Posts by mindmelda

17

1Corinthians 11

by PSacramento in

this is the chapter that is used to "justify" women covering their heads:.

from the esv:.

head coverings.

mindmelda

I think I occasionally find Paul unappealing when he reverts to traditional patriarchal Jewish customs and thinking in regards to women. LOL

I don't think the Bible wrote down the history of the Jews so we could mindlessly repeat their mistakes or the ignorance they displayed because of the times they lived in, along with all the other more positive things we learn from them.

I think we're supposed to learn that the Bronze Age was a crappy and violent time to live in and who would want to live like that, I ask you? I'm glad I don't.

Just because it was the custom of most men of this time in that part of the world to treat women as property, slaves, and deny them privileges we now think of as ordinary doesn't mean that we're wrong for NOT doing it. It means THEY were wrong and less civlized. People in the Bible were wrong about a lot of things. Why wouldn't they be, people can only behave as well as they know how.

People like to think that the Bible and Christianity hasn't always been a civilizing influence, and true, it's had it's bad moments, but over all, I think it's done some good in that respect. After all, it's become a large part of first world thinking and culture and we are somewhat more civilized than we were during the time of the Romans...just a teensy bit.

65

What Do You Like LEAST About This Here Board?

by snowbird in

jw
friends

for me, it's the pm system.. sylvia.

mindmelda

NO CAKE....I was promised cake.

86

Perhaps Had a " Ghost " Experience the Last 6 weeks on a Job ? You tell me

by flipper in

jw
friends

i've never been one to believe in " ghosts " .

i'm open to the possibility that there may exist something in the afterlife or spirit world- i just don't know what it is.

having been out of the witnesses over 6 years i had my fill of being a jehovah's witness and being told how " scared " i should be of satan or the demons.

mindmelda

I know there's no real scientific evidence of the paranormal, but I've also noticed that doesn't keep some people from studying the possibilities.

The real question to me is why do humans want there to be a metaphysical world? I hate dismissing that as mere nuttiness, because that would mean that the average human is pretty nutty. The fact is, most people believe in some aspect of the supernatural, even if it's as mundane as believing in "luck".

There's a good psychological explanation, actually. It's because our brains are anything but literal analytical machines, hell, we're not calculators. They're a lot more sophisicated, so much so that a good part of our brains are occupied with imagination, fiction, fantasy and other self created inner worlds and most importantly, a self conscious awareness that other creatures just seem to lack...some of the smarter animals have some vague sense of self, but nothing like human brains. We have a whole big energy sucking brain section devoted to this stuff, so it has to be important. Evolution doesn't waste it's time on the useless, not much.

All that goofiness comes from the same place, imagination, which is one of the things that makes us hella superior to even the next smartest animals to us on the planet.

I tend not to knock something that makes us what we are, which is the smartest, most creative, most mentally and emotionally complex and just plain old most interesting living creature on earth.

86

Perhaps Had a " Ghost " Experience the Last 6 weeks on a Job ? You tell me

by flipper in

jw
friends

i've never been one to believe in " ghosts " .

i'm open to the possibility that there may exist something in the afterlife or spirit world- i just don't know what it is.

having been out of the witnesses over 6 years i had my fill of being a jehovah's witness and being told how " scared " i should be of satan or the demons.

mindmelda

Longhairgal, I had a lot of issues resolved for me when I went to a psychologist and he discovered that a lot of the things that make some people unhappy with me are simply normal organic differences.

I'm simply different than everyone else in my family, which they took as resistance and flakiness, laziness, all sorts of negative things. I'm just not designed to think conventionally, apparently. I still get things accomplished and manage well, I just have to do some things a bit differently than most people would.

I have a method to my madness too...I usually got schoolwork done in half the time other kids did in school, to the point where teachers accused me of cheating. LOL I'm just a very very quick reader, that was my advantage and also a nearly "photographic" memory. (That''s a poor term, the real term is "eidetic")

I found a way to do math with the help of an outside tutor that worked for me, but didnt conform to the way it was taught in school and so got in trouble for that, as the teacher also thought I was cheating when I suddenly started getting Bs in algebra after being a dismal D student.

People with learning differences or different learning styles cannot always learn things conventionally, and sometimes, they discover alternatives on their own.

A good book to read about learning style differences and how to use them to your advantage is "The One Mind" by Dawna Markova. She works with LD kids and most conventional public schooling is so left brained in concept that being right brained is almost a learning difference! But discovering your own normal brain differences, strengths and weaknesses can help anyone maximize their learning potential.

I always learned more on my own than from public school, most of the time. Occasionally, I'd find a teacher who could accomodate me, but certain subjects in school were either boring or nightmarish for me.

I have a brother who is dyslexic...he's got a genius IQ but went through most of school thinking he was stupid because reading was so hard for him..until he devised a system on his own for reading and finally caught up.

I got the math LD, he got the reading one...interesting that we have almost opposite learing differences, not to mention nearly opposite personalities, too.

27

Do you still believe in the doctrines of the Watchtower

by SAHARA in

man, i did it again in messing up my post.

anyway, after reading many exjw responses to questions from posters, i see there is a wide variety of opinions on faith and religion in general such as still believing that there is a god to no belief in god at all.

for those of you who still believe that there is a god, i'd like to know whether or not you still believe in the doctrines of the watchtower, but you just don't believe that it is gods "only true religion"?.

mindmelda

No, the Bible pretty much teaches that Christ is God, that people who accept Christ as their God are going to have a heavenly afterlife, that there's a "soul". I don't think that there's no biblical taboos against any kind of sex except for beastiality, pedophilia, incest, religiously oriented prostitution or marital unfaithfulness, in spite of the WTS labeling every kind of sex aside from straight vaginal sex between marrieds as EVIL.

I'm trying to think of one thing that the Witnesses teach that is totally and utterly Biblical, and frankly...I can't. That doesn't mean I agree with every teaching of every religion in Christianity, either, but most of the mainstream faiths are closer than Witnesses.

Whether you accept the Bible as total and literal truth seems to be the bone of contention among most other Christians...I don't, so that would put me in disagreement with some, but I don't find the Bible totally invalid either, and I'm not an atheist.

17

1Corinthians 11

by PSacramento in

this is the chapter that is used to "justify" women covering their heads:.

from the esv:.

head coverings.

mindmelda

Since reading non JW bibles, I've discovered they turn a lot of things around to suit them. I'm rather ashamed sometimes that I really thought other religious people were just being nasty or mislead by Satan when they said that the NWT is a piece of crap and mistranslated.

It is, it's a piece of crap Bible re-written to make Witness teachings seem more valid. Self serving bunch of arseholes, as usual.

22

JW practicing form of witchcraft

by XPeterX in

jw
friends

my grandmother practises/used to practise spells,would go to mediums,and believe in witchery-related things.she is an active jw and the elders had been told about that and they said that there is no evidence and the case closed but there were 2-3 witnesses.no jc and no disfellowshipping.why did this happen?any similar experiences?.

mindmelda

They don't care about that stuff unless:

1. It involves making JWs look bad in the community, which it probably wouldn't there, as it's an accepted custom.

2. It costs them money or to lose money.

3. It becomes a big stink among some super Witnesses in the congregation.

Otherwise, you could probably do darn near anything and they'd be all ho hum about it.

35

I continue to find it incredible....

by AK - Jeff in

that christians throw the old 'where did the matter come from if there was a big bang'?, while having no problem with thinking that god was always there!.

so the dust in the room had to have a 'maker'?

but the super-computer brain sky-daddy is just there and always has been?.

mindmelda

I don't mind being wrong at all. I'm used to it, I have three teenagers who tell me that all day long.

Some of the things you assert as being dead right are simply different points of view or debateable. Other people say differently. If we're just BSing, I don't mind anyone saying anything, but if you come out with "That's WRONG!" show me where you got it from so I can read it myself and make a decision from there.

I'm sourcing information that says differently about the Einstein thing, just as an example. I have no idea which source is wrong, but it's in conflict from some of your assertions or sources.

I'm not overly invested in any of it, it's not even my opinion, so yelling "You're wrong!" isn't going to offend me at all. My sources may be wrong, but that's my sources, not my opinion, opinions are not right or wrong, they're individual. On some matters, I care so little, I don't have much of an opinion. When I'm opinionated about something, I say "This is my opinion." Which is worth pretty much nothing, except to me. Opinions may be based on inaccurate information, but they are never wrong, nor are they right. They just are.

I'm just a person who likes to throw information out there and see what happens. That doesn't mean it's always my opinion or that I'm asserting I'm right.

I don't do right and wrong contests. I prefer discussion to debate.

Debate is never about who is right, it's about who wins through persuasion, and isn't about searching for the truth, it's about who presents facts in such a way as to win. Why do you think our legal and political systems are so "interesting" in America? It's not based on right and wrong, it's based on who is the best at persuasion, debate and presenting information in such a way as to win over public opinion, a jury or a judge...that's all.

If you don't believe that, ask a lawyer. They will tell you right away that the first thing law school teaches you is that the law is not about right or wrong, it's about what the people and representatives vote in as law. That's why it changes all the time, because what people think is right or good at one time can change when a situation changes. Law is not immutable because it's based largely on public opinion.

I can be fairly persuasive if I want to be, I used to sell things for a living. That doesn't make me right, it makes me persuasive.

But, just in case anyone missed it, I don't care if some information I throw out here is wrong or inaccurate if you can show me how or why.

And I'm not mad at anyone, I just think that nitpicking at information I throw out there is not equivalent to proving my opinions wrong, it means you think my sources of information are wrong which they might well be. I don't know, I'm sort of at the mercy of people who compile knowledge and present it to the public, like most of us.

I actually haven't contributed anything new and relevant to the body of human knowledge in any field, so when I offer something and someone disagrees, I'm not going to waste my time being offended for the person who originated the idea. How ludicrous is that?

44

So- the MadJWs.com is too much for you, eh?

by theMadJW in

after all, my topic inviting ya'll was deleted!.

no wonder so many of you attack us; you just can't take truth of any kind!.

mindmelda

Yes, you're too much. Now go away.

11

Darwin's Theory of Universal Common Ancestry Confirmed

by leavingwt in

first large-scale formal quantitative test confirms darwin's theory of universal common ancestrysciencedaily (may 17, 2010) more than 150 years ago, darwin proposed the theory of universal common ancestry (uca), linking all forms of life by a shared genetic heritage from single-celled microorganisms to humans.

until now, the theory that makes ladybugs, oak trees, champagne yeast and humans distant relatives has remained beyond the scope of a formal test.

now, a brandeis biochemist reports in nature the results of the first large scale, quantitative test of the famous theory that underpins modern evolutionary biology.. the results of the study confirm that darwin had it right all along.

mindmelda

I think you might be right about that Zid. I guess since I'd never invested much belief when I was a Witness in creationism, but just keep my cake hole shut about it, that giving that up entirely was like giving up mashed rutabaga; I never liked it much anyway, so no biggie. LOL

I tend to believe that there might be superhuman entities...call them aliens or inter dimensional beings or whatever, but I don't believe in old sky gods or anything like that, although I share with Pagans a certain celebration of the earth itself, and nature, which is totally amazing, and maybe even to the point where it deserves a few words, gestures or rituals of thanks for keeping us alive.

Even my individual perception of God when I was a Witness was pretty different than the mainstream Witness believed but again, I just kept my apostate opinions to myself. I just thought of God as some nebulous sexless force that cruised around the dimensions doing whatever it is Gods do. *G*

These days, I tend to think of spiritual things as inner journeys and belief in the supernatural as something to be open about, but nothing to get your panties in a twist about, because literally, it only matters as a part of that inner journey.