Posts by Mad Irishman

20

What are the Witnesses Afraid Of ?

by Sour Grapes in

jw
friends

if the witnesses have the truth and have been going to meetings for many years and every week they learn how to be effective in the ministry and learn about the bible on sundays and every week have a family worship night, why are they afraid to talk to anyone who doesn't agree with them or question their beliefs?

if they have the truth then nothing can refute it.

the truth is the truth.

Mad Irishman

There are strong minded people and there are weak minded people. Weak minded people can be persuaded into believing almost anything.

I think we can all agree that more people are weak minded than strong minded. Maybe it's 60-40.

And remember. Some people have a belief system because they truly believe it and those people are going to live by that system no matter what. You see that in Conservatives or Liberals or Communists and with Born Agains and with nuts like ISIS. No matter what you say to them nothing will change their mind.

Others are complete dummies or uneducated or easily influenced and they can be put off-balance by a leaf falling on their shoe. This is simply human nature.

11

Telling Parents About TTATT

by ivanatahan in

jw
friends

my parents are zealous jecultah's blindnesses, but my sister and i are not.

because of this, we are limited in our abilities/opportunities in life.

mu parents hate my sister because she went to college and started a full time job and thus isn't able to go to meetings or service.

Mad Irishman

If you're not baptized you don't have a lot to worry about.

Do your parents realize that not going to college is a suggestion and not a rule? Many witnesses go to college. Just like anyone there are old school JW's and those who have a brain of their own. Ultimately, too many people who are JW's don't realize that there are only a few rules they have to live by, and everything else is up to their conscience. I'm not sure what it is, perhaps peer pressure, but people who are active JW's have the ultimate decision making power and not anyone else. You have to decide whether you want to go to school or not. If you don't go then that decision is on you no matter what someone else makes you feel. I personally don't care what others think. But I see that many witnesses and ex-witnesses have this belief that they are forced into doing everything they do and that it's the "religion's" fault for whether they went to school, who they married, or how they live. Ultimately, those decisions are yours and you're going to have to live with them. You can't blame someone else when you make a decision. If you are weak minded and you let others influence your decision making that is all on you. Please feel free to bash me, but that is my opinion. It's one thing to not believe in your faith anymore. It's another to blame all your poor decisions on somebody else. You can say you were pressured to do things, but ultimately you make the decisions.

If your parents are happy as JW's they are not going to listen to you and you're just going to alienate them by trying to counter-act what they believe in. Just my experience.

26

Please help me figure out my dreams

by Socrateswannabe in

jw
friends

hi everyone, this may be the stupidest post ever.

i am stumped for an answer and would love to hear your opinions, though.

every week or two for the last couple of years, i have a dream--or at least that's what i'm calling it--that consists of me waking up or thinking that i've waked up, and seeing the ceiling of my darkened bedroom filled with algebraic equations.

Mad Irishman

Your brain stores everything you have ever seen or experienced. These memories are all stored there and when you dream your mind creates narratives from all your life experiences, ideas, emotions, and memories. For many people they dream about something they were recently thinking about or experienced, but for the most part your brain creates random narratives from your memories. This is normal and they have no universal or deeper meaning. Your brain is one of the most complex engines that exists. Random dreams are part of the normal lifecycle of REM sleep.

You're reading too much into what you're experiencing. Just because you cannot recall memories or experiences while you are conscious does not mean they are not all still stored in your brain.

28

For all still in.... fakers. Help.

by Sofia Lose in

am i alone in this feeling?

i wish i could muster the cojones needed to tell my husband "i want a divorce, move away, not be a jw anymore!".

i find myself screaming these same words over and loud inside my mind, several times a day, and yet on the outside my actions could not be more opposed to these inner feelings.. sometimes i worry that this internal conflict will cause me to go crazy.

Mad Irishman

I think it is normal for anyone to want to run away from their life at one point or another. It would be abnormal if you didn't feel that way. There is good and bad with everything and in every relationship. The question is: what are you going to do when there is more bad than good?

That is something only you can answer, because only you know your situation 100 percent.

Good luck. I really feel for you.

30

Looking for examples of Witnesses physically harmed during field service

by Indian Larry in

i am looking for any examples, preferably with independent news sources of any witnesses that have ever been:.

mugged.

raped.

Mad Irishman

I don't think it is the stance of Witnesses that God protects you, even from death, murder, or crime while you are out in the ministry and that you can go anywhere without consequence.

There was a case in Mexico where 4 Witnesses were murdered when they called on the house of a drug lord. Also, Al-Qaeda in the Philippines beheaded several witnesses and sent their severed heads to the local Kingdom Hall as a warning to stay away from their part of the island. These were the same zealots that had several Americans and Europeans kidnapped for several years and the finally the U.S. sent in Navy Seals to rescue them. Hopefully, they killed all those monsters.

29

Is there a Child Molester on the Governing Body?

by TTATTelder in

great report by abc on the abuses in jw-dot-org land.... i hope it opens a "floodgate" of future news reports and exposes.

if you ask yourself, "why hasn't the watchtower leadership changed their policy on the 2 witness rule?

if one or more persons on the gb has victims out there that can't come forward because of the 2 witness rule, then that would explain the permanent road block to policy change that is obviously in place.

Mad Irishman

If you put your emotions aside you can see from a legal standpoint what a Pandora's box releasing files about every molestation case that has ever happened in a religion would be. It would open up the religion to even more lawsuits by those who were named--whether the accusation were true or not. Also, in the Conti case her lawyer was on a fishing expedition asking for that list. It wasn't really relative to her case from a legal standpoint. What was relative was what did her local elders do or not do. This wasn't a class action lawsuit.

Taking the emotion out of it no legal council would tell a company / religion / corporation to release a list of every judicial committee they've ever had in their history. That would cause chaos in that realm and you could never have judicial committees after that at all. So that isn't so unbelievable.

I think what often gets missed in all of these cases is the tragedy they all are. A person's life was ruined. What really isn't happening is that the perpetrator isn't really paying the cost they should. This is really a legal problem, because just like the two-witness rule the standard of proof in a court of law is very high and you usually need two people who were abused to get a conviction. This happens a lot in rape cases as well when a rape kit isn't taken right away. It's he said against she said and a lot of times the guilty person goes scot free.

All too often people comment on these issues with a bias eye--which is their right to do. But you have to look at things from all angles to come to a relative, well-balanced truth of things.

14

Disfellowshipped for Tattoos??

by Lynnie in

are getting tattoos a disfellowshipping offense?

i know several jw's that have them but i always thought they were totally taboo.

what do you guys know about this?

Mad Irishman

I know of an old man who became a witness and then proceeded to get the tetragrammaton (YHWH) tattooed on his forearm. The elders told him he should not get tattoos. He said, opps. After that everyone simply thought it was a funny story, which it was.

Also, you can't get DF'd for getting a tattoo or beard. It's funny how these kind of beliefs get put into the collective and everyone thinks they are true.

46

Is disfellowshipping as popular as it was years ago?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i seldom hear of people getting df'd anymore.

years ago it seemed there were a few per year in a congregation.

Mad Irishman

I don't agree that it's the kids who are getting in trouble. I see mostly adults who get in trouble. 99 percent of the time it's sex, but that's human nature. Kids just drop out if they aren't invested in it. They leave first and then do what they want after that.

14

"Why I don't like people coming to my door, selling religion"

by Captain Schmideo2 in

jw
friends

this is from a blog, "news from me" that i read fairly regularly.

mark evanier is, among other things, a comic book writer (co-writer for "groo-the wanderer), a television writer, a great raconteur, and was a close person friend of jack kirby, one of the world's greatest comic book artists.he got an email from a jw trying to explain why they come to his door.evanier's answer is well thought out, and should explain to even the densest j-dub why people really don't like being bothered.

maybe his correspondent will take it to heart, but probably not.

Mad Irishman

Let's be honest. Who likes someone coming to their door? I recently had an Retirement Portfolio Specialist come to my door, because he opened a new office in my town. I could not get rid of him. And he looked up my number in the phone book and keeps calling now.

I also had these teenage kids come to my door and they explained that they were selling books via this company and the proceeds helped them get out of the inner-city and help get them a scholarship to go to college. So I bought one of their books to help out. As soon as I was done I googled the company and found out the whole thing is a scam and the poor inner city kids are getting scammed too and they work for nothing and in the end they never get a scholarship. It was really, really sad.

So unless you have cake or cookies please don't knock. As long as you bring cake or cookies, even if you're trying to scam me, I'll listen.

By the way if anyone from Microsoft tries to call you and says your laptop is sending out errors or is infected that is a laughable scam. They are from India and it's not real and they're going to try and sell you virus software you don't need. It's not real. Microsoft will never call you. And neither will the IRS!

14

Do you know any books written by Jehovah's Witnesses?

by paradisebeauty in

jw
friends

i found once a list on the internet on novels about the new world written by jehovah's witnesses.

don't seam to find it anymore.

does any of you happen to know any novels about the new world?

Mad Irishman

Oh, and crime novelist Mickey Spillane was a famous Jehovah's Witness. I remember seeing him talk about it on 60 Minutes several years ago. No "New World" stuff in here though. Just pulp fiction.

Mickey Spillane on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Mickey-Spillane/e/B000APA186