VoidEater

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Posts by VoidEater

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  86

  WILL YOU kindly help me?

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i've finished writing my novel (50 thousand words) about my years spent in federal correctional prison when i was an obedient little jw.. the editing and rewriting stage now commences.. i need your help!.

  here is how you can help me.. i can't know what an outside mind wants to find out concerning this experience.

  i can only conjure up what seems interesting to me.. tell me what you want to know about such a personal experience.. that will give me a checklist to compare to what i've written already.. i may have missed many little details which are very important to a reader.. i may have neglected essential questions which must be answered in order to satisfy the mind.. please offer me your curiousity.. thanking you in advance; i appreciate your taking the time to advance my novel to the finish line.. (i wrote it as a fictional work because i could not honestly write about myself without the distance of this device.. so, i made myself into a character with a different name.. the identity of everyone else is non-fiction.

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  VoidEater

  Hi Terry: I'd be happy to be a reader and comment, if you like - PM me -ve
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  22

  Golden Compass Movie, to be avoided?

  by cab1000 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i had a chance to be with a group of jw's yesterday.

  my wife thinks she overheard a couple of them talking about an announcement from the platform about avoiding the "golden compass" movie coming out.

  i know that other religious groups have spoken out against this film, but i would not have expected the witnesses to announce that formally.

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  VoidEater

  Excellent series. Denounces organizations, not religion - though has an interesting take on the nature of spiritual beings, which makes at least as much sense as the society's version of things.

  I've never seen the society condemn a specific film before - though lots of genres of film that "christians would certainly want to avoid".
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  203

  Opinion peice on Athiests

  by SickofLies in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  there seems to be a lot of hostility on the board toward atheists still and a lot of comments floating around like atheists are to preachy.

  well i want to take a quick minute and deal with some of these issues.

  to begin with, to make any statement regarding atheists in general would be false for several reasons.

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  VoidEater

  Produce one shred, one miserable pitiful scrap of empirical evidence that there are Universes other than our own. Go ahead. I DARE YOU. Otherwise you are deluded if you believe that.

  Same could be said of belief in, oh, say...God.

  You can make conclusions, define analogies, defend and debate and argue - but it really comes down to a CHOICE to believe in a deity.

  Maybe I believe - but I don't delude myself that there's any actual empirical evidence for it. Just conclusions that my human mind makes based on my human experience, which is rather sad when brought to bear against the theoretical context of what God must be like.

  The Universe seems ordered, therefore someone must have ordered it...strikes me as a fervently, happily, myopic, humanistic point of view. "This is the only way things could be" gets boring. If things were different, they wouldn't be the same - that's all.

  The more I age, the more pragmatic I get - unless God, or a belief in God, has some particular useful purpose, I don't see the need to invent one.
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  26

  Gail Bethea-Jackson -- doctor, as claimed by Watchtower?

  by Fatfreek in

  1. watchtower
  2. child-abuse

  gail bethea-jackson -- doctor, as claimed by watchtower?

  re: my thread, letter to nbc about watchtower's rebuttal .

  in the above thread, there is some reason to believe (thanks to vm44) that bethea-jackson is not, in fact, the doctor as claimed on the official watchtower site which airs her video.

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  VoidEater

  Is on the Board of Directors of this Catholic-related agency: http://www.leonroberts.org/founding_committee_of_lrli.htm
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  14

  Have JW's changed their tactics for talking with atheists?

  by SickofLies in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i attended a meeting with mash (mcmaster association for secular humanists) the other day where we had an excellent guest speaker, a professor from the university of toronto who founded and runs talkorigins website.

  for those that would like to see the lecture titled "evolution a theory and a fact" i will be posting it on-line in the next day or two and will post the link in this thread.. back to my question, after the speech when we took the speaker out for drinks we were all sharing experiences talking about how talkorigins helped us and the issue of jw's came up, people there were telling me that when jw's come to their door now if they state they are an atheists or don't believe in the bible they simply stop the conversation and go away.. is this an official change in tactics for the jw's?

  it would be great if it were, i can think of only one reason for not wanting to try and preach to the new atheists out there, that being that people who do are getting persuaded by their arguments and leaving the church.. has anyone else heard anything like this?.

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  VoidEater

  in the 70's we were told to respond to atheists with the question, "But don't you see what a terrible mess the world is in today? Don't we need God to sort things out?" But then they started answering, "It doesn't really seem that bad, and I think we can make things better without God". Kinda ruins the strategy..."oh, OK, sorry to have bothered you" *shuffle away with guilt for not traying to make the world a better place*

  "The end of the world came and all I did was try to sell a bunch of magazines"
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  37

  Do I suck?

  by wanderlustguy in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i mean, how would you really know if you do, in fact, suck as a poster?

  would it be because when you post all the sudden there can be no more submissions?

  can you kill the thread killer thread?.

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  VoidEater

  WLG = cool
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  32

  District Assemblies Not All They are Cracked Up to Be

  by WTWizard in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  you hear about them for so long.

  the grand boasting session is supposed to be the biggie.

  there is so much hype about the motels that are on the list, which will come out right around jan 1. you are supposed to call ahead, and usually people get busy signals and full motels.

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  VoidEater

  1969...southern California...

  The Dramas are the highlight of the upcoming convention, and my dad is in one and building props for another. He's built a comical, huge (14 inches long, 3 inches thick) "cigar" (watch it...!) that lights up and blows "smoke" - it's ingenious! And he's playing the part of some OT believer, and builds this 7 foot long javelin that he'll carry on stage.

  It was brilliant theater - the costumes of whatever vignette they were doing in olden times, my dad running on stage with his spear in an orange toga-thing...for a 9 year old this was magic!

  I loved those dramas they did back then. Saturday night was something to look forward to among the snoozefest of how special we are to know Jehober. How wonderful it is to see these young pioneers, choosing a life of misery...er, ministry. Every example person I knew was so certain and blessed looking on stage - and such a total wreck in person.

  Do they do dramas any more? I remember after that '69 there was a concern about the pageantry of period pieces taking away from the message, adn the cost of costumes and all (what cost? My dad paid for everything he used as did everyone else) - but it certianly made things more interesting!
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  31

  I know for her it is complicated

  by oblivious in

  1. social
  2. relationships

  "my girlfriend was raised jw she was'nt allowed to use the phone, and was brought up very strict to say the least.

  she has a 4 year old daughter, and recently moved back home with her family were she lives in their living room.

  she can't call me and our only communication is through emails, when she can sneak to the computer.

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  VoidEater

  oblivious: The wierd mind control that keeps a 33 year old mother with a child away from a phone should speak for itself. Until this woman can stand up for her own life, how can she make a life with you? Can you love someone who is so obviously undeveloped, or is there some other emotion going on? Compassion is good, but you can't base a marriage on that alone - marriage (or even an interesting relationship) needs to be between equals.

  har: It's clear by the nature of your questions that you do not know what this religion teaches. If you did understand "your religion" as you call it, you would already know you will not be allowed to associate with your disfellowshipped sister. I don't understand how you can on the one hand have so little knowledge of this religion, and at the same time go to such lengths to claim membership ("my religion") and defend it ("not a cult").

  Further, you are so blatantly stirring up the waters here that your sincerity is reasonably suspect. You're now talking down the "expert" advice you were just seeking? What gives?

  You tell me what you think a "cult" is and we can go from there.
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  7

  being an outsider as opposed to being an insider

  by drew sagan in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  there have been a few posts lately on the board where people are giving their experiences in talking with jws they meet in day to day life.

  this got me thinking of something i've never seen a post about on this board.

  because of a number of different factors it seems that jws have a very unbalanced approach in the way they deal with criticism.

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  VoidEater

  My dad was like that - I had to be perfect, while other kids could do whatever they wanted. I was supposed to be better than than them, and they were worldly and lost and couldn't be expected to be any better. I, on the other hand, had been taught better, knew better, so the rules were different. My cousins got more attention from my dad than I did, because I was expected to be stronger and better and less needy. Being "better" meant getting treated poorly.

  The issue is one of "tribal membership" and acceptable behavior for the inside group versus outcasts.

  Put a group of monkeys in a cage. Place a chair in the center. Above the chair put a banana so that the only way to get the banana is by standing on the chair.

  Then, each time a monkey touches the chair, give the chair an electric shock. Soon all the monkeys know that you're not allowed to touch the chair. They stop touching the chair.

  Then, take one monkey out and put a new monkey in. Watch the bahavior: the old monkeys will prevent the new monkey from touching the chair. Soon the new monkey knows that you're not allowed to touch the chair (though he only knows this because he's been "told" by the other monkeys). He stops touching the chair.

  Do this for each of the original monkeys. Once the latest monkey has been conditioned to not touch the chair, swap out another old monkey.

  Eventually you will have a group of monkeys that 1) have never been shocked personally, and 2) will prevent any new monkey from touching the chair.

  So it is with the organization - all the monkeys will do their best to enforce accepted behaviors - and only because they are told to. The only twist is that all the inside monkeys have been told that "outside monkeys" are completely different animals (you are no part of the world, they are worldly, they are bad, you are good, they are lost, etc.) and therefore not deserving of "life saving" control. The inside monkeys are supposed to know better - and the inside monkeys will make sure that everyone else toes the line.
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  40

  Pioneer Sister tells my Wife If your Raped just pray to Jehovah for help??

  by Witness 007 in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  while being new in the truth my wife dicussed the rape issue with her pioneer {my mums annionted} teacher.

  her response was to say if your raped you need to pray to jehovah for help and just yell for him to stop so it's not considered fornication.

  i was shocked at this so i found her an awake article about a sister who was assulted by a tradesmen in her home.

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  VoidEater

  Yup, crazy. I recall growing up and overhearing tales of physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse - it's always the victim that has the "problem" (the imapct of the abuse) and needs to just get over it - and you mustn't ever do anything back, but rather waith upon Jehovah, for vengence belongs to him (and doing anything in response is just vengence).

  I always thought this was bizarre. My question to everybody is: Why would a rape victim ever go and tell the elders anything like this in the first place???

  Because the WBTS sets itself up as "mother" to God the "father" and you cannot trust upon nor reveal activities to anyone else - everyone else is Evil. After decades of "two witnesses" and not going to the secular authorities, it's no wonder people can't get the help they need - they're not allowed to ask.

  Keeping the rank and file in "victim mode" makes them ever so much easier to control.