The sad thing about this religion is that subsequent to its reform toward a mainstream Christian religion, a pretty good number of their members broke off to form a more traditionalist conservative cult-like sect again. Some people just don't want to be free.
Mad Sweeney
JoinedPosts by Mad Sweeney
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19
The Magazine "The Plain Truth." Remember It?
by AvocadoJake indo you remember the magazine and the author of this magazine, any old timers know who the backers were?
i was five years old, when the old man was the editor or author of this religious magazine.
did you ever talk to any of the followers of this movement?
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131
Stephen Hawkings and Richard Dawkins attend the Jehovah's witnesses two-day assembly program at London Edgware assembly hall
by mankkeli inhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15834523.
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Mad Sweeney
Why do you let mAlice troll you for six pages? Seriously people. Don't feed the trolls.
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heh...no idea how i just found this..
by cptkirk inwasn't even looking for something like this, was just looking for some good metal music to listen to while i did my college work.
"he was raised a jw" he says.. .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwdbiajbebk.
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Mad Sweeney
They should have known better than to screw with Captain James Tiberius Kirk.
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Read S. Hassan's Book: Do JW's really fit the cult mold?
by simon17 infirst time i got a chance to read his book, "combatting cult mind control" and was interested to see if jw's fell into the cult mold.
my opinion after carefully reading and having left the witnesses after almost 30 years is... no, they don't.
however, i would add that they wish they were but are simply too big and unwieldy to really pull it off.
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Mad Sweeney
The point of the book is that a group doesn't need to attempt ALL of the mind control tactics nor be successfull at all of them in order to fit the definition of a cult. If they do some of them, they're a cult. So seeing exceptions among JWs and the Watchtower doesn't make them non-cult. NO single cult meets EVERY bit of criteria.
The author of the book, Steve Hassan himself calls JWs a cult, based on his professional assessment and knowledge of Lifton, Singer, BITE, and how the JWs employ the methods that research has laid out.
Randy's article at freeminds.org is excellent.
You can listen to Steve Hassan and a discussion of this exact issue on the latest Cult Free Radio. Show #011 is the one with Steve Hassan. I also discussed the issue in show #001.
Video:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/cult-free-radio
http://www.youtube.com/user/MadSweeney1914
Audio Only:
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What's The Biggest Difference In Today's JWs And The Witnesses From Decades Ago?
by minimus ini believe today's witnesses lack zeal, resolve, "love" of the "truth"......just to name a few things.. years ago, witnesses were excited to knock on doors and tell people they were gonna die if they didn't accept paradise.. now, when you see jws in service, they all look zombied out.. it's a slowly dying religion that will last probably forever like an ancient rotted out tree..
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Mad Sweeney
Decades ago they thought they had it all figured out. Today they try not to think too much at all.
Great thread.
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42
LeavingWT's DA letter
by irondork inthe blood issue has been an ongoing arguement between the roomie and me.
not heated, by any means, but she keeps qouting back established wts reasoning on the subject.
"it's feeding, jason.
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Mad Sweeney
The Borg blood doctrine has nothing to do with concern for the health of the rank and file JWs, either spiritually or physically. It is entirely about power and control. It weeds out those who are willing to think and act for themselves, leaving behind only compliant, obedient sheep.
It is one of the most tragic cult traits the Watchtower employs.
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19
The True Nature of Reality
by ballistic indoes any one have any good theories on the true nature of reality?.
if you google this you come up with lots and lots of really wacky fringe science.. it's one of those things that shows just how little humans know about our existance or the universe.. some of the more interesting things i've read, are that our 3 dimensions are just a construct, time doesn't really exist, and another essay explaining that we can't trust our senses and they actually tell us very little about the world around us which is really full of electromagnetic forces, waves of various types and sub atomic particles.. i have started a thread before something along the lines of, i think therefor i am.
i exist on some level.
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Mad Sweeney
Read "The Magic of Reality" by Dawkins and that's about all you need to know. Multidimensional stuff is impractical for us to worry about at the moment, IMO.
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Let's Review: How the Watchtower Society Uses Quickbuilds to Make More $$$
by under_believer ini posted something similar to this in another thread, but i decided that this is an important subject, and something that a lot of people don't realize, so i expanded it into its own post.
and we can always use a review now and then, so that lurkers, active witnesses, and newly ex-witnesses can catch up.
according to the watchtower society, one of the best examples of god's holy spirit operating on the organization is the building program.
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Mad Sweeney
A lot of this info is only partly correct and up to date.
In the USA, the Borg no longer charges interest on its loans. That part of the money-making scheme has been transformed. Because the congregations do not pay interest, their loans are often paid off fairly quickly. Then what? Then many times the congregation will pass a resolution to KEEP PAYING the Borg some sort of regular monthly "donation" since there is no good reason for the rank and file to stop donating and start saving money for their own family. One congregation I was in (and these numbers are guesstimates from memory) paid off its loan, which had been something like $850 a month, then agreed to keep paying the society $500 a month as a donation to the work and sold it to the congregation as doing the right thing and saving $350 a month off what they used to pay.
Also, the part on the Watchtower holding the deed is a bit confusing maybe, but it really is pretty simple. The congregation owns the Kingdom Hall as long as they exist as a JW congregation wanting to use it as a Kingdom Hall. If the congregation dissolves, then the Watchtower Society owns the Kingdom Hall and all other congregation assets. So how does this benefit the WTS? Example.
A decent-sized town has, for example, five congregations in it with two Kingdom Halls (call the congs North, South, East, West, and Spanish). Thanks to JWN, jwfacts.com, and Combating Cult Mind Control there are fewer than 20 elders and 12 MS left to handle all those congregations. Also, neither of the Kingdom Halls are very new and one of them was built back in the 1980s.
So the CO decides the area needs a Borg revitalization project. He forms a plan. Find a relatively central location and build a double-hall on it. Take the four English congregations and merge them into three, and split the Spanish into two congs.
What does this accomplish? Well, if in this restructuring the congregation that owned one of the previous KHs dissolves, what happens to their property? That's right, the Watchtower owns it, sells it, and pockets the money, often loaning it back to the congregation(s) for the building of their new KH.
And the cycle continues...
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24
The pedophile database
by JRK ini know that years ago there were 23,700+ pedophiles listed in a database in brooklyn by the society.
it has to be many more by now.. do you think there will ever be a defector in the watchtower it department that will release it to the media?
do you think that someone will hack it and release the information?
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Mad Sweeney
I doubt the list exists anymore. My guess is it was destroyed some time around 10 years ago. It is more dangerous to the Borg to keep it than it is not to. If it is not gone, they can claim it never existed except in the satanic minds of apostates.
If they kept such a list after Bill Bowen and Barbara Anderson blew the whistle on the pedophile scandal, the question has to be: Why? What does it do for them?
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I was counselled regarding my prayer-ridiculous,
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Mad Sweeney
LMAO at Undercover. @Jehovah on Twitter. Awesome.