Posts by IsaacJ22

12

If you and your spouse were both JWs but you decided to leave: a few questions

by Lady Lee in

if you and your spouse were both jws but you decided to leave and your spouse decided to stay: a few questions.

i am going to be addressing the international cultic studies association (icsa) in july at the conference in montreal.

my focus is on 3 groups.

IsaacJ22

What have been the biggest problems you have faced regarding your relationship and the impact the JW beliefs have had on you?

The strain of peer pressure on my wife has been considerable--especially when I first decided to leave. JWs from my former KH were literally harassing me for years after I left. They sought me out at work, at home, left 50+ messages on my answering machine every day, etc. For them, she was one way they could gain access to me and it was very hard for her to say no to an elder. That put her in the middle of my struggle to leave. Worst of all, I was, in a real sense, a source of shame for her and her even parents. It's as if my decision to leave reflected on her somehow. Bear in mind that the stereotype of the battered wife trapped in a marriage to a "worldly" mate is a powerful one among Witnesses, and even now, many seem to feel sorry for her. Now that 16 years have passed, she has told me that she's glad to be married to me instead of the Witness husbands who have, in fact, treated their wives badly. But this isn't something she's really allowed to say to other Witnesses who assume the stereotype applies. Also, the topic of religion and the WT was unofficially off-limits for many years between us. Fortunately for me, the KH's bad behavior has eroded my wife's WT bubble with little help from me.

How has the JW spouse reacted towards you?

When I first told her that I'm not going back to the KH, she was very upset. That's how a good JW spouse is supposed to feel. She begged me to speak to the elders on at least one occasion when one showed up announced, as they often do.

Have the elders interfered with your relationship?

Actually, there was far more interference when we were dating. She had an uncle who was an elder and he felt entitled to get involved even when her more immediate family asked him to back off. When I left the KH, I suspect more may have happened than she admitted at the time. But the way they harassed me about coming back was the worst thing I saw.

Has your decision to leave the JWs resulted in divorce or separation?

No.

And if you had children together what has been the effect on them?

We have no children.

What would you want therapists to know about your situation?

I would want them to understand the culture of JWs, especially the org's power structure. You don't say no to an elder or stand up to an elder unless you want problems. The literature is just plain true, no questioning it. Therapy itself is sometimes frowned upon, and the therapist would be a source of "worldly" wisdom and guidance. In other words, her being a JW comes with a whole new set of baggage the therapist would have to deal with.

13

Belief in evolution begets belief in God

by yadda yadda 2 in

jw
friends

a strange statement i know.

but consider.... if humans evolved, and humans are a relatively recent evolution, then would it not make sense to believe there might be other far more ancient intelligent beings (who would appear to humans to be like gods/a god) who began evolving long before humans?

in a sense, to believe in human evolution hardly refutes god's existence, unless you believe that us humans are the only thing in the entire universe that has evolved into a salient, intelligent, self-aware being.

IsaacJ22

I think a lot of things have to happen for your idea to really be workable. It's great science fiction fodder, but really, what's more likely? That all the problems that have already been discussed (like the distance between habitable worlds) were overcome just to screw with primitive cavemen only to leave us alone forever after? Or that we just invented gods for our purposes and continue believing in them to this day?

It's not that your suggestion is impossible or inconceivable. It's just that the second answer just seems far simpler and far more likely.

6

Do Present Day Bible Students Go Door-to-Door?

by Band on the Run in

wondering how rutherford's faction was more successful in terms of growth and public awareness.

through a strange coincidence, i met someone raised as a dawn bible student.

i had no idea until then that bible students still existed.

IsaacJ22

I could be wrong, but I don't think they require members to go door-to-door. There was a local break-off that formed from my old KH that supposedly formed a Bible Students group. I was told that was one of the things that made them different from JWs. But then, it could be that these were just rumors.

251

Evidence for God...

by tec in

jw
friends

life come from the living, and this is a universe of life.

his teachings are truth.

which is why i weight it against the truth of the teachings (and one other thing that i will get to).

IsaacJ22

One of the most important differences between skeptical atheists and believers I have seen is that have very different intellecual values. If you watch many debates between the two camps (there are loads of them online) this becomes pretty obvious if you're really paying close attention. It's one of the reasons that it's so hard for both sides to have a real conversation about gods, beliefs, and all that.

A believer will site all their reasons for believing and then look at the atheist camp, confident that they've made a powerful argument for believing. But the atheists will just shrug because none of it is convincing or powerful to us. Then the atheists respond feeling the same way about their arguments against believing, but the believers are just as unimpressed. It's often the same way with evolution versus creationism, too.

I don't think this post will convince anyone who doesn't already believe that they should. Not that this was necessarily your goal.

Still, the differences between the camps are interesting on their own.

1

The evolution of christianity

by corpusdei in

i came across the michael moorcock story "behold the man" the other day.

great story by the way, i urge you to check it out, but this quote really stood out:.

"you make the mistake of considering christianity as something that developed over the course of a few years, from the death of jesus to the time the gospels were written.

IsaacJ22

I tend to lean toward this idea myself. There seems to be plenty of good reasons for it. Then again, I'm an atheist. So that makes it easy for me to go there. :-)

Still, when you try to research ideas like this--the questionable historicity of Jesus is, in many ways, an even bigger one--you seem to get various opinions from real historians. I would be interested in seeing a strong case for the existence of a real, historical Jesus, instead of the usual apologist stuff. If only to give them a chance to change my mind. But I haven't seen much from them. I heard that Bart Ehrman wrote a book that tried to disprove the arguments of Jesus skeptics, but others said it was a badly written book full of errors.

So what else is atheist meant to think about both topics?

26

need your opinion on "who else preaches like the JWs?"

by outsmartthesystem in

i have a friend that has recently confided in me his doubts about the society being god's one and only organization.

his doubts run pretty deep.....but he is very much held in check by "but who else is preaching about the kingdom of god world-wide like jesus said"?

how would you combat that thinking?

IsaacJ22

A few things that might be worth considering:

Where I live, many church leaders preach door to door. Especially Pentecostals, who are constantly inviting people to go to their church. Note that with Pentecostals, it isn't just the leaders who do this. All of them seem determined to preach to everyone they meet.

The Mormoms and 7th Day Adventists preach door to door, though their methodology seems different. They don't preach in their own neighborhoods. They treat it as missionary work.

Christadelphians go door to door.

Over a very long period of time, the Catholic Church has converted more people to Christianity than there are Jehovah's Witnesses in the entire world.

As others have said, other orgs are using other methods, like TV ads, to reach as many people as possible. They did not have TVs in Jesus' day, so that was not an option. Some have 800 numbers and post billboards asking people to call. Some put out ads in local papers, or send out flyers by mail. Note that this is less annoying than dealing with a pushy evangelist on your door step. Also, preaching is preaching--people who do it by other means, besides just door to door, deserve credit too. :-) Naturally, the Society puts emphasis on the door to door work because that's how THEY do it. Who says their opinion is the final opinion?

As far as proving someone's faith if literally "the truth," others will emphasize points that their faith does best in building a case. Look up any religion on Google and add the phrase "true religion" and you will find many articles that make the argument that the faith in question is somehow the one that is true. They can all claim it. But it doesn't make sense to use their own standards in deciding which (if any) is right, now does it? That's just too easy.

21

Atheists! Would like your suggestion..

by umadevi in

jw
friends

hi friends, i have been reading threads on atheism and how they see life from their point of view.

i must admit some of the points that you (atheists) put forth have given me something to think about.

i still have faith in god but let's say if i would like to do a research on atheism, where should i start?

IsaacJ22

If you want to go the free route, you can check out Austin Cline's web site at About. http://atheism.about.com/ This is probably the most thorough web site I know, but Austin can be a tad dry and sarcastic at times. You might want to start here http://atheism.about.com/od/aboutatheism/u/AtheismBasics.htm.

Full disclosure, I've written some XJW articles for him too. http://atheism.about.com/od/jehovahswitnesses/Jehovahs_Witnesses_Watchtower_Bible_Tract_Society.htm

2

How much Watchtower baggage still has to leave our thinking and behaviour?

by Fernando in

this profound piece from www.thewordfortoday.com.au/blog-calendar-6683 made me wonder:.

prejudice is the product of a lazy mind.it's contempt, prior to investigation.

your first impression of someone is incomplete and often inaccurate.

IsaacJ22

Another way I have of putting it is that people are complicated. We often have a dozen different motivations in mind for our own behavior, and even then, half of them are things we made up about ourselves. To simplify creatures like that to something you can dismiss with a wave of your hand and a single comment, like "ex-Witnesses just hate authority" or "atheists just have daddy issues" reveals just how much you aren't trying. And how much you want--or need--to hate and misunderstand the other group.

It takes work to be better than that.

61

Will you ever go back to the Jehovah's Witnesses?

by XPeterX in

jw
friends

discuss..

IsaacJ22

Frankly, the whole thing is creepy to me now. I can't imagine going back. I don't think I could stomach it even if I had family in there that I wanted to reconnect with. No, I can't see myself going back for any reason.

78

Atheism or Agnosticism, which one is correct?

by Joey Jo-Jo in

this has been bugging me for a while, and while i dont want to turn this into something about semantics i think that we should quickly define what an agnostic and atheists are.. richard dawkins defines 7 different types of atheist ranging from weak to militant atheists, but along these definitions there appears one definition with a strong resemblance to agnosticism.. to me an agnostic is a person who neither believes nor disbelieves in deity/deities, but there are those who define agnostics as a ignorant who simply just don't care or don't have the intelligence to come to sound conclusion.. an atheist can be a person who disbelieves in a deity/deities based on the current mathematical and scientific understandings of the universe, as well as understandings that can refute certain religions such as the strong influence of protestantism christianity in america.. .

from here i will refer deity as anything ranging jehovah to a real spaghetti monster, it's not important because a) we dont know b)for the purpose of this discussion it is not important to define what we believe god to be.. an argument that can be used about a deity is -we cannot prove nor disprove that god exists- this is referred to as a null hypothesis, an assumption that we cannot create a hypothesis to prove or disprove this deity.

this to me is agnosticism and is more correct than the idea of atheism.

IsaacJ22

Since I don't agree with your definitions, it's hard to know how to respond on your terms. You would put me in a different category than I would put myself.