Posts by mindmelda

12

Why does Acts 15:29 differentiate "things strangled" from "blood"?

by pirata in

acts 15:29 says to "keep abstaining from things sacrificed to idols and from flood and from things strangled and from fornication".. a study the relevant mosaic laws indicates that blood was to be poured out, and not eaten, when an animal was killed.

if the animal had already died, then it was okay to eat the unbled meat of the animal if you went through the ceremonial cleansing.

thus blood only needs to be poured out when a life was purposefully taken.. however, one could counterargue that since abstaining from "blood" and "things strangled" are listed as seperate items, the "blood" prohibition covers more than just the eating of improperly bled meat.. some have suggested that abstaining from "blood" means to abstain from bloodshed, but i haven't seen any strong arguments/reasoning to support this.. any thoughts on why this distinction is made?

mindmelda

Yes, my two youngest would have no doubt been born seriously ill or even dead if I'd have taken their BS about blood seriously. It's just literally criminal and stupid.

12

Why does Acts 15:29 differentiate "things strangled" from "blood"?

by pirata in

acts 15:29 says to "keep abstaining from things sacrificed to idols and from flood and from things strangled and from fornication".. a study the relevant mosaic laws indicates that blood was to be poured out, and not eaten, when an animal was killed.

if the animal had already died, then it was okay to eat the unbled meat of the animal if you went through the ceremonial cleansing.

thus blood only needs to be poured out when a life was purposefully taken.. however, one could counterargue that since abstaining from "blood" and "things strangled" are listed as seperate items, the "blood" prohibition covers more than just the eating of improperly bled meat.. some have suggested that abstaining from "blood" means to abstain from bloodshed, but i haven't seen any strong arguments/reasoning to support this.. any thoughts on why this distinction is made?

mindmelda

Yes, it was a rabbi I met (reformed) that explained this to me in a much more reasonable fashion than how JWs interpret it.

I have to relate my little story. I had a child in 1988 before it was really "kosher" for Witnesses to take blood factions like RHogam, the factor for preventing RH syndrome if you're an RH neg woman who has a RH pos child, as I have 4 times now. I'm O neg, which makes it problematical to have children if you're married to a RH pos...most people are RH pos.

Anyway, I had a JW midwife who told me to take the Rhogam and she wouldn't tell the elders, because although technically it was a conscience matter, some of them were really bent about any exceptions at the time and would have tried to talk me out of it.

I always took it...and then started thinking how stupid it is that you can do that but not take the rest of it. Kind of like saying it's fine to eat the fat off a steak, or gnaw on the bone, but not to eat meat because eating meat is evil. It's inSANE!

O neg is a fairly rare blood type, only about 6 % of people have it...not the rarest, but hey, if you need a transfusion.... call me!

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Anyone feel like this?

by Strider Arekksu in

jw
friends

i remember i was not always very good at social settings, i was good at analyzing them but bad at participating them, i am always in my head so its hard for me to get influenced by people if i don't get a good feel for them, so it's hard to brainwash me i guess.

when i was in this organization, i knew the tactis they were using in the paragraphs and the way they were writing were ways to trap people mentally, but i just shrugged it if off, i just made excuses, and literally thought, i'll deal with this pothole latter, i got brought in through my grandma, so i never was literally convinced that it was right.

i always remembered when the question "will witnesses be the only ones saved" came up, they gave shady answers, which meant yes, but they didn't want to say it, and knew it didn't make sense and wasn't scriptual.

mindmelda

Free labor, bequests and donations =$$$$$

24

Which do we choose and Why?

by Terry in

religion does as it is told.

science questions, tests, proves and moves forward.. .

religion gives its answers without listening to your questions.. .

mindmelda

That's some baaad religion you're referring to!

I'd say that science has some limitations and room for false conclusions occasionally too...but yes, if I want to know stuff that makes sense about the world around me, science works better.

Myths, allegory, faith or spirituality serves a completely different purpose. It's an emotional and psychological need, and has nothing to do with "reality" in the scientific, physics sense.

Unfortunately, humans are constructed so that they can imagine something and it can seem very real to them, real enough to have significant meaning.

A good example of that is you can get aroused and very very happy just thinking about having sex with a picture of an attractive naked woman. Add some physical stimulus, self applied or by someone else, and bingo, you just had a real physical response that can be measured and observed by science!

Kind of cool, I think. I'm sure faith or spirituality is part of those brain bits that also furnish us with creativity, intuition, imagination, and emotional response.

That's on the other side of the brain that deals with logic, and maybe it's because we'd have brain damage if they got too close to each other. LOL

No, it's because interestingly enough, humans can live fairly comfortably with those apparently conflicting but actually complementary abilities.

31

I have a question for you all......

by its_me! in

my sister visited me a few months ago, and she was on a holy roller, 'save my soul' kick.

she told me that i needed to get back to the meetings because armageddon was so near.

i told her that if i serve jehovah, it will not be because i am afraid of dying at armageddon, it will be because i love him and have a personal relationship with him.

mindmelda

They're brainwashed to believe that the more you do for Jehovah, the better you'll feel. I never got that either...the more I did, the more cognitive dissonance I experienced and the more depressed and miserable I was.

Glad to be out of that misery.

"Cognitive dissonance occurs when a person perceives a logical inconsistency in his beliefs, when one idea implies the opposite of another. The dissonance might be experienced as guilt, anger, frustration, or embarrassment."

64

Did leaving the WT build greater appreciation for or kill your reading of the Bible?

by lepermessiah in

jw
friends

i am really on the fence on this issue right now and would love some opinions.. i find that i dont sit down and read the bible for long periods since becoming inactive, but on the other hand, individual scriptures mean much more to me now.. i will sit down and look up some favorite passages from time to time and feel like its the first time i really "got it" - without the jw goggles on.

i love matthew chapter 23, since i think it describes to a tee the situation in jw congregations.

i think if jesus returned today, he would blast the elders and "leaders" of the borg in a similar fashion (along with most religious leaders) .matthew 24 is actually more interesting to me now, simply because my whole life was waiting for the 1914 generation to end sometime during the reagan era!

mindmelda

Well, actually, just the NWT. I sometimes read the Good News Bible. Just to keep my bible in.

I don't go to church, but if I could find a Universal Unitarian I might. There isn't one around here. It's the only Christian religion that I find overly attractive, although I find I like people in all the Christian faiths...which doesn't include Witnesses. They're not big on Christ. Calling them Christian is ridiculous.

They're what they say they are, worshippers of Jehovah.

508

Most-Ignored Scriptures by JWs

by Mad Sweeney in

the watchtower has been known for over 130 years as a great scriptural cherry-picker.

they pick out disparate unrelated verses and combine them to support the wackiest of wacky doctrines.. on the other hand there are many scriptures they almost never address, whether because they contradict wt doctrine or because they simply don't have a clue what they mean or how to spin them to the wt advantage.. one of these is revelation 19:1 that mentions a "great crowd" "in heaven.

" the only time it is ever brought up it is dismissed.

mindmelda

I really found that they gloss over the first chapter of Hebrews because Paul using a scripture in Psalms that originally used YHWH to refer to Christ is really inconvenient for them.

Anything that talks about Christ being the one through whom you gain salvation is painful for them too.

They really can't figure out what to do with Jesus anymore, except put him on a white horse and having him kill everyone at Armadillo.

(I call it Armadillo because that's what my son came up with at 3 years old, and it's just so silly, as Armadillo should be referred to...it's a silly silly boogey man in the closet thing.)

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Remember that Elder that stopped by my house in December ?

by troubled mind in

jw
friends

well i ran into him at the grocery store the other night ......why is it that my throat still tightens up and i get this anxious laugh when i talk to him ?

i want to be confident and assertive ,but ultimately i end up acting like a blubbering idiot !.

backstory is that he stopped by in december because i had put winter decorations out on my porch and he wanted to know if we were indeed celebrating christmas now .

mindmelda

I'd suggest a long tirade about Jesus or Buddha or Mohammed or the Green Lord next time you see him. Cthulu would be interesting. Come to the door wearing a green rubber tentacle mask and talking about Cthulu...or bring a plate of cooked spaghetti if you're making that for dinner and start talking about the Great Flying Spaghetti monster.

Witnesses run when you mention other gods or religious figures (Jesus is not their God, if you hadn't noticed). They're afeered of them.

Just using "The Lord" or "The Lord's Grace" in a sentence twice will scare them like nothing you ever saw.

I did that to an elder's wife when she came calling on me with magazines after I'd stopped going to the meetings for a few years, I just said, "Isn't it wonderful that we have the Lord's provisions? I appreciate the Lord's Grace."

She looked at me like I had two heads, made some mumbled excuse and ran for the car. She probably thought I had the spirit and was going to start speaking in tongues. What's ironic is that not that long ago, the Witnesses themselves used those very expressions. Kind of sad, really...they just don't know the history of their own religion too well.

I thought about memorizing a few sentences in some arcane language like Sanskrit and practicing getting a wild look in my eye just to see if I could get one to shit their pants with that whole speaking in tongues idea, but I'm too lazy.

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