OneEyedJoe

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Posts by OneEyedJoe

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  85

  Mormons getting hollowed out: The tipping point has occurred.

  by Qcmbr in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  ever since mitt romney turned the spotlight on the lds church a growing tsunami of disaffection has been accelerated and brought to a head.. the lds core faithful members are leaving in increasing numbers such that growth has not simply stagnated in the west but it has actively reversed.

  to their credit the church is responding aggressively but not only is it too late, it is an impossible task.

  you can only paint sh*t so many ways.

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  OneEyedJoe

  I think were both right new halls will be built for mutiple congregations and ownership issues but at the same time this allows for them to quietly delete congregations with out anyone knowing the numbers are down. Some one posted here that they know a co in a circuit near Seattle Wa, and he was told by this co that there lossing half a dozen people per circuit per assembly. No way to know for sure but the last few circuit assemblies I attended seemed down in numbers as well as the District assemblies. But there always changing things around so it hard to tell. Maybe that's the reason why so people won't figure out that the numbers of people attending are down.

  On the topic of anecdotal evidence for decline, I'll add my observations: The last CO visit we had, in his final talk he said what boils down to - the elders have expressed concern to me about meeting attendence, but I don't think it's a problem because your congregation has some of the best meeting attendence in the circuit. Our meeting attendence is probably 70-80% on sundays and 50-70% on the mid-week meetings. That was never passable when I was a kid (we'd get local needs talks if it dropped below 90% for sundays) in the same area so something must've changed. I think the trend is that meeting attendence is dropping everywhere and they've switched from trying to recover the ones that are leaving to trying to put on a good face so that the ones who are still there don't leave too.
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  85

  Mormons getting hollowed out: The tipping point has occurred.

  by Qcmbr in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  ever since mitt romney turned the spotlight on the lds church a growing tsunami of disaffection has been accelerated and brought to a head.. the lds core faithful members are leaving in increasing numbers such that growth has not simply stagnated in the west but it has actively reversed.

  to their credit the church is responding aggressively but not only is it too late, it is an impossible task.

  you can only paint sh*t so many ways.

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  OneEyedJoe

  but is all about ownership

  I suspect that has a lot to do with it...just probably not in the way you meant it...
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  24

  CREATIVE "DAYS" - What do JWs believe?

  by Bloody Hotdogs! in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  a few weeks ago, i asked you to critique my website article on dinosaurs (http://www.jwbeliefs.com/what-do-jehovahs-witnesses-believe-about-dinosaurs/).

  it was pointed out that much of what i wrote depends on the creative "days" being relatively short - something i believe jws teach.. after being prompted to review my conclusions/research, i was more convinced than ever that jws promote relatively short creative days.

  the nail in the coffin was the teaching that day seven is indicative of the length of the other six days (i.e.

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  OneEyedJoe

  Sir82 hit the nail on the head. The 7000 year "day" teaching has been quietly retired and they've backed away from it. I suspect that they didn't want to upset the oldtimers by publishing a QFR on the matter, and now they just go with "thousands of years" instead. This is clearly their trying to have it both ways. When old timers read "thousands of years" they think "7000 years." When younger or more scientifically literate JWs read that they read it as being much longer to coincide with their scientifically accurate understanding of the age of the earth/universe.

  The other thing I'd add is that even COs seem to have the idea that the 7000 year "day" is "old light." I don't know how much of it was in the outline, but I distinctly remember a couple years back a CO gave a long talk in which he talked about how Jesus had been hangin' out with Jehovah for at least 13.8 billion years since that's the age of the universe and jesus was around before that.
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  24

  Can anyone tell me any narrative of having successfully avoided Baptism while being raised JW?

  by SonoftheTrinity in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i just worry for my stepkids about their future that way..

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  OneEyedJoe

  Not to distract from the topic, but you guys who weren't interested in getting baptized -- weren't you worried about being destroyed at Armageddon?

  I had fully bought into the hype that Jehovah was loving and just. I knew that my hesitation/skepticism was justified, so I figured that he'd let me be a part of the ressurection of the unrighteous, even if I had to be killed to do it. Really, though, I figured that being a good person that believed in him as much as I could would warrant getting me through. I knew all the doctrine, so if armageddon really started i'd immediately believe 100% so I figured god wasn't enough of a dick to let something as trivial as an outward display stand in the way of letting me in to paradise.

  In short - if I didn't make it then he was no god that I wanted to serve anyway.
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  24

  Can anyone tell me any narrative of having successfully avoided Baptism while being raised JW?

  by SonoftheTrinity in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i just worry for my stepkids about their future that way..

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  OneEyedJoe

  I managed to avoid getting baptized until I was 19. Had I been able to put it off a couple more years, when my doubts started to surface, I probably would have avoided it altogether. Unfortunately, there was an aggressive, utrazealous elder in my congregation who wouldn't let that happen.

  My story is almost exactly the same, save the ultrazealous elder was my father. I made it to 19. After about 14 people just sorta assumed I was baptized, so it didn't really come up. What did it for me was my brother telling me at one point that he only got dunked because his friends were doing it, and that he felt like he'd done it for the wrong reasons. I resolved then and there that I'd only get baptized because I was sure about the religion and "loved jehovah."

  Whenever someone pressured me to do it, I always came back with "This is a very important descision, and I don't want to do it for the wrong reasons. The more I'm pressured to do it, the more I instintively push back." Sometimes I would add something about them causing me to delay my baptism by pressuring me to do it. That always ended that, and I never got pushed by the same person twice, with the exception of my father.

  I eventually broke my promise to myself and got baptized for the wrong reasons - I was heartbroken over a GF that had just broken up with me (she presumably assumed that I was already baptized) and my father knew just the right thing to say to take advantage of that, and somehow I was convinced it was all god calling me to the cult.

  So, basically, if you can keep the kid from getting baptized because all their friends are doing it, then all you probably have to watch out for is when they're in an emotionally vulnerable situation. People only do things (this especially applies to joining a cult) if they think it's going to solve some problem for them. In my case, I essentially thought god was going to give me a girlfriend if I got baptized. Most kids don't want to be left out. Many just want the guilt-trips to end and don't realize that it's only the beginning of the guilt.
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  85

  Mormons getting hollowed out: The tipping point has occurred.

  by Qcmbr in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  ever since mitt romney turned the spotlight on the lds church a growing tsunami of disaffection has been accelerated and brought to a head.. the lds core faithful members are leaving in increasing numbers such that growth has not simply stagnated in the west but it has actively reversed.

  to their credit the church is responding aggressively but not only is it too late, it is an impossible task.

  you can only paint sh*t so many ways.

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  OneEyedJoe

  I suspect the shunning mandate is the major difference. The Mormons were smug enough to actually think they were right and wouldn't need any further shackles. Now with the latest church admissions on hot topics the core members are either hunkering down into extra committment mode or leaving.

  Yeah, that's what I was thinking... I know mormons do occasionally shun those who leave, but I thought it was more them being super self righteous, not something they did to avoid being shunned themselves, like it is with the JWs.

  Mormons also encourage higher education. In the past that probably didn't hurt them too much, but as the world gets more and more secular that's going to cause problems.
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  127

  I'm sitting here listening to a JW try to recruit somebody

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i'm at starbucks .

  just outside in the courtyard.. i'm trembling.

  my hands are shaking.. wow!.

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  OneEyedJoe

  Well done. You should suggest that he sign up here, I'm sure he'd get a warm welcome and lots of advice and empathy on dealing with his awakening and the resulting family issues.
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  102

  Should I attend Kingdom Hall meetings to discreetly "preach"?

  by CrytoJesus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  christians, should i attend kingdom hall meetings to discreetly "preach" to jws about the real jesus and the lies of the watchtower?.

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  i plan to go undercover and plant seeds into them.. .

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  OneEyedJoe

  whatever floats yer boat. i can't imagine it'd be worth sitting through a meeting to get ignored before and afterwards. JWs don't tolerate being preached to (hypocrites). The only way you might wake someone up is by asking questions that they have no answer for. Most likely, though, they'd just try to breeze past the difficult questions and force you to topics they want to talk about with their cherry picked scriptures. If you keep pressing your unanswerable questions, they'll just abandon any hope of converting you since you "don't have the right heart condition."
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  24

  As a JW Did You Often Feel "Guilty" About Something?

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  if muslim is supposed to be the religion of peace, jehovah's witnesses has to be the religion of guilt..

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  OneEyedJoe

  At one point I realized there was no use in feeling guilty if I wasn't going to change my behavior so I just stopped caring.

  My wife, though, is driven by her guilt. She hates going to meetings (except gossiping afterwards) and hates going out recruiting, but she is faced with uncontrollable guilt if she doesn't go. I wish I knew how to get her past that so she could get some time away and deprogram a bit.
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  9

  Life On Mars?

  by metatron in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/nasa-finds-evidence-of-life-on-mars-9929510.html.

  perhaps life in mars would be more accurate.

  also, recent study of martian meteorites have yielded organic material.. .

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  OneEyedJoe

  At this point data is showing signs of water and methane on Mars. Imagine if fossils of advanced lifeforms (i.e. animals) were found on Mars. I wonder how the Watchtower would try to spin an explaination around that.

  They'd just ignore it like they do all the fossil evidence right here at home. At best, they'd misquote some scientists and quote some fellow creationists to "disprove" the findings.