Posts by zen nudist

20

Questions about Jehovahs Witness???

by JDWEEE in

charles taze russell, founded the jw in the 1860's.

which is based on his own interpretations of the bible.

he had no theology education, and did not know the greek, and hebrew language.. question: how can an average man, with "no" education, interpret the bible correctly?.

zen nudist

C T Russell, from what I have read, began as a very respectable bible believer, but over time he seems to have degenerated into the same sort of con artist that most religious leaders appear to be.... see the miracle wheat scandal... and his apparent growing arrogance proclaiming that by no other means then his studies in the scriptures would anyone receive the right understanding of the bible.... Rutherford apparently took of on this tangent and ran with it, making himself the channel of divine writ...

but to his Credit, CT Russell, seemed to allow free election in his congregations, free exchange of ideas without the threat of being cast out as apostates etc...things that Rutherford swept away with an iron fist in his Nazi-fication of the movement founded by apparently sincere people seeking understanding.

7

What themes do JW's prioritize and WHY?

by tosko in

there are a lot of things discussed on this forum that could be duplicated here, but i need some answers for a dissertation.

the themes jws prioritize that i know are armageddon, judgement day, christ.

but can you all tell me why they prior.

zen nudist

Armeggedon is priority #1 for the same reason it was in the 1st cent.

getting people to do stupid stuff they would never dream of doing if they believed the world had thousands if not millions of years left in it

like avoiding marriage [1 cor 7:9] or avoiding college in this doomed system of things [jws]

Field service #2

why? because idle time allows people to think and thinking is of the devil.

Just as Nazi solidiers were made to endlessly march goose stepping for no valid reason...the more blindly you get people to act for you, the more they simply have to trust you...feeling stupid is not an option for most people, so they will defend their stupid actions rather than admit they were stupid.

To prove this point, just about every baptized JW knows at least one, may be two meeting attenders who are holding back because of field service, so if it was just about numbers, JWs could double over night if they dropped it...but its not about numbers its about loyalty, devoution and weeding out those who cannot be hypnotized.

Guilt#3

WT always presents an idealized Uber JW in all its writings as the gold standard, the perfect forgiven declared righteous completely anal, has no life of his own, does nothing but go out in field service and sleeps [usually in his cheaply purchased 4 door car so he can transport other JWs, car]... if he works, its part time, so he can gain money to pay for his gas and food so he can not be a burden on others in his field service group...but he preaches to all his co workers so that he never misses an opportunity to count time. He never watches R rated movies and does not even own a TV set.... he never goes to any parties unless they are watchtower study parties...etc.

of course all JWs feel sadly and grossly inadequate by comparison to uber JW and that is as it is meant to be.

26

A House Built on Fallacies

by Farkel in

here are just a few examples of the kinds of fallacious dub arguments we've heard and used ourselves when we were dubs.

heck, the whole darn religion is nothing but a series of fallacious arguments!.

ad hominem - (attack the arguer, not the argument).

zen nudist

the rules of logic are difficult enough, but there is also hidden assumptions to deal with...

for example

JWs believe that they will be, if they die now, raised from the dead....

JWs believe that they will cease to exist but for a memory in the mind of God at their death, they will be dead souls, having no eternal anything that survives them... the spirit is seen as electricity which vanishes from their lifeless body at death, their soul is seen as the whole living package which now has no life and thus empty of anything that can be called them....

the assumptions most JWs have is that some part of them really does still exist and will come back to life....

otherwise why worry about a copy of you enjoying paradise when the original is dead, buried and long gone?

7

books to explain the bible

by zen nudist in

if the bible is really the word of god, and complete.... it seems to me that any organization, whether it be wt or christian research institute or a host of others..... by making books to explain" the bible to anyone, is basically saying that the all wise, all knowing god, the creator of all,.

really didn't write his book correctly, needs their help, is basically out of touch with humanity and wrote a book in code that.

needs human intervention to interpret..... the book itself claims to be complete and the only things necessary, and further claims that the spirit of god would be given to .

zen nudist

to clarify a bit--- or to confuse (^_^)

words have no meaning hiding within them... They are symbols which apparently trigger experiences within us.

the only experiences they can trigger are the ones we already have, unless there is some magical intervention which the bible believers seem to claim to be the case calling it the holy spirit....

so no matter what language it was originally written in should not matter if such a thing as holy spirit were real....but manifestly there is either no such thing...or...those who have it are not very obvious the me, as I find no religion out there which speaks with one voice...

there seems to be some evidence from the bible itself that this BS [belief system] was manifestly false back then...but excuses were being made to cover for it.

books are mirrors of the soul-- no monkey looking in will find a god staring out [robert A wilson]

7

books to explain the bible

by zen nudist in

if the bible is really the word of god, and complete.... it seems to me that any organization, whether it be wt or christian research institute or a host of others..... by making books to explain" the bible to anyone, is basically saying that the all wise, all knowing god, the creator of all,.

really didn't write his book correctly, needs their help, is basically out of touch with humanity and wrote a book in code that.

needs human intervention to interpret..... the book itself claims to be complete and the only things necessary, and further claims that the spirit of god would be given to .

zen nudist

if the bible is really the word of God, and complete...

it seems to me that any organization, whether it be WT or Christian Research Institute or a host of others....

by making books to ëxplain" the bible to anyone, is basically saying that the all wise, all knowing God, the creator of all,

really didn't write his book correctly, needs their help, is basically out of touch with humanity and wrote a book in code that

needs human intervention to interpret....

the book itself claims to be complete and the only things necessary, and further claims that the spirit of God would be given to

any believer to help them understand...

so I would conclude that any organization that believes they need to explain things to believers outside the bible must be false....no?

25

If you could go back to the time of Jesus

by JH in

jw
friends

.

if you could go back to the time when jesus was on earth, and you could actually talk to him, what would you ask him?.

would you have followed him, knowing that the end was thousands of years away?

zen nudist

assuming time travel were ever possible, I would like to know if Jesus was a real person or a gnostic invention.

8

Belief and experience in religion

by Markfromcali in

have you ever noticed how you have belief and experience in different proportions when it comes to religion?

on the one hand you might have the fundy that just crams every experience into the interpretation of a static belief system, and on the other you have the typical new age kind of mindset where every kind of belief is conjured up to support your experience.

for those who have seen the movie office space, remember the game "jump to conclusions"?

zen nudist

I have noticed that humans seem to all fit into the following groups

leaders [the shepherds] --they have absolute black and white beliefs and make anyone who seems to think otherwise into an enemy. They know with CONviction exactly what their experiences mean. They are good liars, insane or a bit of both...

I define a lie as any pretending of a belief or faith as a fact which seems to mark most leaders.

Followers [the sheep] --they nearly blindly adopt their chosen leaders beliefs, mannerisms, expressions, etc. The let others tell them what their experiences mean.

Cameleons [often viewed as two faced traitors] --followers who become the group they happen to be with rather than loyal to one particular group.

Independents [anti-social or uncharismatic leaders who cannot attract a following] considered a danger by all, but also considered inspirational at times. the mad geniuses, psycho-pathic loners, etc.

21

What is really discussed at elders' meetings?

by sinamongurl in

.

how to hide secrets?.

sinamon

zen nudist

I know there are a lot of burned people on this board who think the JWs are the worst cult around

but I notice by this topic that there are plenty who want to hit JWs from both ends....

accusing them of holding secrets which should not be held like molestations on the one hand, but spilling the beans of private elder meetings and DF meetings on the other....

anyone else notice the blaring contradiction?

23

If you had the choice ,when you became a jw,,,,,,,

by kls in

would you have been better off being born in to it or have been better off being recruited as an adult .

.

what are the pros and cons of both.

zen nudist

I was not an aDULT when JWs first infected me, but even at age 15 I really had no great desire to join a new religion, but I felt compelled to check it out because if it happened to be THE TRUTH, I would not avoid it.... I went to the library and got anti-JW books from catholics and protestants [circa 1976] but there was no such thing as cult awareness at the time...

the books were disappointing in that they could not give valid reasons why anyone should not be a JW other than WE were here first and they are muscling in on our territory.... their arguements were lame, their dogmatic demand that they are right because they have been around longer was silly... they had nothing to desuade me from JWs who SEEMED to have a much more logical grasp on the bible then they ever had.

so without anyone to give me anything more than their own claims to truth, I became a JW....

I think it would have been far more difficult for me had I been born into it as I would have very little to compare JWs to which helped me finally get away from them without too much psychic damage (^_^)

32

Idyllic paradise breeds idiots

by frankiespeakin in

obstacles that we face in life have a tendency to relly get our attention, and tax our knowledge,and wisdom to overcome them.

when we're faced with problems we have to figure out solutions.

no problems,, no need for solutions.. evolution, the survival of the fittest, or perhaps sometimes survival of the smartest,, this has to be the force behind the development of the greater human brain apart from other animals.

zen nudist

Are you talking about a complete acceptance of the world as it is,, with no desire for it to be any other way?

I am talking about the key to transcending the concepts of good and evil is to accept the world as it is.... which includes desires that it be otherways and an understanding that it is dynamic and not static....

both good and evil are judgements about some aspect of reality as compared to something that aspect is not... so what is the standard of measure? it is NOT real, but an idea, an imagined possible alternative... we can divide up the world by such judgements in many different ways besides good vs evil... there is fair vs unfair, real vs imagined, rational vs irrational, healthy vs sick, proper vs improper... each one has its own standard which often does not have to revolve around a single idea of perfection. each also produces a dominant emotion.

evil brings anger. unfair generates worry . sick leads to compassion, improper causes disgust.

the validity of these judgements is often based on nothing more than gut reactions and rarely does one realize they have as their source an ideal which has little concern with how reality actually works.

if we understood how reality actually unfolded, we would have zero false anticipations, but because we are ignorant we can do little better than to guess what is coming and prepare for it with what skills we have mustered... too often we forget our limitation and come to believe that reality cheated us some how or by means of someone and thus we blame others for being what they are, rather than accept the fact that we made our anticipation in ignorance of how reality works and taking the consequences of our bad guess and learning from it.

zen is the practice that takes you to the place where you are now...it is only our ignorance that makes such a useless journey possible.

after all, we are always exactly where we find ourself, but such a simple acceptance escapes most of us most of the time.