rmt1

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Posts by rmt1

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  12

  Guilt

  by moley in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  does anyone ever suffer from the teachings of the wbts still.

  altough i have been out for over 12 yrs they still sometimes manage to rear their ugly head.

  sometimes a news story will make you think sign of the times, and then all those old feelings come flooding back.

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  rmt1

  Famines vs American waistlines.
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  31

  Catholic Cardinal Says Adam and Eve Didn’t Exist

  by His Excellency in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  http://consciouslifenews.com/catholic-cardinal-adam-eve-didnt-exist/1127457/

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  rmt1

  I would call faith the rational confidence that for two equally probable outcomes, the better outcome will occur. It's not just a fight or flight response - it's somewhat reserved and contemplative, like you can feel it coming on. The reason I call it rational is that even if it is not mathematically rigorous, it satisfies the existence proof. It has, in its nonmathematical way, ensured survival for a subset of life forms. It does this by insuring risk that in the absense of such faith, and to all rational appearances, would not sound prudent. It takes risk to make gains. Even playing by the rules of society is risk, and requires faith. People of a civilized society all operate by at least a little faith. People who defer the gratifications of biological, demonstrable life until a post-biological afterlife of course require a greater faith, to underwrite the greater risk. It would be a tall order to demonstrate conclusively that persons attacking the insolent dogma of TWS are lacking in all faith of all kind. Some may be ok with notions of a superior lifeform. I daresay I have quite a great deal of faith that the species will persist, survive, thrive, and venture up and out of this garden of eden, earth. This faith keeps me going in the face of what you see on the news. It is not a scientific faith.
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  17

  A day in the life of a fading JW

  by dissonance_resolved in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i'm five months into my slow fade and it's going so-so.

  my saturday morning was spent on a 3-mile jog and taking the kids to the park, which was great, but i'm still shuddering from the potential alternative.

  at the last meeting, an elderette literally blocked the exit to prevent my escape and said she just "noticed" that we were in the same field service group and would i like to work with her in service on saturday?

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  rmt1

  The feeling of the weight lifting off your shoulders, if you've been in long enough, is absolutely true. Any of the rare times that I hear Lisa Gerrard's idoglassia of "Now We are Free" (Gladiator), I am transported back to the day that I crossed the Susquehanna river and geographically left the territory of all the Halifax / Harrisburg / Middletown KHs I had even been a slave in. Getting out is a death, with an afterlife, but you're still alive.
• 
  12

  Guilt

  by moley in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  does anyone ever suffer from the teachings of the wbts still.

  altough i have been out for over 12 yrs they still sometimes manage to rear their ugly head.

  sometimes a news story will make you think sign of the times, and then all those old feelings come flooding back.

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  2. 
  3. 
• 

  rmt1

  Here's a field-medic diagnostic for guilt.

  Is what you're doing physically, mentally or emotionally harming yourself?

  Is what you're doing physically, mentally or emotionally harming another?

  Is what you're doing resulting in a gain to yourself that is a loss to another?

  Is what you're doing against the wishes of someone you know personally?

  Is what you're doing against the wishes of someone you do not know personally?
• 
  17

  A day in the life of a fading JW

  by dissonance_resolved in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i'm five months into my slow fade and it's going so-so.

  my saturday morning was spent on a 3-mile jog and taking the kids to the park, which was great, but i'm still shuddering from the potential alternative.

  at the last meeting, an elderette literally blocked the exit to prevent my escape and said she just "noticed" that we were in the same field service group and would i like to work with her in service on saturday?

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  rmt1

  You appear circumspect enough to act in many, small, reversible moves. Over time they sum up to an irreversible state, but you maintain control the entire way. (Burning bridges is the other way to achieve an irreversible state...)
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  31

  Catholic Cardinal Says Adam and Eve Didn’t Exist

  by His Excellency in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  http://consciouslifenews.com/catholic-cardinal-adam-eve-didnt-exist/1127457/

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  rmt1

  What? HOW do JWs explain the age of the universe with Genesis?

  Universe Older Than Previously Thought

  http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/21mar_cmb/

  And do these sage individuals that Jehovah knows by name and has entrusted with deep insight have anything to say about the mystery of dark matter? That would be a great day if then was finished the great mystery of what makes up most of the mass of the universe. Perhaps the panda cartoons have massive observatories cleverly hidden behind the wheel barrows.
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  14

  I just realized....

  by Muddy Waters in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i just realized i've basically lost the past 30 years of culture... listening to music, being rediscovered and discovering new music... political stuff happening around the world and yes, dammit, all that political stuff is important!!!

  tons of other things that, thanks to the wts's very diligent application of the i part of the bite method (information control) i am only beginning to find out or discover.... .

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  rmt1

  JWs were permitted to have only a very broad speculation about the present state of world politics. At least in my time, they were permitted to conceive of politics only to the resolution of extremely large objects, Duplo Politics if you will: continental agreements, multinational organizations analogous to the UN, military analogues to the NATO, and storied Caucasian nations that fed the (I forget the Joseph nobody fart of old) narrative, and historical empires that usefully rotated around the lands of the bible - objects that were so general, so huge, with such a hazy outline, that the WTS spin doctors could bend most scriptures back to them in several ways. So you had JWs speculating in very broad strokes about King of North and South, beasts of Revelations, other cartoon political evils. But civics knowledge of a local kind or of any depth, or insight into a political issue with respect to economics or demographics, or identification with minute and immediately relevant platform or plank was severely frowned upon.
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  11

  Is The Watchtower Spawning An Entire Industry Of Freedom Fighters?

  by Narcissistic Supply in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  167,000 people cast off annually by the jw's; the number of broken and destroyed families grows to the millions?28 million dollars defending child endangerment?

  are you kidding me?10's of millions "mentally diseased apostates" undermining the real estate laundering corporation?800 million in real estate sold in brooklyn *recently* by the jw ficticious business name statement?jehovah witness corporation crawling on its belly like a reptile to upstate new york?big money to be made eating the eyeballs out of the corporation?new tales of jw horror published daily?

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  rmt1

  What is a useful rule of thumb for having 'broken free mentally'?
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  9

  JWs Just Don't Want To Think....

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  they don't want to think about their past, present or future.. they ignore any obvious weakness in "the truth".. they won't question their leader's viewpoints.. they will follow what the governing body (the faithful & discreet slave) says even if they flipflop a hundred times.. it's embarrassing to see millions of people refuse to think.. the only silver lining is that many of us were just like the witnesses of today.

  there is hope!.

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  rmt1

  They are a terrified population under the boot of para-military hope-dealers who hold all blood relatives and social contacts mutually hostage in part and in whole. The population does not have the protected right to bear the self-defense of critical thought. They do not have the protected right to critically examine cause and effect. They do not have the protected right to retain in perpetuity their own data archives and test that data for drift, trends, systematic biases, precision, accuracy. They to not have the protected right to observe, hypothesize, re-observe, model, draw conclusions and share their own results.

  I just got my second degree at 39yo, a BS Astronomy. In this field, and assuredly in any scientific field, there are many analogues and equivalents of the book study, the ministry school, the visiting Sunday speaker, the circuit assemblies and district conventions. One weekly meeting, called Journal Club, is where the apponted people, grad students and profs, pick out and present what they thought were the high points of this or that research paper, and are prepared to answer basic questions from the non-presenting round table. Another type of meeting, more than once a week, has a visiting speaker present their research, and not seldom must face a firey barrage of questions from a dubious, learned, professional, qualified, skeptical, and, fearless, audience. I've now been to two conferences of the American Astronomical Society. If you're headed up the ladder, if you need to network, if you need to present a talk or a poster, why, you dress full suit and tie or business jacket/blouse/heels, etc. If you're there to chillax and enjoy the proceedings, jeans and sneakers will do just fine. The keynote addresses are by speakers who are being honored for specific, unique contributions to science, and these are the solemn talks where science comes as close as it ever will to a system of belief or a devout cause in an of itself. Many other talks by intense, youthful, fired up post-docs and grad students. For lunch you connect with old or new faces and regale each other with experiences in science and anticipations of new science. The holy spirit of this kind of thing, the air that animates, is the quite verifiable fact that you are participating in an actual journey into the unknown, that you are planting torches in the cave to guide you back and to guide new ones in, and that there are surprises around the corner that you did not conceive or prepare for.

  I challenge any terrified JW reading this to read just one short article on extrasolar planets.
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  14

  The Wt. is right we are mentally diseased

  by TotallyADD in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  we are mentally diseased in ways that most normal people cannot understand.

  it does bare asking " what part did the wt.

  have in causing this problem?

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  rmt1

  My priority is to make the future not just a better place but a place where there are substantial numbers of humans who cannot be held hostage into an addiction to cartoon zoos (false) and cartoon genocide (collectively sociopathic), let alone an addiction to cartoon crepuscular rays of Brooklyn (worshippers of men). I am ill at ease not using any strengths or gifts to mindfully warn humans who are still yet outside the event horizon of that torture chamber. It took me from 14 to 25 to climb out of the abyss of cowardice, fear (two different things), and ignorance.