A religion should be a safe environment for people to grow and learn. At most religion can teach faith, model morals, and lead worship. If a religion wants to be involved in people's private business and their private lives, they must be willing to pay for that involvement. So far the Watch Tower has shown they are willing to pay to stay involved in member's private business.
The more the Witnesses deny they're a cult, the more they behave like one.
garybuss
JoinedPosts by garybuss
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16
The court rulings against WTS will force what changes?
by OnTheWayOut inthe california rulings on clergy-client privilege have revealed the problems with .
wt procedure.
they report to headquarters.
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garybuss
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The Science of Religion-recent Economist Article
by BurnTheShips ini found this one on the gene expression blog.
does religion confer evolutionary advantage?.
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10875666.
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garybuss
I'm not sure a house can be built by stacking antelopes. For example, how would you find the door handle?
The stake out story is all true. The Vermillion congregation was a branch of the Yankton, SD congregation. The boss of Yankton Witnesses was Lance Roberts. He didn't like me and he ordered Merlin Marvin from Vermillion to stake out my place and try to catch me doing something they could disfellowship me for.
Marvin probably watched my car for a month while I worked and slept. Finally I asked Roberts for a meeting with him. I read Watchtowers for a solid week before the meeting. Every thing Roberts said, I'd refer him to a recent Watchtower, or I'd ask him what he thought about numerous articles and he hadn't read a single one. I was only 21.
Roberts told me he'd tell Marvin to quit watching my car and he begged me for forgive him for not reading Watchtower magazines. He told me he didn't have time. -
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The Science of Religion-recent Economist Article
by BurnTheShips ini found this one on the gene expression blog.
does religion confer evolutionary advantage?.
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10875666.
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garybuss
You wrote: "Why do antelopes stand together in herds,"
Those aren't antelopes, they're trees. I hope ya never decide to build a log cabin.
I remember one time in early 1966 when I was living in Vermillion South Dakota and working nights in the bakery there a couple Witnesses decided to follow me. They staked out my house and decided they'd watch my car. It didn't take me long to notice them and at first I was upset. After I thought about it a while I decided I liked it. They watched my car when I slept days and when I'd walk to work, they'd watch my car all night. It was like I had a private security guard.
The moral is, they weren't watching what they thought they were watching. -
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The Science of Religion-recent Economist Article
by BurnTheShips ini found this one on the gene expression blog.
does religion confer evolutionary advantage?.
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10875666.
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garybuss
I tried to think about religion from an economic viewpoint once but I kept going back to my original thought that religion is more like a social test kitchen. Like when new recipes are tried out. Food is still the big attraction to religion for me.
Witness events used to be about food number one, and everything else number two. Our circuit had an old school bus that was converted to a mobile kitchen and all the supplies were stored in it between assemblies. After one winter assembly, some over zealous brothers loaded all the food trays just inside the back emergency door and when the bus went over the fifth set of railroad tracks, those trays got to bouncing and the bus broke right in half. The roof broke and everything behind the rear axle broke right off and the back bumper went right to the ground.
The moral of the story is, don't put too much weight on your rear end. -
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Should you leave your cell phone on in church?
by Undecided ingod may want to talk to you and ring your phone to answer your questions.
can he talk to more than one person at a time?
he can kill more than one at a time anyway.. ken p..
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garybuss
You wrote: "One went off in the row behind me during the memorial."
That's how they know they're anointed now. God calls em during memorial. Hey, that's no crazier than the rest of the Watch Tower's claims.
Maybe a cell phone call during memorial is the 8th trumpet. That's as believable as the other 7. -
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Do any active witnesses believe the recycled info?
by Save My Soul infor those that have associates/family still in the org, do you know how many long-time witnesses feel about the recycled info?
i can not even read the mags.
anymore because they have not changed for 20+ years.. .
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garybuss
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. - Philip K. Dick
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Do any active witnesses believe the recycled info?
by Save My Soul infor those that have associates/family still in the org, do you know how many long-time witnesses feel about the recycled info?
i can not even read the mags.
anymore because they have not changed for 20+ years.. .
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garybuss
A crazy person was admitted to the state hospital believing he was a Martian with green blood. He was assigned to a psychiatrist who tried to convince him that he was human with red blood. All his efforts failed, finally in desperation he pulled his scalpel out of his pocked and made a small incision. As the crazy person looks at the red blood he exclaims "Wow I didn't know Martians had red blood."
Moral of the story:
A person who clings to his beliefs will not discard or change them, he will just modify them to fit his old beliefs.
by: Victor Escalante Sept 11, 1998 -
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The backtrack on 1914 is going strong!
by hamsterbait inthe bible students taught that christs return in 1914, would be preceded by an invisible presence from 1874.. when these prophecies failed, judge rutherford revised the teachings, and said that christs return in 1914 was also invisible, and that the world had ended (invisibly!!
) in 1914. hence "the world has ended - millions now living will never die" talk.. even when we were studying in 1969, we were taught that christ had already come.. in 1993 the district a$$embly talks gave new interpretations of mark 13, luke 21, and matt 24, and said that many of the features we had been told applied from 1914 were actually still in the future.
this meant that he could not have come in 1914.. christ did not sit down on his glorious throne in 1914. hence noolite on the sheep and goats parable.. people "faint out of fear" was not at the threat of nuclear annihilation, but terror at the "celestial phenomena" (glorified fireworks, actually) let off by jehoobie to terrorize those who had not bought the witchtower.. now we see it in black and white:.
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garybuss
Looks like Satan made it to the earth but Jesus didn't. Might be a postage issue.
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WTF.... JW Official Website...1914 glossed over...GT in 1975 NOTHING!!!!!!!
by Alpaca inwtf.
i nosed around on the jw official website for over an hour just to see how they were handling some of the dates that are/were central to their understanding of bible chronology.. there was absolutely no significant connection made between 1914 and our current time period being the purported last days.. and, even if they did shoot themselves in foot with the 1975 debacle, presumably the 6,000 year anniversary of adam's creation, which would have been marked in 1975, would still be a significant date in the witness timeline that would help to bracket the last days.. the jw website's internal search mechanism brought up articles mentioning 1975 only in the context of general interest articles about animals, current events, and other "fluff" articles.. the lying bastards have completely buried anything and everything that would incur culpability.. without 1914 and the generation that "would not pass away," they are citing evidence for the last days that is so flimsy, i don't see how they can sustain any significant growth or keep young ones from bolting once they are old enough.
their "solid" evidence is the same old recycled crap about wars, earthquakes, famines, selfish people....yatta, yatta, yatta... that could apply to any time in history.. i hope we are seeing the beginning of the end for the borg.
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garybuss
Witnesses I know don't need any rational "reason" to be Witnesses. They like being Witnesses. They are told: "Follow the Governing Body to pick fruit and pet a lion.", and they accept that as "good enough". The Society doesn't go for reasonable or factual, they go for customer satisfaction.
Obviously they have the right formula with their paying customer base pushing seven million. If I were going to start a publishing business I'd copy them. They take no delivery on a promise to the bank every week. I'd say that's pretty darn good marketing. Not one person has ever been paid what they were promised and they still keep going to work for the Society. Ask your local human resources department in any multi million dollar business if they can beat that.
Take absolutely nothing and turn it into a billion bucks a year! That's some creativity at work! In one word . . . "unbelievable"! -
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garybuss
Good topic. Thanks for posting it!
I was raised by undereducated and extremely superstitious parents who happened to be Witnesses. I was inculcated with Witness dogma instilled as my core beliefs from a child.
I had two equal and opposite opinions.
Number one: I didn't like being a Witness. I didn't like meetings, assemblies, dressing up in a suit on weekends, missing sleep, and I HATED service. A had a few Witness friends but the adult Witness people and many of my Witness peers I disliked. I hated being forced into constant contact with people I really didn't like and never would have associated with them apart from the Watch Tower Publishing Corporation sponsored activities.
Number two: I believed the Witnesses to be "right". I didn't believe the Witnesses to be "true" because teachings, policies, and requirements for approved behaviors were constantly in change. But I believed the Witnesses to be "right". In my inner mind, to please god was to be a compliant Jehovah's Witness.
That changed like a 220 volt shock in 1974 when I was 30 years old. Now . . . I didn't like being a Witness, AND I didn't believe them to be "right". My time had ended.