Posts by OneEyedJoe

15

Feeling indifferent

by campaign of hate in

jw
friends

right now, at this point in my life, i feel like i should be angry, sad, upset, annoyed, whatever emotion that most of you guys here feel or have felt.. but the overwhelming feeling i get, and i have got since waking up, is indifference.. i think that this might be my subconscious coping mechanism.

when i go to the meetings or take part in any other wt related activity, i don't care.

i just really couldn't care less.. i mean, i do care, but i think it's more a fascination now about the whole thing.

OneEyedJoe

I think I (maybe) get what you're saying. I really don't care about any of it at this point and just want out. The only thing keeping me going (in general, not necessarily going to meetings, which I haven't been to a lot lately) is my wife but honestly now there are points where it's difficult to care about that.

I think at a certain point you just get too fatigued from working to get out without seeing any real results and your options are to be really depressed and hopeless or just not to care. So, yeah, a lot of the time I just don't care about anything that has anything to do with the cult, including my family and cult "friends." Maybe I'm preparing myself to lose all of them when I just can't take it anymore. I don't know, and, to be honest, I sorta don't care haha.

17

Jehovahs Witness Shunning & the Crusades

by freemindfade in

while discussing being mistreated by my own jw family last night with my wife, i wanted to try to make her think critically about what shunning really is, and at its root what how beneficial it is.

earlier in the day i sent her non-apostate scholarly article on religious shunning being tantamount to psychological torture.

and most witnesses don't think into much about why they do things, its more of a "this is the way we do it, don't over think it" process.

OneEyedJoe

To answer your question about the 2/3rds thing, I think you might be misapplying it. The statistic (at least the one that I know of) is that roughly 2/3rds of born-ins leave. This is inferred from a pew poll that indicated that roughly 1/3 of people polled that were raised JW still identified as JW.

http://religions.pewforum.org/reports

12

door to door

by gda in

jw
friends

some jw's at my daughters door saturday morning.

they said nothing, nada, zip, zero, and just passed the mags to her and left.

is there no interaction any more?

OneEyedJoe

There's been a pretty steady decline in the zeal most JWs (at least in my area) have for d2d. There are a few older ones that still act like they did when 1975 was coming, but for the most part anyone under 40 is just there to count time and make the morning as easy as possible.

When it comes to the "special campaign" stuff that they do for memorial, conventions and, apparently, the website - they're told to get in and out as quickly as possible, so in that case it comes from the top that they don't linger and talk to people.

31

Who Will Be The Next Member Of The Governing Body To Defect From The Corporation?

by frankiespeakin in

while it may seem unlikely which of the currant governing body members do you feel would be most likely to defect?

i know it is a loaded question.. what about wealthy anthony morris iii?

or mark sanderson or geoffrey jackson?

OneEyedJoe

They just don't make them like Ray anymore.

The world and the cult has changed tremendously. Anyone who's got one ounce of intellectual honesty will have their crisis of conscience much earlier due to the abundance of available information. Ray defected after doing years of research that today would only take a few days or weeks to put together today. The result is that even though I'm sure there are men like Ray Franz that will pass through the cult in the future one way or another, none of them will stick around long enough to make it very high in the org.

29

To all anointed wannabe losers, DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT, OR ELSE!!!!!

by DATA-DOG in

once again the beloved and loving governing body are demonstrating their utmost disdain for the rank and file members of the jehovah church.

let us review this interesting trend, starting with some facts!

yay, facts!!!

OneEyedJoe

If they're so concerned about the rising number of ones partaking, why don't they just shoot out an BOE letter scolding the elders to be very discerning about who to officially count as partaking. That would seem to at least lower the number or slow the growth at worst.

Maybe someone else will be able to confirm with more certainty than I have, but I could've sworn I read that there was indeed some procedure that elders follow in order to determine who is "rightfully" partaking. I don't know what it is, but I think at the very least they weed out all non-JWs.

102

A couple questions for atheists on Suffering

by little_Socrates in

who told you that the world should be free from suffering?.

do you find any value in suffering?.

do you think it is possible to experience all the beauty and goodness and pleasure the world offers without also experiencing the bad?

OneEyedJoe

The only people that ever told me that the world should be without suffering had a religious agenda to sell.

Personally I don't get caught up in trying to categorize things as good or bad, they just are. I accept that the world is what it is and I can't change most of it. This frees me up to focus on the things I can change, and to do what good I can without getting bogged down with things that don't matter.

I also couldn't speculate much on what a perfect suffering free world might look like. Our universe is intrinsically disorderly, and a permanent state of stable perfection is unimaginable in the context of the universe that we live in.

It's also difficult to speculate on what id do were I God, since I expect omniscience would give me a bit of a different perspective on things.

Edit:

Theists SHOULD be the ones defending themselves, because they're the ones making outrageous claims without evidence. They also seem to be incapable of providing a description of god(s) that is both internally consistent and matches with observable reality.

65

Will this Memorial be our last?

by pixel in

they just put up the march km 2014 on the private website.

most of it is same-old-same-old, with info here and there about the memorial.. somebody here might post the march km for all to see, i wont.. i just wanted to share the paragraph from page 2 q&a anticle: will you seize the opportunity?

upcoming memorial enables us to show gratitude .

OneEyedJoe

I wish this memorial would be my last, but being realistic I've probably got 2 or 3 left to go to...

20

Skills Gap

by M*A*S*H in

the jws have now been discouraging higher education and critical thinking for a long time.

we have all seen the 'dumbing down' of the wt literature.

on a personal level i have seen many of the perceivably intelligent younger members of congregations leave.

OneEyedJoe

It's a mix around here, there were some (and still are a few, mostly retirement age now) very intelligent elders, but I came from a poor area so growing up there were definitely a lot of idiots (not to say poor people are all idiots, just that idiots tend to be poor)

It does seem like the WTS is aware of the problem and that it may be getting worse, since they now have the simplified watchtower (and that's saying something because the regular WT is like 5th grade level) and they had to revise the bible to dumb it down as well.

20

Skills Gap

by M*A*S*H in

the jws have now been discouraging higher education and critical thinking for a long time.

we have all seen the 'dumbing down' of the wt literature.

on a personal level i have seen many of the perceivably intelligent younger members of congregations leave.

OneEyedJoe

Agreed. Smart kids aren't sticking around like they used to because education and the internet has made it too easy for anyone with an ounce of intellectual curiosity to find real truth that doesn't force you into a mental prison.

That said, I remember as a pre-teen in the 90's asking my parents why it seemed like most of the people in the congregation weren't as smart as worldly people, so it's by no means a new trend.

29

The Days if Noah - Is this the new unofficial generation?

by cofty in

edit - "the days of noah" damn!.

long story short - i need to go to bed!

i was in edinburgh today with my wife (football, coffee, walks, food, cinema) and i always try to take 10 minutes to have a chat with the jws on the trolley in the "big city".. i challenged an older guy who turned out to be an pioneer about the generation.

OneEyedJoe

The math certainly checks out, and they've really committed to this overlap business so I think at this point I'd be more surprised if they didn't at least strongly hint at 2034 once it gets a little closer.