Posts by slimboyfat

41

Why Aren`t The G.B Members Representive Of All Nations ? and not just America ?

by smiddy3 in

are all of the governing .body .members american citizens ?

shouldn`t they at least represent a greater proportion of nations in light of jesus being a saviour of all the world ?.

god loved the world of mankind right ?

slimboyfat

Leo Greenlees was Scottish? I thought he was Canadian. You may be confusing him with a different Greenlees family.

I didn’t realise Karl Klein was born in Germany

I think Ewart Chitty was English

Martin Poetzinger was German

Wasn't Lloyd Barry Australian? No google says born in New Zealand

Did George Gangas grow up in Greece? His bio says born in the Ottoman Empire, he was that old.

John Barr was Scottish, as mentioned

Geoffrey Jackson is Australian

Gerrit Loesch was born in Austria

And Stephen Lett, a badly kept secret, is from the planet Neptune

45

China Crisis | 18 members of Jehovah's Witnesses arrested and indicted

by jwleaks in

on april 15, 2019, total of 18 jehovah's witnesses in china were arrested and charged with indictable offences relating to, "using an evil religion organization" to "incite the obstruction of law enforcement," and one charge relating to, "obstructing law enforcement by organizing and using an evil religious organization.".

since the arrests, the governing body of jehovah's witnesses have remained silent on the plight of these 18 jehovah's witnesses in china.. link to translation of indictment:.

https://jwleaks.org/2019/07/09/china-crisis-for-jehovahs-witnesses-18-members-indicted/.

slimboyfat

Watchtower doesn't report on activity in banned countries in their annual reports, or in the text of the old yearbooks, as I recall. Russia was a different situation because it started out as a campaign to retain legal recognition where they had an established presence. So I don’t know if Watchtower will make any statements about the developments in China or go into any detail in their news releases. It’s not necessarily about size either, because there was a news blackout on Cuba for decades, yet when Cuba emerged from under ban they had around 100,000 JWs in that country.

5

Received First Donation as a PIMO

by APieceOfShitNamedTate in

jw
friends

on saturday i received my first donation as a pimo.

can you guess how i'm going to spend it?.

by the way, i didn't ask for the donation.

slimboyfat

I suggest you should give the money to wherever the person thought they were giving it, or refuse to take it. Although householders giving money to JWs at the door may be such a rare occurrence these days that you were caught off guard by the situation.

45

Getting disfellowshipped to marry and return

by confused in

i was just wondering if there is any official rules on dealing with this.

a sister in the congregation is planning to divorce her husband who is also a witness so she can marry a different brother in the same hall!

yes this is a huge scandal!

slimboyfat

I knew a convoluted version of this scenario where a married sister had an affair with a married brother and both were disfellowshipped. Both got divorced and later got reinstated separately. But soon after both got reinstated they got married to one another. (I guess the other spouses must have moved on too, for this to be allowed) For some reason it was very important that they insisted they did not plan to get married after being reinstated, but it just “turned out that way”. I’m not sure why that was deemed so important, but it seems it was very important that it wasn’t “premeditated”, to the point that many voiced the opinion that if the marriage was “premeditated” that they would likely die at Armageddon. I didn’t fully understand the issues involved here, since they presumably could have got married while they were disfellowshipped. But it was considered especially egregious, for some reason, that they should be reinstated separately and later decide to marry.

9

Hellfire justifies torture = Armageddon justifies shunning?

by slimboyfat in

a few weeks ago the watchtower study condemned the teaching of hellfire, among other things, because some religions have used the hellfire doctrine as a justification for torture:.

the false teaching of hellfire has been used to justify torture, including the burning at the stake of those who opposed church teachings.

according to a book on the spanish inquisition, some of those responsible for this cruelty may have believed that they were only giving heretics “a taste of what perpetual hellfire would be like” so that they would repent before dying and be saved from hellfire.. it occurs to me that jws justify disfellowshipping on a similar basis.

slimboyfat

Vidiot, what you say makes sense, yet I read something today that makes me challenge it slightly. Because I’ve been reading about Mormons (who I would consider to be on the spectrum of high control groups) who interestingly reject the concepts of “depravity” and “original sin”. I’ll quote what I read:

“Mormonism rejects the notion that man’s condition is best described as ‘depravity’. Nowhere within Mormon theology is its optimism concerning man’s natural condition more clearly apparent than in this denial of the Christian doctrine of original sin... in contrast with the orthodox Christian notion that the fall resulted in a condition of human depravity, the Mormon view asserts that the fall was a necessary condition for man to realise his ultimate potential... to the Mormon the fall is a fall upward rather than downward.” Jerald and Sandra Tanner, The Changing World of Mormonism (1981), 192-193.

So in contrast with JWs, strict Calvinists, and many other Christians, I think Mormons would say that humans are fundamentally good in nature rather than bad. Yet they still manage to be a high control group. Brahma Kumaris also seem to teach that the human soul is fundamentally good, yet they also display controlling characteristics.

I also found this article about Jains to be quite disturbing.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-48879591

Having said all that, I mostly agree with the point you make, that controlling religions tend to emphasise bad human nature, whereas more liberal groups tend to emphasise the good in human nature: the Quakers, with their “something of the divine in everyone”, and Unitarians with their belief in the basic dignity of all people, are cases in point.

9

Hellfire justifies torture = Armageddon justifies shunning?

by slimboyfat in

a few weeks ago the watchtower study condemned the teaching of hellfire, among other things, because some religions have used the hellfire doctrine as a justification for torture:.

the false teaching of hellfire has been used to justify torture, including the burning at the stake of those who opposed church teachings.

according to a book on the spanish inquisition, some of those responsible for this cruelty may have believed that they were only giving heretics “a taste of what perpetual hellfire would be like” so that they would repent before dying and be saved from hellfire.. it occurs to me that jws justify disfellowshipping on a similar basis.

slimboyfat

A few weeks ago the Watchtower study condemned the teaching of hellfire, among other things, because some religions have used the hellfire doctrine as a justification for torture:

The false teaching of hellfire has been used to justify torture, including the burning at the stake of those who opposed church teachings. According to a book on the Spanish Inquisition, some of those responsible for this cruelty may have believed that they were only giving heretics “a taste of what perpetual hellfire would be like” so that they would repent before dying and be saved from hellfire.

It occurs to me that JWs justify disfellowshipping on a similar basis. They claim that shunning causes individuals to change their ways, return to Jehovah, and ultimately survive Armageddon. They would argue that even if shunning is painful (really it is psychological torture, if we are being honest about it) that the pain is worth it if it saves the person from dying at Armageddon. I don’t have any Watchtower quotes but I am sure I have read such sentiments expressed in the Watchtower.

So if Christendom is condemned for having used hellfire to justify physical torture, doesn’t Watchtower stand condemned for using Armageddon to justify the psychological torture of disfellowshipping and shunning? Is that a fair comparison to make? A big difference, of course, is that Christendom stopped justifying torture centuries ago, whereas Watchtower continues to promote psychological torture.

11

Wow Haven't logged on in like 6 years

by wha happened? in

can't believe i remembered my password.

slimboyfat

Hey, what happened?

30

Are Witnesses advised not to get into discussion’s about evolution with HH?

by Diogenesister in

just before the last memorial, i finally had a witness call with an invite ( i say finally because i haven’t seen anyone in the d 2 d preaching work for going on 5 years!)..

i wasn’t particularly prepared ( it being early and me still in my nightie!

) but i managed to collect myself and said i didn’t think i wanted to go since i discovered the scandal around the un.....and i outlined the facts.. jw: oh no i don’t think so, where on earth did you read that?.

slimboyfat

I’ve pointed this out before, see page 6.

https://archive.org/details/ThePhotodramaOfCreation/page/n7

“Only in respect to man does the Bible declare a special, direct creation of God.”

Russell believed that God used “evolution” but not “natural selection”, and that God guided life gradually into different “kinds” and that now those kinds are fixed for good.

So it’s a kind of acceptance of some form of evolution for animals, but opposed to Darwinianism, which in common with many, Russell understood as a sort of social ideology as much as a biological theory.

The crucial point is that Russell accepted that God could have used a form of “evolution” to generate all the different animals that now exist, and in principle modern JWs could accept the same without endangering their theology.

26

2019-New Files Just Arrived!

by Atlantis in

jw
friends

2019 application for prison minister.

https://docdro.id/dxusjmu.

2019 brd visitor center newsletter.

slimboyfat

“The time left is reduced” - to book a Chelmsford tour, that is. That’s just making fun, is it not? Armageddon didn’t come, but never mind, come tour the new shiny branch we built in the meantime.

88

For any that still believe in God and Jesus, what is your reasoning on this matter?

by BourneIdentity in

in the old testament, god was always full of anger and jealousy resulting in the murder of millions of people.

we’re told jesus perfectly reflects his fathers qualities.

why in the new testament does jesus show no hint of anger and jealousy and wanting to kill people?

slimboyfat

It's always fascinating to watch Christians take refuge in dogma, platitudes and personal abuse.
I remember a time when I also had to hide from reality in order to protect faith.

Materialism is a dogma just as sure as any religion is. Just because it is the dominant ideology of the age we live in doesn’t make it any less dogmatic. In fact, probably more so, because people become complacent and assume that, because it’s the received orthodoxy of the day, it therefore stands above other beliefs as more respectable or reliable. The fact that materialism is the current accepted wisdom should make us more rigorous in challenging its claims, not less so.

There are serious problems at the core of a purely materialist account of reality that cannot easily be dismissed. Such as, if everything that is real can be explained in terms of material causes and effects, then what is consciousness? Since we experience consciouness directly, and the material world only indirectly, would we not be more rigorous empiricists if we affirm the reality of consciousness as primary, and remain more sceptical about the nature of the material world? And if we are to use empiricism as a bedrock for understanding, how do we cope with its shaky foundation? In that, what evidence can be produced to support the statement itself: “we should only believe statements on the basis of evidence”? And then, why do we suppose the human mind is capable of posing and answering fundamental questions about reality in the first place. Is this anything more than just wishful thinking?

It’s not just those who believe in God who have difficult questions to answer. If you eliminate God as an explanation then you are also left with a formidable set of difficulties. At least many theists acknowledge the difficulties associated with their beliefs. Some atheists seem to cope with the difficulties of their worldview by pretending they don’t exist. Or maybe they genuinely don’t understand the problems their view of reality throws up.