Lots, if you consider alcohol a legal drug. Or Rx meds. Or pot...well, okay, I know quite a few Witnesses who did and do drugs.
mindmelda
JoinedPosts by mindmelda
-
24
Did You Know Any Jehovah's Witnesses That "Did" Drugs?
by minimus inmy teenage daughter suggested to me that certain kids in well connected families were regular pot smokers.
it was always hush hush because of their connections but evidently it was common knowledge within the "in" crowd.. i knew some adults that were on prescription pills but they had legitimate excuses for being "happy".
of course, most jws i know of, medicate themselves on booze..
-
-
-
99
Why FAITH is actually a form of suicide
by Terry ini once heard a psychiatrist explain suicide as the ultimate act of self-preservation.
sound weird?.
counter-intuitive as that sounds, he went on to explain why.. when all you value in life is threatened you do whatever desperate act that will preserve that value.. destruction of self stops the ......process.....of consciously losing.
-
-
mindmelda
I simply don't believe in vengeful gods anymore...The OT God, which is merely repeated in Revelation, for some reason (it's largely based on Isaiah, some of it word for word, even) isn't my cuppa.
I find what some term Pauline Christianity rather unpalatable, I think he was going back to the Jewish God and Jewish law just a bit, which is to be expected from a former rabbi!
But, it is one extension of Christian belief, I suppose. I tend to think of Paul as the first real big split of Christian belief, he obviously carried a lot of weight. Obviously, even then, there were those who disagreed with him for better or worse, but for some reason, Pauline Christianity became the basis for the majority at that time, at least, in the NT version of things.
I'm a Universalist, and to be honest, the only part of the Bible that floats my boat is the Gospels and some of the Psalms...even those I take with a grain or two of salt, but I do find Christ appealing, as do many people, even non-Christians. However, I find Buddha equally appealing. I also love reform Judaism and elements of Paganism. I've learned a lot from atheists, but I'm not committed enough to be one...I find it too restrictive, I have too much of a love of the potential or possibility of the metaphysical.
I'm sort of a Jewish Buddhist Christian Pagan, I guess. I take only what I think are the best parts of any belief system, examine them, and incorporate what appeals, and it's quite eclectic, although I find it interesting that all those belief systems have quite a bit in common, more than some people would like to think. I don't believe in "one size fits all" beliefs or ideas, so it works for me.
-
20
As a JW, Did You Pray & Study With Your Spouse?
by mentallyfree31 inwhen you were a jw, did you pray regularly with your spouse?
what about a "family study"?.
i was a pioneer and ministerial servant, but praying with somebody was always the most awkward, uncomfortable thing ever.
-
-
mindmelda
I did always enjoy that occasional brother who would asked to be forgived for his falling shorts, though.
Falling shorts are a terrible problem for some guys, I guess, so much that they feel the need for godly intervention, although suspenders tend to work better.
-
13
Found another NWT lie! Romans 6:23 - Wages sin pays is death
by Robert7 inso i was speaking to a pastor friend of mine while i was explaining why i have a hard time beleiving how a loving god could send any of his creation to an eternal hell, and i brought up romans 6:23, which says in the nwt "the wages sin pays is death", and mentioned now when we die, our death covers our sins, according to jws.. he said, no, romans 6:23 says "the wages of sin is death".
very different meaning!
the jw translation means when you die, you sins are washed clean.
-
-
mindmelda
I can believe people thought that then. They also believed if a pregnant woman looked at a rabbit, her baby would be born with a cleft palate.
Sympathic magic is the basis of all Neolithic and Bronze Age religions, which are the basis for all the ones we still have now.
Sympathetic magic is the human brain making connections based on observations that are incomplete or unknown and so making connections between unrelated things.
If you didn't know that germs caused illness, it was easy, from observation, to believe it was fumes or anything else around the sick or the dead causing it. So, for years people believed illness was caused by bad smells. They're vaguely related, so believing that did some good (it caused people to burn and wash things attached to illness, or to practice quarantine, sometimes), but the cause of decomposition and the bad smells emanating from ill people was bacteria, which wasn't known about...but decomposition and illness does indeed smell BAD.
-
5
This is What the Overlapping Generation Teaching Means
by Mad Dawg inhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyljh81dsiw.
-
-
mindmelda
Oh thank...now I understand everything!
-
20
As a JW, Did You Pray & Study With Your Spouse?
by mentallyfree31 inwhen you were a jw, did you pray regularly with your spouse?
what about a "family study"?.
i was a pioneer and ministerial servant, but praying with somebody was always the most awkward, uncomfortable thing ever.
-
-
mindmelda
I always knew Star Trek was going to become a religion. Where can I sign up?
I never did that with my husband and we're not estranged or indifferent to each other at all, which is saying something. I was less embarrassed to have sex and be naked in front of him than to ask him to pray with me. Always came off as ridiculously pious to both of us to pray out loud together.
We always read all kinds of things, we didn't need anyone to enforce that.
-
39
Do JHW teach about the blood of Jesus and what it did ?
by evangelist 1 ini am sorry for maybe starting new thread on the most important topic, but i couldn't find them here to bring them up again or read through the thread if any.. .
i started the thread on grace and was almost shock to death about the fact that the jhw don't teach on grace.. now if they don't teach on the blood of jesus in concepts and in contexts of the bible i will really know satan himself is the author and finisher of the jhw whole society and it is from the pits of hell.. i thought it was formed on misunderstandings and error based on many religious men but i am starting to see a deeper truth about the jhw who must go door to door and decieve innocent people, to brain wash them into a hell bound society, with people going to hell with a bible in their hand.. so can people here give me information about the teaching of the blood of jesus is if they do teach this what do they reach about the blood of jesus which has washed away all our sins??.
does it wash all our sins away rather than getting water baptized??.
-
-
mindmelda
Apparently, it's only good for getting rid of Adamic sin (something like bad genes?)...the rest can only be cured by a thousand years of having elders treat you like something they wiped off the bottom of their shoe. They're practicing that now for later, it's called the "spiritual paradise".
-
23
they are gettin better and better at ludicrous
by booby inso jesus regularly attended meetings for worship (they don't specify which kingdom hall) and may have been thinking about psalm 40:6-8 (in the new world translation i suppose).
7 jesus showed his keen interest in spiritual things by regularly attending meetings for.
worship.
-
-
mindmelda
For Jehovah's Witnesses, Jesus has become the dogcatcher of their spiritual paradise, somewhere beneath the Borganization as far as people to be paid attention to.
-
99
Why FAITH is actually a form of suicide
by Terry ini once heard a psychiatrist explain suicide as the ultimate act of self-preservation.
sound weird?.
counter-intuitive as that sounds, he went on to explain why.. when all you value in life is threatened you do whatever desperate act that will preserve that value.. destruction of self stops the ......process.....of consciously losing.
-
-
mindmelda
Yes, I know, that's why I referred to that as "faith in the metaphysical sense". Sun rises, earth rotates, same difference. *shrugs* Point is, however the process is described, from the subjective observable "sunrise" or the objective, scientific "earth rotating", it does.
Don't get me wrong, I'm okay with the existence of the inexplicable, the metaphysical, although it causes me no pain when someone comes up with a scientific explanation for the previously inexplicable. *G*
But, faith in the unseen or unknown as being beneficient is a particularly human trait, and I don't see it going away anytime soon, nor does it need to.
For one thing, it probably keeps us from going crazycakes wondering about all the things that can actually go wrong in the universe, galaxy or solar system and obliterate us in no time at all. It's easier on the psyche to visualize (and humans are excellent at imagining and by doing so, creating emotions that react to those imagined scenarios exactly as they do to real experiences) a beneficient universal force that actually gives a hoot about us and gives us special purpose in being alive other than just randomness or chaos. Human brains hate chaos...they fight it, and religion may be a reaction to that fact. A universe full of gods or God controlling everything, even when it's going wrong, is more acceptable than randomness.
Did I mention humans innately hate randomness? LOL Hence, the essentially random nature of the universe (as we've come to discover) scares the pee out of us. I'm sure a lot of people hate science for finding that out, if nothing else. Damn science, messing up our nice imagined controlled beneficentily run universe!
No sense worrying about stuff like that we have no control over anyway, and most of the time, the universe is indeed "benevolent" in that it allows us to keep existing, aside from the usual hiccups of plague, extreme climate shifts, earthquakes and lethal weather. That's about as good at is gets, I guess.
However, I have a concept of God or the metaphysical that doesn't require constant attendance or even constant benevolence as proof of godliness, so I'm fine with the universe the way it is....it's better than banging your head against the wall of wanting God to fix everything for me.
Getting rid of notions of God as Santa or Mr. Goodwrench or eHarmony dating services or my three wish genie in the lamp is the only way I can continue to believe in God at all.
-
14
Aug 15 2010 WT - 3rd Study Article - Are they Serious!
by Simon Morley inparagraph 17 states: "how should we respond when rumors about fellow believers are circulated by gods enemies?".
what about: "how we should respond when rumours about fellow believers are circulated by fellow believers?
my family was continually a victim of sewer level slander (not even gossip that resulted in murder - not physical but a character assassination.
-
-
mindmelda
Cults always have to blame the victim or at least, the source of complaint against them or their representives, to keep their veneer of purity and superiority to anything else.
It's never THEIR fault, because they represent God (or make themselves a god), who makes no errors. Therefore, they make no errors. Circular reasoning deluxe.