Yeah, but somehow there's a difference between naming your kids Josh and Tim and naming them Joshua and Timothy. Maybe it's some kind of esoteric sixth sense we've developed!
MungoBaobab
JoinedPosts by MungoBaobab
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31
Naming your children Biblical names
by JustTickledPink inthe thread about jael got me to thinking about all the biblical names i heard from witness children.. jael, barak, elisha, elijah, noah, matthew,.
anyone else remember new babies coming into the world and being given "biblical" names?
i thought it was hilarious when there was baby noah.
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43
Homeschooling?
by mkr32208 inthis is a pet peeve of mine!
how in the heck can the school board justify turning the education of anyone over to some jacka$$ that dropped out of school to pioneer and makes their living cleaning toilets!
how can any parent that truely loves their kid not take a good long look at themselves and say "i am not the best teacher for this child.
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MungoBaobab
Maybe it's home schooling, maybe not, but has anyone else noticed how many JWs have such poor reading skills? Listening to them read at bookstudy is like listening to G.W. Bush speak; words are mispronounced, omitted, or mumbled. And I've seen others' lips moving as they read along...
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MungoBaobab
I had to read the title for this thread four times to get it right. What I saw was "For my Hot Dead Friend Minimus.." And I thought...
Minimus died?
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Has anyone sucessfully talked a JW into quiting?
by JustTickledPink inmy mother doesn't speak to me although she will exchange emails with me.
we actually don't communicate much, but recently i sent her a few emails detailing things are wrong with the watchtower society.
her responses are laughable... but i am still printing out articles and mailing them to her about the un scandle, she of course doesn't believe it.. but has anyone sucessfully made any headway talking to a dyed in the wool jw and made any progress?
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MungoBaobab
Okay, guys. By popular demand I posted my summary of the August 1, 2002 Watchtower under the title "The Worst Watchtower I've Ever Read." Check it out and tell me what you think!
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The Worst Watchtower I've Ever Read
by MungoBaobab init wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back.
that back had already broken.
it was more of the last nail in the coffin for my allegiance to the wts.
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MungoBaobab
It wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back. That back had already broken. It was more of the last nail in the coffin for my allegiance to the WTS. I'd struggled at "overcoming" my atheism for six years, with varying degrees of success, but I always considered myself an intellectual and fought desperately to amalgamate Watchtower doctrine with fact and logic. The social manipulation really got to me, too, but I forced myself to hold out the possibility that deep down the WTS had the truth.
Then the August 1, 2002 Watchtower came out. Everything that irked me about the Organization wrapped in 32 pages.
The cover article is "Do Superstitions Control Your Life?" (I know, try to keep a straight face now, it gets worse!) Page 3 asks "Are you affected by a 'belief, half-belief, or practice for which there appears to be no rational substance?' Your answer could be revealing, for that is how one reference work defined the word "superstition." Someone really must tell them at Brooklyn that its dishonest not to quote your sources. It goes on to say on the following page that "many superstitions basically stem from a fear of spirits of the dead or of spirits of any sort. Events are interpreted as attempts by these spirits to contact the living with a threat, a warning, or a blessing." And I agree completely. But by the next page, "contacting [demons] or submitting to their influence is not to be taken lightly, for they, like their leader, Satan the Devil, would like to devour us." Certainly sounds like a threat from spirits to me. Or was that a warning from Jehovah God and the angels? By the end of the artcle we have an experience by a man named Ade,* and guess what? *Names have been changed! So why give a false name? Certainly not to prevent anyone from verifying the story, I'm sure.
Now, as if this wasn't contradictory enough, later in the magazine we have an article on the dangers of Yoga. The writers quote Indian ex-president Dr. S. Radhakrishnan saying that yogi can communicate with telepathy and "The yogi can make his body invisible." Quite cleverly, they make no attempt to endorse his claims, so if anyone ever cornered the Society for saying such nonsense was possible they could easily deny it. Typical Watchtower dishonesty. The next paragraph is particularly damning:
The image of a yogi sleeping on a bed of nails or walking on hot coals may appear to be a hoax to some and a joke to others. But these are common occurances in India... In June 1995 The Times of India reported that a three-and-a-half-year-old girl lay in a trance as a car weighing more than 1,600 pounds was allowed to run over her abdomen. To the amazement of the crowd, when she awoke she was totally unharmed. The report added: "It was sheer yogic power."
No, it was sheer weight and heat distribution for all those examples. All hoaxes, easily duplicated without the help of demons, all easily explained by the simple laws of physics Witnesses champion when defending Creationism. Either the Watchtower Society is completely ignorant of such simple facts or are bold-faced liars and manipulators. Whatever the case, I expect more from "God's Organization."
Other points of interest include illustrations on page 17. At a Witness function, seven friends are seated around a coffee table. The only Black person is sitting on the floor! Over the caption "Does your personal appearance reflect well on the God you worship?" a teenage Witness walks down a high school allway in a fully-buttoned plaid shirt neatly tucked in to his khakis, in sharp contrast to the "worldly" students who wear jeans, one of which sports a tattoo on his neck. Coupled with the previous photo the Society seems to be implying that even in the privacy of ones homes denim jeans are unacceptable forms of dress. One last quote from the opposite page: "One of her clients was Martha, one of Jehovah's Witnesses. Since Martha was severely affected by dementia, she was in need of constant supervision." It's not funny that this poor old lady was senile, but when you put it like that...
So, does anyone else remember this magazine? Does anyone else have a similar experience with a certain talk, publication, or comment that pushed the limits of your tolerance for nonsense and hypocrisy one iota too far?
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Has anyone sucessfully talked a JW into quiting?
by JustTickledPink inmy mother doesn't speak to me although she will exchange emails with me.
we actually don't communicate much, but recently i sent her a few emails detailing things are wrong with the watchtower society.
her responses are laughable... but i am still printing out articles and mailing them to her about the un scandle, she of course doesn't believe it.. but has anyone sucessfully made any headway talking to a dyed in the wool jw and made any progress?
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MungoBaobab
Wow! Looks like some "Ex-JWs are in a tizzy!" LOL
I'll start a new thread. Look for the "Worst Watchtower Issue EVER"
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What is "Pagan" anyways?...
by Hecklerboy inwitnesses love to use the word "pagan", but i think few really even know what the word means.
i think most think of the word pagan as referring to some satan worshiping cult or other strange religion.
they alway say they don't celebrate the holidays because of it pagan origins.
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MungoBaobab
I was lucky/unlucky enough to not have any other JWs in my school until 7th grade. One activity I saw nothing wrong with was coloring the flags of different countries around the world. He, however, told the teacher that WE couldn't do it. When she asked why he said "Because it's pagan." She blinked twice.
"Pagan...Okay."
I felt like slapping that kid across the face.
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when the end is nigh.. go borrow millions of dollars lol
by candidlynuts inmormons who banked on doomsday find the debt collector at the door does this sound familiar to any of you who were around in the 70s when jw's borrowed money they didnt think they'd ever have to repay?
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=591991&host=3&dir=70by david usborne11 december 2004. if the 9,000 members of a polygamous mormon sect in south-west utah felt comfortable borrowing from their local bank like there was no tomorrow, it was because, in their minds, that was precisely the case.
the world, they had been told, was coming to an end.. the fundamentalist church of jesus christ of latter-day saints gladly used high-interest funds to finance suspect business ventures.
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MungoBaobab
That's really funny. Being a whacko makes you do crazy things, I guess.
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Do JWs really grieve?
by undercover ina strange thing happened to me while watching a television movie on the life of the late nascar star dale earnhardt; i got choked up remembering a close family member who died at an early age.. .
for those of you who aren't familar with earnhardt, his father died when dale was a young man and this movie portrayed him pretty much living his entire life trying to live up to his father's ideals.
of course he died on the race track having some of the same issues with his own son, now a superstar on the track.. .
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MungoBaobab
Sure they do, like anyone else. It's interesting that some have equated grief with lack of faith in the resurrection, which the WTS always says it isn't; that it's okay to grieve. But deep down, I feel, everyone knows that there is no life after death, even if they won't admit it or vehemently defend their beliefs. That's why everyone grieves in some fashion and to some degree.
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Top DJ is ex-JW
by IT Support inlet's see if it works this time.
(the last couple of times i posted this, i'd tried embedding the page: mistake!).
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/music/story.jsp?story=592641.
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MungoBaobab
I like WBALZ better, the station that plays only platinum hits, 187.4 on your FM dial. Some of you gotta know what I'm talking about!
I have a hard time believing she used to be a Witness, though. She doesn't have the lingo. "Prayer meetings?" And is the Watchtower "sold" anywhere anymore?