Posts by mindmelda

28

Girls - what subject got you thinking?

by wannabefree in

jw
friends

reading the post "how long did it take you to leave", i can't help but be envious of those of you who refer to leaving as a "we" event.. i know it has been said that women tend to react to feelings/emotions along with logic, can you help me with ideas that got you to feel something was wrong?

what should i work on planting with my wife?.

thanks..

mindmelda

I can't really believe deep down that any women truly wants to be treated the way JWs are supposed to treat women...who in their right mind wants to be totally submissive to another person all the time simply because they have a Y chromosome and outdoor plumbing and you don't?

How exactly does that give anyone the right or ability to have that degree of control over someone who happens to have two X chromosomes and indoor plumbing?

The Witnesses make it sound so nice, that you're supposed to be cherished and cared for and all that, and that's fine, no one minds that, but bad news is that the Bible does confirm that, at least during the time it was written, that men OWN women they're married or related to, which is just bullshit, and not even legal in most first world countries for a good reason.

People owning people means the owned person is legally designated as PROPERTY. For thousands of years, men believed they owned women and children and it was good for them, but history has proved otherwise. It wasn't good for anyone, which is why it changed.

Just because that was true for thousands of years didn't make it a great thing. It just was and it SUCKED.

Name me one instance where women and children being property was actually of benefit to them? Nah, you can't because it wasn't.

Who the hell wants to be property when they can be a PERSON, which gives you actual rights and some power over your life? You'd have to be crazy to want someone else to own you, unless you're a dog. Even cats hate being owned!

32

Silly things I wondered as a kid

by exwhyzee in

if god is like a loving father why did he set up a way for adam and eve to possibly fail by putting the "magic tree" in the garden?

if my dad sabotaged his kids this way or felt the need to test our love him he'd be considered an abusive father.. when god put an angel with a spinning sword in front of the entrance to the garden why didn't a&e walk a few miles down from there and climb over the wall ?

was there a wall ?.

mindmelda

If you try to take all this stuff literally, your head will explode.

I used to wonder things exactly like this when I was a kid and a JW, but I kept being assured by all the supposedly wise adults around me that I'd understand eventually.

Never happened. LOL

And then I found out like everyone does eventually when I became one myself that most adults don't know a good crap about half of what they're talking about anyway.

199

Are you an active Jw or an ex-jw?

by XPeterX in

active unbaptised publisher here.you?

(though i already know the answer for some people).

mindmelda

Technically, I'm a totally inactive JW and have been for nearly a decade. But, I've never been DF'd or DA'd. I was baptized at age 15 in 1976 to please the folks, but always had serious doctrinal issues with the Witnesses, which I really believed I could ignore or would eventually be explained away by NU LITE, but they never were.

Finally got tired of faking it around the late 1990s and only attended Sunday meetings to keep my JW parents happy, but was and had been doing and thinking whatever I pleased for sometime.

I've never really bothered to cover it up even to other Witnesses that I had issues with some of their beliefs, but they were always sure they could convince me it was "the truth"if they could just encourage me enough or keep studying with me.

I just let them think that...I think that was because I never was belligerent or aggressive about my doubts, I just pleasantly kept stating that I have them, and frankly, the elders in my former congos were too busy dealing with all the other crap going on to bother with my fading away...I rarely heard from them at first about my inactivity, and then never.

I think I've successfully faded, after a decade, but if I were DF'd at this point, I wouldn't give a hoot, it'd make no real difference, probably not even to my largely inactive JW parents. My mother might freak a bit, but she's got mental problems anyway (she's agoraphobic, OCD and a total hypochondriac who rarely leaves the house because of "germs")...everything makes her freak, so nothing new there.

3

Research confirms - ignorance elicits confidence and assuredness

by A Paduan in

darwin & others new this - research supports it - and shows that revealing the ignorance to the ignorant doesn't cure it .

http://www.abc.net.au/cgi-bin/common/player_launch.pl?s=rn/scienceshow_item&d=rn/scienceshow/audio/items&r=ssw_08052010_1237.ram&w=ssw_08052010_1237.asx&t=the dunning-kruger effect<br><span>saturday 08 may 2010</span>.

dunning-kruger effect saturday 08 may 2010. a good listen.

mindmelda

Oh, sure...there's truth in the old saying, "Ignorance is bliss."

Most of the time, it just makes them angry and provokes a feeling of self justification and martyrdom.

People are rarely grateful for having their foibles and ignorance exposed, it just sinks them further into denial or makes them angry and defensive.

I don't make a habit of doing that with the brainwashed, they just seem to have to figure it out for themselves, if at all. I try to jump in and nudge it along at that point where they have a little "HOLY FLAMING SCHNIKES! I've been duped!" moment, but I'd as soon jump naked into a brushfire than try to unbrainwash someone, doesn't work usually and you just get burned yourself.

40

I didn't know what a JW was, until I fell for one

by headoverheels in

when i fell for him i was completely unaware of his upbringing as a jw and only became aware once he decided to leave a few months back.

being raised without much of a religious basis, besides the typical western christian exposure, i have researched, read, attended groups, read in this forum, to try to better understand him, and jws, but i am feeling at a loss here.

he just recently left the jws and now i am experiencing this struggle with him; i am wondering how much of our problems can be contributed to this transition.

mindmelda

My experience is that if a man is insecure and angry at the world, and taking it out on you in some, he will simply USE a religion to try and justify it, but that's probably not why he's insecure and angry.

Some people are attracted to JWs because they're depressed, controlling, or mad at the world and it seems to offer them a solution to that, but it doesn't change things too much and underneath it all, they're still angry and controlling sorts of people. Some learn a veneer of civility or piety that they slap over that, but it's not their true self. It may just be that he was always an angry and controlling person about some things.

One thing I don't know is if he was always like this or he just started being an occasional surly bastard to you since he left the JWs. If he was always like this anyway, except around other Witnesses when forced by social pressure to make nice nice, then he's got some serious personality problems.

If he's just been like this since he quit being a Witness, it could be a transition of sorts, where he's just mad at them and the world and taking it out on you because you're handy. Don't be so handy. Just leave the room or the house and say something like "When you decide not to treat me like crap, we can talk, but until then, don't talk to me like that, you're being an ass." If you can't assert yourself that way without feeling scared or insecure about consequences, you really do have a problem and he's genuinely abusive and you need to make a decision about how much of this you're willing to take.

My husband went through being a grumpy butt at times when we left off being Witnesses...he was pretty disillusioned and pissed off at them and the world and would occasionally get surly with me, nothing horrible, just "Leave me ALONE!" and go brood or play computer games for a few hours or go piddle in the garage alone, not wanting to talk right away.

"Shut up" is a bit rude, but sounds like he just can't take any more talking at the moment more than actually outright abusive (although he's being unpleasant, obviously). "Fuck off" is crossing a bit of a line for me, but it all sounds like ways to distance himself, in various degrees, and that's a more extreme way of distancing yourself.

I'd want to know why he's working so hard at distancing you at times. There has to be a reason. It may not have anything to do with the Witness thing, it could just be something to do with him.

One thing I try to remember that most men rarely want to talk out their problems like most women do, at least, not at first. They want to brood, then fix them in some way, but most men tend to think talking about a problem is fairly ineffective until they've sat and thought on it a while. The "shut up" and ignoring you at times could simply be that, he's wrestling with something big and isn't ready to talk about it yet or it could be that he's got too many "issues" to be successful at a relationship with ANYONE until he gets it all sorted out.

31

EASY WAY TO END IT ALL

by QuitWastingTIME in

i don't understand... with all the people who are contra-watchtower - i mean all the books, all the websites, all the forums dedicated to "exposing" the watchtower "truth" - why has no one group actually just gone ahead and really exposed it?.

all the proceeds from crisis of conscience or whatever other books (many on amazon.com) or whatever spare money and time people have to create these forums for people of varying degrees of craziness and experience could all go towards one simple solution: infiltrate the governing body "enclave" meeting room with bugged mics and a hidden camera.

really, why hasn't anyone thought of that?

mindmelda

I kind of like the sharks with frickin' lasers on their heads thing. *G*

20

A Few JWs and Apologists are showing up...

by mrsjones5 in

jw
friends

could it be the holiday weekend and they don't have anything better to do?.

mindmelda

Oh, Geez...that love letter to Hitler.

One more reason to hope that if there's a hell, Rutherford is having a nice slow roast, right next to his buddy Hitler.

I don't believe in hell, but occasionally I meet or hear of someone who makes me wish there were one.

20

A Few JWs and Apologists are showing up...

by mrsjones5 in

jw
friends

could it be the holiday weekend and they don't have anything better to do?.

mindmelda

I hope they get an eyeful. Seriously, I wish all JWs would come here and read this forum. I can dream, can't I?

5

Skeptic-Fu for the Terry-Meister: does James Randi stack the deck?

by BurnTheShips in

jw
friends

red meat from sacred cows?.

but winning the prize would not be my main concern.

sheldrake pointed out a previous confrontation as evidence for his distrust of james randi:.

mindmelda

It's interesting to me that a lot of "debunkers" of anything metaphysical are magicians. They seem to think because THEY can fool people with so called "magic" that everything inexplicable is a trick or a misconception.

Actually, that mindset is psychologically explained as "projection". Every one of us tends to see the world with a relative lack of objectivity...it's not possible to be totally objective, our minds don't work that way.

We always project our own mindset into everything and onto others. If we've been successfully tricking people for years, it's going to be easy for us to think that everyone else is a trickster, or a potential one, too.

That, if nothing else, invalidates the thinking of Randi and also of Penn and Teller, who do the same thing. Of course they think everyone who seems to be doing inexplicable things is also tricking everyone! Because that's what they do.

There's no such thing as an objective observer...it's all relative,so anyone who claims total objectivity, in the words of Penn Gillette, is full of BULLSHIT. They're filtering imput throught their own perceptions, opinions, ideas and experiences, just like everyone else is.

They're not superhuman...it's what we all do. And it's why people don't agree on many things. The more subjective or personal an idea or experience is, the less we agree about it, because everyone's perceptions are slightly different.

58

TODAY is MrsJones' Birthday!

by StAnn in

jw
friends

.

lotsa love,.

stann.

mindmelda

Yay! Happy Birthday and all that good stuff!