Posts by OneEyedJoe

23

No such thing as history

by woodforde in

why do you think it is that wts limit accessibility to watchtowers and awakes to only issues since year 2000 on jworg?

a whiff of something slightly orwellian?

not a case of re-writing history but nixing it altogether?

I sometimes think that the reason for the differing cut-offs on WTs and Awakes on WT-library (1950 for WTs and 1970 for Awakes) is the infamous 1969 Awake quote that says something about young ones never growing old in this system, encouraging them to neglect schooling, etc.

They've got a pretty perfect system set up that makes it easy for them to throw away the old literature anyways. All the literature is just the same regurgitated crap year after year, so if you go back 50 years you won't really have anything more (other than doctrinal flip-flops) than you would be able to get by just going back 10 years.

I'm interested to see if they start removing old stuff from the website too eventually. Now that would be telling.

51

EXPERTS ONLY! A Pop Quiz on (current) Watchtower teaching

by TerryWalstrom in

pop quiz on jw (current) teaching.

1. was jesus 2nd coming in 1914?.

2. is jesus 2nd (parousia) presence the same thing as his coming?.

OneEyedJoe

screw it, I'll take a go.

1. No, that was the beginning of his presence. He's magic, he can be somewhere without actually going there.

2. No, see above.

3. Whichever is most convenient at the time. I think it's been called a parable most recently, but they still treat it as a prophecy, so you choose.

4. Nope. Jesus is present, but hasn't come. Once he comes he'll do the appointing.

5. I think that's still 1914.

6. Yet to come

7. Nope, they just get the fringe benefits of hanging out with the uber special anointed ones.

8. You shouldn't! don't you know that reading the bible is how you become an apostate!

9. No clear stance that I'm aware of after the recent FDS changes, so by default he must still have been (that's a fun conjugation) anointed since they haven't spelled it out.

How'd I do? Am I wasting enough of my life to have passed the quiz?

6

Something JWs don't understand how to do

by enigma1863 in

i had to share this quote.

it reminds me of trying to reason with jws.

you can only go so far before they shut down.. .

OneEyedJoe

Love that quote, and I agree 100%. Just trying to get a JW to entertain a premise that they don't agree with in order to draw a logical conclusion is impossible. For example, they'll claim that evolution couldn't have created the eye. If someone entertains the idea of evolution, it's easy to see how our eyes could have formed that way, but as soon as you start talking about it they immediately reject it because they think you're trying to force it on them.

28

If you're bothered by god murdering innocent children, you must have a "critical heart"

by OneEyedJoe in

this week's book study contains this gem:.

the way in which the bible is written serves to test what is in our heart.

hebrews 4:12 says: the word [or, message] of god is alive and exerts power and is sharper than any two-edged sword and pierces even to the dividing of soul and spirit .

OneEyedJoe

I do not approve of infanticide. And even if I did, in your view it could not be morally repugnant because there is no God to set the standards of morality. Also, I am a great proponent of Mormonism. If there is no penalty or eternal consequence, there is no law. As the Book of Mormon prophet Alma wrote:

The assertion that god is required for morality is completely unsupported. infanticide is wrong not because god says so, but because I myself was once an infant and I wouldn't much have liked to have been killed. If you need a penalty or eternal consequence not to behave like an evil person, then that just means you're an evil person and a wuss.

If there is no God, then there can be no law; so where else can the law come? From men. But men aren't consistent in their laws or moral outlooks. In the Canaanite religions, it was okay to commit infanticide and to combine it with torture and to have orgies as part of the religious order. If there's no God, then the laws of men could be reprehensible to me, but A-Okay with our society. In either way, Cofty, what gives you the right to set the precepts of morality? Or to condemn the infanticide of the Canaanites? I could feed kittens to bulldogs and who could condemn it if I thought it was okay? The only way man instinctively knows right from wrong is through the Light of Christ, which is given to all men. And you condemn the author of that light which you misuse to judge God which is the greatest irony of your argument.

I, for one, am quite grateful that men aren't consistent in their laws and moral outlooks. If they'd stuck with it, then rape would still be a viable way to choose your wife (read your bible, if an isrealite rapes a woman he gets to marry her and she has no say) and we'd be stoning people to death because their father stole a robe. There are certainly many laws that I find reprehensible, but other support. why is that proof that god exists? Everyone has the right to determine their own morality, just so long as it doesn't interfere with the reasonable rights of others.

You make a blind assertion that instinctive morality can only come from god, I make the evidence-based assertion that instinctive morality comes from evolution. Species that didn't have some instinctive desire to help each other out and not kill their own kind likely went extinct pretty quickly. It doesn't take much thought to conclude that morality is an important aspect of human (and many animals') nature and without it we would not have survived as a species. What evidence do you have that god is the origin of morality? Just going to stick with your argument from incredulity?

34

Quick introduction

by OzGirl in

jw
friends

only have a few minutes to spare so thought i would throw this together.. been in for about 30 years.

questions and doubts gathered over that time.

i have a keen interest in the legal and financial matters of the watchtower.. came across this site about 5 years ago.

OneEyedJoe

Welcome! Hopefully this forum will be as much of a help to you as it has been (and continues to be) for me. I second the encouragement to share some (as much as you're comfortable with) of your story. For me, just writing out all the things I'm not allowed to say out loud is helpful, and you never know who your story might help. It's always good to know we're not alone.

Stay a while, and chime in. The forum benefits from a variety of viewpoints.

12

Stephen Fry on God: What would you say to him if he did exist?

by Simon in

great answer to a stupid question - what would you say if you're wrong, if god does exist and you go to meet him when you die?.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-suvkwnysqo.

OneEyedJoe

His point about river blindness made me think back to a scripture JWs (and other christians) love to use to justify their belief in god and interpret it in a different way

Romans 1:20 rNWT:

For his invisible qualities are clearly seen from the world’s creation onward, because they are perceived by the things made, even his eternal power and Godship, so that they are inexcusable.

God's actions and qualities as seen in creation are truly inexcusable.

Twisting scripture is a pretty entertaining past-time!

17

"Religion gives us the Why"

by Phizzy in

i have heard this nonsense said by many believers, especially when science conflicts with their belief, they say:.

" well, science may tell us how we got here, religion tells us why we are here".

does religion tell us that ?

OneEyedJoe

I watched a show a while back (I believe it was an episode of "Through the Wormhole") where it showed psychological studies that attempted to find the source of religion. One study was done with children, asking questions like "why does grass exist" or "why are there sunsets." (I don't remember the exact questions, but these get the point across) children of a young age overwhelmingly preferred purpose-based explanations. Grass exists so that cows can graze. Sunsets are there for us to enjoy. In some people, these purpose-based explanations for things never seem to get weeded out and that is a big contributing factor in becoming religious.

I forget who this quote is from, but I've seen it here a few times and I think it sums things up nicely. I'd rather have questions I can't answer than answers I can't question. In some ways it's feels good to think you have all the answers and have the self-assurance that comes with that, but to me it's vastly more freeing and exciting to admit that you don't have all the answers, but at least the one answer you do have is that there's not some lunatic in the sky watching your every move just waiting to punish you for living your life.

On netflix, there's a 2 or 3 part miniseries on the meaning of by stephen hawking. If you're not into quantum mechanics or sciency stuff in general it might be a little much, but in it he uses our current understanding of physics and math to come to a rather satisfying conclusion (at least for me) as to what the meaning of life is. It's worth a watch if you're interested in that sort of thing.

17

Jehovah Witness promotion of JW.org as the place to get answers to all of lifes important question is the height of arrogance

by Brokeback Watchtower in

we are hearing reports of this promotion of the website by the jw and it seems to be a resource for them to dodge questions of their faith, when they don't have or want to give an answer to a question they direct the house holder to the organization/corporation's website to get the answer as if it really existed.there.. i think soon they are going to drop the door to door work all together as completely unprofitable, i mean their donation arrangement is a complete flop and has cost them i'm sure so they are in the process of shipping as many as they can into building up real estate for the corporation, because that is where the money is right now.. the whole jw.org is just a complete failure as a source of good information and only scare away people except the most vulnerable/gullible.. .

.

OneEyedJoe

Viviane - If the website didn't answer all of your questions, then you clearly don't have the right heart condition and you aren't worth her time.

21

Giving comments at meetings that cause cognitive dissonance while keeping yourself below elder radar for apostasy

by Brokeback Watchtower in

well i'm sure we can come up with clever comments that make people feel uncomfortable by serving to decompartmentalize things that have been compartmentalized in the thinking of the average jw.

or comments that make the cognitive dissonance stand out plainly, these have to be said in innocent manner and with an apparent obliviousness to the contradiction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/compartmentalization_%28psychology%29.

OneEyedJoe

There's two different ways that I've come up with to do this, though I can't say I've gotten any results to speak of.

The first method is to give a comment as if you're a complete hardliner. An example of this is a comment I wanted to give during the book study a few weeks ago. The paragraph said something about his God cleverly had the Bible written in such a way that it exposed those with a"critical heart" my comment was "many people take issue with the fact that the good of the Bible on several occasions ordered the Israelites to kill every man, woman, and child of other nations, not even giving them the chance to accept God. But it is clear that anyone raising such objections simply have a critical heart." Basically the point is to apply the point of the paragraph in such a way that it becomes obvious to anyone with half a brain that it's wrong.

Thee other method is to introduced information that the average jw does not have, then explain it away on an obviously flawed manner. Maybe something like mentioning a doomsday predictor like Harold camping in a negative way, then saying something like "of course the Bible students expected the end to come in 1914 and again in 1925, but we know that they were mearly driven by their zeal in expectation of the great day of Jehovah."

65

The Fear mongering of this weeks WT study!

by stuckinarut2 in

have you all read this weeks study article?.

oh my word it is full of fear inducing tactics....doom and gloom outlooks.... anxiety inducing methods to develop absolute control over witnesses and cripple them in any attempt to think for themselves!.

(notice i am saying "themselves" rather than "ourselves"?!

OneEyedJoe

Good to know that even hunkered down in a basement the white men will still find time, razors and shaving cream to stay clean shaven. Also, it appears that the soul-patch exemption is still in place for black men.