Posts by OneEyedJoe

23

What does the building of Warwick HQ have to do with the Society's expectation of the end?

by Apognophos in

this topic is a couple years late, but i just wanted to get this off my chest.

i don't understand why people say that the society starting a project that won't finish until 2017 means that the end can't come until then, or that they don't expect the end before then.

this isn't a very logical line of thought.

OneEyedJoe

Yeah, when people joke about the apparent lack of confidence in how imminent armageddon is based on their plans that go well into the future, I don't think they actually mean it that way. It's more of a dig at the hipocracy of it all. If I were to personally go and start work on some project that couldn't possibly be completed in 10 years, I have no doubt that I would recieve rampant criticism from everyone in the congregation because of my apparent lack of confidence in how soon armageddon would be. But when the GB does it, it's evidence of how fast god's chariot moves!

They constantly print material that discourages planning for the future, but they're constantly planning for the future...

35

Nimrod: Fact or fiction

by dugout in

jw
friends

nimrod and the tower of babel-is this history or biblical myth.

god confused their lauguges?.

sounds quite comical when you think about it.

OneEyedJoe

It is pretty obvious he wanted them to scatter and populate the earth.

We must not be reading the same passage...to me it's pretty obvious that he didn't want them to achieve what they'd be able to with a common tounge.

Nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them -> let's confuse their language.

The scattering that this (alledgedly) caused was incedental.

But whatever. It really doesn't matter, because either way the account is demonstrably false on many levels.

41

How Much Drinking Is Too Much?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i have seen that some say if a man has 3 beers per day or a woman has 2 glasses of wine per day, that they may have .

.

OneEyedJoe

I think some people get a little fanatical about what constitutes alcoholism. I'll go through periods where I'll have 3-4 drinks a night for a couple weeks, and sometimes I won't have any for a long strech. For me, it's no different than how I'll sometimes crave pizza for a couple days in a row, but sometimes I don't feel like it for a long stretch.

I think some of the difference has to do with what you get out of drinking. I drink because it tastes good, but some people will drink anything they can get their hands on just to get drunk. Sometimes I'm in the mood for a drink, but I've run out of the particular scotch I was in the mood for, and I end up not drinking anything (despite having an otherwise fully stocked bar). I have no interest in medication to make me drink less...when I want to drink less, I just drink less. Sometimes I stop drinking for a while to lose weight, but I definitely miss the pizza more than the drink when I do that.

35

Nimrod: Fact or fiction

by dugout in

jw
friends

nimrod and the tower of babel-is this history or biblical myth.

god confused their lauguges?.

sounds quite comical when you think about it.

OneEyedJoe

It seems to me that you have to read that with the pre-concieved notion that god had a just reason for confusing the languages to arrive at that conclusion. God said these guys can do whatever they set their mind to, we need to confuse their languages. Unless god speaks in non-sequiter, that's a pretty clear statement of the problem followed by the solution.

35

Nimrod: Fact or fiction

by dugout in

jw
friends

nimrod and the tower of babel-is this history or biblical myth.

god confused their lauguges?.

sounds quite comical when you think about it.

OneEyedJoe

If it is true, it could be that God wanted the people to spread out and fill

the earth and not congregate in the middle east.

Confusing the languages would facilitate that.

If that's the case, why does the bible misrepresent god's reason for doing it? The bible is pretty clear that god confused the languages in order to limit their capabilities.

28

SAD HOLY SPIRIT ILLUSTRATION

by GreenhornChristian in

just got an email from elder sharing illustration from assembly.

the holy spirit does not seem to be in control as it supposedly was in the 1st century.

it's just lube now.

OneEyedJoe

Reminds me of a talk by the CO a while back in which he asserted that HS "flows" to us from the GB down through the organization, to each of us in the congregations. I believe a comparison was made to the roman aqueducts. He said that we needed to make sure that our thinking was in line with the organization because we didn't want to "block the flow" of the HS. I was still mentally in at the time of the talk, and now that I'm typing this up, i think it was possibly one of the most culty talks ever. Completely removed Jesus from the equation, and the GB/organization are now in charge of supplying holy spirit.

35

Nimrod: Fact or fiction

by dugout in

jw
friends

nimrod and the tower of babel-is this history or biblical myth.

god confused their lauguges?.

sounds quite comical when you think about it.

OneEyedJoe

Also adds to the confusion of the issue of soverignty issue.

[As the story goes], God decided to let man have a hand at governing himself to prove that he would be unsuccessful, but then just as soon as man gets to the point of really being able to accomplish something grand ("he could accomplish anything his heart desired") he meddles with them such as confusing the language to thwart their efforts.

That seems fair and just.

Doc

That's a really great point. It's like god said "Oh, shit, they're better at this than I thought they'd be!"

35

Nimrod: Fact or fiction

by dugout in

jw
friends

nimrod and the tower of babel-is this history or biblical myth.

god confused their lauguges?.

sounds quite comical when you think about it.

OneEyedJoe

It wouldn't surprise me if there was some great building project that was started but eventually failed, but the confused languages bit is just an explanation for something they didn't understand (i.e. we all came from adam, so why don't we all speak the same language?). Of course, today, we have observed the evolution of language and understand how different groups end up speaking completely different languages. If god really confused the languages, he didn't do a very good job since english/spanish/latin/etc all share a lot of words, as well as many gramatical constructs.

Just in the relatively short period of time that the US and UK have been seperate cultures, it's clear that we're developing our own disprate languages. In the US if you ask for a lift, you're asking for a ride home, in the UK you'll be directed to the nearest elevator. Clearly god is not required to cause this "confusion."

What's more, is if god observed a group of people trying to build a tower that would rise into the heavens in order to be impervious to any future flood, I can't imagine why he would've done anything more than laugh. If the flood waters covered the top of Mt. Everest, they couldn't have had the slightest chance of building a tower higher than that, especially not starting in the region where they're supposed to have begun building, as it is barely above sea level. With all our technology (and vastly greater world population) we would be hard pressed to build such a tower today. So why would god confuse the languages to stop them from attempting something that was beyond their means anyway? Just to be a dick? I think it would've been a greater "witness" to the superiority of god if he'd just let them fail on their own, instead of acting as if he were afraid that they might succeed.

35

How many born ins actually stay?

by lostinthought in

jw
friends

i was wondering if anyone know sany statistics of the amount of born ins that actually stay in the orginization.

i think i have read it before on here but i can't really remember what it was.

.

OneEyedJoe

The statistics make me think that there's some hope, but my personal (anecdotal evidence) experience hasn't been as good. Of those that I was friends with growing up, there were a few that never got baptized, didn't really go to meetings, etc. all of them eventually got baptized in their 20s and are now as 'in' as they can be. I only know of 2 that left, one was gay and I don't know the circumstances of the other, but I think he just didn't care enough (whatever it takes). I just hope both found TTATT. 2 out of a group of 10-15 isn't entirely optimistic.

It definitely varies from one group to another. One (more recent) friend of mine said the other day that essentially everyone he grew up with is now DF'd.

35

Going on the OFFENSIVE

by Coded Logic in

the wtbts has an easy time painting x-witnesses as apostates because the direction of information is entirely one way.

and jws rarely get an opportunity to consider both sides of the equation for themselves.

i think that websites like this one are a great tool for those who are already questioning their beliefs or are already entirely out.

OneEyedJoe

Gone AWOL - sounds like a great idea to me. One thing I'd recommend, though is to go with a less controversial message. The UN thing is just so unbelievable to anyone who's still indoctrinated that they'll probably assume it's a creative lie and not investigate further.

I like the idea of printing up the picture on jwfacts (or on like it) that shows a grandparent with their child and grandchild captioned "how many generations do you see?" Then the address for jwfacts. Since the generation change is still fresh, I feel like that's probably the best thing to go with.