Posts by done4good

4

In recent interview, Patti Smith talks about being raised JW.

by talesin in

from interview magazine, in october.

she has a new memoir, should be a good read.. [bold is mine, and yes!

to whole thing, and especially the last sentence.].

done4good

Big Patti Smith fan. Brilliant poet and rocker. Was planning to read M Train shortly. This post reminded me of that.

Thanks, Tal.

d4g

79

The really cool feeling of community within JWs

by Phaedra in

i remember going out with other jws after the memorial.. small gatherings.. picnics at some local landmark.. the feeling of closeness, camaraderie, friendship with like minded people you could trust.. haven't experienced it since i left.. really miss that..

done4good

Frank Ward - but I think learning the teachings of Jesus is better than having no moral teaching.

Here you go again with incredibly ignorant statements. Stop doing this to yourself.

What makes you assume that atheists have "no moral teaching"?

Please do some reading and educate yourself. Start with the bible. If read with even the slightest open mind, it becomes clear this book should never be used as a moral guide. That should give you your first hint where morals do not come from.

d4g

54

The Watchtower is not invincible

by Coded Logic in

despite claims to the contrary, there's no guarantee the watchtower will be around in a few decades time.

and it seems to me there's ever mounting evidence that the opposite may well be true.

but it's not just that recruitment is down and their defectors are up.

done4good

Phizzy - They know that they can go down the extremist/fundamentalist route and lose most members, but retain a few had-core types. Or they can go more Mainstream, retain almost as many as they have in the past, and still keep the money flowing in.

Going mainstream will not guarantee they keep members and keep money flowing in. WT is an authoritarian organization, and part of its success is based on its authority and control over its members. If this control is lost, many, many will likely leave, since the only thing keeping them in is that control. It is not in their DNA to even take a serious shot at this.

It's a catch-22 though. Becoming more hardcore is not a good option either. They really have been doing this for the last 20 years or so, and what has taken place is a steady outward flow of their best and brightest that continues to this day.

Given those two poor options, WT will likely keep the status quo, (meaning more control will be attempted), since a long, slow bleed out is preferable to crash and burn. It is the social evolutionary preference of immediate survival vs. long-term sustainability. WT really does not think long-term. Authoritarian regimes typically do not.

d4g

27

People who are happy in the org

by jhine in

i don't know if i can put my musings clearly into words , but i' ll try to be coherant !

on a couple of other threads lately folk have said that they have no wish to disenchant jws who are happy in the org .

those who have no personal problems and are content to stay in , thinking that it is good way to live and the nearest thing to the truth .

done4good

It is really not a matter of what is better or worse for them, or even those affected by their beliefs, (such as innocents being shunned by believers). It is a matter of what is probable, and the potential downside that might result if you miss your target, (and you likely will).

Unfortunately, it is highly improbable that a believing JW, (good life in the organization or not), will accept TTATT openly, without doing so on their own volition. JWs are not unique in this area. All believers are such, because at some level, they want to be. As long as this is the case, you will not have success, and only cause frustration, (or worse), for yourself, and may even cause them to become even more entrenched, as that type of response is often a first instinct of someone experiencing acute cognitive dissonance. TTATT will cause cognitive dissonance.

People will research on their own when they are ready. That is why we have resources such as this website.

To use an oft quoted Buddhist proverb, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear".

d4g

79

The really cool feeling of community within JWs

by Phaedra in

i remember going out with other jws after the memorial.. small gatherings.. picnics at some local landmark.. the feeling of closeness, camaraderie, friendship with like minded people you could trust.. haven't experienced it since i left.. really miss that..

done4good

Frank Ward Atheists can't possibly offer the same closeness and trust which Christianity offers.

Gotta love how these religious fanatics shoot themselves in the foot with their own words.

You just traded one judgemental and bigoted belief system for another.

Brilliant.

d4g

79

The really cool feeling of community within JWs

by Phaedra in

i remember going out with other jws after the memorial.. small gatherings.. picnics at some local landmark.. the feeling of closeness, camaraderie, friendship with like minded people you could trust.. haven't experienced it since i left.. really miss that..

done4good

Humans are social creatures and social needs run deep. Your post expresses this natural human phenomenon. Creating a new social environment takes work. You may not end up with as many "friends" in the end, but the quality of those new relationships will doubtless be better overall, since your friendship will not compete with loyalty to an organization. The very fact that you are expressing feelings of social displacement is testimony to the fact that most of those social relationships were not true friendships.

d4g

37

What did you have for Christmas dinner?

by GrreatTeacher in

jw
friends

my inlaws are polish, though my husband is a 3rd generation american, but the food traditions have stuck around.. we have christmas eve dinner starting with red beet soup with sour cream, pierogies filled with mashed potatoes or saurkraut, ham, polish sausage sliced and cooked with saurkraut, turkey (that part is american), krischickies (likely spelled wrong) which are crispy pastries dipped in powdered sugar, and apple pie (also american.).

there are goodnatured threats toward bad children who may need to get their dupa busted (butt spanked) and therefore santa will bring figismachen.

i also love golabkis (ground beef and rice wrapped in cabbage leaves), but these were not served this time.

done4good

Wow...a Polish family Christmas dinner...That takes me back. My grandparents on mom's side were 1st gen American, born to Polish immigrant parents, and in my mom's early JW days, (late '70s early '80s), this Christmas visit was still allowed for some reason, although we were made to feel guilty about it, so it stopped eventually. Making homemade pierogies with both mashed potato/cheese and sauerkraut filling and kielbasa was an all day affair on Christmas eve for my grandmother and her three daughters, (mom and aunts were all JW by '81 or so). Really miss homemade pierogies...

This year was somewhat of an non-traditional, (for my wife's non-Italian family), Italian family dinner with eggplant rolatini, lasagna, and chicken marsala, Chianti and Valpolicella, and some kind of really good cannoli thing with the crust separate from the filling. Yes, I ate too much ;-)

d4g

56

What made you turn atheist or agnostic?

by LevelThePlayingField in

if you were a jw and are now an atheist or agnostic, what was the tipping point that made you turn to it?.

the reason i ask is i have noticed that many who leave the jw's seem to turn to atheism, versus still having some form of a faith.

have many of you given up on god first or have you had atheistic views first and then found atheism to be true.

done4good

Oubliette, I can assure you I was not ignoring what you were saying, and agree only the first quote was in reference to a desert OT type god.

Deism was very much a precursor to modern atheism. Very few people at the beginning of the enlightenment era considered themselves atheists, (such as Thomas Paine), however when their views on the matter are considered in context, their ideas were no different than modern atheists. Sagan chooses to define modern atheism as something it is not, (as refusal to accept the possibility of a god or superior power), rather than simple non-belief. A higher power could be many things, (from zero dimension point particle branes to multi-dimension p-branes to some superior intellect that humans will never know), however none of those possibilities imply belief. They are merely possibilities that can be acknowledged.

Deists are no different than modern atheists in this context. Sagan's statement that atheism is "certainty that god does not exist", is a misrepresentation of atheism as understood by modern definition.

d4g

56

What made you turn atheist or agnostic?

by LevelThePlayingField in

if you were a jw and are now an atheist or agnostic, what was the tipping point that made you turn to it?.

the reason i ask is i have noticed that many who leave the jw's seem to turn to atheism, versus still having some form of a faith.

have many of you given up on god first or have you had atheistic views first and then found atheism to be true.

done4good

An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed. - Conversations with Carl Sagan (2006), edited by Tom Head, p. 70

I am a big fan of Sagan, but he is just plain wrong here. He does atheism an incredible disservice with this statement. Sometimes quoting a credible source to add weight to an argument, is just as logically flawed as using one's supposed lack of credibility as a source of disconfirmation, (kind of an ad hominem in reverse).

Atheism is NOT about certainty at all. Atheism concerning belief in a desert god is no different than non-belief in the Easter Bunny. The burden of proof lies with the believer. If empirical evidence is demonstrated for the existence of said god, an intellectually honest atheist would change her/his position.

d4g

56

What made you turn atheist or agnostic?

by LevelThePlayingField in

if you were a jw and are now an atheist or agnostic, what was the tipping point that made you turn to it?.

the reason i ask is i have noticed that many who leave the jw's seem to turn to atheism, versus still having some form of a faith.

have many of you given up on god first or have you had atheistic views first and then found atheism to be true.

done4good

Even as a JW, evidence/empiricism was important to me. I compartmentalized and suppressed critical thought when it came to matters of my religion, however. I was very good at this.

After leaving JW, I naturally fell into a "semi-Christian" belief system. I basically was Christian in belief, but in areas I questioned, I did what I thought was best in action, not necessarily according to that belief. Then, just as I saw inconsistencies with real life vs. JW belief, I began seeing the same with Christian belief as a whole as well. This led to questioning that belief with the same level of critical thought I applied to other areas of my life.

You know the story from here. The OT was untenable. Its god was the polar opposite of anything I considered morally acceptable. Upon closer scrutiny, the NT was almost as bad, or at least inconsistent with the OT, and itself. I studied evolution, physics, history, sociology, and psychology well enough, that an abstraction easily emerged that religion was nothing more than a human made social meme to serve several purposes, some of which were less noble than others. I declared myself agnostic by this time, (I was out about a year).

Two critical points in this development happened in 2007. The first of which actually involved my second adult experience with marijuana, which was very frightening at the time. It was one of those classic paranoia experiences. It involved thoughts that my entire understanding of "existence", (including all of the social constructs, such as what is "moral"), was brought into question. While this was extremely off-putting at the time, (I stayed away from the drug for at least another year), as I processed that experience over the next year, I began to realize I learned something important from that experience. What I learned in a very concrete manner, was that morals are indeed a social construct, and something that evolved socially, as humans became increasingly aware of their consciousness. This fit nicely with what I already understood about human social evolution. The lesson stuck.

The next important development took place a few month later while reading a biography about Einstein. That bio included an explanation of special relativity that allowed me to understand how time is relative to space. I quickly formed a mental extrapolation that made it crystal clear that if god existed, it could certainly have no such thing as a timetable, unless it either existed outside of time, (which would mean that the need for a timetable is little more than superficial), or was confined to that same physical law, which of course would mean that god is not so powerful, if the laws of physics confine it. That was inconsistent with any understanding of god I ever held to, even as a JW.

It took another 4 years for me to be comfortable with the thought that my agnosticism was really just a "friendlier" term for atheism. I knew four years prior that no god I studied about could be real, (certainly by the time of the special relativity lesson). It then simply became a matter of accepting that atheism is nothing more than non-belief, (which is how most people incorrectly use the term "agnostic").

d4g