thank you for this forum.
thank you for your stories which helped wake me up from my delusion.
thank you for letting me join you.
-became a pious-sneer
hahahha - first time i've seen that one
welcome to the real world :)
2001 District Convention 'Korah' drama was what triggered my own sickening realization that the GB and their pack of "Bethel Heavies" underlings were utterly sociopathic and thus I couldn't possibly remain a JW.
it's perhaps sad, but perhaps a bit of wisdom to come to realize how insignificant jws really are.. .
you finally get to the point where you don't even care what happens to the borg one way or another.. .
this said after almost four years..
Everybody is different. I left the Johos over 10 years ago, which means that I've been OUT longer than I was IN. With no JW relatives or any ongoing connections with the borg, the whole experience of it has faded into this weird, very time-compressed period in my memory that carries little or no emotional weight now, other than some low-level regret for the lost years and some low-level embarrassment that I was ever receptive to such utter nonsense.
But, I do still feel a connection with other people who have left, and this place was such a godsend to me when I left in '02, so I think it's important to keep the board active as long as JWism continues to exist in its ever-morphing ways.
are jw's all abuzz about the "blessing" the gb has given them in the form of this new training video?.
The degree to which the R&F are aware of this video, how it was leaked to youtube ahead of its official release, yadda, is probably less than we might think. I would imagine that most dubs use the internet to maybe cruise CNN or Yahoo or get email, oh and watch pron of course...I'd be willing to put money on the overall awareness of American dubs regarding this situation to be less than one percent. You're talking about a group of people that HAS to keep their heads in the sand to maintain any kind of sanity (or maintain their insanity is more like it). I could be wrong tho!
only scientific responses needed smiddy
I think OGD's analogy between proving *God's* existence and proving one's *love* for another only succeeds if you view God as just a poetic idea or something Platonic like "goodness" or "treeness" or the like. And even then only partially. Love, though not easy to define in precise scientific terms, is at least partly defineable, if in no other way but the subjective 'I know it when I see it' variety. God isn't really like that as God isn't an idea that corresponds to a strong emotion i.e. something you can (again) sort of measure.
I don't see how God can be defined either poetically or scientifically.
Edith: (Calling up the stairs) "Archie??"
*FLUSH*
i have a personal theory about russell, rutherford and franz.. it extends to end times religious people in general.. that is, highly intelligent...end times believers.... .
there is a tension to believing something that never seems to overlap with reality.. your intelligence keeps flashing "something's wrong".. but, your deeply held convictions (faith) tells you to shut the f**k up!.
so, you live your live with a "gnawing" away at your brain.
Great thoughts, and I think the Charles Manson comparison is legit enough.
I guess the difference would be that, Manson's methods of overwhelming and taking hold of a person's entire psychic existence were deeply personal (and with the women, sexual), and therefore a small following was the best he could ever hope for. Those infamous crazy-piercing brown/black eyes and all. FF's charisma came not from having a piercing, I-OWN-you stare nor an ability to gain complete psychological control of a small group of people, but rather a unique and bizarre set of circumstances that combined to put an intelligent and studious yet extremely kooky man from Kentucky at the head of an international, boisterous, and apocalyptic religious sect whose very existence RELIED upon an always immenent doomsday in the minds of the flock, and Fred's hypnotic (to the impressionable) writing style was just the trick.
Two men with different styles and different circumstances, but with the same bent towards believing themselves to be at the very heart of a grand cosmic drama that was being played out. You can throw Hitler and David Koresh and countless other into that category.
anybody know about a brother h. latchman in fl.
a jw elder was talking to me about him.
he was so impressed with the fact that he was a. sub.
1000% percent likelihood that said Prof is a convert. There's more than enough weird intellectual types in the world to go around, and JWism manages to snare its share of them. Plenty of evidence of that on this very site.
In the 90s when I was still in, a bro and his wife moved to the cong I attended. He was raised JW and was a WTSociety boy through and through, but at the same time he somehow had managed to attend business school, got an MBA, and was making bank at a local energy company. He quickly became the fugging DARLING of the congregation. Cognitive dissonance indeed...
what is/are your regrets?
do u wish that you'd have pursued something or dealt differently with a situation?.
My deepest regret regarding JWism is how long I stayed in out of fear and guilt. I converted (as an adult) around 1992 and by 1996 I was burnt out on it completely. But I also had completely internalized their 'if you struggle or doubt anything, you're the problem' line. I stayed in until 2002, and by that time I was a complete freaking mental case from it.
sooner or later each of us who does not have a significant other goes out on the trail armed with our crappy photo and lame self-descriptions and awkward smile in search of our prey: an exciting mate!.
who'd have thunk it?
it ain't easy.. not easy, why?
I'm MAN seeks WOMAN in the 35-45 age group. Plenty of dents and dings in that category too.
Typical intro lines of woman-seeking-man ads on POF: "Tired of Losers!" or, "Tired of Players!" or, "Where are the nice guys?" Cracks me up. Get real - you're on a free dating website, you're in your 30s/40s/50s with a string of unsuccessful relationships behind you, but it's always our fault, lol.
.
topgodapexspiritual persons (eg paul)middleatheists, agnostics, secularistsbottomreligionists (eg saul)seemingly in scripture the only persons jesus repeatedly tore into were the religionists (pharisees and sanhedrin or governing body).
it seems he gave the romans (secularists) scant attention, and chose to eat with the likes of prostitutes and presumably also lgbt persons..
Belief in "God" I think is really more of a belief in purpose, in fatherly love, in objective moral standards, in meaning, in an orderly universe.
God separated from those things is really difficult to define in a meaningful, tangible way. Where is God? What is God made of? How did God come into existence? How does God bring other things into existence? How does God decide what is morally right? Why did God create the universe? These are questions with no answers, but not everybody who believes in God asks them.
If atheists and aggies are closer to God in some sense, I guess it would be that it's in that we've given more thought as to just what God is, stripped of the tribalism and religious and moral baggage that are tied to the concept.
