this place is great and it helped me.
for anyone i used to interact with, i think about you often.
i just wanted to read and catch up..
Hi Dinah! Hope you are doing well. Did you know that wearing tight pants and coloured socks do not make Jehovah happy?
I wore my leggings today and some black socks with orange heels and toes. I guess I won't survive Armageddon or get a resurrection into Paradise Earth. Particularly since my socks also represent Hallowe'en colours, a double wammy there. Isn't Jehovah such a wonderful god?
jws like to think they have found the one true religion.
but like so many other religious people, it's usually the religion they were born into, the only religion they know because it's the first one they found or, at the most, one of two or three (typically the second one after they left their first / born-in faith).. the trouble is, there simply isn't enough time to explore and investigate each and everyone of the many thousands of belief systems, religions and sects around the world.. think of it this way: which is the best neighbourhood to live in where you would be most happy and most successful?
not just in the city or even the country you are in, but the entire world.. how would you ever know?
Simon, you keep applying logic and reason to the realm of religion. That just doesn't work.
Any organization based on fantasy and mythology is not 'true' in the sense that it is based on factual evidence.
I think the ancients who worshipped real things such as the Sun and the Earth as being life givers and divine were more sane than the big 3 we have today, worshipping Gods that kill people for not believing whatever warped interpretation of ancient scribes' superstitious writings less ancient people chose as some sort of 'bible'.
this always baffled me.
either pork is unclean and wrong to eat forever, or it was a load of bull to begin with..
One of my Jewish colleagues a number of years ago told me they'd also prohibited broccoli. Apparently they felt it was not able to be cleaned enough to consume.
can jws read publications by other churches?
or by atheists?
i've always heard these are apostate materials.
Heaven » My Father looked very suspiciously at my Hobby Farms Home magazine....
Cold Steel said: As he should have, you demonic apostate!
You need inspirational works like Watchtower, Awake and Guns & Ammo.
Haha! Well I am not a fan of the Borg's formulaic writing style for one. Their articles are predictive, ending in "Jehovah is the answer to everything" meanwhile, in the real world, Jehovah fixes nothing.
Perhaps it was the article about "Plan A Girlfriend Getaway On Your Farm" he had issue with. This implies you wouldn't be out in the Field Serve-Us or attending any indoctrination sessions (aka 'meetings' at the Kindumb Hell) but having a good time with good friends doing some fun things.
i wish i had read this back when i was 18. it's an amazing take down of religious beliefs, the bible, and religion in general.
) a "reason"-able manner.take this quote, from near the beginning:.
when also i am told that a woman, called the virgin mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, joseph, said that an angel told him so, i have a right to believe them or not: such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it: but we have not even this; for neither joseph nor mary wrote any such matter themselves.
steve2 said: Paine's work was on the reading list of one of the undergraduate papers I took in Sociology.
You can see why the Borg doesn't want people attending higher education. I should add Paine's work to my reading list.
I do agree that it is a very good idea to research pre-Jewish/pre-Christian beliefs. The Egyptian Book of the Dead, written before the Bible, contains many of the same themes/beliefs Christians hold with their own adaptation of these. An example: instead of celebrating "Yule and the Winter Solstice" - where pagans celebrate the birth of the sun, Christians celebrate "Christmas", the birth of the son. What better way to attract new members to your cult? Offer up comfort and some familiarity saying "Look, we celebrate very similar things that you do! Come on over and join up."
As Christopher Hitchens once said "Ask yourself what is more likely. That the laws of nature are suspended... OR that an unmarried Jewish girl told a fib."
Edited to add: Interestingly, this being Thu Dec 8, 2016, my calendar states this is "Immaculate Conception" day.
can jws read publications by other churches?
or by atheists?
i've always heard these are apostate materials.
Anything not produced by the Borg is suspect. My Father looked very suspiciously at my Hobby Farms Home magazine as if the demunz were about to ooze right out of it:
My Father also called the Dictionary 'worldly' with a tone of disdain.
it's been several years since the start of the rebranding of jehovahs witnesses.
i believe it started with the website change.
ever since then the religion has moved in a more modern direction.
Interestingly, my cousin, who hasn't contacted me in over 7 years, just out of the blue sent me an email about a month ago. He knew my Dad wasn't well 7 years ago as he was the one who emailed me back in 2009 that something wasn't right with Dad. Then nothing until now. He is a born in like me. Maybe ... just maybe the re-branding is part of why he contacted me.
Their videos are crap. Lots of doctrinal bs too. The blood policy nonsense is a big one for our family.
Anyone who has been in the Borg at least since the '60s has got to know something isn't right here. Where the f*ck is Armageddon?!! Fifty plus years ain't "imminent" ... it's not even "soon".
Well, there is a lot of violence in it for sure. It's certainly not a book for kids.
There are many people who have lived full and productive lives past, present, and will in the future without ever having read the Bronze and Iron Age Middle Eastern desert dwellers' book of fantasies. Heck most modern day Christians haven't read it either.
I would suggest there are far more fun and productive things to do than discuss a book of stories written and compiled by people who never met the Jewish apocalyptic rabbi they decided to deify.
several months ago i approached a nice young couple who were standing by a jw literature stand in my local community.
they were pleasant and polite but incredibly stilted when it came to answering my "innocent" questions about their beliefs.
this was the occasion of jws featuring the article headlined "is religion dying?".
My Dad was a baptized witness for 25+ years after he retired. He never once convinced anyone to join the Borg. Outside of the fact that he wasn't a trained sales person, I have to go with the next obvious point... the product just isn't desirable.
nathan, outlaw.....all of you hilarious people...this means you!
i believe in humor as an effective way to bring attention to an important topic.
humor has made many people aware of the true nuttiness of the jw cult in the past (sign language masturbation video—went viral).. amazon allows humorous reviews and even showcases them.
I still have my copy of this book. I remember reading it and thinking they heap all the sexual properness responsibility on the girls. It pissed me off.
