Posts by Midget-Sasquatch

48

Being Brought Up As A Jehovah's Witness---Was It A "BAD" Upbringing?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i think that my upbringing made me the person that i am today---for good and bad.

even though i was raised a witness, i don't think that my upbringing was bad.. your thoughts, please..

Midget-Sasquatch

bluecanary

Well, at least today, I can look back at some stuff and laugh. Like the different times I tried one on one meetups with some girls from some of my university classes. Oh gawd were those pathetically sad! I'll admit its still hard even just hanging out with workmates.

But on the bright side, I've met alot of accepting "worldly" people. The dubs are only superficially accepting so long as I keep up the facade of agreeing with them.

freedomisntfree

To really get to the root of our own "deficiencies" (applying that more to me than to anyone else), its important to be objective and not just easily blame the big bad evil org. My parents shouldn't have gotten married, much less stay together even after me and my sib grew up (we're both in our early mid 30s). But as weird testament to the members of a dysfunctional family not really helping themselves to change: I still want to keep in close contact, so I'm just fading and trying not to get DFed. So I'm sort of making it harder for me to just let it all go. I accept my own part in it all, along with my own natural tendencies of being shy/a loner. Its just that i'm pretty sure that without the dub factor my issues would have been less blown up.

48

Being Brought Up As A Jehovah's Witness---Was It A "BAD" Upbringing?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i think that my upbringing made me the person that i am today---for good and bad.

even though i was raised a witness, i don't think that my upbringing was bad.. your thoughts, please..

Midget-Sasquatch

Overall it was more negative to my social development. I have to admit to several things though. I believe I'm naturally more inclined to be a recluse anyways, but the environment I grew up in just exacerbated my isolation. I grew up in a religiously divided house for the longest time (till my Catholic mom finally relented to my hard core Dub father).

So I was going to Catholic school but still being made to live as a JW. Because of that I was never accepted by the true-believer dubs (only tolerated), I wasn't cool enough for the teen dubs living double lives (they avoided me like the plague) and just forget about the guys and the gals at school. Being an outsider in all worlds stunted my making real friendships, going through all the ups and downs of trying to strike up relationships (intimate or otherwise).

I did have a fairly close non jw school friend in grade school so that tells me I'm not unibomber material and there was some hope for me. Some people only have a closer smaller circle of friends. But the stupid pushing from my Dad to "preach" messed things up so that by middle school with larger classes and other kids, he moved on but I just got further isolated.

As for intimacy with the opposite sex, all attempts at relationships floundered because of not having the freedom to interact with them on our own mutually agreed upon terms. It had to be chaperoned and "acceptable" activities. It was completely artificial and I learned nothing. Mind you I'll also be objective and say that my parents were a horrible match and should never have stayed married so that dysfunction also was a huge deficiency for me because I had no model for how to positively relate to the opposite sex . But then thats why I really could have benefited from the more typical dating scene.

Maybe I really should consider therapy. But this board is free.

One positive thing about the witness upbringing: Its taught me the importance of NOT going down the same mistaken path most of them take: i.e. I should fight my (also natural) tendency to ignore inconvenient truths rather than stick my head in the sand.

64

Catholicism--Curious About It

by White Dove in

jw
friends

does anyone here have any catholic experience or have friends who are catholic?

although i'm wiccan all the way, i'm still checking things out and would like input about it..

Midget-Sasquatch

I went through a catholic school education (my mom was catholic for quite some time) and also was made to do the JW routine with my Dad. I honestly can't get myself to fully believe either the Roman or the Orthodox faiths. If anything, I lean more towards what both camps would consider heresy.

But what I like about Catholicism is that its more intellectually honest on several topics like human origins, and the transmission of the OT and NT. I had some great teachers who were nuns who actually got us to think critically about stuff found in the bible. Mind you as young teens alot of us weren't really appreciating the full intent of their approach. We were more like well if its not fact then why are you believeing this or that. They were trying to pass on how to nurture spirituality and faith and still keep true to reason. They weren't completely objective mind you, (understandable since its about their beliefs), but vastly better than the WTBS' writers/"teachers".

If you have a more mystical bent, don't just read up on the Roman tradition but definitely look into the eastern traditions.

16

Amityville horror house and Roswell UFO's...a good example of myths, lies spread as facts!

by Witness 007 in

roswell is where an american military base tests it's new aircraft...so a ufo happens to crash just down the road!.....hello!

the theory took off in the 1970's due to conspiracy books...a miltary offical claimed it was a ufo, he also claimed he was a decorated ww 2 fighter pilot which was proved un-true and he was a known story teller....but the myth took off as more books came out.. amityville haunted house - the lutz family did move out of the house where a family was murdered, probably freaked by the thought.

years later a semi-fictional book was written claiming pig faced demon attacks and priests being told to "get out"....funny how the demons seemed to move out too...the new owners for the last 30 years only complained about the damn tourists.

Midget-Sasquatch

Metatron,

Thanks for the link to the page on the contents of the memo. All I can say is I have a very hard time seeing how those blurred blown up images could be made out into any definite phrases. I have an easier time seeing some of supposed "demonic" subliminal images in the Wt literature. Then again what does that say about me, if we really just see what we're fixated on?) Hmm, no wonder those inkblots always make me feel flush.....sorry, back on topic.

I take all the death-bed testimonies more seriously. Especially when several of those people aren't making any profit from it. Corso's book on the other hand (on how the Roswell Crashed disc's tech was reverse engineered and filtered into our own tech) was completely a money grab.

I definitely believe that the Cash-Landrum incident with the two women and the child is genuine. IIRC, they saw a diamond shaped craft that seemed to be ejecting alot of flames etc being followed by helicopters. So its not too much of a stretch to say that instead of being a UFO they were trying to fly, it was rather a military craft that had trouble and the choppers were making sure it got back to base. Unfortunately those witnesses were exposed to whatever the craft was spewing. (Maybe a faulty nuclear core for power or for some kind of reactor as the engine?).

The Belgian Triangle's manoeuvers are hard to explain, if we take the eyewitness testimony at complete face value. But should we assume they're making completely accurate reports? What if they were overestimating several things like acceleration? If the craft they spotted were testing out some very advanced experimental tech on antigravity, they'd have unusual and unconventional movements. Even if they weren't actually fantastical, they would still seem like nothing on earth they've ever known, and that impression could feed into unintentional exaggeration by the eyewitnesses.

12

Job knew about Satan?

by todo in

hello and wish me welcome :d. a question.... i know that job was unaware about the cause of his problems, he didn't know that satan was causing his problems.. but did he know about the existence of satan?

.

i know moses knew... .

Midget-Sasquatch

The author for most of the material in the book has Job's comforters saying alot about suffering being caused by one's own sins as just punishment for it, but never a mention of it being because of theadversary. I think it would have been a good point in the debate for Jobto bring him upif the author really believed he existed as an antagonist to humans. But it looks like the author just has Job puzzled and ticked about God's lack of involvement in rectifying the unfairness of life.

You don't really need a satan to fill the role of the nasty and powerful character against the hero. Yahweh near the end of the poetic dialogues doesn't come across as all that concerned or caring and that attitude easily can explain why Job's finds himself in his sad state.

59

Good-bye Everyone

by cognac in

jw
friends

some of you have been like family to me.

yet, it's time that i must say good-bye.

my husband and i have chosen to study the scriptures together on two conditions:.

Midget-Sasquatch

I hope your making this concession pays off immensely for you relationship. It'll be wonderful to have a partner on your spiritual journey.

Wishing you the best!

16

Amityville horror house and Roswell UFO's...a good example of myths, lies spread as facts!

by Witness 007 in

roswell is where an american military base tests it's new aircraft...so a ufo happens to crash just down the road!.....hello!

the theory took off in the 1970's due to conspiracy books...a miltary offical claimed it was a ufo, he also claimed he was a decorated ww 2 fighter pilot which was proved un-true and he was a known story teller....but the myth took off as more books came out.. amityville haunted house - the lutz family did move out of the house where a family was murdered, probably freaked by the thought.

years later a semi-fictional book was written claiming pig faced demon attacks and priests being told to "get out"....funny how the demons seemed to move out too...the new owners for the last 30 years only complained about the damn tourists.

Midget-Sasquatch

Leolaia makes a very good point. I'm sure many of these people who are now coming forward with tales of crashed saucers and their crew really believe they saw something unearthly. They're more than likely just mistaken, and conflating some memories, rather than lying. Its interesting how people can generate memories that are quite different from how things actually occurred. But I wouldn't be surprised at all to find several who are just attention seekers, and a handful who want to try to make some cash from it.

Until 9/11, I think it was useful for factions of the US military and spy agencies to encourage the belief in UFOs, as a cover for their experimental craft that would be spotted. They could even manage to refine various psychological warfare techniques and get practice on disinformation campaigns. But I think its just too dangerous for them now to get alot of false hits being reported and clogging up the channels needed to quickly track real airborne threats.

Metatron

I heard that anecdote about Gleason. But thats all it is so its not that persuasive to me. The Belgian Triangle and the Bentwaters incident are interesting. But in both cases, its more plausible to believe secret experimental craft were involved rather than ETs.

16

Amityville horror house and Roswell UFO's...a good example of myths, lies spread as facts!

by Witness 007 in

roswell is where an american military base tests it's new aircraft...so a ufo happens to crash just down the road!.....hello!

the theory took off in the 1970's due to conspiracy books...a miltary offical claimed it was a ufo, he also claimed he was a decorated ww 2 fighter pilot which was proved un-true and he was a known story teller....but the myth took off as more books came out.. amityville haunted house - the lutz family did move out of the house where a family was murdered, probably freaked by the thought.

years later a semi-fictional book was written claiming pig faced demon attacks and priests being told to "get out"....funny how the demons seemed to move out too...the new owners for the last 30 years only complained about the damn tourists.

Midget-Sasquatch

IIRC the author who wrote the book about the Roswell Crash was Charles Berlitz, who also wrote about the Bermuda Triangle and the Philadelphia Experiment and the long time favourite myth: Atlantis.

20

Defining "race".

by lurk3r in

jw
friends

if we enter into a "new world" with no boundries, and people mix freely in a "perfect world", with no regard for race or a particular ethnicity, what will the world become?

how and where would everything settle out genetically in the stream of time?.

Midget-Sasquatch

Well if you want to go with the JW fantasy of Paradise, then who really cares about our current understanding of genetics and the benefits of having a more diverse gene pool. "The Big J" would make everyone's alleles perfect so the Heinz 57 argument shouldn't factor into making the population more robust.

There'd be more homogeneity for the bulk of the world population but you'll always have clusters of individuals with less common phenotypes. So variety will always be there, its just that you won't have such large numbers of people propogating a handful of specific phenotypes (caucasian, asian, etc.).

Since this is fantasy, I hope that all women are going to resemble the best mix of Latinas, south-east asians, and Indians. Something along the lines of Salma Hayek mixed in with a bit of Tia Carrera and Aishwarya Rai. (swoon).

Back to reality. The free flow of new alleles into all the smaller gene pools is crucial to the long term health of our species. But you'd always want some almost separate populations on the side to allow newer alleles to take root and possibly drive speciation.

27

As of July 1st No more reimbursements directly to CO's etc. from congregations.

by cattails in

well if i read it correctly it seems that at the spanish extj.com forum.

there's a letter (in spanish of course) saying there's a change in the.

way reimbursement of expenses are going to be made for co's, and.

Midget-Sasquatch

Hi Blondie,

Here in Canada, they haven't been including the monthly account reports in the local announcements since the switch in January. Our congregation (the title holding one) has both the monthly congregation report and the joint maintenance account report on the backboard available for any to see. The accounts servant also has to give photocopies of the records for the joint account to the other two congregations sharing the KH.

Also here in Canada, there's no more resolution passed to cover the CO's expenses. Its ideally supposed to be that the CO presents the expenses on the Sunday and the cheque-book should be ready to make out the cheque before he leaves.

Killer expenses are the gas which always boggles me how they seem to have to fill completely empty tanks twice in that week with us, despite always seeming to go with the publishers' cars for service. Their bloody circuit apartment not being more than 3/4 the way of my commute to work. If I can stretch one full tank two weeks , driving a 3.8L big car something stinks. Then I gotta love some of their other expenses, like fish and name brand vitamins....hell they're eating for free with publishers during the month. Just ignore me, had to get that off my chest from the days I had to be the accounts servant.