Congrats Simon, and happy birthday to the forum. Pretty cool to make it 16 years online.
dubstepped
JoinedPosts by dubstepped
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59
Sweet 16 - Happy Birthday to Us !
by Simon init's the forum's 16th birthday today!.
amazing that not only have we lasted so long but we're still thriving and growing.. thanks to all the people and often colorful characters who've contributed to the site over the years.
some are still here with us, some have since moved on, but all have touched each others lives in some way along our different journeys.. .
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Is this a site controlled by atheists?
by The Rebel inunder the exterior of being an ex- witness site, is this site simply converting atheism?.
i pose the question, because many come here in distress and insecurity with the realization that the w.t is wrong but still retain a belief in god.
my personal opinion is the threads on god are not challenged by an atheists personal animosity to believers, they are challenged and become confrontational because the atheist wants an elaboration and factual proof to a believers faith.. is this unreasonable?
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dubstepped
Yes. -
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I COLLECT QUOTES. . . Here are some of my favorites
by Terry inplease post your favorites too.
my favorite quotations:.
you cannot change what you refuse to confront.. sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.. don’t think of cost.
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dubstepped
Run with those who search for truth, and run like hell from those that claim to have found it.
Is the life you're living worth the price you're paying.
(Those two were huge for me during my awakening. Also, nice idea for a thread. I like many of yours too.)
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Blood Transfusion and Eating
by dugout ini get highly irritated when this subject comes up.
this idiot gave a talk in my hall recently and said that transfusion of blood and eating blood was the same thing.
my wife accepts this reasoning.
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dubstepped
One of the things that helped me cut through the bs was to read the context in Acts 15. Realizing that the whole discussion was nothing more than Paul trying to mediate the differences between the Jews and Gentiles of the times who were having a difficult time assimilating together opened my eyes. It wasn't some proclamation of law, just Paul telling the Gentiles to lay off eating blood to avoid upsetting the Jews as they tried to work together.
There are also lots of good points over at JWfacts.com on the matter.
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Don't Accept the Blame for Being Shunned
by cofty inour family and friends blame us for the fact that they shun us.
imagine an abusive husband who threatened his wife that if she leaves him he will hunt her down and kill her.
eventually she finds the courage to leave and he carries out his threat.
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dubstepped
So true. So many leave the organization in shame and with their head held low. When I reached out to my DFed brother after 14 years or so I think he still carried that shame. He is in therapy now and deals with PTSD due to it all. My wife and I walked out of our own accord and with our heads held high. Even then we still felt some blame at first for being the lone dissenters and messing up the family. Not now. Their shunning is on them. Great post Cofty. -
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dubstepped
I've known of similar stories. "What a protection baptism is for our dear young ones.".
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Re: New Songs for Memorial
by pixel into all congregations.
re: new songs for memorial.
dear brothers:.
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dubstepped
You have the Memorial, which is supposed to be this uber important dignified occasion, and you release new songs at the last minute to be sung by ordinary singers? Seems very opposed to the importance they place on the occasion. -
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Would you have married your spouse if you weren't both JWs?
by 3rdgen inok, i've had some wine, but i'm curious.
objectively speaking, but for the religion, did you have enough in common with your spouse to have met and married as non believers?
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dubstepped
I would have married my wife regardless, assuming we would have crossed paths, which we wouldn't have. Just celebrated 16 years a week and a half ago. We had some really rough times, but honestly most of that was just getting married before we were whole people ourselves. I was 22 and on my own, she was 19 and had lived a very sheltered life. There were some days where we thought it wouldn't work out for sure, but we have learned and grown up tremendously together. I like that we have that history, as the tough times dish out the best lessons. Today our relationship is truly great. Oh, and did I mention that we work together every day and have pretty much since we got married. We clean together daily, though there was a period in our business where we went separate ways for maybe 6 months while regrouping after a bad business deal. Working together made us have to confront every little issue and caused a lot of drama because we could never get away from the other one if they were having a bad day, but we made it through and we can handle the worst day now with grace. -
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dubstepped
Disclaimer: I am no political guru, I just got out of the Borg late last year but I do listen things and read articles and try to be at least somewhat informed. I have no dog in this race but find Bernie's stance interesting and know and have spoken with some of his vocal supporters. What follows is my experience and opinions based on such.
I grew up poor-ish. We had a cheap house in a fairly bad neighborhood and drove old beaters. My dad worked for a factory and I don't think he ever made more than $10/hour, and mom didn't work. When dad's factory went on strike, things would get really tough. However, there was always a program to get us through and we never did without. We could have been in a better position but my mom chose not to work, and my dad turned down overtime often because of JW responsibilities.
Fast forward to a few years ago. Dad didn't take care of himself. He was told for years to get his blood sugar under control, actually for decades, and didn't. He was wasting away and we got him to go to a doctor and found out that his blood sugar was off the charts. He was put on medication and a new diet. He wasn't very compliant. Within that next decade his kidneys failed and he went on dialysis and couldn't work anymore. My parents still never went without. They got all kinds of benefits, benefits that he paid in for over all of those years, but again there were programs there for them.
Let's talk food stamps for a minute. My mom was appalled by the program. She said that she had more money on food stamps to spend at the grocery than she had ever had. In fact, for the first time she could afford to buy the brand named items and had to in order to even come close to spending her share. She felt bad spending so much because it didn't feel right to her.
So when people say "what will the poor people do as things are currently constructed" I say that some choose that lifestyle. Poor people sometimes refuse to do the things it would take to get out of their situation. Mom could have worked and didn't want to. Dad could have taken overtime and didn't. It isn't like wealthy people are sitting around all day not working. The highest earners I know are usually the ones working the most. They live their businesses. My parents never chose to get new skills or reach out for anything. They were stuck of their own choosing, and even then with bad decisions over the years they always got a big tax return for being low income with kids and there were programs galore to bail them out.
Of course, those programs came with the ulcers that my mom probably has from dealing with governmental red tape for everything. She was sent a summons to court to appear for fraud because the government kept putting money on her account after she no longer qualified for food stamps. She had stopped spending them and told the government that they were on some other program and no longer needed or qualified for them. She was honest and because she didn't spend them the government eventually got their act together and dropped the charges. But dealing with the government was a part-time job for my mom, constantly fighting them tooth and nail for every program they qualified for.
So it surprises me to see so many people advocating for more governmental control. They are inefficient idiots. Why do we want them controlling health care or anything else? They are deeply in debt and yet we want them to have more of our money?
Most of the people that I personally know that love Bernie are rather entitled. They have parents that have worked hard to give them nice lives and they think that everyone should get college paid for and more. But how many people waste their college years on something totally non-productive? Getting a degree in something with no marketable potential, and now we're all supposed to front the bill for that? Drinking and partying is now government sanctioned? What about everyone with student loans now? Are they forgiven? And how many people go to college and get a degree in something just because mom and dad want them to? College isn't for everyone.
I worked my ass off to get out of the situation that I grew up in. I had scholarship offers to engineering school and turned them down to pioneer (ugh). But rather than expecting someone to hand me something I worked hard and my wife and I make roughly $30-35k each cleaning houses after expenses. We work long hours at times, much more than the 40 hours that for some reason we've set up as a standard by which everyone theoretically should be able to support a family based on current rhetoric. We don't run to the doctor for every hangnail, or rarely ever (haven't been in years other than check-ups). We take reasonable care of ourselves, don't smoke or drink or anything and are reasonable weights for our heights. We've been lucky to keep our insurance from pre-ACA so far and our rates are low, but if we are forced into Obamacare our rates will triple and our deductible will rise for service that actually pays a lower percentage of covered events than what we currently have. That is messed up.
So where would Bernie benefit me/us? It looks like I'd pay more so that other people can go to college and run to the doctor every time they get a sniffle on my dime. I'm not averse to helping people, but as a person that's scratched and clawed for everything he's got and that hopes to maybe this year be able to finally put something back for retirement, you're telling me that the government could tax me and take away that money too.
The ACA actually forced my mom to go find a job. She had to work to pay for the insurance that she now had to have because previously there were actually programs that helped my parents that went away with the new system.
I guess I just don't see how more programs funded by my dollars are a good thing. Abuse of the system is so rampant, and the government is too inept to take care of the abuse. You can't just throw money at problems and expect them to go away. You can't out-earn your stupidity. The government will find a way to screw up the programs and probably end up further in debt. Our country goes into other lands and hands out money and programs that cripple communities because they lose any desire or will to improve themselves. I'm afraid that if Bernie is elected we'll just do more of that here too. People like I saw growing up will have less incentive to get out of their situations. They will become more dependent on others instead of more independent.
With that said, I like the ideas that Bernie puts forth on some levels. I just don't think that humans can be counted on to use them wisely. More control just reminds me of my j-dub days with people making my decisions for me and I don't like that much. Maybe in the end it is the lesser of the evils presented for candidacy, but those are my concerns about Bernie. I'd love to know how he's really going to fix things, not just throw money at things, because most issues in life are behavioral and I'm not sure how those things get changed. I've talked to some Bernie supporters and so far the answers haven't been anything more than "feeling the Bern" and I'd love to have more substance as far as how things really benefit and change under him.
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Why ExJW's should care about the FBI vs. Apple encryption case
by juandefiero inmany people that don't keep up with technology news are, at best, vaguely aware that apple is fighting a court order to create a tool for the government to unlock one of the san bernadino terrorist's iphone.. what the fbi is asking for could jeopardize the security of all iphones.
besides the obvious possible slippery slope leading to governmental abuse of this technology they're asking apple to create, there is a more personal reason for many exjw's to be concerned about.. anytime you create a weakness in information security, there is always the possibility of that weakness being exploited.
sometimes, those weaknesses are difficult to exploit, sometimes they are easy.
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dubstepped
Can't one just erase cookies, history, etc. or go incognito on the Chrome browser to cover their tracks? A password protected phone isn't a necessity is it? I'm not an Apple user. Can you not do similar things on the iPhone?