Mad Irishman

Joined

• started 0 topics
• posted 263 times   see topics posted on
• send a message

Posts by Mad Irishman

• 
  7

  Reveal article: 6 ways religious exemption laws are exploited - Excellent!

  by AndersonsInfo in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  https://www.revealnews.org/article/6-ways-religious-exemption-laws-are-exploited/.

  by amy julia harris / february 29, 2016 .

  6 ways religious exemption laws are exploited.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Mad Irishman

  You either get rid of all the religious exemptions or none of them. Nobody is going to be singled out.

  Seeing that those in control of Congress and the Senate are all religious nuts: good luck with any of that!
• 
  12

  Do the GB want the JW religion to fail?

  by Grey Goose in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  basically what the thread title says.. do you guys think the gb want the jw religion to fail?

  of course failing in the ultimate sense is just not going to happen.

  no matter how bankrupt they went, there is always going to be a percentage that holds on.. but downsizing the membership?

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Mad Irishman

  Nothing is going to happen. People have been saying the JW's are going to disappear for decades. A lot of those people who had been saying that are dead now.
• 
  66

  THE LINGERING SHADOW OF '75

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  none of you are old enough to have been there, i suspect.

  i had been in prison two years as a jw conscientious objector when the exciting news about 1975 spread like wildfire.i was paroled from prison in 1969 and immediately began pioneering.

  the pressures began mounting throughout the organization.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Mad Irishman

  This wasn't my experience at all in 1975. Maybe it was the congregation you were in or who your elders were. I've heard different stories from different people about what they experienced during this time and they are all different, but all I remember is my own personal experience.

  The elders and CO in the congregation I grew up in made it quite clear that nobody knew when the end was coming. We were told we had no idea if 1975 meant anything or not. There certainly was a vocal minority who insisted something was going to happen, but those in charge in our halls, and those giving the talks, most of them at least, warned everyone not to speculate. We had so many "its wrong to speculate brothers" talks that I actually remember that more than the whispers about something might happen. Now I certainly remember some people, a minority doing crazy stuff like selling their house or selling their business. But I remember those people were thought of as kooks and it was wrong to be doing what they were doing. And lets face it. There were a lot of not-so-distantly-past hippies who took a lot of drugs right before they became JW's at that time.

  I believe through the years what happened in 1975 has become greatly exaggerated. Why? I don't know. I know more people who left the witnesses after the explanation of the overlapping generation concept than 1975 coming and going. As a matter of fact I never knew anyone, and I was part of a big region and big group of congregations, who left the witnesses after 1975.

  Everyone's experience is different. Sometimes I think we take our experience as what everyone experienced, because we assume everyone lived the exact same turmoil, emotions, or events. But life and history isn't like that. The truth is what the collective experienced. Not what the individual has.

  Just my opinion.
• 
  5

  THE SHADOW OF '75

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  few of your are old enough to have been there, i suspect.

  i had been in prison two years as a jw conscientious objector when the exciting news about 1975 spread like wildfire.. .

  i was paroled from prison in 1969 and immediately began pioneering.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Mad Irishman

  This wasn't my experience at all in 1975. Maybe it was the congregation you were in or who your elders were. I've heard different stories from different people about what they experienced during this time and they are all different, but all I remember is my own personal experience.

  The elders and CO in the congregation I grew up in made it quite clear that nobody knew when the end was coming. We were told we had no idea if 1975 meant anything or not. There certainly was a vocal minority who insisted something was going to happen, but those in charge in our halls, and those giving the talks, most of them at least, warned everyone not to speculate. We had so many "its wrong to speculate brothers" talks that I actually remember that more than the whispers about something might happen. Now I certainly remember some people, a minority doing crazy stuff like selling their house or selling their business. But I remember those people were thought of as kooks and it was wrong to be doing what they were doing. And lets face it. There were a lot of not-so-distantly-past hippies who took a lot of drugs right before they became JW's at that time.

  I believe through the years what happened in 1975 has become greatly exaggerated. Why? I don't know. I know more people who left the witnesses after the explanation of the overlapping generation concept than 1975 coming and going. As a matter of fact I never knew anyone, and I was part of a big region and big group of congregations, who left the witnesses after 1975.

  Everyone's experience is different. Sometimes I think we take our experience as what everyone experienced, because we assume everyone lived the exact same turmoil, emotions, or events. But life and history isn't like that. The truth is what the collective experienced. Not what the individual has.

  Just my opinion.

  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  
• 
  79

  What's a word that describes the way Witnesses behave as a group?

  by paul from cleveland in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i can't recall the word that describes a group that keeps to itself like the witnesses do.

  i thought it was "insular" but i don't think that's the one i'm looking for after reading the definition.

  i remember an elder using the word "clannish" and that has the proper definition but it reminds me of a group of elves.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Mad Irishman

  You had it with insular. It is neither negative nor positive. Go with that.
• 
  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

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  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.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  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

  1. jw
  2. 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?

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  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

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  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:.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  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

  1. jw
  2. 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.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  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

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  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.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  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.