Posts by OneEyedJoe

32

Hidden Doctrines

by jhine in

" religions do not volunteer their most offensive doctrines to newcomers ".

the above sentence was posted on another thread as part of a quote taken from jwfacts .

l commented that this was a sweeping generalisation of the kind often made about all religions .

OneEyedJoe

The statement is an accusation , one that l find offensive . Like saying " all people with who can afford a Porsche must be criminals " There is no basis for either statement .

It's certainly not remotely as baseless as the example you gave. There are offensive doctrines in all christian denominations, all forms of judaism, and islam - that covers a huge swath of religious belief. Throw in some newer religions like scientology, mormonism (which, although it shares many of the offensive doctrines of christianity, managed to add its own novel ones), etc and there definitely seems to be a pattern here. None of these religions advertise their most offensive parts to outsiders, though they're all exposed in the modern age of free information.

32

Hidden Doctrines

by jhine in

" religions do not volunteer their most offensive doctrines to newcomers ".

the above sentence was posted on another thread as part of a quote taken from jwfacts .

l commented that this was a sweeping generalisation of the kind often made about all religions .

OneEyedJoe

If you subscribe to a particular faith, perhaps you'd like to put forth a counterexample to disprove the statement. It seems to be, if not entirely infallible, a pretty solid heuristic.

Do remember, though, that you could provide a counterexample in two forms - either by presenting a faith that has nothing offensive about it, or by presenting one that openly volunteers its most offensive doctrine.

7

Why don't JWs have problems with board games involving dice?

by cognisonance in

so i don't really care about these things anymore, but i was reading this article (and it's a very good one): gamified life.. in the article it mentions (without references):.

dice-based games of chance are thought to have originated with ancient divination practices involving thrown knucklebones.. .

so it's okay to play yahtzee but not okay to go trick-or-treat.

OneEyedJoe

For my thoughts on this, see my post on a similar thread:

https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/5733471205982208/can-someone-help-me-figure-out-something-dealing-paganism

In short, it's because they ban things that might facilitate a JW finding commonality with a non-jw. Dice don't pose much of a threat.

18

I am an idiot..

by zeb in

jw
friends

going past a 'new-age' shop today i stupidly said to my most 'uber' wife, do you want a reading?

" ..not a good idea.. oh dear.. she opened up correcting my every other word and brought in a stream of jw speak and now many hours later is still steaming under an acute cloud of sol.. oh god keep me from being so stupid; cut out my tongue, glue my teeth together.

aaarrgh!

OneEyedJoe

Oh God keep me from being so stupid; cut out my tongue, glue my teeth together. aaarrgh! and help me to accept that not even wry humor is now allowed.

I'm not sure how serious you are or how much you've internalized this, but I just want to point out that this is a very big warning sign that you're in an emotionally abusive relationship. I was in a similar situation with my JW wife for a couple years and I know how oppressive it can feel...but you need to remember that it is not healthy for one person in a relationship to be solely responsible for managing the emotions of the other. You meant no harm by making a joke, and if it causes her distress then she can calmly talk to you about her feelings and manager her responses like a mature adult. Using her emotional outbursts to control you and keep you in line is not healthy for either of you.

43

A Cult Tactic: Removing Guilt By Dehumanising Others

by pale.emperor in

in the real world, very few parents would disown their own children simply because they read a magazine that told them to do it.

very few people would forever completely ignore their own parents because an elder got up on a platform one day and announced that they no longer follow the same religion as you.. in the real world it just doesn't happen.

and yet, for 8 million jehovah's witnesses it's very a normal part of their world to treat "other people" differently than they'd treat each other.

OneEyedJoe

ANY claim that what the WTS does is similar (in any way) to what the Nazis or Japanese of WWII did risks being seen as a claim that the two crimes are the same.

Here's a thought. Why don't we all act like adults and actually listen to the claims made instead of interpreting them under the assumption that the person we're in conversation with is a bad actor? The fact of the matter is that Nazi Germany was an authoritarian high control group and as such it used all the same tactics that every such group uses. Of course Nazis were more violent. Of course there should be no equivalency made. And there wasn't. This is like someone giving advice to a checkers player that they treat it like a chess match and think 5 moves ahead and you swooping in to make sure everyone knows that chess is a much more complex game and that the strategies used in checkers would never work in chess. Everyone already knows this.

They are not the same. There is a very vague and tenuous link which is, IMO, pretty contrived and I don't think trying to make this link helps convince people it's true or elicit sympathy - I think the correct response to this is laughter and ridicule because c'mon, it IS utterly ridiculous. We could make the same claim about lots of things - "advertising uses mental manipulation techniques and OMG, Hitler did that too, therefore people selling lipstick are literally Nazis!!!"

Against whom are you arguing? Absolutely no one said they were the same. It seems that you're alone in your inability to see the similarities in tactics (in spite of absolutely obvious differences in scale and the addition of physical violence) between Nazism and the JW or other religious cults. No one said that JWs are literally Nazis. They do use some of the same basic strategies for control as Nazis did, though, as do all cults.

Here's a thought experiment if you still disagree: go tell a holocaust survivor to recount their story and then say that a similar thing happened to you and explain why. If you feel you'd be embarrassed doing that (you should) then you are not looking objectively at the claim

I doubt that what Jews experienced during the holocaust was especially similar to what I've gone through in leaving a cult. But that was never the claim made. The claim made was that the Nazis used similar tactics as JWs to get other Nazis to mistreat Jews. Now if I were talking to someone whose father was a Nazi and committed atrocities during the war, I might sympathize and relate how the JW cult uses similar tactics to manipulate my parents into doing things that are against their nature. I think that may well be a useful thing for someone that might be struggling with their personal identity in the light of their father's misdeeds - seeing that your case isn't a one-off and that your family isn't uniquely evil is sometimes a huge help towards moving on.

43

A Cult Tactic: Removing Guilt By Dehumanising Others

by pale.emperor in

in the real world, very few parents would disown their own children simply because they read a magazine that told them to do it.

very few people would forever completely ignore their own parents because an elder got up on a platform one day and announced that they no longer follow the same religion as you.. in the real world it just doesn't happen.

and yet, for 8 million jehovah's witnesses it's very a normal part of their world to treat "other people" differently than they'd treat each other.

OneEyedJoe

I found his comment off putting but also count it as a guard against sensationalism. Where this post could easily go. (or might still go)

If a topic is going to be considered not worthy of discussion because of where it might go, then we'll never discuss anything. No one was saying that being a JW was as bad as living in Nazi Germany or North Korea. Drawing parallels (while acknowledging that they occupy different positions on a spectrum) is entirely valid. When people actually take things too far or make false equivalencies or begin sensationalizing things, that's the time for criticism.

Or hell, coming in and saying something like "while Nazis used the same techniques, I do think we should be careful not to equate the shunning that JWs do to the treatment of Jews during the holocaust" would be perfectly fine. I find it difficult, however, not to take the tone of that post to imply that the entire discussion is worthless, which it most definitely is not. It's a valuable comparison that explains how influential these techniques are, and understanding that can be a great comfort to those suffering under the torment of being shunned. Realizing that your family aren't torturing you out of malice or out of any special evil, but that they're just victims of the same sort of propaganda and manipulation that people have been using for centuries - that can be a powerful step towards healing.

43

A Cult Tactic: Removing Guilt By Dehumanising Others

by pale.emperor in

in the real world, very few parents would disown their own children simply because they read a magazine that told them to do it.

very few people would forever completely ignore their own parents because an elder got up on a platform one day and announced that they no longer follow the same religion as you.. in the real world it just doesn't happen.

and yet, for 8 million jehovah's witnesses it's very a normal part of their world to treat "other people" differently than they'd treat each other.

OneEyedJoe

Seriously? We're going to try to equate "mommy didn't invite me to the family BBQ" to what the Nazis and Japanese did in WWII???
I think this is a stretch beyond belief. The WTS try to paint us as "the enemy" because to them, we are. It doesn't really come anywhere close to the barbarism that has happened in history.

I'm trying to understand where you're coming from posting something like this. This is a forum specifically for victims of a cult...you know this better than anyone. Are we not going to talk about shunning and the psychological manipulation that the cult uses to get people to shun family members in defiance of what is typically the strongest social bond that we form? If you accept that it's natural for us to discuss the mechanism behind that, then why is it not natural to look at the extremes that can happen when people use these techniques to turn one group of people against another? Your use of the word "equate" is dishonest. No one equated shunning (which I think you well know goes FAR beyond not being invited to the family bbq, especially for those who are recently leaving the cult and have absolutely no support network outside the group).

Obviously the mass incarceration and murder of innocent Jews during the holocaust was a far worse atrocity than anything that the JWs have done. Pointing this out is not helpful in any way. The fact that former JWs are not Jews in the holocaust in no way makes their situation any easier. People come here struggling to understand what was done to them, how it was done, and how their family can possibly treat them the way they do. Discussing human nature and showing the extremes to which it can be taken is extremely instrumental in this endeavor for many.

I'm really confused by your post. You're the last person I would've expected to have such a drastic misunderstanding of what PE was trying to do with his post that I find it difficult not to think that you either didn't read it or that you're intentionally trolling. I hope there's a third possibility that I'm missing, because both of those options are very surprising coming from the person that created a forum that I had long assumed was here primarily to help cult victims to heal.

43

A Cult Tactic: Removing Guilt By Dehumanising Others

by pale.emperor in

in the real world, very few parents would disown their own children simply because they read a magazine that told them to do it.

very few people would forever completely ignore their own parents because an elder got up on a platform one day and announced that they no longer follow the same religion as you.. in the real world it just doesn't happen.

and yet, for 8 million jehovah's witnesses it's very a normal part of their world to treat "other people" differently than they'd treat each other.

OneEyedJoe

Beyond the dehumanization (or, perhaps, integral to it) is the way cults and propaganda machines seek to tap into the brain's disgust circuitry. There's strong indication that the moral disgust that we feel when thinking about atrocities committed by others (or, for right-wingers, thinking about homosexuality, etc) come from the same neural structures as the disgust that we feel towards feces, rotting food or carcasses, etc. These are very basic instincts that are wired in such a way as to strongly influence behavior. Two of the four terms you listed as ways ex-JWs are referred to are transparently designed to tap into this - calling us "mentally diseased" or "partaking at the table of demons" evoke images and concepts that trigger a disgust reaction. The feeling of disgust is "designed" to motivate a response of avoidance, so it's a very strong tool to use to separate people from society. It's no wonder that you can break up families, if you're able to make one family member find the other disgusting.

34

ECHR Rules Against Free Speech

by cofty in

the european court of human rights ruled against an austrian woman who claimed calling the prophet muhammad a pedophile was protected by free speech.

... the woman in 2009 held two seminars entitled "basic information on islam," during which she likened muhammad's marriage to a six-year-old girl, aisha, to pedophilia.. the marriage according to islamic tradition was consummated when aisha was nine and muhammad was around 50. aisha was the daughter of muhammad's best friend and the first caliph, abu bakr.. the court cited the austrian women stating during the seminar that muhammad "liked to do it with children" and "... a 56-year-old and a six-year-old?

... what do we call it, if it is not pedophilia?".

OneEyedJoe

What in the actual fuck. Stating uncontested facts is now illegal on the basis of protecting the feelings of the self-deluded?

18

Can someone help me figure out something, dealing with paganism?

by Tameria2001 in

the watchtower and quite a few other religious groups don't do certain things because of pagan origins.

they go on about the different holidays, certain traditions, and say they don't do those things because of pagan origins.

yet they turn right around and do other stuff, which does have pagan origins.

OneEyedJoe

One thing I do remember asking, and no one could ever answer was if they don't celebrate the different holidays, because of pagan origin, then why couldn't they celebrate the Jewish holidays such as Hanukkah, surely they weren't started by pagans. Weren't the Jews at one time God's chosen? That was how I brought it up back then, this was before I was even baptized. No one could or would answer my question.

I'm shocked no one could give you an answer. I can make up a perfectly coherent one for you just off the top of my head - The Jews were god's chosen people, but when they killed jesus and the curtain between the holy and most holy in the temple ripped, that symbolized the breaking of the covenant that god had with them and they are no longer his people. Jesus came to fulfill the law and put an end to it, so celebrating the jewish holidays would be clinging to the tradition of people that were no longer special in gods eyes, and clinging to requirements that were ended by Jesus. This would put you in similar footing to Lot's wife who looked back at the things left behind, you wouldn't want to be like Lot's wife, would you?

That'd be a great after-the-fact doctrinal justification. Obviously, though, it's more succinctly explained as: just like the other holidays you're not allowed to celebrate, you can't celebrate the jewish ones because then you might do so with non-JWs and start to see that they aren't so bad.