Posts by Mad Irishman

33

Need to vent: My loathing for the JW cult increases more and more, while my wife clings more and more to it

by goingthruthemotions in

just as i think my loathing for the jw cult has peaked, it goes higher and higher.

i wish this cult would just go away.

i wish my wife would just wake up.

Mad Irishman

I come here on this website and I see a lot of ex-witnesses who have just lost their minds. A religion isn't going to go away. You're not going to take it down. People are not going to change. You need to hear this from someone.

If more people were kinder here they would try to have an intervention for those stuck in the cycle of this sort of thinking. Nothing is going to change. The more you hang onto that way of thinking the more miserable you're going to be. You're giving yourself false hope thinking something is going to change, which allows you to hold onto the thought that maybe you won't lose what you're afraid you're going to lose.

Everyone has the freedom to believe what they want to believe; whether it's dumb, true, false, great, whatever. Look around at society. The only thing you can choose is the right choice for you. You can't make other people make that choice. Believing the future will resolve it all out is cheating yourself out of the time you could be letting go and moving on with your life.

6

A friend

by Garrett in

jw
friends

my friend,.

if only i could count how many times i've been told that it's a holy organization run by imperfect humans.

i told you about 1975 but you said that the future is all that matters and not the past, i told you about "new light" and "old light" and i asked you, "who got the old light wrong?

Mad Irishman

My advice to you is to get off this website, move on with your life, put your past in your rear view mirror, and go live life. Otherwise you're just whipping yourself up into a frenzy. And for what? So you can prove to yourself that you're right? Good luck with that. You'll be here posting the same upheaval 20 years from now if that's what you need. Just go live life and stop worrying about what others want or don't want to do.

This is just an opinion.

15

JW Brothers

by Festus in

there is a group called jw brothers in facebook.

somebody has posted an article that catholic church has covered up child abuse.. http://www.myfoxboston.com/news/national-content/catholic-bishops-not-obligated-to-report-clerical-sex-abuse-vatican-says/72976327.

this is what somebody had posted as reply:.

Mad Irishman

If you know anything about the Catholic Church abuse scandal trying to compare it to Jehovah's Witnesses is sort of like comparing the sun to the moon. They are both round spheres out in space, but one doesn't equal the other. You have to take your emotional interest and your emotional disdain for witnesses out of your head and heart in order to look at things straight and truthfully sometimes.

A local priest where I come from admitted to abusing over 400 boys over the course of 30 years. That's one priest! I know of about 80 priests from my area who have been accused of molesting approximately 5,000 children. In Milwaukee one priest is accused of molesting over 300 deaf boys who were in the care of the Catholic Church. In one diocese in Ireland several priests molested over 100 disabled children. There are some cities where there are thousands of Catholic children victims of priest molestation. On top of that the Church knew the whole time, and time and again simply "reassigned" priests to different parishes. I've had several family members who are raped by priests as children. My friend was raped by a priest for 10 years. That priest was reassigned 6 times to different parishes and molested around 100 boys that they know of.

I didn't see that prevalence among witnesses. And just like in society in general most molestation cases among witnesses are done by family members, not elders who rape 20, 30, 40, 200 kids, get reassigned somewhere else, and then rape another 100 kids, only to do it again and again after that. Trying to connect those dots is disingenuous. That is all I'm saying.

I know this is a very emotionally charged issue. But some common sense needs to be used when discussing this and comparing it to the Catholic Church. Most of my family is Catholic. And I've never seen any molestation scandal so large in scope with so many people from the top to the bottom, including all the bishops, cardinals, and Popes as the Catholic molestation scandal that was so egregious and disgusting. Comparing witnesses to that scandal would be akin to comparing 9/11 to the 6 million Jews and 8 million non-Jews Hitler killed in the Holocaust.

You may not like that opinion, but that is closer to the truth than a lot of the over-the-top comparisons you read here sometimes.

12

I had a bizarre dream the other night

by Freeandclear in

jw
friends

quick recap.

i'm 44, been df'd about a 10 months.

got baptized when i was 18, in and out of the borg for years due to guilt.

Mad Irishman

Dreams are a combination of what you may have been thinking about lately and all of your memories that your brain puts together randomly into pieces. Dreams don't make sense. Don't put too much trouble or worry into it.

23

Should this Body of elders be considered blood guilty?

by dbq407 in

over the weekend a very nice, caring individual was killed in a car accident after meeting.

she was 32 y/o and has a 3 year old daughter.

her husband was driving home from meeting when his car slid off the road, came back on the road, and was broad sided by a truck.

Mad Irishman

Personal responsibility. People have free will. If I get killed going somewhere it is my responsibility that I made the decision to go.

Blood guilty would have been that the elders told the congregation that they had to come to the meeting no matter the weather and that Jehovah would protect them no matter the circumstance and no harm could come to them if they came no matter what. Maybe then. But not cancelling a meeting? No. That would not be it.

21

Travel recommendations?

by stephanie61092 in

hey guys.

i've decided that during this time of being dfed, maybe trying to get reinstated, i'm going to enjoy my time with myself.

that being said, i would like to do some traveling when the weather warms up across the us.

Mad Irishman

Some wonderful places to see in the United States that are safe: Pacific Coast Highway near Big Sur and the Redwood forests. Just paradise and beautiful.

The Florida Keys are insanely beautiful and Key West is tame from what it used to be.

Newport, Rhode Island is a gem of a place. Beautiful island with old world flare, beaches in the summer, 19th Century mansions you can take a tour of that are castles really, great food. Just beautiful.

Mount Desert Island in Maine. Sublime.

The White Mountains of New Hampshire are wonderful. Great food and accommodations in North Conway, New Hampshire.

Stowe, Vermont is great. And you can go to Ben & Jerry's and get ice cream samples!

22

Another one bites the dust...

by StarTrekAngel in

so despite glimpses of hope here and there, the wife is just not seeing this cult for what it is.. so who is the one the bit the dust?

i've not been feeling so well lately.

a bit of lightheadedness.

Mad Irishman

Marriage is tough. And when someone changes it is tough on the other mate no matter what that change might be. You can't blame your wife. But religion, or not accepting someone else's faith, is something that can come between any two people no matter what that faith is. Keep your head up. Try to find some things to keep your mind busy or you'll let your mind drive you crazy.

30

When Did Higher Education Become Taboo?

by Wild_Thing in

jw
friends

i have been reading about the early history of russelites/jws and in the beginning, it seems the organization was formed and headed by quite a few educated people.

lawyers, doctors, businessman.

you could buy voting rights within the organization for $1000, which by today's standard would be somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000, something most of us do not have on hand, unless you are highly educated and/or wealthy.

Mad Irishman

It was in the mid-eighties when they started to bring it up. It was a personal decision. Still is. But then it swung a bit so that Witnesses shouldn't go to 4 year colleges. Then it swung back the other way. Then it swung back to that young people shouldn't go. Then it was they should only go for a couple of years or just enough to get what they needed for a trade or job.

If you go by what's in the literature you wouldn't know what they are directing. They can only make a recommendation. It isn't a rule.

47

Help finding a video of GB member saying that Jehovah may not really be God's name

by mamacita29 in

jw
friends

hi everyone i'm at work and need to show this video to a jw.

i saw it a few weeks ago i think it was geoffry jackson who said that jehovah may or may not be gods real name but we use it anyways.

can someone help me find that video?

Mad Irishman

Some of you really have no reading or listening comprehension. For people who are always clamoring for the truth.

He said: the exact pro·nun·ci·a·tion is not known. Pro·nun·ci·a·tion. Let's all say it together now. The exact pronunciation of God's name is not known. It never has been. No one in history ever said it was. Jehovah's Witnesses never said they knew. Never. Did you guys even study when you were witnesses?

Have any of you even read a book? Went to college perhaps? Know anything about American and English history? YHWH is God's name. They didn't use vowels in Hebrew, so no one knows the original pronunciation of YHWH, because we don't know the exact vowels. Educated men came up with Yahweh from their study of ancient Hebrew. Jehovah is the English version of Yahweh. The founding fathers of our country, the United State of America, used Jehovah. I'm not talking about Thomas Jefferson or George Washington, although they used Jehovah too. I'm talking about William Bradford from the Mayflower. Have any of you ever read his dairies? How about the founder of Rhode Island Roger Williams? Have you ever read his books? The pilgrims and the settlers at Plymouth and all the first settlers of this country from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York. They all used Jehovah as God's name. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Some you you have let your hatred rot your brain out from reality, history, and common sense. Jehovah is the English translation of YHWH. Before the 20th Century all Christians of every faith used Jehovah as the English name for God. It isn't a witness thing!

46

Jehovahs Witnesses and the Name , HOW Important. ?

by smiddy in

jehovah`s witnesses place great emphasis on the importance of god`s name as jehovah .so much so that they are often accused by christendom`s religions as substituting jehovah for christ.. the old testament ( hebrew scriptures identify god as the tetragrammaton four hebrew consanants yhwh and not jhvh.

as mistakenly believed by a 13th century spanish monk .. modern scholars including the j.w.`s agree that the more accurate pronunciation of gods name would be more nearer to yahweh than the name jehovah .. so why do j.w.`s insist on the name ?

jehovah ?

Mad Irishman

Giordano,

You don't know what you're talking about. Go read English literature being written in colonial America and all they use is the name Jehovah. The Puritans in Plymouth used it. Roger Williams in Rhode Island used it. It is even on Anne Hutchinson's grave stone (a founder of Rhode Island). Jehovah is on gravestones all over New England in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. People started talking it out of Bibles at the turn of the 20th Century. It was there all those years before that. Really, it is mind-numbing how ignorant people are of our own American history.

The term Jehovah was not obscure in American literature until the 20th Century. Before the 20th Century when most Americans spoke of God they used the name Jehovah. Why do you think all the great writers pre-WWI in the U.S. used Jehovah? Why did Ernest Hemingway use Jehovah? Why is it used in American Cinema pre-1960's so much. I've gone to college. I've studied English Lit and American Cinema. You're brain washing yourself if you want to contradict fact.

That is a fact. To try and rewrite history is obscene and rather bizarre. Jehovah's Witnesses did not invent the name "Jehovah" in the English language.

No offense, but go study English literature and British history and American history. You really need to brush up on it. You're embarrassing yourself.