what am i missing?
why are the illegal immigrants demanding their rights?
they're illegal, they don't have the rights of an american citizen because they are not citizens.
Oh, I just wonder how unnecessary it is to make illegal aliens more illegal while they're already committing another illegal act?
God, we already have a lot of redundant laws, do we really need this one?
I guess what I'm asking is: Are the present laws so full of loopholes that we need this new so lawyers can find some more in IT?
Yeah, I sound cynical...bleh.
.....disfellowshipping, i think.. potential disfellowshipping, current disfellowshipping, disfellowshipping of people we love.. it's the most genius cult tool ever invented..
NO DFing necessary here...I snuck out the back door before they could fire me.
Still sneaking. If it weren't for my parents, who are old and don't need me to get DF'd, I'd be screaming from the rooftops and actually, I'm not exactly quiet about what shit the WTS is out of their hearing.
I just happen to live 1800 miles from anyone who knew me as a Witness years ago now, so it doesn't matter. I don't identify, I don't even know any JWs here except my husband's uncle and aunt, who are rather inactive themselves and seem to ignore our un Witness-y behavior.
I think the poor guy had a belly ful when HE was DF'd a few years ago and even though he was reinstated, he acts like he could care less about it now. I think we may have another potential fader in the family, thank goodness.
i was watching cnn, an d they asked this question and this one lady called in and claimed she wasn't raised in a religious household.
but she remembered when she was in elementary school that this jw girl asked her if she was spritual she said no, then the jw told her she would go to hell.
wow.
I think it's the other way round...anthropologists tend to say that spirituality, which is more or less innate, came a long time before anything we'd call "religion", especially organized religion.
Spirituality is kind of hard to define, but so are emotions, art and creativity. They seem to come from the same parts of the brain...the right side part that handles all the non-linear, non logical stuff.
Basically, we just like to experience alteration to our brain chemistry occasionally, and we can induce it in various ways, some internalized and part of every day existence, some external. Most of it is harmless recreation for our brain meats, I think. Some researchers believe that even subtle changes in the earth's electromagnetic fields can induce these states...which could account for some places being revered for ages as "sacred".
These places tend to have more of that energy when readings are taken. Some places may have naturally produced unseen gases or plant substances that induced hallucinations or trancendent emotional or physical states...seem to be the case with the Delphian Oracle legend.
Also, our brains are so big and smart, they need constant diversion, like how we can look up at clouds and see dragons...as long as you don't start believing that they're real dragons and running around screaming "Dragons!" you're fine. We like to invent fictions and exaggerate to entertain ourselves and to try to explain the inexplicable.
it is here in writing the new generation change.
on page 5 of the of the wt while talking about the annual meeting report.. "john barr gave the third and final talk.".
"john barr made clear that the gathering wound not continue indefinitely.
I think meant to say that the last days comes in PANTS...well..... it's funnier that way.
it is here in writing the new generation change.
on page 5 of the of the wt while talking about the annual meeting report.. "john barr gave the third and final talk.".
"john barr made clear that the gathering wound not continue indefinitely.
"John Barr made clear that the gathering wound not continue indefinitely."
Whoop de doo...does this mean I can go watch Dr. Who now? I mean, if I'm going to indulge in fiction, I want it to be entertaining.
.....disfellowshipping, i think.. potential disfellowshipping, current disfellowshipping, disfellowshipping of people we love.. it's the most genius cult tool ever invented..
I thought there was going to be cake.
if you leave the "safe waters" of the organization and go back into the world, you are doomed to misery----per the watchtower.....was that your experience?.
Frankly, I could never figure out why they were always demonizing perfectly nice "wordly" people. Since I was dragged into the JWs at the ripe old age of 12, I actually knew there were nice people out there.
It was my mother who thought the world was shit and wanted to believe it wasn't worth the effort. But, that was because she viewed it through the eyes of her depression and anxiety, but I didn't realize that until much later, of course.
in the june 15th wt it says on page 9 i will just write it out as it is to hard and unbelievable to preface this.
so here it is.. "many who today are members of the christian congregation can tell you that before learning of and adopting jehovah's righteous standards, they lived without moral restrain.
yet, they were unsatisfied and unhappy.
God, yes, I've had 900 abortions, I'm a heroin addict, I gamble away my children's milk money and I run around naked screaming "I'm a ham sandwich!" since I left the Borg.
*big eye roll*
wednesday's daily text was a masterpiece.
each sentence just added another layer of sexual guilt and repression.
i could go off for at least another 500 words but i'll stop.. .
I started realizing that it's just unusual for Witness couples to enjoy sex, and if they do, they're made to feel guilty about it.
I'm sure that's because of the strictness of dating rituals among Witnesses. There's no way to discover at all if there's any sexual chemistry between you, because that's "loose conduct".
Thank God my husband and I ignored that. We discovered that we REALLY liked each other in the usual way BEFORE we got married. I can't even imagine marrying someone and not knowing first if I turned him on. What a dilemma, especially since sexual or any other kind of incompatibility are no grounds for divorce among Witnesses.
Of course, that is because the use the Bible as the rule book for everything from Stupid to Nuts and the form of marriage most common when it was written was arranged marriage for the sake of property and inheritance. Oh, and polygamy. It has been the most "traditional" form of marriage for most of human history...simply because it accomodated the lifestyle of people in those times best in many ways. Most humans are still practicing "polygamy", except now we call it "getting some on the side".
Seriously, statistics indicate that most people have had sex with someone other than their spouse...it's because lifelong monogamy is a social imposition and expectation in the first world, not a biological inclination.
why christianity must adapt -- or perish.
there is a fundamental question facing christian sects in america, an ideological distinction that cleaves the many churches into two different camps: is it better to fit the church and christianity to the world, thus keeping the faith relevant, or is it better to mold the world to the faith?
put more bluntly, whose vision of the future of christianity is correct: the conservative, literal baptists or the modern, liberal episcopalians?
I think Christ's teachings are fine. It's too bad that more Christians don't practice them.
Many people are confusing religiosity, which is basically what Jesus was talking about when he went on about "hypocrites" who are so busy going through the motions of looking pious, with spirituality that they forget that all that is required is treating people in a reciprocal manner to make society better. We've always had those. Nothing new, you can't beat humans for corrupting any system to their own advantage.
I wouldn't even confuse Pauline writings with what Christ taught...he somehow felt the need to interject some typically torturous rabinical reasoning into the simplicity of what was written down as Christian teaching, so I tend to take that stuff with a grain of salt.
Even H.G. Wells, an avowed atheist, once said, to paraphrase. that the simplicity of Christ's teachings were so at odds with the need for religion to create ritual and complexity out of innate spiritual traits that people immediately starting interjecting that complexity back into it, when it was simply an appeal for universal brotherhood, understanding that all humans are deserving of justice, equality and compassion.
Christ is not at fault for that...he didn't demand all the things associated with organized religion, that's all just someone trying to sell you something...one of those other basic human traits, avarice, asserting itself.
I have no quibble with Christ, Buddha, Confucious, Mohammed and many others who taught basically that same thing, that humans are better off treating each other with fairness, dignity and compassion. I'm not sure I can justifiably blame the worlds great religious figures for how people deified them, corrupted their ideas and used them for their own political and economic ends.
