Posts by cognizant dissident

and to the rest of you. Take a deep breath because this one is opinionated. Mind you, moreso than others. lol so if he decides to be a boob, it is not me. He thinks different than I and we disagree on most everything. It keeps our debate skills fresh in this home.

Wow! Sparkie is already disavowing all responsibility for anything you might say. You must really be a live one!

Cog

77

ARREST IN JONBENET RAMSEY CASE!

by BizzyBee in

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060816/ap_on_re_us/jonbenet_ramsey

boulder, colo. - a man suspected in the slaying of 6-year-old beauty queen jonbenet ramsey nearly a decade ago was arrested wednesday in thailand, the district attorney said in the long-awaited breakthrough in one of the nation's most lurid unsolved murder cases.

district attorney mary lacey said the arrest followed several months of work.

cognizant dissident

Rabbit:

2nd, most parents facing the violent death of their child are very emotional & distraught, Jonbenet's parents seemed IMO way too blase. As I said, maybe they are just odd. That is just my opinion based partly on what I would feel. Thank you for your opinion.

3rd, "this case has [not] been resolved." The man is a suspect...saying anymore than that right now would indicate a person has been manipulated by the media. I hope, if this guy is the guilty one, he pays dearly for his crimes.

Just because some people keep their emotions private and choose not to show them on national television does not mean they are not "feeling" the exact same thing that any parent of a murdered child feels. This is not odd in the least. It is a common personality trait and is also a common reaction when one is in shock from grief. It is hardly evidence of any guilt. Conversely, many guilty of crimes can put on quite convincing acts of innocence for the public. This means absolutely nothing.

You say that implying the man who was arrested was guilty, indicates a person has been manipulated by the media. So what does it indicate when you imply the Ramsey's are guilty in some way just because they did not show the amount of feeling you thought they should and it seemed odd to you? Could it be that you were manipulated by pre-mature statements made by the police to the media implicating the Ramsey's? The police had enough evidence to at least make an arrest of this man which is more evidence than they ever had against the Ramsey's. In all fairness, judge both circumstances with the same measuring stick.

Cog

30

Is it possible to go to university and still come out a dub?

by Crumpet in

the reason i ask is that my best friend all the time i was growing up was a boy about 5 years older than i was.

his parents were at lot less strict than mine and as he was super brainy after he finished public school and sixth form he went off to one of the country's finest universities.

the only thing that bugs me now about this is that i know he was incredibly clever - how could he go to uni and still be a dub?

cognizant dissident

To some degree I think it also depends on what you are studying. Someone studying ethics, philosophy, psychology, and various sciences are more likely to be exposed to new information and critical thinking skills that cause them to re-evaluate how they "know" what they know and how their beliefs have been formed and influenced over the years. At least, that's how it started for me. Courage to look honestly at opposing opinions such as those found on AJWRB and JWD was the end. I can't say the courses I took in accounting and business administration after I had to transfer out of the sciences, really encouraged the same kind of reflection on my beliefs. So definitely, what you study makes a difference.

Cog

46

Agnostic or Atheist?

by done4good in

for all of you non-religionists out there: do you consider yourself an agnostic or atheist, and why?

it seems many ex-jws that "loose the faith" have a tendency to go straight for atheism.

i myself, would consider myself more of an agnostic, as i believe we have no real way of knowing if there is a god one way or the other, and it tends to seem just as extreme to me, to insist that there is not one.

cognizant dissident

Great article startingover. I have been waffling between labelling myself an agnostic or an atheist for 6 months now, since I left the witnesses and watched my whole life's belief system crumble in a few weeks time. From those well-reasoned arguments you posted, I can see that it was a distinction without a difference.

I agree, none of us really "knows" if there is a god and right now it is unprovable. I am open to changing my mind as new evidence becomes available but I don't really expect that to happen in my lifetime. I may not be as strict as Kid-A in accepting only objective, measurable, empirical evidence. If I experienced a miracle I might be persuaded to believe in god based on that subjective experience of mine. Or I might just get the dosage on my meds checked. Hard to say. I definitely am not going to accept the word of half a dozen prophets, long dead, who claim god spoke to them. Sorry, need a little more proof than that. Being gullible is how my parents got sucked into the witnesses. If god saw fit to give a half dozen humans divine revelations and the rest of us mortals were just supposed to believe based on heresay, then I say, if there is a god, he is not very reasonable. One has to wonder, if they had good anti-psychotic drugs in Bible times, how many prophets would still have been having visions?

Cog

ps: James Thomas, you often ask, "Who am I really"? Do you really know who you truly are or are you just hoping one of us will?

25

One more down the drain-marriage-divorce

by sspo in

jw
friends

i mentioned in the past that my wife turned me in for apostasy and because of it she filed for separation ( she is too holy and spiritual to file for divorce) .she came home this afternoon and started packing a few things to move to an apartment.. i am still going to meetings but it is not enough for her, i reminded her of 1 cor 7 where it talks about a wife not leaving an unbeleiver as long as he is willing to stay with her but she says that does not apply to apostasy.

go figure!.

she is free to worship her god, i'm not stopping her but she has been blessed by the powerful gb who the witnesses exalts above god himself that tells them they have the right to leave a mate if it is spiritual endangerment.

cognizant dissident

sspo

I'm sorry for what you're going through right now. I know when my husband and I were having some serious marriage problems, not JW related, that I wished he would do something unscriptural, like cheat on me so that I would have a scriptural "excuse" to divorce him. Is it possible that there are other unresolved problems between you and your wife, so that when she was presented with a viable reason (your apostasy) she decided to grasp on to that as her "scriptural reason" to leave. As you pointed out, she didn't have to do that. Many others have stayed with unbelieving mates and had good marriages. That's why I wonder if there may be more to her reasoning than she is letting on to the elders.

Cog

38

WHY I'M BECOMING A MUSLIM!

by Dansk in

jw
friends

i came across an interesting site the other day and below is an extract from one of its web pages (does anyone know if the following is actually true as i've never read the quran?).

no wonder so many muslim men wear baggy trousers, it's to hide the erection they get when they look heavenwards!.

what i don't understand is what's in it for the women?

cognizant dissident

Is it just me or is this Muhammed fellow just a tad bit obsessed with virgin sex?

26

So THAT's the reason!

by Dansk in

and i thought it was just me!

security 'bad news for sex drive' differences in sexual appetite may be driven by evolutiona woman's sex drive begins to plummet once she is in a secure relationship, according to research.. researchers from germany found that four years into a relationship, less than half of 30-year-old women wanted regular sex.

conversely, the team found a man's libido remained the same regardless of how long he had been in a relationship.

cognizant dissident

juni

I have been in your situation and I too wondered if my husband had a problem getting it up because of middle age (prostate) or whether he had just turned into a lazy, tv watching, wife neglecting, ass. So, I did a little experiment one night (I'll spare you the details, let's just say I read in cosmo about a few moves no healthy man can resist! ) Well, I discovered the plumbing was in fine working order, he just didn't have any motivation to turn on the tap. So one night, after getting the cold shoulder to the television again, I told him that another man had asked me out (true) and if he didn't start paying more attention to me than to the f*****g TV, I saw no reason not to accept the offer. So, now I have been getting my just desserts regularly ever since. For my part, I am trying to learn how to bring up issues a little more sweetly and subtlely. (I get crabby when I ain't getting any!)

I'm not recommending this approach to everyone. Our situation was so bad that I was about ready to walk away from the relationship altogether so it wasn't a manipulative bluff. I was prepared to carry through and leave. We have a lot of other issues too, which is probably at the root of the problem to begin with, but having a pleasurabl physical relationship makes it a lot more motivating to work out the other problems.

Cog

41

Rules you broke?

by KW13 in

jw
friends

.

what rules did you find, you couldn't help breaking as a witness?.

i swore sometimes, got me and a mate drunk, copied software e.t.c (caesars things to caesar), celebrated a birthday/christmas or two...went against some stuff we were told not to do in the young people ask book...erm.... how about you?

cognizant dissident

I pretty much broke all of them at one time or another. The last and most serious was talking to all you evil apostates!

Cog

17

Is it possible to 'choose' your own beliefs?

by nicolaou in

to my mind the answer is an obvious "no".

what i believe is drawn from my experiences, reasoning, research and endeavour.

my beliefs may well be wrong but i have no other choice than to believe them until evidence or superior reasoning convinces me otherwise.. it narks me to hear people say "this is what i choose to believe".. am i weird?

cognizant dissident

As children, our experiences are very limited and often controlled or manipulated by others. The amount and types of information we are exposed to can also be controlled by our parents and teachers. So, perhaps, as very young children, we do not consciously choose our beliefs but adopt the ones of those who surround us. As teenagers, we are exposed to more and more situations where beliefs are held which are disparate to those we have already been exposed to. If a child is told one thing by a teacher, and another thing by its parents, it might then make a choice as to who it will believe. The choice could be influenced by logic and reasoning power, but also by fear, trust, love and loyalty. It is still a choice. We continue to make choices such as these for our whole lives.

Some choose to obey the elder's and never read an apostate website or enroll in a university course. Others choose to pick up a book such as Crisis of Conscience or a book on evolution. Does that automatically mean that they will believe what those books are telling them? Two people may read the same book, one will choose to reject what he has read and another accept it. Two householders may hear the exact same JW sermon by the exact same person. One will believe what they say is the "truth", another scoff at their "drivel".

In conclusion, I will say that people very much "choose" their beliefs and it is not always because of superior arguments, evidence, or reasoning powers. Our choices are very much afftected by other things, such as personal experieces and our own perceptions of them, temperament, value we place on group acceptance and hundreds of othe factors.

Cog