Posts by OneEyedJoe

21

People who study for years ??

by Clambake in

in my cong ( my wives cong.

) there is a lady who attends every meeting , minus the field service just like a regular dub.

it just seems odd she has not taken the dip yet.

There was one woman in my former congregation that studied for 7 years, I think it was. Finally committed fully to the cult. Apparently the blood ban was what had held her back, so it took an extra few doses of mind control to finally commit to the possibility having to kill one of her children for her cult.

I don't think there's much the elders can do. They can't kick someone out who's not been baptized. About the best they can do is be passive aggressive or use emotional manipulation to try to pressure them to get baptized. I'm sure whoever was studying with her got a lot of talking to about it as well, but it's not like they can DF you or take away privileges for something like that since most JWs are doing good to get someone to a meeting once.

20

Why some smart people believe the JWs/Bible

by jws in

jw
friends

i consider myself smart.

go ahead, laugh.

i have a sense of humor too.. but i grew up a jw and also believed in the bible.

OneEyedJoe

Towards the end of my time in the mental prison of JWdom, one of the few remaining threads that my loyalty to the cult was hanging by was the fact that one of the elders in my congregation was very intelligent and often gave comments about how he had previously been agnostic before converting. I liked him personally, and I couldn't understand how he wouldn't be able to see all the issues that I could see. But he was still in and by all accounts fully invested.

One day I was bored and thinking about this predicament and googled "Why do smart people believe stupid things" which lead me to an article that referenced Festinger's "When Prophecy Fails" - a well regarded book written after following around a doomsday cult to study the psychology of it all. I never actually read the book, but the overview on wikipedia hit me pretty hard. In a lot of ways it sounded like the JWs - they predicted the end of the world, and after the failure of the prediction the ones that stuck around were more committed than ever and this is when they began to attempt to proselytize. When you're uncertain of a belief that you hold, convincing others of its truth validates the belief to you, so you seek to do that. I'm not saying that's exactly what happened with JWs, but at the time I didn't know fully the history, but I knew the preaching work mainly started after 1914.

In short, intelligence has less to do with whether you believe stupid things than we'd like to think. In many cases it has much more to do with how invested you are in the truth of an idea. If you've given up jobs, family, friendships, property or a great deal of time in commitment to it, you're far more likely to continue to hold this to be true long after it's proven false. In the case of the elder I'd looked up to, he'd given up all these things for the cult. I also later learned that he converted only after his wife had converted, and this lent further credence to the idea that he, in spite of his intelligence, may well have been fooled into holding some very stupid beliefs.

42

How much damage has internet done against the The Watchtower Society ?

by opusdei1972 in

in the beginning of internet the society was worried about the information published exposing its falsehood.

so, i wonder how many people lost the society on account of forums and web sites like this.

.

OneEyedJoe

On jwfacts, he makes a reasonable case that the internet has cost them 6 million publishers so far. That's including those that leave and those that never converted because of the internet.

http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/statistics.php

Now the internet might not be the sole factor for the sudden decline in growth, but I suspect it's the largest contributor, with the inexorable passage of time coming in second.

27

Use of first names at the KH

by Sour Grapes in

jw
friends

have you ever noticed that know one uses first names at the kh?

it is how are you brother jones?

how are you sister smith?

OneEyedJoe

Because they're not your real friends.

113

New letter, re: Fully Utilizing Kingdom Hall Auditoriums

by suavojr in

jw
friends

let the merging begin!!!.

to all bodies of elders in the united states branch territory.

re: fully utilizing kingdom hall auditoriums.

OneEyedJoe

I can't imagine a better place for them to do this than my (well I haven't been in months, so I guess now it's my wife's) congregation. They meet in a 2-auditorium KH with 5 congregations. When the CO comes to a congregation that normally meets on thursday, they already cram two congregations into one auditorium instead of changing the midweek meeting for the tuesday-nighters to a different night. It's a little full, and I know a number of JWs that intentionally skip those nights because it's uncomfortable, but they all fit just fine. I can easily see them dividing one congregation among the others and taking on the two congregations from a (recently remodeled) KH that's about 10 minutes away. That little shell game would leave them with 6 congregations meeting in the double auditorium hall (they were doing that at one time a few years ago) and sell off the KH that they just got finished fixing up on the congregation's dime.

Actually, if they do this right and divide up the congregations that are getting reassigned to new halls slowly and evenly distribute them among the surrounding congregations that aren't moving halls they'll even leave most of the R/F with a vague impression of growth. They'll notice that the KH is more full, but won't look around and realize that everyone's been a JW for 20-30 years and just got reassigned. Only the ones that actually have to change their routine will really notice anything, and most of them will probably think "wow this new congregation that we moved to sure is full, they must be growing quickly."

From their letter, it seems to me that they know exactly what they're trying to do - manage decline while selling it as growth. They start of talking about all the growth, but spend the entire rest of the letter talking about consolidation. I so hope they do this in my area, as my wife will likely be missing a lot more meetings if they add 20-30% more people to her congregation's roster.

13

Were we meant to live forever?

by konceptual99 in

so i believed for years that humans will one day revert to being able to live forever.

i was told the only reason we don't already is because adam and eve sinned.. if this is the case then why is nothing else in the universe capable of the same thing.

everything else has a finite lifespan.

OneEyedJoe

Yeah, I often wondered what would happen when our sun ran out of hydrogen and consumed the earth. Perhaps we'd have the technology to leave by then, but doesn't the bible say "the earth will endure forever" or was that not true? What happens to us when our galaxy collides with andromeda? Or when the universe has expanded to the point where stars can no longer exist? Sure, that's all a long way off, but not as far off as forever. It was deeply unsatisfying to imagine that god would have to intervene periodically to keep things running.

The funny thing is that the 2nd law of thermodynamics (the same one that they love to use to "prove" that life cannot form without divine intervention - forgetting that the earth is not a closed system) proves that nothing can last forever. Eventually everything will reach a state of maximum entropy.

8

DC ooopps I mean RC

by tresdecu in

jw
friends

so, i gotta go this weekend.

ugh!!!

fml!!!

OneEyedJoe

Ostensibly the brochure is to show the GB's (oops I mean Jehovah's) love for those that are inactive, but the real reason is to pigeonhole inactive people into a few categories to explain to the R/F why people are inactive. This just shores up in their mind 1. inactivity is "leaving jehovah" and 2. there is no valid reason to become inactive.

The brochure won't change anything. Actually, if anything, it'll make things worse once they try to use the brochure on someone and they don't respond - now they're inactive and ungrateful/obstinate.

6

Why being disfellowshipped from the Jehovah's Witnesses cult is a good thing

by Finkelstein in

one of the many reasons are people are free to enhance their intellectual growth through pursuing education, something the wts demeaned for very much of its existence.

education is a good thing for humanity for knowledge can and does help resolving some of the problems mankind has to endure.

new discoveries in health and medicine.

OneEyedJoe

To be fair you can do all that without being DFed if you're careful (and maybe a bit lucky).

The only reasons for being DFed that I can think of would be to separate yourself completely from association with a morally bankrupt organization, for a sense of closure and to eliminate pesky guilt-tripping and manipulative contact from cultists.

The reasons to leave in general, on the other hand, are vast and innumerable. You can live a life of integrity, intellectual honesty, and freedom. You can give and receive true unconditional love. You can have open discussions about religion and philosophy without being careful not to step across some doctrinal line. You can live on your own terms and learn to be happy (whatever that means for you) without unnecessary feelings of guilt, fear and obligation being constantly pushed upon you.

31

MORE PROPAGANDA FROM THE CO!!

by DATA-DOG in

well, once again my "friend" has shared their notes with me from the latest co visit.

besides the usual 1914 assertions/ world getting worse all the time/ our day is the worst of all time nonsense, the co mentioned some interesting things.

number one won't surprise you.

OneEyedJoe

Perhaps in the future, CO visits will be broadcast from Cult Headquarters. Any problems any in the cong have, you have 5 mins in the second school to skype Cult Headquaters.

For some reason "Cult Headquarters" is cracking me up.

I think the more likely approach will be that any problems in the congregation will simply be met with instructions to suck it up and wait on the desert god to (never) fix it.

25

All quiet on the western front

by campaign of hate in

recently it seems very quiet in jw land.. jw broadcasting has been in full swing for months now, nobody bats an eye lid at that anymore.. so the question is, what is next?

the next organisation change, the next doctrine change.

it seems like this is the quiet before the storm.. the way things are going, it's almost like they try and one up their last change, things in jw land get that bit more crazy every year.. i'm hedging my bets toward a monthly public talk broadcast straight from new york.

OneEyedJoe

There's definitely been new light at the conventions - last year Losch even used the term "new light" when giving the bit about third heaven, then he sorta stumbled to correct himself saying "new understanding." But I guess it's always been trivial stuff intended to make people feel like there's progress being made and to have something to talk about and act all holier than thou. Like I said, not really what we're talking about here.

I definitely expect that we'll see some sort of monthly broadcast public talk...they've been making such a fuss about getting monitors and projectors into all the KHs that it seems unlikely that it's just for a yearly dog and pony show.