I think that's the only arena where you can be effective talking to witnesses. They are in YOUR element, YOUR turf. They're not at a Kingdom hall where they can just find an elder or library 20 feet away to answer your challenges.
B_Deserter
JoinedPosts by B_Deserter
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I 'never' answer the door when JWs come a knockin' but . . .
by Gayle ini 'never' answer the door when jws (2 men) come to the door, well, yesterday i did,,and i couldn't help it.
i dominated the conversation,,wouldn't let them talk much,,stayed on the blood issue for the most part, about 6/7 min., they excused themselves & left.
they were kind of like deer facing headlights of a speeding car.
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The floodgates have opened
by B_Deserter ini posted elsewhere that i decided to contact a non-witness friend i cut ties with because she spoke ill of the society.
well, through her i was contacted by another former jw friend of mine.
turns out, we both thought we hated the other person, but turns out it wasn't true on either side.
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B_Deserter
I posted elsewhere that I decided to contact a non-witness friend I cut ties with because she spoke ill of the society. Well, through her I was contacted by another former JW friend of mine. Turns out, we both thought we hated the other person, but turns out it wasn't true on either side. This week has been amazing. Not only do I get my voter registration, but I start getting friends outside the Kingdom Hall. I believe I'll look back at this week as the week my life REALLY got started.
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I got my voter registration card today
by B_Deserter inmy jw brother brought it in.
god i hope he didn't look at it!
i was hoping it'd come in a discreet envelope, but no, it had to be marked all over the place.
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B_Deserter
My JW brother brought it in. God I hope he didn't look at it! I was hoping it'd come in a discreet envelope, but no, it had to be marked all over the place. He didn't say anything when he brought it in, but if they say something later I'll just say I must've accidently filled out both sides of the change-of-address form (voter registration and change-of-address is on the same form in Michigan) and that I tossed the card.
It's.....strange. This is the first real, tangible evidence that I have started a new life. It's like one small step for B_D, one giant leap for B_D's life. My polling place is the local church so the next election I'll get that experience, too! Wow, it's just....wow. I feel so proud right now that I'm an American citizen. I feel like singing!
(sings) Well I'm Proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm freeeeeeeee! -
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Thinking of becoming a Witness again and my reasons for doing so :(
by reniaa ini've been a faded jw for 10 years i left because of my failed first marriage, i'm no hypocrite and realised i had left completely so i embraced the world and dived in, only christmas and birthdays i could not get into, they were too foreign to me having never celebrated them, like if i suddenly tried to do ramadan or something like that.. 1/ all the criticisms of the people in the truth you say on here, i've found in the world, warts and all only in the world nothing holds them back from being utterly horrible to you.. 2/ i got stabbed by a worldly boyfriend, i got married 2 times of my own choosing to men outside the truth, the first smoked and was an alcoholic, the second gambled every penny we had and defrauded me out of money after we separated, 2 divorces later i am currently pregnant and a single mum since current boyfriend decided kids was to much of a responsibility and he needed his freedom and i was 'too selfish to expect him to give up his life'.. 3/ parents-in-law!
i have been shunned by them as equal to anything you accuse witness families of and for the silliest of reasons, i had a disabled son and his grandparents said they wanted nothing to do with him because they didn't want to become attached in case he died.. 4/ i miss the honest friendships of the truth, i had friends of all ages from 14 to 80 years old and they genuinely cared for me, many trying to keep me in the faith a long time after i left but i was determined to fade so moved away completely, but i find friendships in the world so shallow in comparison and very hard to sustain :( i've never been a drinker and sometimes thats what friendship means you being a companion for them to goto pub with.. 5/ my recent boyfriend was in a christian religion, i thought why not find out about it, harvest churches if you ever heard of them, unfortunately it still hasn't stop him leaving me pregnant and alone and when i said to him how does he clear that with god, he replies "as long as i repent it doesn't matter" it's like he has a "get out of jail free card" for any wrong-doing in the bible, this is so alien to me and my witness trained conscience.. 6/ i recently out of frustration tried looking into atheism and joined their forums, it wasn't fun, they are as bombastic and arrogant as their religious counterparts can be from any religion, they make a religion out of not believing in god, it's very weird they talk of saving people from believing in god and offer nothing to replace it.
they said to me "be happy you are in reality now and enjoy it" and i thought "well if this is reality i've had enough of it".
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B_Deserter
especially as a recent fossil find of a large wolf-like mammal with a half eaten dinosaur in it's belly means hundreds of dinosaur books will have to be rewritten, Science is not an infallable tool and can change with every new discovery or scientific opinion.
At first glance I find this "large wolf-like mammal" claim to be quite dubious. Can you link to the story? That said, if it was real, most biologists would look at you and say, "so?" Mammals existed in the time of the dinosaurs. Evolution is not a linear process. Dinosaurs and mammals did have a common ancestor, but that doesn't mean mammals evolved from dinosaurs. According to the most current research, it's likely that birds evolved from dinosaurs. This is confirmed as scientists have been able to turn genes in chicken fetuses on and off, causing feathers to grow where there are normally scales, and vice versa, as well as stimulating tooth and tail development. Manipulating the genes of a chicken fetus to grow a longer tail and teeth like a reptile is pretty compelling evidence. It means that those genes are there to turn on. If your story is true, it's likely, the mammal is a small rodent with a half-eaten dinosaur FETUS in it's stomach, which is a pretty likely scenario.
That said, you'll be hard-pressed to find any scientifically-minded person to say science is infallible. It's not. It's not because we don't have the whole story. But, as more and more facts are collected, many theories are being confirmed and refined, while certain others fall out of favor. Theories in the scientific realm are not "guesses," or theories in the layman's sense. A theory in the scientific context is used in the same way Music "theory" is used. At any rate, no, science is not infallible, but mountains of evidence continue to weed out the bad theories while strengthening the good ones. Evolution is a good theory, as it is confirmed with just about every piece of evidence we find.
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Anxiety breakthrough - connecting with people I cut ties with as a JW
by B_Deserter ini've decided to contact someone that i cut ties with as a jw.
i really wrestle with this because i feel like the fact that i only knew most of these people in the first place was through the jws, so in a way reconnecting with them will stifle my moving on.
there are also other factors involved, like what kind of terms on which we left, the risk of knowledge of my intention to leave the religion getting back to my family through them, etc.. .
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B_Deserter
I've decided to contact someone that I cut ties with as a JW. I really wrestle with this because I feel like the fact that I only knew most of these people in the first place was through the JWs, so in a way reconnecting with them will stifle my moving on. There are also other factors involved, like what kind of terms on which we left, the risk of knowledge of my intention to leave the religion getting back to my family through them, etc.
This particular person was I dare say almost a love interest. The only problem was that she was a "worldly" friend of a witness friend of mine, who introduced us. This person told me that she would marry me if I wasn't a witness. I actually doubt that now. It's easy to say things like that when you know that barrier isn't likely to be removed any time soon. I really enjoyed talking to her while we were friends. Eventually, she started bad-mouthing the Watchtower Society, which prompted my decision to break contact.
I was perusing MySpace and she just popped in my head, so I decided to run a search and see if anything popped up. Sure enough, there she was. I put in a request for her to add me, which she granted. Then, I sent her a message basically telling her what I'm doing now and that I left the JWs. I didn't go into detail. I just said it wasn't helping with things and then one day it just stopped making sense, which is the ultra cliff notes version of it. Then I said we should chat sometime.
I struggled with sending the letter. Part of me is still afraid I'll get an angry response back, and she'll think I'm leaving the JWs for her (I'm not, btw, she was not a factor in my leaving at all). I decided to send it anyway. If I get an angry response back, so what? She's 1,000 miles away and things will be exactly the same, so I really have nothing to lose. Since she is far away, the risk of any of this getting back to my family is minimal. I'm not particularly sure a relationship would be a good idea, either. She is a very devout Christian and I am an Atheist. There would be the same barriers I had before I think, but hey, I least I don't have to stop being friends with her because she doesn't like a book publishing company. -
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Could a JW lifer not know about theocratic warfare?
by RebelWife ini was just looking at another thread about lying.
it reminded me of a discussion i had a while back with my husband, who has been a jw all his life (dfd now).
i brought up lying and this term "theocratic warfare," which i had never heard before, but found online.
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B_Deserter
I don't think it comes up often enough for most JWs to think about it. Half of them can't even remember what the public talk was about 5 minutes after the watchtower study, let alone something that's in some obscure Watchtower article from the 70's
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"There Is A God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind"
by Open mind inauthor's name is anthony flew.. this book was sitting right next to "the god delusion" at the library, so in fairness to my username, i checked it out.
haven't read anything but the cover flaps so far.
anybody else read this yet?.
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B_Deserter
He probably fell into the various logical traps like proving a negative, Pascal's Wager, or other such nonsense.
Plus, the fact that he was 15 when he "became" an atheist strongly suggests that he never really thought about it that much at all, but was just rebelling against his father. -
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Jehovah's Witnesses - A Hijacked Religion
by B_Deserter inthe more and more i read about the history of the witnesses, the more i don't see them as one in the same as charles t. russell's religion.
i think the religious movement from 1874 to 1916 was completely different than the one from 1918 to now.
rutherford is the real founder of jehovah's witnesses.
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B_Deserter
Constantine really didn't change the Christianity of his time. It was a very splintered religion in the 4th century, with several different sects teaching many doctrines we'd find strange, and using gospels no longer used today. What the Council of Nicea did was pick which beliefs and creeds became "official." Many Christians churches like the Gnostics and the Egyptian Coptic church found themselves on the "wrong" side overnight.
What Rutherford did was different. He violated Russell's will by declaring himself the new president and firing those Russell had appointed, and introduced his own, man-made teachings. Holidays, blood, beards, no cross, even the name "Jehovah's Witnesses" came from Rutherford. -
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Jehovah's Witnesses - A Hijacked Religion
by B_Deserter inthe more and more i read about the history of the witnesses, the more i don't see them as one in the same as charles t. russell's religion.
i think the religious movement from 1874 to 1916 was completely different than the one from 1918 to now.
rutherford is the real founder of jehovah's witnesses.
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B_Deserter
The more and more I read about the history of the witnesses, the more I don't see them as one in the same as Charles T. Russell's religion. I think the religious movement from 1874 to 1916 was completely different than the one from 1918 to now. Rutherford is the real founder of Jehovah's Witnesses. He even came up with the name. He originated their primary doctrine: the role of the faithful and discreet slave. He turned it from a truly religious movement into a business enterprise.
I've come to the conclusion that Jehovah's Witnesses did not have their beginning in 1874, when Russell held his first study. Their true beginning is 1917, when Rutherford took over as president of the Watchtower Society. Like Russell borrowed the teachings of Miller and Barbour, Rutherford borrowed from Russell, but put his own twist on it, creating a new religion. -
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alternative medicine/healing...tried any? is it nuts?
by oompa ini have gone to chiropractors for years...and some are pathetic quacks....some really help me.
i had severe tendonitis in my elbow and tried reg.
doctors for six months...was helped more in one visit to a acupuncturist!
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B_Deserter
Chiropractic is quack medicine that became (very) slightly legitimized by medical science. It does help relieve back pain (although, it is not more effective than a massage). The problem with chiropractors is that they exaggerate who actually needs the treatments. In reality, very few people need them. A lot of chiropractors will tell you that everybody "needs" it and it's good just to "prevent" subluxations from happening. They'll tell you that you need to see them multiple times per week for the first few months, and then put you on a less frequent but regular regimen of adjustments. They'll tell you that if you don't keep coming back, all the benefits of the treatment will be nullified. Of course, the real reason they tell you these things is simple: money. They want you to become a regular source of income. My advice: get a massage instead.