Your "What if you had to ...." question strains reality, but in the spirit of the question, some have opted for Universalist because the members pretty much believe what they want. I would rather look for an eastern religion along the lines of Tao or Zen Buddhism that allows one to focus on the philosophies and leave alone any of the beliefs about God.
OnTheWayOut
JoinedPosts by OnTheWayOut
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121
What Are Your Rights?
by Simon inrights seem to be everywhere nowadays.
say hello to someone in the wrong way and you've violated 101 of their human rights.
people imagine they have the right to all sorts of things - food, healthcare, housing, internet ... so many things are labelled basic rights and then you get onto their human rights - a favourite of the do-nothing bodies such as the un to declare.
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OnTheWayOut
I think interning the residents born to that hostile nation was a no-brainer,
62% of them were U.S. citizens.
I won't see eye-to-eye with you on that one, so we'll agree to disagree. But at least you got my point-" ...the rights are an illusion. If you ever really need them then you won't have them. You have them only because a government choses to abide by the rule to follow and grant them."
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Did anyone else have a JW "sliding doors" moment when they made the wrong call.
by dozy inreading the thread on mind numbing meetings reminds me of the following event that occurred when i was about 19.. i'd got a full time job away after leaving school and was working about 20 miles away - thursday night meetings necessitated working later , catching a 6.10pm bus after work and walking 10 minutes or so straight to the kh , often arriving just as the meetings were starting or a few minutes late and getting the "evil eye" from some of the jws when i arrived.
my parents ( father was the presiding overseer ) would bring my clothes in the car and i would get changed into my suit in the kh toilets.. it was one of those moments when all the stars seemed to align.
i had had a particularly stressful day at work and was even more tired & hungry than usual on a thursday night.
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OnTheWayOut
I liked reading that. Thanks for sharing.
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"This system will probably be over in about 5 years"
by john.prestor ini don't think i shared this story yet, it's strange and although i did a little detective work trying to figure out who said what and when i never found out much, big surprise, jehovah's witnesses love their secrets as we all know... but i thought other posters might find this interesting both in and of itself, because of what an elder told me one sunday back in 2011, and because of what it could imply as to high-ranking jehovah's witnesses prophesying the date of armageddon.
specific dates went out the window in 1975, although governing body helper ken flodin hinted at 2040 in a talk uploaded to jw.org a couple years back, and the governing body hinted at 2034 in a watchtower back in the 90s.
but it might be, just might, that more specific date-setting still goes on behind closed doors in certain circuits.... so after i went to "meetings" and talked to witnesses for a couple years at a rural congregation in the eastern united states an elder pulled me aside one service into the vestibule at the hall, in other words, into a private area where no one would overhear us.
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OnTheWayOut
Hey, I faded more than 10 years ago, and some told me "This system cannot last another 10 years."
Just keep moving the goalpost. Don't look back at expectations, verbalized or not, or you will turn into a pillar of salt.
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121
What Are Your Rights?
by Simon inrights seem to be everywhere nowadays.
say hello to someone in the wrong way and you've violated 101 of their human rights.
people imagine they have the right to all sorts of things - food, healthcare, housing, internet ... so many things are labelled basic rights and then you get onto their human rights - a favourite of the do-nothing bodies such as the un to declare.
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OnTheWayOut
From George Carlin:
Folks I hate to spoil your fun, but... there's no such thing as rights. They're imaginary. We made 'em up. Like the boogie man. Like Three Little Pigs, Pinocio, Mother Goose, shxt like that. Rights are an idea. They're just imaginary. They're a cute idea. Cute. But that's all. Cute...and fictional. But if you think you do have rights, let me ask you this, "where do they come from?" People say, "They come from God. They're God given rights." Awww fxxx, here we go again...here we go again.
The God excuse, the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument, "It came from God." Anything we can't describe must have come from God. Personally folks, I believe that if your rights came from God, he would've given you the right for some food every day, and he would've given you the right to a roof over your head. GOD would've been looking out for ya. You know that.
He wouldn't have been worried making sure you have a gun so you can get drunk on Sunday night and kill your girlfriend's parents.But let's say it's true. Let's say that God gave us these rights. Why would he give us a certain number of rights?
The Bill of Rights of this country has 10 stipulations. OK...10 rights. And apparently God was doing sloppy work that week, because we've had to ammend the bill of rights an additional 17 times. So God forgot a couple of things, like...SLAVERY. Just fxxxin' slipped his mind.
But let's say...let's say God gave us the original 10. He gave the british 13. The british Bill of Rights has 13 stipulations. The Germans have 29, the Belgians have 25, the Swedish have only 6, and some people in the world have no rights at all. What kind of a fxxxin' god damn god given deal is that!?...NO RIGHTS AT ALL!?.........
Now, if you think you do have rights, I have one last assignment for ya. Next time you're at the computer get on the Internet, go to Wikipedia. When you get to Wikipedia, in the search field for Wikipedia, i want to type in, "Japanese-Americans 1942" and you'll find out all about your precious fxxxing rights. Alright. You know about it.
In 1942 there were 110,000 Japanese-American citizens, in good standing, law abiding people, who were thrown into internment camps simply because their parents were born in the wrong country. That's all they did wrong. They had no right to a lawyer, no right to a fair trial, no right to a jury of their peers, no right to due process of any kind. The only right they had was...right this way! Into the internment camps.
Just when these American citizens needed their rights the most...their government took them away. and rights aren't rights if someone can take em away. They're privileges. -
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Just wanted to share my little bit of good news.
by nicolaou ini haven't been posting here much lately, i think i only created one topic in 2018!
but this is worth it.. i am a grandfather 😊.
it happens all the time but damn, it feels good.
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OnTheWayOut
Great post. Congrats. Rock on!!!
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I Am Still Here! Another Birthday look back at one helluva lifetime
by TerryWalstrom inwhen the doctor pulled my screaming body out of mom all those 7 decades ago, i landed in a post-wwii world.the world of 1947--compared to today's world--an alien planet.. the world i live in today has nothing in common with the world in which i grew up.. there were no cell phones back then--there were black telephones with a dial-tone and an operator who placed your call.
everywhere you found telephone booths!
a call was a nickel.where did all those telephone booths go?i dunno.where did my whole world go?i dunno.. tv sets were huge boxes with tubes and small screens.
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OnTheWayOut
My dad is about 5 years older than you, so I am going to take some of what you posted here and come up with a birthday thing for him next year. Growing up from virtually any point in the first half of the 2oth century allows one to have seen fascinating changes.
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Crisis of Conscience is being delivered to my door today. I can't wait
by Fognomore insince i have no one else to talk to about what i am going through, i just thought i would let this group know that i have .
crisis of conscience coming to my front door today.
i already know what i will say if my wife says something.
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OnTheWayOut
Great book, I wish you happy reading and I wish you well answering up about reading it.
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Demon Posessed Rock Bands I couldn’t listen to
by hoser inkiss.
steve miller band (abracadabra).
eagles.
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OnTheWayOut
I gave up classic rock to join JW's at about 23 years old. Loved, Zep, Floyd, AC DC, Eagles, Talking Heads, etc. etc.
I went back to it. My self-induced theme song for my life is "Back in Black" by AC DC- as a tribute to my old, revived rock n roller personality. Forget the hearse because I never die(d).
I go to concerts from old rockers before they cease, including AC DC, Sting, Peter Gabriel, Foreigner, Cheap Trick, Ozzy, Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac, Foghat, Deep Purple, and more.
I never saw Led Zeppelin, but have seen Jon Bonham's cover band several times. Never saw Pink Floyd but saw cover bands Brit Floyd and Australian Pink Floyd.
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Did you actually read the bible end to end?
by Ultimate Axiom inin my ten years as a witness i never read the whole bible end to end, what with four magazines a month, the book study, meetings and talk preparations, there just wasn’t the time.
i knew all the important references to ‘prove’ the various jw doctrines, and the cherry picked chapters that help foster the idea that it’s a good book, but that’s not reading it.
well after nearly forty years out, i decided i would do it.
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OnTheWayOut
Not a good Bible (yeah- oxymoron) but I kept up with the 5-year schedule for the New World Translation completely once around.
When you read with a JW mindset, and a JW schedule, you typically have no time left to question what you read.
Otherwise, I agree on this:
"And as for God, well words fail me to describe his disgusting behaviour. "