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

They're not "hidden." That was never the claim. Let's look at the quote from your original post again:

Religions do not volunteer their most offensive doctrines to newcomers

As I said, you're moving the goalposts - these are offensive, morally reprehensible doctrines that are not volunteered to newcomers. You might hear an occasional intellectually dishonest, fallacy laden sermon trying to explain away a natural disaster in order to somehow make it consistent with an omnibenevolent, omnipotent god that is interested in humans because adherents need an excuse to keep believing in the face of such powerful disconfirming evidence. Or maybe there'll be a sermon loudly proclaiming the hellfire that the unconverted will suffer for their failure to be convinced of the existence of god based on appeals to authority. But if someone comes to a church for the first time and asks the preacher what the doctrine is, that's hardly what he'll open with.

You're tacitly defending the bible as that is what your religion claims to be based upon. Unless, I've misunderstood and part of anglican doctrine is that the bible has nothing to do with god. Please, educate me.

You have given a list of the things that you find morally disgusting , how do you know about these things if they are " hidden " . That is at the heart of my post

Then the heart of your post is the combination of the no true scottsman fallacy and equivocation on the original quote, changing it from "not volunteered" to "hidden." If you're going to claim that doctrine isn't hidden because I know about it, then it will be impossible for me to dispute your claim even in principle. But fine, I know about these "hidden" doctrines of the bible because I was a christian for 28 years and they, among many, many others, troubled me for a great deal of that time. None of these things were volunteered to me. At best, they were hinted at by people making excuses for them. I had to go and find out on my own what people were making excuses for, only to find out that the excuses were hardly satisfactory.

In the end, I don't expect I'll ever change the mind of the self-deluded. I just think it's beneficial for the world if poor reasoning and overwrought claims of victimhood get pointed out for what they are. I don't know the exact context of the quote that caused you to start this thread, but while it is possible that it's a bit of a sweeping generalization, it certainly applies to your faith. Your offense at the suggestion that your denomination contains objectionable doctrine that is not volunteered to newcomers is not an argument against the truth of that suggestion.

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 the Christians used only the sayings of Jesus there is very little any one could find fault in. So I guess it's some of the Old testament stories and morality tales that a new convert would find objectionable, and may not be aware of.

Lol oh do go on, then.

I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

Woohoo! Thoughtcrime!

And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words ... It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city.

Certainly didn't have a very kind view toward people like me that are averse to believing things without evidence on the basis of authority alone.

God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death.

Death penalty for those practicing free speech!

He that is not with me is against me.

Gotta love his dichotomous thinking!

It goes on and on. Just because Jesus said some things that were considerably better than the barbaric nonsense in the old testament doesn't mean he was all good, or would even be considered good in modern times.

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

l am an Anglican , a member of the Church of England . What do you consider are the offensive doctrines of my faith group ? Or Buddhism ? The reason that l find this statement offensive is because when JWs talk to people at front doors , on carts etc they do gloss over much of the stuff that would cause someone to cut and run , and will actually lie ( Theocratic Warfare ) if asked about the more embarrassing stuff . To say that all religions do this implies that l .as a member of a faith group , do the same . Neither l , nor anyone l know would do this . As main stream faith groups make up the biggest percentage of Christians in the world that is tarring a lot of people with the JW brush . The nasty stuff like the Crusades and the religious intolerance of the Tudors is taught in schools and is widely known about .

I'm going to talk more in terms of moral disgust than offense, due to the modern connotations of claiming something to be offensive. I find the doctrine that my eternal fate depends on my belief in things on bad (or no) evidence to be disgusting. The doctrine of infinite punishment for the offense(s) of a finite lifetime is disgusting. The implications of a supposed omnibenevolent, omnipotent being existing at the same time as as a billion people suffer in poverty make that being morally disgusting, so the doctrine that insists that I have love for such a being and worship this being is disgusting. The endorsement of a book that itself endorses slavery is disgusting. I could go on and on.

None of these things are openly advertised by adherents to christianity, but they're aspects of all christianity. You're moving the goal posts here in saying that the quote you began the thread with paints christians as liars or deliberately hiding objectionable doctrine. It simply said that these things are not readily volunteered by the religious, which I think is invariably true. In many cases this comes out of people just being intellectually lazy and not actually looking at what objectionable things exist in their religion. In others it comes from a discomfort at the facts and resultant avoidance (which, I guess is just another form of intellectual laziness).

On Buddhism, I don't know enough about it to say for sure that there's anything inherently disgusting about the doctrine, but I do know that the concept of kharmic rebirth does, in certain practices, result in discouraging providing help to the less fortunate based on the assumption that they're being punished for sins in their past lives. That's morally reprehensible. From what I know about Buddhism, this is not a very good interpretation of the spirit of the religion, but it nevertheless occurs.

But anyway, lets put your claim to the test. Why do you continue to endorse the bible when it endorses the owning of other humans as slaves? I'd like to see someone answer that question without either lying (or being deceptive) or indicting themselves as morally reprehensible.

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.