothing but the film of dust on a scale to him, we are to believe that it would have taken negligible effort on his part to stop it.
This is akin to a father standing over his infant child as it lays in a shallow puddle, watching as a light rain slowly makes the puddle deeper until the child drowns. It would've been negligable effort for the father to pick up the child and keep it alive. If a father actually did this, I have no doubt that he'd be tried and convicted not only under our current system of laws, but under the mosaic law that god supposedly handed to isreal himself.
Why is it that god cannot be held accountable to the very laws that he has given mankind? It is said that his sense of justice is so extreem that he had to pay a debt to himself with the death of his son, but you're telling me that he can't be held accountable for preventing the loss of life that serves absolutely no purpose except to make people who believe in him question their faith?
a little experience that happened very recently:.
another brother, an elder, and i were talking, i was explaining to him and giving him several examples of how a couple of the elders in our congregation were blatantly trying to run their own show, parading themselves around as "representatives" of the body, when the other brothers didnt know what the hell they were talking about.
they are using their "elder powers" to bully and push people around, causing a bit of angst and hurt feelings.
Paris - you're correct in how you describe official stance of the WTS. What Oubilette was describing is the functional doctrine. Since Jehovah isn't known for telling folks what to do directly, the GB has set themselves up doctrinally as his mouthpeice. Since you'll agree that this doctrine is false, and they are not actually speaking for Jehovah, you'll have to agree that the GB is acting on their own as if they were Jehovah.
The other bit about the way the WT consistently describes "Jehovah's earthly organization" or "Jehovah and his organization" explains how the WT creates a tacit mental link that eventually (functionally) becomes Jehovah=GB.
this 'everybody partakes' or is anointed is an interesting idea.
i do wonder if this clandestine effort is having an effect.. i was unable to find any explicit testimonies on the site - that is, naming names , as long as they have already exposed themselves to wts retribution.
they claim elders, co's and a do now follow them.
I'm skeptical of the veracity of their claims, but assuming it's true-
Part of me is with you that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and I would like the WTS to reform. However, the only reform I'm interested in is the end to shunning and a stop to the policies and propaganda aimed at demonizing those who do not wish to be associated with the JW "religion." As an atheist that's stuck in for my wife, that's the only reform that helps me, aside from perhaps reform on the blood doctrine that could potentially kill my wife should some rare circumstance arise.
The other part of me feels like reform of the WTS is the worst thing that can happen for me. If the organization becomes more reasonable and places itself on a firmer doctrinal position, it becomes more difficult to point out the flaws and errors and corruption to my wife. So, in some ways, the worse the org gets the better my chances of making a clean break from it are.
If it is true that there is disention among the ranks - it spells change for the WTS and the GB will have to tread carefully to maintain control. If the GB is seen as capitulating to the dissenters "below" them, it will plant seeds of doubt (Fred Franz's infamous tail wagging the dog talk comes to mind) in many adherants and could potentially lead to a schism. A split in the organization would likely lead to oppurtunites to make an easy exit, even if one doesn't want to be a part in either of the two peices of the split. Just like when you break a peice of bread, there's lots of small individual crumbs that escape from the two halves. If such a schism occurrs, and I'm still stuck in at the time, I hope my family will be among the crumbs.
on coftys thread about his former pastor trying to re-convert him, which is very long but a tremendous discussion of the problem of evil, a poster, sunny23, wrote :.
" having been 7 months since i first posted on the first page of this topic i have just read those posts and acknowledged a huge transfromation in myself for the better."..
i was only thinking the other day how, as i discovered this site and ttatt, i really changed as a person in so many ways, and i think mainly for the better.. i have been "born again" !!.
I'm definitely more at peace with the fact that I'm an atheist, and ultimately have been for years before finding TTATT. Its also nice not to have an internal conflict about how to feel about homosexuals. Basically, I'm able to be the better person I always felt like I should be, but couldn't fully embrace because it conflicted with the WTS's doctrine and policies.
But since I'm still stuck in, I'd describe it mostly like one weight has been lifted and another has replaced it. I no longer have this internal conflict, but now I'm constantly stressed about how to handle my wife and how I'm going to get out and hopefully keep her.
