Posts by darkl1ght3r

50

How Did You Handle Sitting At The Meetings?

by minimus in

jw
friends

did you pretend to listen?

did you actually follow along, listening intently?.

at the end i was listening more intently and getting more irritated by the whole sham..

darkl1ght3r

My ex wife used to work out of town for one week each month. During that week I usually didn't go to a single meeting or service. I looked forward to that week SO much. But when I did have to go I usually just sat there and did personal research in the Bible. I was completely oblivious to the meeting because I couldn't care less anymore. I'd head it all before any way. A hundred times.

14

about New DVD

by possible-san in

i thought that the new video (dvd) which jehovah's witnesses announced in this year is great.. http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/bible/178729/1/the-wonders-of-creation-reveal-gods-glory-dvd-watch-on-youtube.

that bgm is also excellent.. what do you think?.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fat1rej83zu&fmt=18.

darkl1ght3r

Well said frankie. That was one of the things that I couldn't get off my mind when I was a believer. How the mind (supposedly) behind the laws of physics, chemistry, mathematics, and everthing from beautiful nebulas down to the quantum level intricacies of matter and reality, ALSO thinks that the fat of lambs smells sweet and gets pissed when people masturbate. It just makes no sense.

I REALLY want to see the video just to see how poorly reasoned/researched it is.

39

Now you can post your comments on the Watchtower.org website!

by Elsewhere in

jw
friends

the wts was smart enough to not setup a forum on their site.

they knew too much of the truth would come out!.

google has released a simple solution to this little problem: google sidewiki.

darkl1ght3r

This is awesome! I will definately be posting some comments. Although... I really do fear that the nuts and whackjobs driven by pure hatred are going to drown out the voices of reason and sanity that simply post smart rebuttels to the info and links to good sites like this one and jwfacts.com. It would help if everyone uses the rating system to give positive ratings for the really useful comments, and negative ratings for the stupid ones.

9

Some thoughts on Deism.......

by desib77 in

jw
friends

so i've been thinking a lot about the beliefs behind deism and a lot of it makes sense to me...... here are a few things that i still wonder about.. if god created us and then left us to our own doing i'm not sure how i feel about that.

i'm very thankful for the chance to have life but on the other hand hate that there is so much suffering in the world.. has he abandoned us or does he just watch?.

if i pray to him, does he listen or is it not worth anything but my own comfort?.

darkl1ght3r

For what it's worth... my two cents:

I understand the rationale behind deism, and it's tempting to go that route since it seems to explain the big mystery of 'Why does anything exist?', without suffering from the gaping holes in logic that belief in the Biblical God suffers from. You get to accept the findings of science without believing in genesis, the flood, jewish zombies, transubstantiation, etc..., and you get to retain some kind of a hope for something beyond this life... a nice compromise. But it still suffers from the largest problem that all religions face... aside from subjective experiences, what good reasons do we have for believing that it is true?

Science hasn't revealed that a God is necessary, quite the opposite in fact. While obviously not disproving the existence of God (which is impossible), we have more reason than ever to think that a God hypothesis is completely UNnecessary to explain the universe. For every rock we lift, and box we open, and every unexplainable thing we finally explain, we don't find a God sitting there. We find another natural principal we weren't aware of before. And usually another mystery to solve.

The suffering in the world is exactly what we would expect to find in a universe that is essentially devoid of (and hostile to) life. When a "theory" purports to explain something, it should make it easier to understand. Not more difficult. Although our world seems incomprehensible at times, stacking an incomprehensible God on top of it makes it no more understandable. We've just needlessly complicated the problem.

I'm not opposed to the idea of gods existing... I just see no good reason to assume they do. Which is why I'm an atheist.

55

What do you think about this quote from the 2003 District Convention talk "Beware of the Voice of Strangers"?

by LUKEWARM in

jw
friends

[23:23] so friends, hypothetically, and i repeat, hypothetically, even if an angel were to come down here and land on this platform, today, at this moment, and to present something to us that didn't fit into the pattern of truth, what should we be ready to do?

we should be ready to say, " hold on there, that doesn't fit into the pattern, and i am not going to listen to it!

" yes, even if it were one of jehovah's angels.. .

darkl1ght3r

As donuthole pointed out, there is scriptural basis for that reasoning. But the problem is... how do they then know what is "new light" and what is a "deceptive angel". The Bible is full of examples of Jehovah (or his angelic messenger) asking his servants to do things that they might not have considered as fitting with the "pattern of truth". For example Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son, and Peter being asked to eat unclean things. Such things are usually counted as indications of strong faith.

So how does one determine when to follow a "new" direction from God, or to disregard it? The problem is complicated for the JWs because they claim to receive "new light" through angelic direction. And comparing their beliefs over the last century+, it's clear that their "pattern of truth" is one of dissarray, running in circles, and random doctrinal changes.

They've got a real problem on their hands trying to reconcile their obsession with "new light", and the words Galatians 1:8. Of course they deal with this problem by pretending it doesn't exist.

17

Please don't turn your back on Jehovah!

by tigeress in

jw
friends

"please don't turn your back on jehovah!

it would break my heart!

i'm sure that one day you will want to make peace with him?".

darkl1ght3r

I like bluecanary's response. However when I don't really feel like giving such a detailed answer to that question (from either JWs or plain-ol Christians) I usually say "Well, he turned his back on me first." And if I'm annoyed I'll just say "Leave me alone. Its too late anyway cuz I've blasphemed the holy spirit."

20

Did your big toe get baptized? Did they re-dunk you?

by Open mind in

bro.

all three of us, ms. hydrophobia, bro.

bro.

darkl1ght3r

HAHA! Great story! Well told...

Yeah, I can so see that happening... Maybe her big toe is gonna rot and fall off when she gets to the new system. They're so into their "rules" that some lose sight of the fact that it's supposed to be a SYMBOL. There's nothing "magical" happening (even in the JW view) during a baptism. It's going through the ACT that counts. As if they need a NFL referee on the sideline to call "FOUL - Invalid Baptism. Incomplete Dunkage. 10-yard penalty. 2nd Down."

It reminds me of the time when we had a Bethelite speaker giving our memorial talk, and a few in the congregation made a huge fuss over the fact that he didn't PHYSICALLY touch the sacred plate-o-christ and the Jesus juice. "No you actually have to TOUCH the plate for it to be valid." LOL Can you people HEAR yourselves?!?!?

And that reminds me of how STUPID the "servers" looked each year when they would finish passing the "embelems", bring them to the front, sit down while one brother offered the "embelem" to the speaker, then the speaker would come down and "serve" the "servers" and then return to the stage. OMG, I hated rehersing that crap. Even when I was a believer I was thinking, "You old dudes are making this WAY more complicated than it needs to be."

Yeah, JWs mock the Catholics for their complicated "rituals" but they seem to be jealous that the GB doesn't give them any of their own.

57

A Conversation That Sent Me On a Search ...

by snowbird in

in 2000, my boss, a police lieutenant, was nearing retirement and had very little work to do.. every afternoon, he used to come out of his office and station himself near my workstation for a chat.

there was something about me that seemed to fascinate him.

i think it was my being a jw; he used to ask probing questions about my belief.. one day our conversation centered on sin and judgment.

darkl1ght3r

Snowbird... interesting indeed! Funny that's a doctrine I never thought to question untill you mentioned it here. Just when you thing the dubs can't be any MORE wrong than they already are... lol Anyway, good post on a relatively untouched topic!

78

Proof texts that Jesus was, and is, God. Any ideas?

by jonathan dough in

can anyone add to this list of links?.

20) proof texts that jesus was, and is, god.. 21) phillip said to jesus: show us the father - (john 14:8-10).

37) and the word was god - (john 1:1).

darkl1ght3r

I must agree with the glenster and others who said that people will see the "proof" that they want to see, and continue to believe what they want to believe. However, a comparison of the two positions will show that one is more consistent with the totality of what the scriptures say about the subject, whereas the other requires denial of scripture. For example, the Alpha/Omega First/Last issue in Revelation. The JW position requires the Bible to NOT mean what it says. The same with the doubting Thomas passage, and the numerous OT parallels that the Gospels drew between Yahweh and Jesus.

4

"Bearing Thorough Witness" p. 35, par. 20--Interesting...

by sd-7 in

bearing thorough witness about god's kingdom, page 35, paragraph 20:.

"with a generous spirit like that of faithful disciples in first-century jerusalem, millions of present-day witnesses support the worldwide preaching work by making voluntary donations.

no one is forced to give either his time or his money to support this work.

darkl1ght3r

Good luck getting your friend out sd-7... thats a noble thing. And great comments on that paragraph.

"We're not forcing you to go out in service, but you'll die in armageddon if you don't. And you'll be treated like a second-class witness. And we'll constantly harass you to start going. But we're not forcing you."

Haha... gimmie a break.