Posts by rebel8

29

Meaningful Study

by Awake at last in

i never thought i would be commenting, let alone starting a new topic in the category of bible research and study.

anyone reading my comments on this site would have realised that i am the most unspiritual person to have ever stepped foot inside a kh.

yet for the first time in my life, on saturday night, i did some meaningful bible study/research, on my own without a wtbts publication in sight, except the nwt bible.

rebel8

When I began to realize TTATT, I read the bible in its entirety without using any outside resources.

I discovered, a few chapters in, that it was pure poppycock. I kept going and telling myself I was wrong. By the time I finished Revelation, I thought it was madness.

So I started over, because I thought for sure I was wrong. And I couldn't help but come to the same difficult conclusion. Not only must my cult affiliation end--along with all my friendships and some familial relationships--but so must my belief in that evil book.

I so wanted to believe. It would have been easier. Had I sought out the interpretation of others, I may have ended up on a different, wrong path. I'm so glad I didn't.

It is full of factual and historical inaccuracies, and many of the things churches preach against (violence, rape, bigotry and meanness).

Reading it by itself helps remove those blinders.

I'm sorry but I do not buy the need to understand historical context. This is a timeless, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent god who could effortlessly inspire a literary work that would be understood by his true followers without need for understanding ancient cultures. Such a work would be believable by us today, awe-inspiring and breathtaking.

To each, his own, but that's my $.02.

Reading the bible in entirety by myself was one of the most freeing, therapeutic things I've ever done.

29

Meaningful Study

by Awake at last in

i never thought i would be commenting, let alone starting a new topic in the category of bible research and study.

anyone reading my comments on this site would have realised that i am the most unspiritual person to have ever stepped foot inside a kh.

yet for the first time in my life, on saturday night, i did some meaningful bible study/research, on my own without a wtbts publication in sight, except the nwt bible.

rebel8

IMO no study aids of any kind (including group study or essays/publications) should be used.

The god of the bible says he wants us to worship him, and says he gave us brains to understand and this book to read. Hence, we should be able to read it ourselves and it should be fairly obvious it's true. If the bible is what it says it is, anyone reading it should be blown away by it so much that they fall on their knees and weep.

There should be no mystery about its basic teachings/passages.

Yet religions/people persist in reinterpreting what it says, so much that most people don't read it and the rest immediately revise its meaning in their heads once they do. Instead we need to deal with the bible on its own terms, understand it for what it really says.

I believe reading the bible yourself, w/o influence from others, is the best possible thing to do to solve the mystery of what to believe. It will be very obvious once you read it without influence from others.

44

rama singh WHAT HE REALLY SAID, so you men can stop lying

by atheist_R_stupid in

"there have been repeated scientific challenges to the.

theory of evolution in the past, and the nonbelievers of evo-.

lution cite them as support for their case.

rebel8

Your username is a tool of bigotry intended to incite others, and your posts are rageful.

What is it inside of you that you are trying to heal by using this username and making these angry posts?

Your message is not affecting others in any meaningful way, so apparently its purpose is to help you somehow.

What emotional need are you trying to fill by using this ineffective method?

8

Watchtower spiritual "retreat"

by Viva la Vida in

wt applied for tax exemption to the town of ramapo, ny, on the ground that they use the land as a "spiritual "retreat", including hiking trails to facilitate spiritual meditation in the natural contemplative setting of the wooded property and reflection on the creative works of the almighty".

tax authority didn't buy it and wt sued: one, two.

i didn't know they did this kind of meditation or spiritual retreats....

rebel8

Hi, which document are you referring to? There's a very long list of documents. Thanks

34

RELIGION AND MENTAL ILLNESS!!!

by ADJUSTMENTS in

jw
friends

i have have come to realize most "rank and file" jw's are mentally unstable-to-ill and here is why.... http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/mental-issues.php.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/religious_delusion.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/religion_and_schizophrenia.

rebel8

A person with a piece of paper (college degree)

This is a false equivocation and reveals bias.

the issues are so blatant and are right before us

Most people here do not deny there are issues. (Please refer to my previous 10,000 posts where I stated them.)

What I'm are saying is you are characterizing the actual issue as something it is not.

Let's review: It's a controlling cult--evil, dishonest, abusive and destructive. That's what it is, and when we realize that, we can deal with the actual problem.

6

Site update: Jan 17, 2015

by Simon in

some quick updates, mostly cosmetic:.

the message sending form should display better feedback of why a message is invalid (which will prevent the send button becoming active).. if your status is telling you that you have unread messages then you should see an option in the 'inbox' page to reset the count / mark all messages read.

just press it once, be patient - marking the actual messages is done in the background.. the topic and post counts are being updated - some will still be incorrect while it processes the data but after that should be correct.

rebel8

topic and post counts are being updated - some will still be incorrect

For a moment there, I thought I had stepped into a time machine. I think my virginity is growing back as well.

24

Jehovah's Witnesses recover best from surgery, despite refusing blood.

by nicolaou in

that's' the headline of an article in the sydney morning herald.

my jw family are sharing it with glee on facebook right now.

here's the link; .

rebel8

Cases from 32 years ago cannot be extrapolated to today in the sense the dubs seem to be taking it. Technology is so different.

This 2012 (Not News!) article discusses reviewing outcomes from a very large sample population over several decades.

I noticed Colleen Koch wrote another article that appears (by its title) to be showing opposite results in a different population.

I get it, dubs are looking for external validation of their doctrines, because ya know, they need Satan's System Of Things to say they're right, or something. But they shouldn't cherry pick one article and not even look at the study design and what the results actually mean.

34

RELIGION AND MENTAL ILLNESS!!!

by ADJUSTMENTS in

jw
friends

i have have come to realize most "rank and file" jw's are mentally unstable-to-ill and here is why.... http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/mental-issues.php.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/religious_delusion.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/religion_and_schizophrenia.

rebel8

One of the reasons for widespread misunderstanding of behavioral health conditions is pop psychology. People say, "I'm depressed", and think having the blues when some rather trivial life event happens is the same thing as clinical depression. This does a great disservice to people with actual mental illness by greatly minimizing their symptoms and causes, and eliminating the opportunity to understand physical causes. Just one example.

It's kind of like saying you and your neighbor both have heart disease, when what you have is a self-diagnosed heart murmur and your neighbor is dying from Congestive Heart Failure.

Ignoranceisbliss, I think you're on the right track with your hypothesis. There are also known risk factors that are more prevalent within dubbery (stress, lifestyle), and protective factors that are minimized within it.

34

RELIGION AND MENTAL ILLNESS!!!

by ADJUSTMENTS in

jw
friends

i have have come to realize most "rank and file" jw's are mentally unstable-to-ill and here is why.... http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/mental-issues.php.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/religious_delusion.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/religion_and_schizophrenia.

rebel8

What specific diagnosis are you referring to in regards to the brainwashing comment?

"Mentally ill" is a broad category of hundreds if specific medical conditions.

What is your source material for the statement that brainwashing=mental illness?

Let's start there so we can understand where you're coming from.

mentally ill, the links go on to show most religious people are

I'm sorry but those links do not provide evidence.

As we've discussed, many of the things people typically consider mental illnesses ("Axis I" disorders) are brain conditions. Many brain conditions, not just one. To prove that most religious people are mentally ill, we'd need evidence of diagnoses for 51% of a statistically significant sample of religious people.

And then, not sure where you're going with this, but correlation does not prove causation. So imagining said proof existed, we'd need to eliminate other reasons for correlation.

I remember reading some article once about MI and JW. Might have been on pew.org or something like that--maybe you can find that since you're interested in the topic. I don't know if it was evidence though--IIRC it was more of a general anonymous survey that had to be taken with a grain of salt.

34

RELIGION AND MENTAL ILLNESS!!!

by ADJUSTMENTS in

jw
friends

i have have come to realize most "rank and file" jw's are mentally unstable-to-ill and here is why.... http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/mental-issues.php.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/religious_delusion.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/religion_and_schizophrenia.

rebel8

most "RANK AND FILE" JW's are mentally unstable

Mental illness is a medical condition, diagnosed by professionals using specific medical criteria.

Believing in something that isn't true doesn't by itself mean someone is mentally ill. If that were true, most kids would be mentally ill because they believe in Santa Claus. Or people who are superstitious about the number 13. etc.

I don't doubt mental illness is common among dubs, as it's common among the general population and dubs have additional risk factors. But I'm having trouble with the word "most" in the OP, in absence of evidence.