The website worth1000.com recently held a photoshop contest, asking for entries that depict mass destruction. It looks like some of these entries could have been taken straight from the pages of the watchtower publications.
Posts by lucky
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4New Watchtower artists?
by lucky in.
the website worth1000.com recently held a photoshop contest, asking for entries that depict mass destruction.
it looks like some of these entries could have been taken straight from the pages of the watchtower publications..
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20
Interesting statistic about JWs in this week's Newsweek
by lucky ini just got this week's newsweek in the mail.
the cover story is "spirituality in america".
page 54 has a table listing change in religious self-identification between 1990 and 2001. the four bottom religions, with negative percentages, are jehovah's witnesses (-4%), jewish, rastafarian, and protestant.
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lucky
Sorry, for some reason, the statistics didn't post the first time! Second try:
55% of those listing "Jehovah's Witness" as their religion are "official" members (I would assume that means baptized, or maybe a publisher) 27% of witnesses are single 3% are single and co-habiting (THAT's an interesting statistic) 30% live in a "mixed" (divided) household with at least one non-witness adult 24% are ages 18-29 10% are 65+ 71% were female in 2001 vs. 60% female in 1990 (that's an interesting one) 46% are white 37% are black 14% are hispanic Here's another interesting set: 2% identify themselves as republicans 10% as democrats 34% as independents 54% say they have no political affiliation I would have to guess that the 12% who are democrat/republican are inactive or in the early stages of studying. My guess would be that the 34% who identified themselves as independents were confused about what an independent is (maybe they thought it meant "independent of the political system" as opposed to "independent of a political party"). Again, here's where I got these: http://www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research_briefs/aris/key_findings.htm
The website says that the survey was conducted by telephone, of 50,000 households in the 48 contiguous states. -
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Interesting statistic about JWs in this week's Newsweek
by lucky ini just got this week's newsweek in the mail.
the cover story is "spirituality in america".
page 54 has a table listing change in religious self-identification between 1990 and 2001. the four bottom religions, with negative percentages, are jehovah's witnesses (-4%), jewish, rastafarian, and protestant.
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lucky
I just got this week's Newsweek in the mail. The cover story is "Spirituality in America". Page 54 has a table listing change in religious self-identification between 1990 and 2001. The four bottom religions, with negative percentages, are Jehovah's Witnesses (-4%), Jewish, Rastafarian, and Protestant. The source is cited as a City University of New York survey in 2001. I looked the survey up and found the site:
http://www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research_briefs/aris/key_findings.htmIt has some pretty interesting statistics about Jehovah's Witnesses, including the estimated number of witnesses in 1991 (1,381,000) vs. 2001(1,331,000), the number of Witnesses who have "switched in" (517,540) and "switched out" (380,983), and the percentage of JW's who are divorced (6%). They are weighted estimates based on a survey of 50,000 people, but it would still be interesting to do a comparison of some of the statistics with the "official" available WTBTS statistics.
I'm sorry if this study has been posted before, but it's the first I've ever seen of it and I thought it was pretty interesting.
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Google Earth - Brooklyn
by Ozner inwith the google earth software-aplication, it is possible to "fly" above brooklyn and have good possibility's to inspect the watch tower buildings there.
maybe someone can put pointers on the google earth maps on every wt building there?.
ozner
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lucky
there's not much detail for Patterson in google earth, but here's an aerial photo from the new york state GIS clearinghouse, flown in spring 2004. As you can see in the second photo, you can zoom way in. Here's a link to the website: http://www1.nysgis.state.ny.us/mainmap.cfmClick on the binoculars button to do a search for the town of Patterson. The facility is on the east side of route 22, I believe, although I think they own some property on the west side, too.
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$250k to prove that Jesus is not the Son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
by lucky inhere's in interesting recent entry on boingboing.net:
boing boing's $250,000 intelligent design challenge yesterday, i posted an item to boing boing about the growing popularity of pastafarianism, a new religion that worships flying spaghetti monster, initially created to protest the kansas state school board's decision to teach "intelligent design" in schools.
a suprising number of i.d.
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lucky
Here's in interesting recent entry on boingboing.net:
Boing Boing's $250,000 Intelligent Design challenge
Yesterday, I posted an item to Boing Boing about the growing popularity of Pastafarianism, a new religion that worships Flying Spaghetti Monster, initially created to protest the Kansas State School Board's decision to teach "Intelligent Design" in schools. A suprising number of I.D. supporters wrote in with comments like this from reader Anne Kenny:
Okay Xeni I read your Blog about Intellegent Design and the spaghetti monster. Ridiculous. I'd like to know what you think should be taught in the schools.
Certainally not evolution considering there is not one single fact that proves it. No missing links, not even common sense. Lies are still being printed that were proven wrong in the late 1800's but they're still taught as fact.
If you're so positive that you came from a monkey or a rock or whatever you think it is I suggest you debate Dr. Kent Hovind.
Dr. Hovind is willing to pay any individual a quarter of a million dollars to anyone who can give any empirical evidence for evolution. He has had this offer up for a long time but even this country's top scientists have gone up against him and lost the debates.
I suggest you offer this to your avid readers... I'm sure one of them would like some extra cash. You can call 850-479-3466 (8-5 Mon-Fri CST) for more info about the $250,000. Please blog this I'm interested in what you think about evolution and all of its lies.
Well, I've discussed the matter with my blog colleagues, and we would like to hereby issue a challenge to Dr. Hovind and his supporters.
We are willing to pay any individual *$250,000 if they can produce empirical evidence which proves that Jesus is not the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
You may submit entries here, and please, no meatball attachments.
Suggested reading in Scientific American, "15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense: Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don't hold up." Link to SciAm article (paid sub required); Link to a subscription-free PDF copy. (Thanks, Dan Strunk)
Previously on Boing Boing:
Pastafarianism: Flying Spaghetti Monster cult grows
Dear Kansas: Why stop at "Intelligent Design?" What about Spaghetti Monsters?
* Prize to be awarded with Intelligently Designed currency; void where prohibited by logic.
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Mental illness among JWs: cause or effect?
by kid-A inthere is compelling, published evidence (see link below) to suggest higher rates of mental illness among jws compared to other religious sects, and the general population.
what is your opinion, is this because people with "susceptibility" to mental illness are more likely to be attracted to the lifestyle and psychology of the wts, or after joining and being an active member for years, the jw psychology and lifestyle are simply enough to push any psychologically healthy individual into psychopathology?
http://www.premier1.net/~raines/mental.html
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lucky
HL,
My mom majored in religion before she converted. She was baptized when she was 26 or 27. She was living across the country from her family and lonely and not too happy with her marriage and pretty vulnerable. I think that she was really drawn to the "black and white" aspect of the witnesses. Thirty years later, she's still lonely and not happy with her marriage and is suffering from depression and anxiety as well.
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Mental illness among JWs: cause or effect?
by kid-A inthere is compelling, published evidence (see link below) to suggest higher rates of mental illness among jws compared to other religious sects, and the general population.
what is your opinion, is this because people with "susceptibility" to mental illness are more likely to be attracted to the lifestyle and psychology of the wts, or after joining and being an active member for years, the jw psychology and lifestyle are simply enough to push any psychologically healthy individual into psychopathology?
http://www.premier1.net/~raines/mental.html
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lucky
My mom and my aunt are identical twins. My mom has been a witness for most of her adult life. My aunt is not and has never been a witness, although she is deeply religious. They both have some fairly serious, although slightly different, mental problems. The twins were not raised in a religious household, but both chose to major in religion in college and they have both chosen to lead very religious, although different, lives. I think there is an inherent personality trait that attracted them to religion.
I think it's a whole different story for those who were raised in the truth, though. I think I'm inherently unreligious and now I'm stuck with all this mental baggage leftover from 24 years of brainwashing.
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most hated analogies
by googlemagoogle inwe've already got some "most hated" threads on here, like "most hated bible verse" or "most hated meeting", don't know if there's another thread on metaphors/analogies.
one of the most used analogies used is the "jehovah's like a loving father holding your hand and leading you, you can trust him like a little child trusts his father".
i don't know how often i heard that one.
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lucky
I've always hated (and even more since I left) the analogy of the rowboat. If you don't keep rowing forward, you will start drifting backwards.
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Tell us your story if you went to seldom worked territory
by truthseeker intell us about the results, the fun, the friendships you made and those that broke.
did you meet your current spouse there?
what was your team captain like?
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lucky
I went on one trip to seldom worked territory. It wasn't "official", but we did let the elders in the congregation know that we were coming. I was pioneering at the time. It was just a friend and me, in Nebraska. We drove my friend's dad's truck and slept in the back of the truck on the way there (it took us a couple days to get there), which in retrospect was probably actually pretty dangerous! We had to drive through Colorado and I had never seen the rockies, so that was fun. We spent the first night after we arrived sleeping in the back of the truck in the kingdom hall parking lot, but a brother and sister in the congregation ended up letting us stay at their house - they had an extra room. We spent every day all day for a week doing "rurals". It was a ton of fun. We were placing some brochure or other (it was one of those "blanket" campaigns), so we didn't have to talk much to the householders and all the houses were so far apart and it was just fun to see the scenery. We took lots of pictures, and got pretty creative with our photography, taking pictures of us up to our necks in wheat, or standing in old abandoned schoolhouses. Some days, the one pioneer brother in the congregation came with us and other days we had kids come with us (10-12 year olds, mostly). A couple days we were by ourselves. Everyone in the congregation was really nice and we were treated as sort of celebrities. We got invited over to dinner at peoples houses almost every night and they had a party for us at the end of the week. The whole thing was very fun. It's probably one of the few good memories I have from my 24 years of servitude...
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Older men dating teenagers/Lolitas
by wanderlustguy inlolitas older men with little girls.
i promised myself only 30 minutes on thisso the timer starts now.
my perspective on this is probably different than most, i am a male, 32 years old.
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lucky
When I was 17/18 I got involved with a married brother who was 25 years my senior. It was entirely initiated by him; I didn't think of him as anything other than a father figure before he told me he was in love with me (we worked together). Our (secret) relationship lasted about two years, during which he completely dominated every aspect of my life, including picking out my clothes, choosing what music I could listen to, forbidding me from watching TV or movies, refusing to allow me to wear makeup or jewelry, and deciding what I could eat and who I could hang out with. The fact that all of this happened in secrecy without anyone knowing (although we did sit through a number of meetings with the elders towards the end of the two years (during which we both denied everything) and I believe his wife was pretty suspicious) is all the more amazing. Although he refused to leave his wife, he told me that he would commit suicide if I ever married anyone else. My parents wondered what in the world was causing this radical transformation in all of my habits. Even after leaving the relationship (I left and moved to a different state because I was afraid of being disfellowshipped, not because the relationship was abusive; I didn't believe it was) I felt that I was absolutely in love with him and that we were meant to be together, that all these changes were things that I WANTED, and that we'd be together in the new system (his wife was an unbeliever). Afterwards, I spent years consumed by the guilt of the fornication and by the fear that he would somehow find out that I had worn earrings or watched a movie or committed some other "sin" when my strict habits started to slip a bit in my new home.
Now, 14 years later, out of the borg, and married to someone my own age and completely un-domineering, I am amazed at both how naive I was and how much damage the relationship caused me emotionally.
Okay Xeni