Posts by LisaRose

64

What triggered your doubts / awakening?

by Tornintwo in

i am sort of new here, used a different username for a while but things got 'difficult' at home so i've since been lurking.... what i would be really interested to know, if you don't mind sharing, is what it was that triggered your doubts and initial research which led to awakening, was it a bad experience, injustice, changed doctrine?

for me, it was seeing mistreatment of young ones in the congregation, they're under so much pressure and as soon as they go even slightly astray they are shunned, either informally (as bad associations which pushes them further into the 'world') or formally - with elders dying to throw the book at them so they even lose their family.... ...then reading about child abuse issues in the press.... ...which led me to silentlambs.

...then jw facts, this forum and coc, wham!

LisaRose

It was the cumulative effects of a lot of things, being stuck in a bad marriage to a disfellowshipped person. Being treated like a second class citizen because of that. Health and family issues that made it more and more difficult to live the JW life, and being judged for that. Having a better than average job where I was respected and paid the same as a man doing the same work made it odd to be treated as a "lesser vessel" by the brothers.

Learning to think logically and starting to question things, like the generation change, because i had been around in 1975 and didn't get how "this generation" could be more than one generation. Seeing the question from the readers about the UN and thinking, huummm.

I finally reached a breaking point and it all just hit me one day that there was no evidence that the Watchtower had any special knowledge or was in any way being directed by God.

16

They lie about everything, why don’t they lie about annual publisher growth?

by John Aquila in

jwfacts show that publisher growth was 15% pre- 1975 and has decline to about 2%.

what prevents them from fudging the annual growth and keeping it at something more positive like 10%?.

"a great crowd that no man is able to number".

LisaRose

It might seem like they could get away with that, but they really can't. It would work for a year or two, but it would quickly become very obvious due to compounding, the effect of percentage increases over many years.

For example, if a country had 500k publishers and they reported growth of ten percent a year, they would have 978k publishers in only seven years, almost double. People in that country would probably be aware that no congregation they know of doubled in the last seven years. They would also wonder why they didn't need more kingdom halls, more magazines, books, etc. It also wouldn't match data from people like the Pew research center. I think most people in the organization are basically honest, and something like this would raise concerns among too many people.

It's like companies that fudge the numbers to prop up stock prices. Creative accounting can only get you so far. This actually happened in a company I worked for. They lied, hoping the market would go back up, but it didn't, they got caught out and people went to jail. I think they would do this if they could, but it's just not something they can get away with.

29

17 year old son is blaming me for ruining his life from the Cult. He's complaining "I could have been a high school sports star!"

by PhilsWager2 in

you know about my not-so-ugly divorce and how me and my wife found out the religion is false.

she still attends while my 17 year old has been raging on me about all the wasted time he suffered from by being in this religion.

he think's his life is ruined, very angry we did not learn this was a cult earlier(he was 14 when he stopped attending after reading the revelation book, he said "in all time and history, how could a trumpet blown in revelation have anything to do with a jw bible student convention statement"?.

LisaRose

Tell him you did the best you knew how to do at the time, when you knew better, you did better. How can he expect better than that?

It is a shame he didn't get a chance to go for his dream, but it doesn't mean that's the only dream he can ever have. As long as he is playing "what if", instead of being born to a JW family, what if: He was born blind or he was born in a poor, third world country or he was autistic or he had cancer.

I wasted most of my life on this stupid cult, I was forty five and had health problems by the time I got out, but I don't dwell on that, I just am thankful I didn't waste any more time than that, and I enjoy the life I have right now.

Attitude is everything.

51

“We are not done yet!” – Candace Conti reacts to appeal court decision

by Watchtower-Free in

http://jwsurvey.org/cedars-blog/we-are-not-done-yet-candace-reacts-to-appeal-court-decision.

candace conti (pictured in her interview with abc) has spoken out for the first time about the appeal court decision.

as current and former jehovahs witnesses digest the news that watchtowers appeal against the candace conti verdict has faltered, albeit with the punitive element of the judgment reversed, candace has reacted for the first time by telling me: we are not done yet.. news spread on monday that the state appeals court in san francisco had upheld the $2.8 million compensatory damages in the original june 2012 verdict, but overturned the $8.6 million punitive award against watchtower.. the court decided that, though watchtower had neglected its responsibility to supervise known pedophile jonathan kendrick in field ministry, a church-sponsored activity, the organization had no duty to warn parents in the congregation that a pedophile was in their midst or report him to authorities.. an insightful report by investigative reporter trey bundy has suggested that the court reached its decision because the precedent set by the conti verdict might be too burdensome to enforce.. the burden would be considerable because the precedent could require a church to intervene whenever it has reason to believe that a congregation member is capable of doing harm, and the scope of that duty could not be limited with any precision, the judges wrote.. candaces attorney rick simons responded by pointedly telling bundy: they think in public policy terms that theres too much risk in broadening the churchs responsibility and liability so that it burdens what churches do.

LisaRose

Take off the crown:

Is Candace challenging Jehovah?

No, she is challenging the Watchtower, she knows only too well that God has nothing to do with them, or they wouldn't have designed policies that favored pedophiles at the expense of children.

Or did you think God did that?

20

In depth research reveals....

by Deltawave in

something i have noticed over the years is how much harder it is to research the history of the watchtower society from its own literature.

people have thrown away old publications in place of the watchtower library.

i beleive soon the watchtower library disk will be discontinued in place of the online library.

LisaRose

Doug, I sent you my email, thanks.

29

"So you are an atheist. So would you kill me if it were to your advantage?"

by OnTheWayOut in

jw
friends

i worked a different shift.

i knew the people i worked with, but not as well as i could have.. anyway, religion comes up.

one guy mentions in front of another that i wrote a book about my religious experience.

LisaRose

Unbelievable. So he can't imagine why anyone would refrain from murder unless they feared God and eternal torment in hell. it sounds like he is the one with problems.

20

In depth research reveals....

by Deltawave in

something i have noticed over the years is how much harder it is to research the history of the watchtower society from its own literature.

people have thrown away old publications in place of the watchtower library.

i beleive soon the watchtower library disk will be discontinued in place of the online library.

LisaRose

I was looking for a digital version of the old bue "truth" book, the 1968 version, and couldn't find it without joining an obscure digital book service. I was just curious about how much was left of what I had been taught when I converted. I imagine it's not much other than the basics (trinity, hell fire, etc). The organization I joined doesn't exist anymore.

But that's how the cult business goes. The religion I joined in 1969 was not the religion that existed in 1914. Doomsday cults either go out of business or sanitize their history and pretend it didn't happen. Most people don't want to question things, so they accept it. The good news is that the internet is making it harder to hide the past.

16

How many child abuse cases?

by LHS123 in

does anyone know where i can find numbers of how many child abuse cases have been brought against jws or settled out of court?.

i know that 1 is too many and statistics don't reflect the horror suffered, but i would like some numbers to use when explaining to others the reasons for my decreased activity and to have support for my reasons for 'stumbling', facts which might make others think too.. im from uk so it helps that the charities commission is investigating there and also there's a paedophiles exposed website which names 32 jws convicted in uk since 2012, horrifying!

http://ukpaedos-exposed.com.

LisaRose

Have you checked Silent Lambs?

http://www.silentlambs.org/

It's hard to know how many cases there are, as the Watchtower prefers to settle out of court and have the victims sign a confidentiality agreement. The rumor is that the Watchtower maintains a list of 58 thousand names of those that have been accused of child sex abuse.

37

The flat earth conspiracy!

by Truthexplorer in

ok. let me first start by saying i am not a flat earther.

i like most on here will have the same view most will have here about our planet.

in saying that however, i am incredibly gob smacked by the book written by eric dubay called 'the flat earth conspiracy'.

LisaRose

Keep exploring for truth, you haven't found it yet.

22

New light on more parables

by Deltawave in

well after a full watchtower study last week about how we should not read to much into bible account as types and antitypes, we had a whole study article on what the 10 wise virgins now means.

interesting though is the fact that only in 2007/8 they taught that the discreet virgins were the annointed ones who waited for christ's return in 1914 and the foolish ones were the ones who fell away in 1914 because the end didn't come.

now though, we have new light!

LisaRose

Holy Hannah, is this an ego trip on their part, or does the governing body hae too much time on their hands? Not that any of this made much sense in the first place, but this new "new light" is just as ridiculous.

I am beginning to wonder if any of what I was taught back in 1969 is still being taught, other than the basics like trinity , 1914 and hell fire. Has anybody done a comparison?