mindmelda

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Posts by mindmelda

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  18

  It's About Time Something Was Done.....

  by Sam Whiskey in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the toughest anti-illegal-immigrant measure in a generation passed the arizona legislature this week.

  if signed, as expected, by republican governor jan brewer, the law will give local police sweeping new powers in regard to undocumented workers.

  currently, immigration offenses are violations of federal, not state, law, and local police officers only can inquire about a person's immigration status if that person is suspected of another crime.

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  mindmelda

  Heck I know Hispanics born in the USA who are already hassled by the cops anytime they go too far out of their neighborhoods.

  Nothing new here, except now the cops won't get suspended for it.
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  31

  I just watched The Matrix last night...

  by doublelife in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  and i understand now what everyone means when they talk about taking the red pill.

  creepy.

  especially when laurence fishburn's character tells keanu reeves' character, "welcome to reality.

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  mindmelda

  Movies that remind me of the Borg:

  The Matrix

  Star Trek, First Contact-the Borg in all their glory...you'll see why it's an apt description

  Pleasantville

  Children of the Corn

  The Village

  The Stepford Wives

  Invasion of the Body Snatchers
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  29

  Why did Russell look so different?

  by startingover in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i have a photo taken in 1915 with c. t. russell standing in a large group of men.

  i have seen lots of pictures of him but usually he is by himself.

  something that stood out in the picture is how different he looked from everyone else in the picture.

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  mindmelda

  When they decided it was an "organization" rather than a "religion" (remember that period in the 80s when the WTS eshewed the word "religion" and then decided to use it again, as people were getting worried that they were in an organization like the PLO or the United Nations rather than anything spiritual like a "religion"?) I'm sure that the rules about conformity of dress, speech and behavior started coming in to it.

  That's why people have "uniforms" even if of their own making, so everyone knows more or less who they are. Hippies wearing cruddy blue jeans and cast off army jackets were telling you what they stood for, and the Watchtower Society makes sure that when you march up the sidewalk with your book bag and your middle management suit, short hair and shaved face, you're a JW.
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  282

  What accusations do you have about us JWs? AND what group are YOU a part of?

  by theMadJW in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

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  i'm one of the few jws that freely admit our faults and mistakes.. let's compare notes!.

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  mindmelda

  When someone comes upon a forum where they know ex Witnesses are, and challenges them, and the forum responds as has to be anticipated, that's not an unfair fight.

  That's either throwing yourself on a grenade to save the rest of your platoon or purposely stepping on a landmine to get out of the war.

  The fact is, you cannot, by definition call something "the Truth" when it doesn't fit the criteria of absolute truth in every sense of the word. It's as simple as looking at a dictionary:

  Truth: Middle English trewthe, from Old English treowth fidelity; akin to Old English treowe faithful — more at true

  Date: before 12th century

  1 aarchaic:fidelity, constancyb: sincerity in action, character, and utterance
  2 a (1): the state of being the case :fact(2): the body of real things, events, and facts :actuality(3)often capitalized: a transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality b: a judgment, proposition, or idea that is true or accepted as true <truths of thermodynamics> c: the body of true statements and propositions
  3 a: the property (as of a statement) of being in accord with fact or reality bchiefly British:true 2 c:fidelity to an original or to a standard
  4capitalizedChristian Science:god

  I can accept what Witnesses believe as their spiritual reality, as in definition 2 (like any other faith), or sincerity, as there are no doubt many sincere Witnesses (just like any other faith) there, but that's not the same as scientific truth or the body or real events, things and facts.

  I had an elder of good standing, my former Congregation overseer, admit to me once that what Witnesses have is a kind of spiritual truth, but not THE truth about everything. He was a physics professor many years ago, gave it up to be a Witness of course, but he could never convince himself that what the Witnesses believe is the absolute truth.

  That's pretty honest, I wonder how long it'll take for total cognitive dissonance to catch up with this guy? After comparing many religions, which the Witnesses seem to appear to encourage, I've noticed that all religions make similar claims. All claim truth, that they are "right" (righteous?), to understand the writings of their faith and interpret them correctly, to be the religion God most approves of and to be the religion that will make you feel spiritually fulfilled and happy.

  All those differing beliefs and Gods, and yet, everyone thinks they're IT. So that leaves you with three possibilities. Because we're talking reality, here, not someone's totally subjective spiritual experiences.

  1. One religion is correct and the only one that has the right ideas about life, the universe, the nature of God or gods, and all the others are wrong.

  2. Some religions are right because they teach similar things, and the others are wrong because they deviate more from those few that are right.

  3. All religions claim to be right or "the truth", but since spiritual experience is totally subjective, the word "right" is misapplied here, since where everything is subjective, there is no right or wrong, just what suits you or what you prefer.

  Witnesses, of course, believe the first supposition, that they're right and everyone else is wrong. But, so do Muslims, Mormons, and any number of other churches and religions and philosophies. If you're going for a "them vs. US" argument, you have to prove absolute truth and consistantly always having that truth, and no religion meets that criteria. NONE.

  Some people believe 2, that Christianity or Judaism or Islam is correct, in general categories and as long as you stick with "Christian" for example which teaches roughly the same things, you're fine. You still think the Jews or Buddhists are wrong, but you're fine with anyone Christian.

  I happen, after long deliberation, to subscribe to three, which seems most accurate to me. I admit that anything spiritual is totally subjective, and in that sense, is true for the person experiencing it. If you're not trying to prove absolute truth, which is nearly impossible, you don't get yourselves painted into that corner where you're constantly trying to "prove" your faith, which isn't possible anyway.

  I understand why atheists want to choke the living crap out of theists sometimes, because they keep trying to argue their beliefs, which are totally subjective, on the basis of reason and logic, which are totally OBJECTIVE, and man, you just cannot get anywhere doing that. It's harder than trying to prove "what is art?" which is also totally subjective and people argue about endlessly. Best summed up with the quote, "I know what art isn't." With art, as with music or spiritual transcendence, you are having an entirely emotional response to something called art, and if you don't have that, it's not art to you.

  Might as well pound nails with your forehead all day than try to prove a subjective emotion as The Absolute Truth for Everyone as the Witnesses do with their beliefs..I know I'd rather. I'm so OVER trying to prove what I believe. It's not possible, it's not required and therefore, a waste of time.

  On scientific matters, I use logic. When I want to walk out into nature and have a spiritual experience, I use other parts of my brain. I think everyone can do that, but don't confuse one with the other or your brain will bleed.
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  29

  Why did Russell look so different?

  by startingover in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i have a photo taken in 1915 with c. t. russell standing in a large group of men.

  i have seen lots of pictures of him but usually he is by himself.

  something that stood out in the picture is how different he looked from everyone else in the picture.

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  mindmelda

  I think these guys were making cough drops on the side.

  
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  30

  What Are YOU Most Passionate About?

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i have to say that i love music!

  i love 60s to present r &b, soul, funk and many top 40 songs.

  i think that even if i'm tired or down a bit, music picks me up!.

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  mindmelda

  Education, music, children, and dogs, probably in that order.

  My kids are older now, so they've moved down on the list.

  Also, I'm an activist for my Aspie (Aspergers) son, and although I love education, I hate the public school system. It's the biggest single injustice to our children right now that I can imagine.

  I know, I used to work in it. The only job more scary is being a prison guard, but what do you expect when you through a few hundred emotionally immature individuals into an artificial social construct designed to foment competition about everything from academic skills, to looks, to popularity, wealth, athletic skills, and now, violence and sexual conquest?

  It's a wonder any teenager comes out sane after that. Then you're supposed to learn all the skills you need to either get a job or hopefully go on to college, as neither one is nothing like high school.

  You can't wonder why some teenagers act like criminals when they're in a daily situation somewhat comparable to prison. At best, a public school functions like the military, but without many of the real world incentives. At it's worst, like a prison.

  The reason it functions like the military in some ways is that the original purpose of public schooling was to give the children of the poor adequate education to become factory workers and soldiers, because every society needs minimally educated drones.

  The idea of encouraging academic excellence in public schools with scholarships and grants to attend college is a fairly recent one...only since the 60s. Some damn socialistic Democrats did that, as they had this idea that the better educated Americans were, the better it would be for the country's economy as a counter agent to poverty. Imagine that....prevention instead of mopping up financial disaster later...who'd have thought it?
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  27

  Does a satanic cult control the world?

  by Weeping in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  "some of the biggest men in the united states, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something.

  they know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

  " woodrow wilson, the new freedom (1913) in march, svali, an ex-illuminati mind controller wrote: "there is a lot more going on in the suburbs around washington, dc than most people realize," she described how the illuminati cult brainwashed and trained people to become assassins.

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  mindmelda

  No,no, it's aliens from another dimension who gave the Mayans advanced skills like irrigation and written language and then died, leaving their crystal skulls behind so that a brave archaeologist with a cool hat and a whip, with his son, would discover them. They left taking all evidence of their presence with them when the golden room was found and inadvertantly activated by a commie who was obsessed with the supernatural.

  I know its true...I saw the documentary called "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull".

  Satan has been a convenient label for human fears for quite some time. Thanks for that, Judeo Christian myth. Without that, we might actually have to blame ourselves for all the evil in the world.
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  12

  Is God Punishing the Tea Party?

  by Elsewhere in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i've noticed that when something bad happens, the religious right tends to have a knee jerk reaction of saying that god is punishing a certain group because that group did something that god doesn't like.. .

  on april 15th (tax day), all of the tea party people got together and had rallies in a lot of the major cities.. on april 17th & 18th, the days that the nascar was supposed to happen, it rained... and rained... and rained... and the races had to be canceled.. .

  now, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to conclude that a disproportionately large number of nascar fans are affiliated with the tea party movement.

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  mindmelda

  I wondered when one of these pundidiots would claim that the volcano was God's punishment.

  I guess God really hates unbridled capitalism and glaciers because Iceland had a terribly unregulated banking system that collapsed and left the country bankrupt, and now this.
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  5

  Lifeforce v. Spirit and Star Trek and Stargate SG1?

  by Cold Steel in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i was just wondering about the jw concept of lifeforce v. spirit.. now i'm a big fan of stargate sg-1/atlantis and, to a lesser degree, star trek.

  and the question i always had about the whole dematerialization and rematerialization process used in wormhole travel and beaming and such is this: if i understand it correctly, ever time you dematerialize, you're effectively killed, or cease to exist.

  the version of "you" that steps onto the transporter or jumps into the wormhole gets completely zapped and the one that reappears on the other side is simply a perfect copy, with all the memories, feelings and so forth.

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  mindmelda

  Good questions, actually. The Dubs always claim that when one is resurrected, it's a copy of you, exact in everyway, but hey, doesn't that mean that without a superhuman "upgrade" you'd still be subject to death and disease?

  With that in mind, none of us who were ushered into "the new system", including the resurrected, are going to be in the same bodies, not genetically speaking, that we are now. Death is actually written into our DNA. You know what happens when most bodily cells don't die as they should and then are replaced by new ones (some cells, such as those in the human nervous system, unfortunately don't regenerate, ever)? They mutate and become cancerous. Yes, cells do one of two things, they die or they become cancerous. Cells are genetically written to DIE, or else they become something malignant, tumors or wildly growing cells unable to carry out their life sustaining functions.

  What the Witnesses describe as "resurrection" to a human body or regenerating back to youth or living forever simply isn't in the human genetic code at the moment, and we'd literally be something different from humans as we know it if that was re-written.

  Reading that in a medical science magazine about 7 years back made me think...would we still even be human if we didn't die physically?

  Other religions at least affirm the truth that the body dies...it's only that ethereal and immortal soul that they say lives on. Since that's not quite provable, not scientifically, I leave belief in that to each person, but at least other Christian faiths aren't saying we won't be human in the sense we're familiar with anymore.

  No wonder the Dubs discourage Scifi. It might actually make some people look at actual science, which might lead to actual thoughts...oh dear.

  Oh, I'm sure that the Dubs would no doubt explain by the old "miracle" clause, but I don't know how you could perform this miracle and humans not be fundamentally re-written on a cellular level...and that's what makes us human. We share 98% of our DNA with a chimp, for instance. Change a few hundred thousand strands of this and that and we're...well...something different than what we are now.

  Kind of scary when you think of it that way.
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  50

  Profoundly Shock, Sadening and Traumatic Account of Mary Aguilar

  by Scott77 in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  after reading this internet link below about the profoundly shocking, sadening and traumatic account of mary aguilar, an ex-jw woman's systematic treatment and abuse, what do you think regarding the action her jw abusive husband, the congregational elders, and finally, the wts attitude when she finally reported the accident to them?

  is there any related experienes that you might have come across?.

  http://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/blogs/view/306.

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  mindmelda

  My ex sister in law's mother (a Witness married to a non-Witness) was abused by her alcoholic husband for years, in every way possible and she was encouraged by the elders to stay with him out of "respect for Jehovah's arrangement of marriage and headship".

  The man was insane from alcohol abuse and finally also diagnosed with schizophrenia. He would hold her down and burn her with curling iron because he was paranoid and possessive, and when he'd see her get ready to go to the meetings by curling her hair, that's what he' do. The elders told her she was being persecuted for being faithful to Jehovah.

  He was finally committed to a mental institution for some public acts of violent drunkeness and she was free of him but could have been much earlier if she'd not believed the advice of the elders.

  I know that this kind of extreme abuse isn't excused as much by some elders now, but, if people in this religion were trained to actually think, no one with any sense or compassion would tell a woman to return to a man who was literally torturing her and endangering her life.