OnTheWayOut

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Posts by OnTheWayOut

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  25

  What to do when you're PIMO and dont want to date a jw?

  by nowawake14 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  what are your thoughts on that?.

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  OnTheWayOut

  Just don't date a JW.
  
  Since you are living in the lie for now, don't date anyone. It isn't really fair to someone that you have to keep them secret from your other life.
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  62

  Evolution - A Conversation with Alex Williams

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  alex - thank you for your offer to have a conversation about evolution.. i accept the scientific evidence that all life - including humans - evolved from a common ancestor through unguided evolution over millions of years.

  this isn't even a controversial position in the scientific community.. the evidence rests on the data from many interconnected fields including paleontology, comparative anatomy, geology and especially genetics.

  it is no exaggeration to say that the evidence for your own non-human ancestry is contained in every cell in your body.. it is my experience that jws are generally quite ignorant (not in a pejorative sense) of the scientific case.

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  OnTheWayOut

  Doug Mason:
  OTWO,
  Yes, Shapiro is one man with one point of view, but that was not the issue I was endeavouring to point out
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  33

  WT Teaching That You Can't Leave Behind

  by jhine in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  after posting on another thread it became apparent to me that it can be difficult for some ex jws to totally shake off all wt teaching , even after leaving the org.

  do you still feel guilty going into a church for a wedding or a funeral .

  can you bring yourself to celebrate birthdays or christmas .

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  OnTheWayOut

  Every birthday, I am reminded how I joined a cult that took my birthday away.
  Despite my atheism, I have no problem sharing gifts on or near December 25th with people who choose that time.
  
  No hesitation to accept a blood transfusion. I just want to be informed about any medical procedures.
  
  I have no hesitation going into any facility for a wedding or funeral. I do kinda laugh at the priestly outfits, though.
  
  The indoctrination does do something to me- as mentioned above with my birthday, I think about how silly it was to be afraid of birthday wishes or holidays or churches or anything "worldly."
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  18

  1914 Was Originally Just 40 Years Past the End Date of 1874, That's All it Was!

  by OnTheWayOut in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  you don't need to understand complicated ways to go from 607bce to 1914ce.

  you don't have to go back to the late 1700's to understand the founding of jehovah's witnesses on the back of william miller's teachings.

  you just need to know that watchtower math and past doctrines along with changes in teachings are all based on lies.

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  OnTheWayOut

  TD, okay on when Russell started his own pamphlets. I meant that he wanted to distribute his own, but I did kind of lead it to say he was already distributing. Otherwise, you are splitting hairs on a very simplified explanation. You are adding accurate layers but the whole point was that we don't really need to bother with all the details. Thanks for correcting me, though.

  Blondie, that 6000-years thing sounds like the predecessor to the 1975 thing, stealing from other doctrines. It further tells me that some of them knew the whole thing is bullshit.
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  18

  1914 Was Originally Just 40 Years Past the End Date of 1874, That's All it Was!

  by OnTheWayOut in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  you don't need to understand complicated ways to go from 607bce to 1914ce.

  you don't have to go back to the late 1700's to understand the founding of jehovah's witnesses on the back of william miller's teachings.

  you just need to know that watchtower math and past doctrines along with changes in teachings are all based on lies.

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  OnTheWayOut

  Page 2 replies.
  
  Blondie, thanks for the "Harvest" information.
  
  TD, I simplified to make a point but I am pretty sure it isn't wrong. Go ahead. Tell us what is wrong about what I said. But be sure it is wrong, not just over simplification.
  
  BluesBrother, yes- I needed it to be true. Many were brought up with no other options.
• 
  18

  1914 Was Originally Just 40 Years Past the End Date of 1874, That's All it Was!

  by OnTheWayOut in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  you don't need to understand complicated ways to go from 607bce to 1914ce.

  you don't have to go back to the late 1700's to understand the founding of jehovah's witnesses on the back of william miller's teachings.

  you just need to know that watchtower math and past doctrines along with changes in teachings are all based on lies.

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  OnTheWayOut

  Page 1 replies-
  
  

  Sigfrid Mallozzi- yes, that is exactly the point. They used to teach that a generation was 40 years, they used to teach different stuff. Thanks for that thought.
  
  Anders Andersen, BTLC
  Good question, good answer. Thanks.
  
  Stan, most of us REALLY DID believe all this crap.
  
  Finkelstein, somehow we were mostly indoctrinated enough to ignore Watchtower violating Jesus' command.
  1975 was indeed used to sell literature. 1975 paid for modern presses for the giant printing company. It also attracted more recruits than they lost in the aftermath.
  
  BTLC, on Russel's shift attempt on 1914 to 1915, old information like this is enough for me to be sure that many (if not all) of the people in the "ivory tower" know that the doctrine is bullshit to manipulate people.

  
  

  peacefulpete, very excellent point on 40 years already foreshadowed. Watchtower teaches that stuff with virtually everything, so that fit right in. And back in the days, doctrine was very much a juggling act of adding this factor and that factor, making something literal and another thing symbolic. It's much stupider now with the "overlapping generation" stuff they come up with.
  
  
  
  
  
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  11

  The dangerous species: The True Believer

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the age of enlightenment is worth a good look.

  (the rise of reason, science, art, philosophy replacing superstition and 'belief.

  ")for millennia emperors and popes enforced compliance in our world.

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  OnTheWayOut

  My JW mother likes to say
  "The most dangerous people are those with good intentions but they are just wrong."
  
  She doesn't see the irony in her saying that.
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  16

  Will directing people to jw.org actually prove counter productive?

  by eyeslice2 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  there was a time when the society was very skeptical about the internet and the so-called lies and apostate information that was out there.

  it sort of was something to be avoided.

  over the past ten years, however, it seems they have taken to it with a passion.

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  OnTheWayOut

  Hey, in 12 years or so since I left, I have seen Jehovah's Witnesses go from growth through recruitment to basically abandoning any hope of growth at all. The carts that they put to the side of walkways and have JW's silently stand near are just for die-hard JW's to think they are still recruiting. Telling people to go to the internet is the same. People will virtually never even go to check out jwdotorg.
  
  Watchtower is willing to ride on it's current millions of members and hope for some retention through children. They have sold off millions upon millions of dollars worth of Brooklyn property at numbers way lower than they would have gotten 12 years ago at the height of real estate values.
  
  So the good news for me- I fully underestimated how fast such changes would occur. I guessed that Watchtower would eventually go away, but the reduction and the sale of Kingdom Halls is going way faster than I would ever have guessed. The lawsuits are incredible and making more headway in the United States than I could imagine.
  
  I still make the offer- I will help them pack their bags if the Governing Body are ready to make a run to some country in the tropics with no extradition.
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  18

  1914 Was Originally Just 40 Years Past the End Date of 1874, That's All it Was!

  by OnTheWayOut in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  you don't need to understand complicated ways to go from 607bce to 1914ce.

  you don't have to go back to the late 1700's to understand the founding of jehovah's witnesses on the back of william miller's teachings.

  you just need to know that watchtower math and past doctrines along with changes in teachings are all based on lies.

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  OnTheWayOut

  You don't need to understand complicated ways to go from 607BCE to 1914CE. You don't have to go back to the late 1700's to understand the founding of Jehovah's Witnesses on the back of William Miller's teachings. You just need to know that Watchtower math and past doctrines along with changes in teachings are all based on lies.
  
  You don't even need to fully understand the ridiculous methods that they did date setting from.
  
  Here's a really short version of what happened and all you really need to know-
  
  William Miller said that Jesus' Return would be in 1844. (See The Great Disappointment at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Disappointment ) People who believed what he said were known as "Millerites." Jesus' return didn't happen. This return of Jesus was also known as his second advent, and believers came to be known as Adventists.

  Adventist Jonas Wendell suffered in his faith at the Great Disappointment, but later carried the same type of "Millerites" talk in a sermon where Wendell had picked the new date of 1873 or 1874 for Jesus' return (after studying Bible chronology and being wrong about 1868). 18 year old C. T. Russell heard Wendell in 1870 speak of such a date. Wendell had already published The Present Truth, or Meat in Due Season highlighting such dates. So Wendell invented those terms that would haunt the WT organization and morph into New Light and food at the proper time.
  
  Wendell died in August of 1873, probably confident that his 1873 to 1874 date was correct. When Jesus didn't appear as expected, Russell still believed it (or at least wanted to keep selling pamplets that explained it). He taught that Jesus must have returned invisibly, meaning that Jesus was ruling from Heaven starting in 1874. He taught that 40 years later, a literal application of how long a "generation" was, in 1914, Jesus would take power on the earth. That would mean an end to the Gentile Times in 1914 and an end to the last days- destruction and death and stuff.
  
  Because World War One (coincidentally) started in 1914, Russell used that as a sign that he was correct in his complicated doctrines. He was already good at reinventing understanding rather than admitting he was wrong.

  ---

  All the rest is just calculated backwards- the stuff about 607 BCE and the 2520 years and the Seven Times.
  All of it was just made to fit that understanding. When things didn't work out as planned (again) the people in charge just reinvented the understandings and adjusted the math to fit whatever they wanted it to fit to sell more pamphlets/magazines/books. The end of the last days became the beginning of the last days. 1874 was forgotten. They just kept changing the end-date. They even made terrible errors and just changed the math to fit- they forgot there was no "Year Zero" and changed 606 BCE to 607 BCE.
  They kept 1914 because it was so well-known to the followers and they already said "See, we were right" when World War One started. Everything about Nebuchadnezzar and the destruction/building of the temple was just made to fit the math. You can find anything if you work backwards. It's like writing a Sherlock Holmes story. Just work backwards from what a great detective would expect to find and make him look like a genius in discovering those things.
  
  It is so unnecessary to understand the ridiculous theories of WT's present understanding when you can see what it was based on and how it changed to suit their need to get a following and sell pamphlets/magazines/books. It saddens me that I bothered to understand it at one time.
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  50

  Did Jesus die on a stake or pole?

  by sweetyj in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  we already know how jws will respond ( on a pole).

  but i found an article that talks about jws views on how jesus died.

  i didn't know that there was a time when jws accepted the cross unlike now.

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  OnTheWayOut

  Asking "Did Jesus die this way or that way?" stifles the argument that Jesus existed at all.
  You presuppose it isn't all a fairy tale.
  
  "Did the elves approach Santa Claus to make toys or did Santa go to them?"