Posts by easyreader1970

2

Do you have faith in humanity?

by easyreader1970 in

jw
friends

realizing that there really is no yahweh deity and therefore no wonderful paradise in store for everyone, do you have faith in humanity?.

are humans going to hell in a handbasket?

usually i try to give them credit for trying, but then i realize that it seems to be relatively few people that seem to be trying to do anything to better themselves or the world in which they live.

easyreader1970

Realizing that there really is no Yahweh deity and therefore no wonderful paradise in store for everyone, do you have faith in humanity?

Are humans going to hell in a handbasket? Usually I try to give them credit for trying, but then I realize that it seems to be relatively few people that seem to be trying to do anything to better themselves or the world in which they live. People as a whole these days are pretty selfish. Are they more selfish now than they have been in centuries past? I think so. I have no way to qualify that except for my own personal observations.

I see individual humans as becoming more instinctive and animalistic in nature, almost devolving in a way. This is especially bad and a shame because technoligically we have become so advanced. People seem to have concern for themselves and, by extension, their immediate familes. Concern for their fellow man is at an all time low.

Of course, this line of reasoning feeds right into the Watchtower's scribblings about the end of this system of things and such. While I don't think that the Sky God will have a hand in it.

People seem to act their best when everything is going in their favor and they don't have alot of unhappiness and stressors. When things start to go down the tubes, whether it is a personal issue or one that affects their community or even globally, people seem to resort to animal instinctiveness. We use human words to describe their behavior: rude, inconsiderate, selfish, mean, violent, apathetic, etc. But I wonder if these are just words we have created to define aspects about personalities that we don't like and thus we label them wrong. But if they are natural tendencies, survival tendencies, how can they be wrong?

When someone purposely cuts someone off on the freeway, it usually results in one or both people being angry. Maybe that's just survival. The cutter-offer doesn't care if the person he offended gets killed or wrecks. He's looking out for his own affairs.

I don't know why I'm rambling. I just woke up this morning disgusted at the world and seeing little hope in it or hope for it.

er

8

Elder burnout

by easyreader1970 in

jw
friends

i know that some have said that they aren't seeing it in their local congregations.

but i have been in two congregations in the past 2 years and they are both struggling to keep elders and ministerial servants.

one much worse than the other, though.

easyreader1970

I think you may be on to something there about lack of qualified men to take the Book Study. Obviously no one believes the 'cost of fuel' excuse.

My wife, who is the most hardcore JW you could ever meet, doesn't even buy the "fuel" excuse. It doesn't make any sense given their prior fondness of the book study arrangement. But like a good JW soldier, she stopped questioning the decision a couple of weeks ago and has accepted that the governing body must be right.

er

86

E-mail to JW Ex-Wife: What You Can Learn Researching the WTS in 3 Hours!

by Seeker4 in

i posted a thread earlier this week about a conversation i had with my jw ex-wife.

the next day i sent her this e-mail.

one should never be afraid of ideas.

easyreader1970

I respect your opinion but one thing i would say to support my education statement is look at the ex-elders, ex-Ms and just ex Jw's on here, they all come across as intelligent inc yourself, Even if you can only read Jw books rightly or wrongly the way you are made to study and analyse them constantly will impact on your mind,

lol I can see a "Yeah in a bad way" coming from that but just step back and think of how all the constant studying does make you able to read and write more lucidly think more deeper on subjects etc. thats my personal experience possibly more noticiable for me because i was brought up on a council estate/ghetto and found my speech from reading and the way i looked at things also kept me apart from my peers in many ways after I left Jws

The Society will tell you that the only schooling a Witness needs is whatever is mandated by the law. A JW need only the basics, minimal reading. While this may allow you to be able to read their twisted material, it does NOT allow for you to make any money. This is why the Society's treatment of "higher education" is so wrong. The reason that they give is not because "we can teach you to analyze things." Analyzing things will not put food on the table or clothes on your back. The reason they don't want people getting a higher education, in their own words, is because their minds will be filled with thoughts of men. They will be exposed to philosophies of men. What they really mean to say is that your mind will be exposed to common sense and you will be encouraged to be a skeptic and question everything.

86

E-mail to JW Ex-Wife: What You Can Learn Researching the WTS in 3 Hours!

by Seeker4 in

i posted a thread earlier this week about a conversation i had with my jw ex-wife.

the next day i sent her this e-mail.

one should never be afraid of ideas.

easyreader1970

they may get stuck in deadend low paid jobs but i bet the average witness IQ is quite high

If you have a high IQ and are perpetually stuck in a dead end, low paying job, what good is the IQ?

I think that discouraging its members, its young people, from seeking a higher education is the worst crime that the organization has committed. Even worse than the blood job they are doing on people. The blood doctrine affects relatively few people. Telling people that nothing good can come from higher education is damning to just about everyone who believes it. Worse yet, they will actually show pictures of people in their literature happily doing things like mopping floors and such.

How many people do you know who can support a family doing Broom Duty?

Oh wait. Jehovah provides the "necessities of life". That means you should be able to afford 10 year old blue jeans from the Goodwill, ramen noodles for dinner, and a 1973 Datsun. Anything more than that is pursuit of riches.

er

Sorry for the double-post. I hit Submit too excitedly.

86

E-mail to JW Ex-Wife: What You Can Learn Researching the WTS in 3 Hours!

by Seeker4 in

i posted a thread earlier this week about a conversation i had with my jw ex-wife.

the next day i sent her this e-mail.

one should never be afraid of ideas.

easyreader1970

they may get stuck in deadend low paid jobs but i bet the average witness IQ is quite high

If you have a high IQ and are perpetually stuck in a dead end, low paying job, what good is the IQ?

I think that discouraging its members, its young people, from seeking a higher education is the worst crime that the organization has committed. Even worse than the blood job they are doing on people. The blood doctrine affects relatively few people. Telling people that nothing good can come from higher education is damning to just about everyone who believes it. Worse yet, they will actually show pictures of people in their literature happily doing things like mopping floors and such.

How many people do you know who can support a family doing Broom Duty?

Oh wait. Jehovah provides the "necessities of life". That means you should be able to afford 10 year old blue jeans from the Goodwill, ramen noodles for dinner, and a 1973 Datsun. Anything more than that is pursuit of riches.

er

28

An Interesting YouTube debate I had with a JW

by B_Deserter in

so most of you have probably seen my youtube video what you should know about jehovah's witnesses, which can be found here.

naturally, this draws quite a negative response from the jw community, but this particular person decided to send me a personal message.. you wanna talk smack about witnesses or anyone in general you better have your facts straight.

everything you said is taken almost enitrly out of context to our true practices.

easyreader1970

This person that you have been communicating with is either very dim or they haven't been paying very much attention in the meetings. Saying that it is not a requirement to report field service time is like saying that it's not a requirement to bathe. Sure, there's no law that forces you do it. But you will find your life extremely difficult and limited if you don't do it.

er

7

The murderers are right!

by Fadeout in

over the years there have been a few news stories about some "crazed" jw man or woman that kills their family because they don't want them to be destroyed at armageddon..

wts teaching is that anyone who dies in this system, if not irredeemably evil (hitler), will be resurrected in the new system.

wts teaching is also that those who are not evil but merely indifferent, disfellowshipped, children having unbelieving parents, etc., will be destroyed very soon, and that this destruction is permanent, with no hope of resurrection..

easyreader1970

I never understood that reasoning. I had always thought that the reason JWs were going door to door was to sort all this out. Everyone would have made their decision. If you were not "incorrigibly wicked" and you turned down the JWs literature at your door and sent them on your way, you will still get resurrected if you die before Armageddon. Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of JWs visiting you in the first place?

er

28

Natural disasters- Does permission equal causation?

by nvrgnbk in

jw
friends

for believers:.

does an omniscient god's permission of the loss of human life due to natural disasters imply some sort of negligence?.

if god possesses the power to prevent suffering, but chooses not to, what reasonable explanation can be offered?

easyreader1970

The JWs say that Jehovah is like a man listening to the radio. He can choose to turn the radio on to see what's going on in the news or he can choose not to. The Jehovah deity can know the future and everything about the present. He just chooses not to at times.

It's sort of like he has a cheat code.

er

28

Natural disasters- Does permission equal causation?

by nvrgnbk in

jw
friends

for believers:.

does an omniscient god's permission of the loss of human life due to natural disasters imply some sort of negligence?.

if god possesses the power to prevent suffering, but chooses not to, what reasonable explanation can be offered?

easyreader1970

JW explanations:

1. This is not Jehovah's fault. Everything was hunky dory before Eve listened to the serpent.

2. Sure, he could have just killed off Adam, Eve, and even Satan. But the other "myriads and myriads" of angels would have seen this act. Jehovah would only be proving that he was all powerful, not wrong in creating stupid humans. To prove humans were not a failed experiment, he had to prove over time that they would worship him, in spite of the fact that he himself had cursed them.

3. Jehovah's allowing for thousands of years of human suffering is logical because it allows more and more people to come to know him.

Re: 1

It's funny how sometimes Jehovah doesn't have a clue what is going on. Being all powerful and all knowing, shouldn't he have already known that there was a bad seed in his heavenly realm? Why did he allow them to disturb his creations? And so he allows Satan to disturb his creations, his creations fail the test, and it's suddenly the creations' fault and they and their offspring (who weren't even there at the time) are punished for all eternity.

Re: 2

I have problems with this one. Jehovah has personally ordered the killing of millions of people following this event. Why would two more killings have made a difference?

Re: 3

This logic is bad. For every one person that becomes a Witness, there is some ridiculous number of people that come into existence that will never be witnesses and Jehovah will systematically destroy them all at Armageddon. Why not stop the madness early and save those billions of deaths? Wouldn't that be more loving?

er

8

Elder burnout

by easyreader1970 in

jw
friends

i know that some have said that they aren't seeing it in their local congregations.

but i have been in two congregations in the past 2 years and they are both struggling to keep elders and ministerial servants.

one much worse than the other, though.

easyreader1970

I know that some have said that they aren't seeing it in their local congregations. But I have been in two congregations in the past 2 years and they are both struggling to keep elders and ministerial servants. One much worse than the other, though.

Some elders have been forced to step down because their children have acted in ways that indicate that the elder was not presiding over his household well. I can think of two situations where the elders' daughters were lesbians or bisexual. So two elders sat down because of that (one left the congregation). One elder disappeared because he owed too much money to fellow elders and, in the end, he abandoned his wife. A couple of them just quit specifically because of elder burnout. The load became too much to bear because of the elder/servant shortage.

In my current congregation, I was told a couple of weeks ago that they desperately needed more book studies (the few that they had were too large) but they didn't have the number of qualified brothers to handle them. Many times the elders have to conduct the bible studies deathly ill because there are no brothers to replace them. People are not reaching out for servant-ship and few of the servants actually want to be elders. They asked a servant I know twice in the last twelve months and he said he doesn't have time for it.

If these are problems that are happening worldwide (or at least nationwide), it seems logical that the Society would want to keep the few elders that they have left--especially since they can't convince any more to sign up. So dumping the book study seems like the necessary move, though desperate. This might also explain the shortening of the public talk to 30 minutes instead of 45. Ostensibly, these things are being done for the benefit of everyone but really it is the Society reacting to negativity and apathy by the elder bodies.

I wonder what else they are going to do to retain elders or even encourage more to "reach out."

er