Posts by HB

79

Role Reversal: Placing 1969 Awake with JW's Manning the New Portable Literature Displays

by snapdragon4 in

jw
friends

in recent weeks the jw’s here in the uk have been setting up their new portable watchtower literature displays in my local town square on a saturday morning.

as they hadn’t knocked on my door for at least five years, and consequently feeling somewhat neglected, i thought that i would pay them a visit instead.. .

the first thing i needed to do was arrange my literature.

HB

Myself and an exJW friend were in Camden (London) before Christmas and we saw a JW literature stand manned by three young people outside the station. At first my friend didn't want to approach them as he has moved on and left his JW life behind, but I have never been involved with JWs and was curious, and wanted to engage them.

So I asked in a friendly and inquisitive manner what their beliefs were. I can't easily debate on JW topics (although I have learnt a lot now) so after the standard reply I just said with a kind of amazed disbelief in my voice:

"So you ACTUALLY believe that the myths in the bible are true, like the story of Adam and Eve and the talking snake and the global flood and Noah's Ark?"

The fashionable and stylish girl and the man did not reply, but the other girl simply said "Yes". I noted that she had a very sheepish look on her face, and was uncomfortable saying it. I said I was amazed that they took it literally in spite of all the scientific evidence to the contrary.

I then left it to my friend to debate with them as he knows the bible as well as science. He was polite, but easily outgunned them at every point, leaving them with nowhere to go and many questions they couldn't answer and had never before even considered. It was fascinating to watch and I was quite amazed to see how easy it was for my friend to run rings around them and how uncomfortable they looked defending fairy tales in the 21st century in a busy public place. It was obviously a relief to them when we moved on, but I hope at least one of them would have been googling for answers that evening.

52

Theists - does your god DESERVE to be respected or worshipped?

by cantleave in

or should she abdicate for lack of action / leadership?.

HB

I don't often join in here, but just wanted to say to Snare & Racket I thought that your post [#2327] was brilliant......you explained very lucidly how exciting, wonderful and precious the experience of being alive becomes when it is based on identifying what is real and true.

In my experience, most believers base their lives not on rationality but on what gives them emotional comfort. They think that showing respect to their god provides them with a depth of emotion not available to non believers. They honestly think that life without god would be grey, emotionless, empty and without hope, lacking the touch of magic that the supernatural offers. They are sorry for athiests and humanists who they perceive as missing out on the breath and depth of emotions they have.

But your post expressed with passion the fact that when you accept that there is probably no god and definitely not one that deserves respect, life becomes, to use your words, "a fantastic opportunity, an awe inducing experience that we should endeavour to value, every single tiny moment of because of how valuable it is."

31

JWs took off from work in 1975?

by skeeter1 in

jw
friends

a friend of mine is an electrician supervisor.

back in 1975, one of his employees was a jw.

the jw was so convinced that 1975 would bring the end of the world, that the jw took off from work (like, the first week in january) and sat on the top of a north carolina mountain waiting for armegheddon.

HB

My parents were not religious, but in the early 1970s, they employed a young JW man called John to work on the family plant nursery.

John explained at his job interview that he wanted to learn about plants because he would need to know how to grow things in the 'new world' that was to come. My father had many discussions about religion with John, but they always ended in stalemate. John was strange, a loner and very shy, but he was a conscientious and trustworthy employee.

During the last few months of 1974, we learnt that John's parents had sold their large house, donated most of the money to the Watch Tower Org and moved into a caravan awaiting Armageddon. We all thought it was very stupid but also extremely sad.

John gave in his notice at the begining of December and left employment on New Year's Eve 1974. He came into the house to say goodbye to us all, and I remember he was close to tears because he believed he would never see us again and we would soon be killed.

I don't know what happened to him or his family during 1975, but on the 2nd January 1976, John came to see my Dad and asked for his job back. We did find it quite funny but he was re-employed and continued to work on the nursery for a few more years. He avoided getting into religious discussions after that and was even more quiet and withdrawn than before.

We lost touch, but I believe John now runs his own nursery. Not sure if he is still a JW.

73

evolution vs God mr comfort

by unstopableravens in

HB

I have never been to Canada, nor have I seen it from an aeroplane. But I don't need faith to know it is real, the evidence for it's existence is overwhelming.

Nor have I been to or seen Atlantis. From what I have read it was a fabulous place, but as there is no firm evidence for its current existence, I don't have it on my holiday wish list.

........ But ..... perhaps all that evidence for Canada's existence has been concocted by deluded or dishonest people with some ulterior motive?

Perhaps they have all conspired together over many years to fool me, and actually Canada doesn't exist. Maybe all atlases have been deliberately falsified, and photos from space were cleverly photoshopped to add a large landmass above the USA. Maybe people who say they live in Canada are deliberately lying, and the photos taken by my friends who said they went on holiday there are really of somewhere else. All news items about Canada are invented by journalists, and the country's existence is just a big conspiracy theory.

Perhaps to be certain, I should take the trouble to actually book a flight and go there myself and check it out.

There again, maybe Atlantis is a real place in the Atlantic Ocean, a huge empire and wonderful paradise as desribed by none other than Plato, and if ONLY my faith was strong enough and I believed, I could go there myself too. When I go to book my trip to Canada, I'll ask at the travel agents how much a flight to Atlantis costs.

BBC article lists ALL JW predictions for the end of the world

by HB in

thearticle below is on the main bbc news webpage today.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-24432491 .

bob geldof has said the human race might have as little as 17 more years before "a mass extinction event".

HB

The article below is on the main BBC news webpage today.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-24432491

Bob Geldof has said the human race might have as little as 17 more years before "a mass extinction event". Why do people make such bold predictions of doom, asks Ben Milne.

The End is Nigh - it's a simple message, and it gets the attention (if not necessarily the belief) of the passer-by. But Live Aid organiser Geldof - who made his remark at youth summit in South Africa is not the first person to walk the streets with this sandwich board.

In fact, predicting the end of the world may be one of its inhabitants' oldest pastimes. It's only a matter of months since the ancient Mayan "prophecy" of 21 December 2012 passed without event. The world - and last-minute Christmas shopping - continued uninterrupted.

Religions are particularly prone to this sort of prediction. In Matthew's gospel, Jesus talks of the "return of the Son of Man", and says "but of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only".

It's a line which has proved too tempting for second-guessing believers ever since. Jehovah's Witnesses have been accused of having made predictions for 1878, 1881, 1914, 1918, 1925, and 1975 as dates for Judgement Day. The US radio evangelist Harold Camping built up a ministry worth millions of dollars predicting that 21 May 2011 would be the big one. Camping later admitted he was probably mistaken, and donations to his ministry suffered an apocalyptic fall themselves.

But in this age of nuclear power and climate change warnings, end-of-days predictions come from all manner of sources. Independent scientist James Lovelock made apocalyptic warnings about the climate in 2006, saying that by the end of the 21st Century, billions of people would be wiped out, and the Arctic would be one of the few places remaining habitable. He later said he might have been "alarmist".

Myles Allen, who's professor of geosystem science at Oxford University, says that "competing hyperbole" is not helpful for actually understanding climate change. "People talk up the rate of climate change in reaction to other people blatantly talking down the problem... which is why we don't make an advance on policy."

3

How Scientology Changed the internet - BBC article

by HB in

thought some of you might be interested in this bbc article dealing with the ways that scientology has tried to prevent ex members spreading negative information about their church on the internet.. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23273109#.

the various battles between digital rights acticivist and the church of scientology are covered, particularly in relation to google and you tube.

this was quite funny in retrospect:.

HB

Thought some of you might be interested in this BBC article dealing with the ways that Scientology has tried to prevent ex members spreading negative information about their Church on the internet.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23273109#

The various battles between digital rights acticivist and the Church of Scientology are covered, particularly in relation to Google and You Tube.

This was quite funny in retrospect:

Back in May 1994, at a time when most major organisations were yet to figure out how exactly to deal with the relatively unknown power of the internet, the Church's Elaine Siegel had a few ideas, outlined in a leaked email to "all Scientologists on the internet".

"I would like to ask your assistance in getting each one of you to post positive messages on the internet (at least once a week, more if you like), about Scientology," she wrote.

"If you imagine 40-50 Scientologists posting on the internet every few days, we'll just run the SP's [ex-members] right off the system.

"It will be quite simple, actually."

Or perhaps not.

Unsurprisingly, the Church of today is keen to distance itself from Ms Siegel's email.

74

There is no doubt that Adam wasn't the first man. How do believers get around that small fact?

by jam in

using bible in determing the date of the creation of adam .

anyone in their right mind believe this to be true in today age.. don,t you think this nullify the whole bible?

the very first book.

HB

James Brown... interesting point.

I agree that it is theoretically possible that we could be 'living' in a computer simulation and that the reality we apparently experience is virtual and not actually a fact.

It is a strangely compelling idea as no-one can prove it true or false. But I see no justification for claiming that the chief programmer is God, either the Christian God or any god, or that there is more than one level.

We only know about God because of the Bible which was also theoretically dreamed up by our programmer/s. The programmer could just as easily be an evil being or not be a 'being' at all, but something 'other', who or which has programmed the idea of God into the minds of the people he designed.

74

There is no doubt that Adam wasn't the first man. How do believers get around that small fact?

by jam in

using bible in determing the date of the creation of adam .

anyone in their right mind believe this to be true in today age.. don,t you think this nullify the whole bible?

the very first book.

HB

On page 2 of this thread, MrFreeze made a short but very interesting point which nobody followed up in detail and I am very curious to learn more about it and hear people's views...........

......."Well where did sin come into play if you don't look at it literally? Did god create us perfect? If not, why would we need Jesus' sacrifice? "

(NB I am not a regular poster and probably unknown to most, so I will just mention for background information, that I have never been a JW or been connected to the religion. Although in my teens I was a nominal 'Christian', I never read the bible much or thought about theology and once I started using rationality rather than emotion on which to base beliefs, the supernatural was soon dismissed. But I am now fascinated by religion (in an academic, not faith based way), and this topic in particular is something I have been pondering recently. I come here as I find it a great place to learn, as I find the average exJW, whatever their current beliefs, knows more about the bible than even vicars, priests and church ministers that I have met).

So back to the topic.

For the last 150 years, science has progressively been pushing religion into a position of defensiveness to the point that now most Christians (at least in Europe, not sure about the US?) believe that Adam, Eve and the snake were allegorical, and they accept evolution as the way God created Man.

I have posed the following genuine question to a couple of Christians in my acquaintance:

......"At what point in the evolution of the human species do you believe 'sin' originated, bearing in mind that evolution shows that we humans are a part of the animal kingdom and early hominids evolved from ape like creatures?"

One just looked puzzled and said she didn't know but would have to think about it, another said it could have been when the human conscience developed. However, on further questioning, he can't bring himself to believe that before that, these conscience-less humanoids were 'perfect'. It is too far a stretch for him to envision a particular time after which every baby was born in sin and therefore prone to death, although the baby's parents were 'perfect' but lacking a conscience. He didn't think there was a gene for 'sin' that suddenly appeared in the human genome and then became heritable from parents.

I read the 'Neanderthal' idea on this thread but that doesn't work well either.

There seems to be a conundrum, and no-one has yet been able to give me an answer. So I would like to know from you guys if there is a credible explanation that fits with Christian teachings?

Leading on from that, if there was no actual time when mankind fell from perfection, how does the Christian message of salvation work? Why did Jesus need to come to die in such a gory, horrific way to save us all from sin, if God created us the way we are through evolution and we didn't rebel?

Correct me if I have understood this wrongly, but from what I have learned, it all seems to work nicely if you believe in a literal Adam. Adam was originally perfect but chose to sin and was then, together with all his descendants, condemned to die. But Adam's death could not atone for sin because God's justice demanded a perfect man to give his blood and Adam was no longer perfect. So Jesus was sent instead. This makes a sort of sense in a fairytale kind of way.

But if Adam is not literal, how does it work? I just don't get it, and nor do the Christians I have asked so far, but they are not very well versed in their theology either so I hoped that exJW Christians here might be able to give a plausible explanation? As I said, I am here to learn.

84

How do I as a future "Therapist" help ex-jws that won't move on from the WT?

by booker-t in

i am halfway through my master's program in psychology/sociology and plan on being a therapist/sounselor.

i left jw's in 1988 and i have never looked back.

i enjoy my life so much after getting my aa degree, then my ba degree, and now i will soon get my ma degree.

HB

I have never been a JW, never set foot in a KH, and have no friends or family who are in the religion, but nevertheless I have been visiting JWN more or less every day (bar holidays) for the last 5 years, and you could say I am mildly addicted.

I have a great marriage, 3 fantastic children, lots of friends, good health and a full, happy and comfortable life with no problems or emotional issues, and yet I still find myself being drawn back here daily to see what is going on in the world of exJWs. And I can see I'll be here for at least a few more years if not forever. I very rarely post but I read a lot.

My point is to present myself as evidence that just because a member stays here a while and becomes addicted to the site, it doesn't necessarily mean they are emotionally clinging to the past or lacking courage to move on from their former beliefs; I have no JW past and no harmful mind control to move on from, but I'm still here.

Like me, people might just choose to stay here because they enjoy intelligent discussion and love following debates, (and there are some very clever people here whose minds can dazzle). I am not a believer, but have learnt a huge amount about religion and the bible here which I find fascinating and I have so much more to learn. I also love the ambiance of the site, particularly the caring and supportive empathy shown to those in need and I love reading all your stories that show triumph over adversity. It's like a big family in some ways, squabbles happen and people come and go, but the good far outweighs the bad. It's much better entertainment than any TV soap opera and as educational as a good documentary .

There are obviously some who remain here for years because they need support or friendship and this site is probably as valuable to these people as any expensive therapy and what's wrong with that.

A deep flesh wound will eventually heal over at least superficially if proper treatment is applied, but it will always leave a disfiguring scar as a reminder. Unfortunately some scars do not fade and the damaged tissue underneath remains painful, and even the best doctors can only offer to minimise the appearance of the wound; it never completely disappears. I can see this site is like a wonderfully soothing balm for members who have to live with scarred memories and currently have pain in their lives, so I feel no one should blame these people or make them feel guilty for not being able to move on from being a member here. Not everyone has personal circumstances that allow them to forget.

20

Were you surpised how little the "world" new about JW's after you left?

by donny in

i have been out of the jw organization for some time now and have been fairly active in discussing my adventures in watchtower with those who are interested.

what really surprised me in the first few years after leaving was how little the "world" knew about jw's.

we were taught that we have been warning the unwashed for 100+ years and they resist the message because satan keeps them from grasping this "good news".. in the many discussions i have had with these folks since leaving, it is amazing how little or no understanding about jw's beyond the blood issue and holidays they have.

HB

As I have never been JW and have no family connections to the religion, I know first hand how widespread the general ignorance about JWs is, at least here in the UK. For most they are a nuisance or a joke.

As a 7 yr old child, the only fact I knew about the JWs was that a boy in my class called Bryan was one and he was not allowed to join us in school assembly because we sang hymns and the head teacher said a prayer. But I was mystified as to why this was a problem as I understood that JWs worshipped the same god that the school prayed to. Bryan was a very withdrawn child and didn't make friends with anyone but at the time I didn't associate his social problems with his family's beliefs.

Then when I was in my early teens, I learnt a couple more details about the religion, as my father had a young employee called John who was a JW. I knew most of the other employees well but I didn't get to know John because, like Bryan in my junior school class, he was withdrawn and kept himself to himself. I did feel a bit sorry for him though as he always looked tortured.

The business was a nursery and I learnt from my father that John had taken the job because he needed to learn to grow plants as it would be a necessary skill after Armageddon (....the end of the world was a concept which I had never heard of till then). This just sounded silly to me and I took little notice. The only other thing I knew was that John would not accept a blood transfusion which just confirmned my general impression of it being a really wacky cult.

I remember clearly the laughter and incredulity from my parents and their friends when in 1974, John's parents sold their home and moved the family of seven into a caravan because the end was nigh. John handed his notice in to my Dad at the end of November and came and rather dramatically said goodbye to all of us on the last day of the year. On the first day of 1976, he came and asked for his job back, which everyone found rather amusing but sad too. He did get his job back but only stayed a couple more years before he started his own nursery.

After that I managed to go through my life knowing nothing more about JWs until 2008 when a friend got involverd and I joined this site I didn't even know that they didn't celebrate birthdays or Christmas.

In 1990 I did answer the door to two nice JW ladies soon after giving birth to my third child. I had the baby in my arms and my two toddlers were playing at my feet. The two JW ladies cooed over how sweet the baby was and asked if I was worried about bringing children up in this wicked world? I said no, the world was a much safer place nowadays than ever before and they told me about the last days approaching and suggested I would surely not want my children to perish as they could see I loved them very much.

So I asked them to look at my happy, healthy and beautiful newborn daughter and look me in the eye and tell me that she was sinful and deserved to die. They seemed quite embarrassed and for some reason, they decided not to reply but just gave me a leaflet, wished me well and went.

Since joining this site and getting to know some ex JWs, I now know a great deal about the religion, but I discovered there are very few outsiders, including vicars, priests and misinsters, who knows much more than I used to.