Posts by OneEyedJoe

18

The stuff JWs get right

by HowTheBibleWasCreated in

since today there is a post about jws and science i thought it right to throw them a bone and see if they have anything right:.

1. round earth (lol).

2. old universe (13.7 billion years).

Have they ever actually come out and said #2 and #3? I thought they always just vaguely said that they were "thousands of years old." I remember a CO talking about the universe being almost 14 billion years old but I don't think I ever saw it in print. They used to teach that the universe was ~49000 years old (each of the days of creation being 7000 years) and they never officially retracted that, they just stopped saying it explicitly and always seemed to phrase things in a way that doesn't contradict that teaching but is still technically accurate (e.g. the universe is many thousands of years old).

23

Coping with a change of heart

by Strugglingrsa in

after 24 years of active service as a witness my marriage came to an end causing massive trauma.during this tragic life event for a period of approx 8 months i went haywire.

drinking.

partying.smoking.i was disfellowshipped.i met a wonderful non witness along the way and am remarried.what i don't get is this.if an announcement was made that i am no longer a jehovahs witness then why does the bible principle in corinthians about not even greeting he who calls himself a brother still apply.

OneEyedJoe

It sounds like you need to spend some time really coming to terms with what the cult did and the mind control that was involved. I suggest you check out jwfacts.com if you haven't already. freedomofmind.com is another good resource. I definitely found the book by Steven Hassan that I read very helpful when I was leaving the cult. Really understanding what has been done to you goes a long way toward taking away its power.

Disfellowshipping isn't about helping people or anything like that - you're absolutely right that if the true motivation was to help someone who has stumbled the best thing in most cases is to continue to show love to that person. Disfellowshipping is about making an example of those that dare think for themselves and keeping an implicit threat in the minds of every JW as well as preventing anyone who realizes that they've been systematically lied to for their entire lives from being able to help those that are still under the spell. The bible is just used as post-hoc justification for the same sort of policy that all cults use to control their members.

22

Service experiences

by former2free in

jw
friends

i know what you may be thinking by the title but bear with me.

have you ever reflected on past service experiences and think wow if only i had listened to a householder?

two things come to my mind of personal experience.

OneEyedJoe

There was only one time that I remember...I think I was maybe 14 (maybe younger?) and it was one of my first times being allowed to go to the door with a friend of mine of similar age without a parent. One person we met gave us a pamphlet about CTR and his Millerite origin story, how he sold his clothing business for a gigantic sum and started a publishing company and scammed people with "miracle wheat" among other things. Obviously we didn't obey the cult's advice not to read it. We actually gave it to my friends parents and they read bits of it to us and we all had a great laugh at those "ridiculous made-up lies." In some ways I think it's rather advantageous just how obvious a scammer CTR was, because it makes the truth seem just so silly and blatantly fabricated to any JW that's had the cult's side of things beaten into them for years.

13

My brother is shunning me (but he's not a Witness)

by john.prestor in

i didn't know where to post this but it's been on my mind and i'm looking for support and advice from people who know what it's like being shunned.

i was raised in a fundamentalist baptist church, so what i'm experiencing is a little different than most posters on this site.

i've been out of that church for years, and my brother's been out for a while too.

OneEyedJoe

The way we frame things goes a long way toward determining if (and how much) we suffer due to the circumstances we're in. It sounds like he might be doing you a favor. I know all too well how stressful and exhausting it is to be around people that can go off on you at a moment's notice. One lesson that I've learned from the distance leaving a cult has placed between myself and my family is that I'd rather expend my efforts on people that enrich my life than those that I just so happened to live under the same roof with for a time (and not by my choice, at that.)

So your brother's 'shunning' is really his helping you to remove a toxic influence from your life. Now you can spend your time more productively - work on yourself, meet new people, volunteer, do things you enjoy. There's always a period of grieving as you become accustomed to things being a little different, but it diminishes over time until you'll one day wonder how you could've been so silly to waste so much time and energy chasing after someone that did little but make your life more difficult and stressful.

34

What would make an Ex-Jw go back to been a full in Baptized JW

by LOLS in

i was just wondering , why would my jw husband return to been a full blown baptized jw after 20 years of fading?.

he has spent 20 years of his life been a worldly person , with a worldly wife & kids & worldly friends .... to joining the borg full time , to getting baptized , to getting new brothers & sisters .... and to writing off most of his worldly friends (some his known his whole life ) , to trying to convince me & our children how wonderful this org is ......and anyone else who will listen :(.

has anyone ever experienced this ...... oh and he seems to be in it 110% and no-one can say anything about this crazy org or show him proof that it all bs...... his such a clever independent , successful guy , why on earth would he go back to this , after been out for so many years & change into this domineering , opinionated fool ..... oh and his entire family also went back ... father , mother , brother & sister .

OneEyedJoe

A failure to educate oneself.

22

What do the Angels do?

by LovingLifeNow in

jw
friends

so what exactly have they been doing now , with the exception of intervening thousands of years ago, what exactly do they do in heaven?

.

OneEyedJoe

I recall a JW (who happened to have a preexisting fear of dogs) telling a story at a meeting in which a dog charged at him while out in service only to be stopped dead by an angel. It was definitely an angel. Had nothing to do with the chain around the dog's neck that he was too panicked to notice.

5

The One-Electron Universe | Space Time

by Brokeback Watchtower in

richard feynman's idea.

that's the guy who said if someone claims to know quantum physics doesn't know quantum physics and just shut up and calculate.

maybe everything is just one thing like the mystics claim.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dqtw9mslfk.

OneEyedJoe

It's an interesting thought, but there appears to be some as-yet undiscovered asymmetry between matter and antimatter that has resulted in there being more elections than positions in the universe. This would preclude there being only one election, as that would require equal amounts of matter and antimatter. This was mentioned in the video, but it doesn't surprise me that you ignored it considering your history of affinity for using your misunderstanding of quantum mechanics to justify a belief in Deepak Chopra style bullshit.

Also, that Feynman quote was from several decades ago. Using it to, in effect, say, "no one understands quantum mechanics so no one can tell me my nonsense ideas about it are wrong" is fallacious. People understand quantum mechanics now. Or do you also quote people saying that heavier than air manned flight will never be possible to conclude that airplanes must be lighter than air?

34

For those who are athest, or non-christian, how did you come to this decision?

by Tameria2001 in

i'm not asking this question to cause an argument or accuse, but i am honestly just wondering?

for those of you who are now atheist or non-christian, how did you come to this decision?

i hadn't given this much thought until about a year ago.

OneEyedJoe

When I was in my late teens I started thinking about a lot of things more objectively - you see I really internalized the idea of being a "truthseeker" from the cult, I guess I just missed the point that truth=cult. I was also in college getting a degree in computer science engineering at the time, so I was taking a lot of courses on logic, statistics, etc and got interested in rationality and logical fallacies. I learned how to spot logical fallacies and started seeing them in every theist's argument for the existence of god. Usually taking the form of special pleading, appeals to authority or appeals to consequences. When I thought about this stuff I often found myself thinking "If I weren't a JW I'd definitely be an atheist" or "If I hadn't been born into being a JW, there's no way I'd ever become one." Unfortunately life got in the way and a few things happened that caused me to fall back into the cult mind control for another 10 years or so, but if I'd been honest with myself, I'd have become an atheist back then. Once I woke up to the mind control of the cult, I wasted no more time with theism.

If you're really interested in finding truth, I'd start by learning how to really be rational and how to beat the in-built biases that we all have that make us tend to be irrational. Here's where I'd focus:

Learn about logical fallacies. This wikipedia page is a pretty good starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies As you learn about these, try to spot places where you have in the past or where you're still relying on one of these fallacies to justify some belief. You don't have to look at your belief in god to start - the more invested you are the harder it will be to attack a belief, so start with small things - maybe little bits of trivia that you've never verified but you still tell people, etc. Many people, when learning about logical fallacies, learn to apply them to other people but still have a hard time applying their new skill to their own beliefs - don't fall into this trap. If you do this, you use rationality to make yourself stupider.

Actively try to find places where your beliefs are wrong. Again, maybe don't start with religion...maybe start with some political view that you're drawn to but aren't very invested in one way or the other. Research the counter arguments for what is your gut feeling. Make arguments for your stance and then pick them apart as though they were another person's argument and you are arguing against it.

When you discover that you've been wrong - celebrate! Shove aside the shame that we all instinctively feel when we find out that we've been wrong, and instead celebrate that you're now wrong about one less thing. Everyone everywhere is walking around with at least one wrong belief, and being wrong feels a lot like being right...it's when you find out that you've been wrong that you feel bad, but that's precisely the moment when you should celebrate your success. This may seem like a little thing, but I suspect that a great deal of people's irrationality about things stems from a fear of accepting the shame of having been wrong. If you can eliminate this feeling of shame from yourself, you eliminate a large source of bias.

Learn about Bayesian inference. This is a remarkably simple, but extremely powerful tool for coming to accurate beliefs. This is a method of essentially assigning a probability for the truth of an idea (its credence) and then updating based on information. It's a quantitative tool, but just having a qualitative grasp on the idea is very helpful.

If you want to challenge belief in god directly, there are lots of good books out there, one that many people have found helpful is Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion." For a great (but long) primer on rationality, I can't reccomend Eliezer Yudkowsky's "Rationality: From AI to Zombies" enough. It's long and delves in to a number of topics that are a little bit more philosophical, and it spends a fair amount of time on discussions of artificial intelligence, but I found most of the diversions quite interesting as well, and they were typically still very helpful as metaphors.

15

Dating another Woke exJW or no?

by caves in

i find that the people here speak in a way i can understand because we have one thing in common if nothing else.

so my question is , would it be easier to date someone that has been a jw and woke up or not?.

i would love for someone to 'get it' without having to explain much.

OneEyedJoe

I wouldn't specifically look for an exJW, just date people that you're interested in. In my view it mostly turns out as a wash, with some slight disadvantages to dating an exJW, perhaps. This is speaking generally, of course, and is far from a hard rule.

Pro: You'll have a built in short-hand for talking about your past trauma, and they'll be able to immediately understand some of the challenges specific to your transition from being a JW to being a normal person in society.
Con: You won't be forced to actually think through how to explain what you experienced to someone to whom it is all new. Being forced to do this can help you come to a new understanding of your past and how to move forward. Furthermore, there's something to be said for dating someone who's willing to put in the effort to understand your past despite being completely unfamiliar with it. This can be a great litmus test to determine if someone is truly interested in you and your well-being or if they're just dating you for what they hope you'll give them.

Pro: You'll have someone who can truly commiserate on what it was like to be raised as a JW.
Con: You might find yourselves dwelling on your JW past in a sort of positive feedback loop that is not conducive to moving on with your life.

Pro: You'll both understand the language of the cult.
Con: You'll keep using the loaded language of cultspeak instead of moving on and talking like a normal person.

Pro: You'll both understand what the other is dealing with as far as their still-in JW family is concerned.
Con: Double the amount of family craziness and no family to help integrate you into normal society.

Depending on your circumstances it might also be nice to date someone that can understand the struggles of past trauma, but I would point out that JWs do not have a monopoly on trauma and when you boil it down it's all really very similar, if of different scales. And there's something to be said for dating a normal person that doesn't have demons in their past but can still be compassionate to those that do.

Personally, I think you should enjoy your freedom and date whoever you're interested in dating. I also think there's something to be said for dating both exJWs and normal folk (though exJWs are in much shorter supply...another downside) and just find what you like. Don't rush into anything, there's no formula or guidebook you can follow to get it exactly right on the first try - just try stuff and see how things work out and learn from the mistakes as you make them and strive not to repeat them. Have fun, life isn't so serious.

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.