http://www.theage.com.au/national/jehovahs-witnesses-a-cruel-cult-20130315-2g5x3.htmlit's hotting up in australia regarding cults, especially tax free like jws but how is the response of vin toole (the australian wts legal mouth piece) regarding shunning!.
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These WTS higher-ups are the biggest sociopaths in a decidedly sociopathic organization, and hence can lie, and even to an extent, believe their own lies due to their ability to jump through legalistic mental hoops that are far beyond the reach of most mortals.
It's really, really sad, when you see the deep strangeness and viciousness of persons such as Mr. Toole, who hold such power of millions of people.
i believe i posted on this before.
but,i was recently thinking back when i was still regularly going to meetings.
and how sometimes,just the thought of having to start to get ready to go,sent me in a panic.
I never really had that issue at the klingon hell meetings, but I do I remember sitting at a circuit assembly sometime in 2001 and experiencing this. I was looking around at all those people that I didn't know, some of them I had seen before, some I hadn't, studying their faces (by this time in my JW tenure, the talks and demonstrations and whatever else that was going on on the stage held no interest to me), and i just experienced this hollowness of feeling that was unlike anything I had ever experienced before or have since. I mustered what little strength i could in my legs, and walked out of there, barely able to make my numb legs move. Somehow I managed to recover from it on the walk through the parking lot and the drive home. I never went back to that Assembly Hall, the very thought of that place makes me shudder to this day!
was reflecting on the instructions that are given pretty regularly to make the truth your own, prove it to ourselves, and address any doubts we might have.
why would jws get this advice when the result of any honest search would lead one to exactly where most of us here are?
i can think of two answers.. first, it's somewhat like being on a tour at a public attraction.
nonjwspouse nailed it. Sure, investigate all you want! Just be sure to agree with us when you're done! Or we'll make your family and entire social circle shun you! GOT IT?
"it is the concept of original sin that negates morality.. if man is guilty by nature, he has no choice about it.. if he has no choice, the issue does not belong in the field of morality.
morality pertains only to the sphere of man's free will -- only to those actions which are open to his choice.. to consider man guilty by nature is a contradiction in terms.".
augustine had the mistaken view that many metaphysicians had at that time: all humans were "nested" inside of adam like those russian dolls that fit inside each other.
I wanna read the books terry has read. There must be lots of them.
i like terry's topic about noah's day not being armageddon enough.
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Outlaw you kill me every time!
i like terry's topic about noah's day not being armageddon enough.
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I would ask them how exactly they expect armageddon to go down. Like, will there be fireballs reigning down from the sky? Giant cracks opening up in the earth that everybody except JWs fall into? Or will all of the sudden, in a blink of an eye, everybody except faithful JWs will just die instantly?
Most JWs compartmentalize armageddon. It's this fantasy of theirs that they don't think about in real world terms; just a vague notion that this big end is coming, and the thought stops there. Because to continue the thought is really disturbing.
think about this.. go way back...far far back in history.. .
go back before the internet.
go back farther.. go back before newspapers, tv and radio.. .
I would give anything to spend a day in ancient Athens, or Ur, or Babylon, or Maya (and understand the language being spoken there as part of the deal). I've always been so curious as to what the minds of pre-scientific, pre-enlightenment people were like, just the everyday people. I think the intellectual evolution of the past thousands years has really made it nearly impossible for us to imagine how ancient people viewed their world and interacted with each other,at least at the granular level you'd get by direct observation.
today the verdict was read for jodi arias, in her slaughter of her former lover travis alexander.. have you followed this four month long trial?
if so, what are your thoughts?.
http://www.hlntv.com/article/2013/05/08/jodi-arias-verdict-live-blog.
My girlfriend watched a lot of the trial coverage on HLN, so I saw a lot of it too. Jodi is such a disturbed individual that I can hardly stand to look at her image on the TV.
I was stunned by the Casey Anthony verdict (still am - CHRIST what was that jury thinking?) and so I was pessimistic about the Jodi Arias trial. Glad the jury didn't shirk their responsibility the way the Casey Anthony and OJ juries did.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jespkydgizu.
Well done.
GB to JWs: The Finished Mystery! A milestone in the history of Jerhoover's Barfanization! But don't read it! NOOOO need to be curious about its contents!
or the 2000's generation thing?.
how did you feel?
how did it help you wake up?
"With similar sincere intentions, God’s servants in modern times have tried to derive from what Jesus said about “generation” some clear time element calculated from 1914. For instance, one line of reasoning has been that a generation can be 70 or 80 years, made up of people old enough to grasp the significance of the first world war and other developments; thus we can calculate more or less how near the end is."
This is just so laughable. This "one line of reasoning" was an official WTS doctrine for decades (although they kept stretching it, and stretching it, and stretching it, until it finally broke) and you would have been labeled an apostate and tossed out on your ear if you expressed doubt about it! The way this is worded is so disgustingly disingenous. Only the WTS leadership and their eager-to-believe-whatever-bullshit-they-come-up-with flock are together so collectively deluded to be capable of such breathtaking, mind-numbing dishonesty. It was a similarly worded, back-handed non-apology (I think it came in the late 90s) directed towards JWs who had served time IN PRISON for refusing alternative service, only to have "increased light" on that particular matter come out decades later, that really got my attention and was one of my first WTF??? moments as a JW.
At the time the 1995 study articles came out, I'll be honest - i barely paid attention to them. It just seemed like another set of long dumb boring study articles that I didn't read before the meetings when they were covered, and I must have just zoned out during the study meetings. I didn't realize that there was a major change. I had only been officially a JW for a couple of years by 1995, and so I didn't realize how long they had been pounding on the old-light Generations teaching to keep the end ever close. Oy.
