Posts by slimboyfat

80

Are we losing our way a bit at JWN?

by nicolaou in

firstly, i want to be crystal clear how grateful i am for jwn.

it's been my place of support for over seventeen years and it's the first online space i direct anyone to if they are taking steps out of the cult.

i am not bashing jwn - i love this place and appreciate the hard work and expense simon puts in to keep it going.

slimboyfat

I think it’s a number of things.

First of all young people just don’t seem to use old fashioned forums as much as older people now do. They use Facebook and reddit, so I’m told, and probably other stuff I don’t even know about.

Plus this forum seems to have drifted to the right, collectively and as individuals. Maybe that’s just because people have got older.

Plus JWs themselves are older on average, so it makes sense that the people who leave tend to be older too on average.

Whereas the young ones who leave JWs these days, some of them seem to just walk off without much fuss. No angst about doctrines such as mediator or 1914 or all that. It probably seems quite archane to most young people these days, inside or outside JWs.

12

Relative rates of mental illness

by Doug Mason in

a report produced 50 years ago by a psychiatrist at a west australian mental health facility ("asylum"l reported that the mental illness rate among jws was 3 times the norm of society.

other similar studies at the time concluded the rate was much higher.. i wrote to the psychiatrist at the time, asking whether the wts attracted people who were already susceptible to mental illness or if the situation was created after the person became a jw.

he responded that they did not know.. being myopically focused on the wts at the time, but more importantly belonging to an alternative eschatological apocalyptic body at the time, i did not think more broadly.. i think that today i would like to know:.

slimboyfat

Spencer’s study was methodologically problematic, it was biased, and it was rejected by other academics, including James Beckford and James Penton. There are no good data available on the questions you raise, as far as I am aware, which is unfortunate.

286

Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Baker Who Refused to Bake Cake for Gay Couple

by Simon in

seems like such an obviously correct decision to overturn the previous overreach - it should never have been necessary to go to the supreme court but happened because the rights of the religious were being ignored.. as the fundamental level, no one should be able to compel you to work for them or to provide services that go against your beliefs, and certainly not have the government be able to force you to comply.. if this was allowed there would be so many unreconcilable situations that would clog up courts over nonsense.. i also have little patience for these activists that intentionally look to be offended.

it really doesn't do their cause any good to go round looking to make trouble for people.

it's also misguided because it ends up strengthening religious rights over effectively stupid issues.. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/04/us/politics/supreme-court-sides-with-baker-who-turned-away-gay-couple.html.

slimboyfat

So what are the protected characteristic in the US? Is political orientation one of them?

286

Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Baker Who Refused to Bake Cake for Gay Couple

by Simon in

seems like such an obviously correct decision to overturn the previous overreach - it should never have been necessary to go to the supreme court but happened because the rights of the religious were being ignored.. as the fundamental level, no one should be able to compel you to work for them or to provide services that go against your beliefs, and certainly not have the government be able to force you to comply.. if this was allowed there would be so many unreconcilable situations that would clog up courts over nonsense.. i also have little patience for these activists that intentionally look to be offended.

it really doesn't do their cause any good to go round looking to make trouble for people.

it's also misguided because it ends up strengthening religious rights over effectively stupid issues.. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/04/us/politics/supreme-court-sides-with-baker-who-turned-away-gay-couple.html.

slimboyfat

In the UK protected characteristics are as follows: age, disability, gender, marital status, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion, sex, and sexual orientation.

https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/hr/equality/focus/equalityact/protected

Political affiliation/views is not a protected characteristic.

14

Will The Governing Body's Shunning Policy Backfire On Them Eventually?

by Brokeback Watchtower in

we all can agree that the disfellowshipping arrangement benefits the wt corporation by keeping the indoctrinated in servitude, make members afraid to doubt the corporation's teachings and explanations because they can be disfellowshipped for saying anything negative about the corporation or it's ceos or not agreeing with some new light.. but what about negative effects caused by the harsh use of disfellowshipping to the corporation, what could they be?

it's a two edged sword..

slimboyfat

https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/6235212213125120/shunning-watchtowers-self-inflicted-wound

55

Cults in our Midst

by Lee Elder in

this is related to a comment i made in a previous thread.

cults exist in many diverse parts of society.

this includes politics.

slimboyfat

Don’t know if Trump and supporters are cult, but they do lack common sense and moral sense, to support a man who lies compulsively and has confessed to crimes, including assaulting women and obstruction of justice, so far without conviction.

34

How to spot awake JW at a convention

by Akid48 in

i cant spot one to save my life, so i wanted to now if any one could me figure out how..

slimboyfat

Sitting in a nearby burger place during the session, I met one last time. With something like, “the sessions are bit long and boring, huh?” as an opener. He told me I should check out the Cedars channel on YouTube. I said I am already familiar with that punk.

21

For Those Claiming That the GB are Simply Naive - Another Philly Story

by berrygerry in

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/jehovahs-witnesses-child-sex-abuse-stephen-lett-chessa-manion-20180620.html.

slimboyfat

This is explosive. If specific cases emerge where members of the governing body ignored cases of abuse, this could get very serious indeed. Don’t you think?

6

Removing scriptures and numbering

by carla in

recently there was a thread https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/5596141447020544/nwt-1984-vs-nwt-2013.

and kairos mentioned the following-.

i am baffled that john 8:1-12 was removed from their bible.it's a verse that makes judging and shunning impossible if you claim to be christian.".

slimboyfat

Since JWs only tend to quote isolated verses and rarely whole chapters, let alone longer extracts, I don’t see that the situation is likely to arise often that they need to skip over these verses or explain the omission.

Someone may draw attention to it if they are clued up about the issue, in which case they may be an ex-JW or an Evangelical of the King James only variety. In which case they may have argued over something else other than this anyway.

It’s worth pointing about that it’s probably easier to spot that the verses are missing in an old fashioned print copy of the Bible over digital versions. Just one more way in which the turn to digital affects how JWs use and interact with texts.

29

Anyone think Assemblies will stop?

by blownaway in

not completely but the expensive renting of halls or assembly hall ownership.

maybe with streaming they could have assemblies at the kh and stream the program.

i bet they cut costs in a lot of ways.

slimboyfat

Oh I agree the videos are powerful, no doubt about that. I just don’t think they are as likely to get people to donate as the old book handouts, which is a separate issue.

Unless they designed a video that specifically ended in a crescendo of “give your valuable things to Jehovah now” swiftly followed by some sort of collection. I don’t think I’ve seen that.

It’s striking that JWs don’t pass a collection. Most other churches do. JWs have traditionally disparaged it, but it’s an important ritual apart from anything else.