Posts by techdotcom

47

The no beard or facial hair rule

by Soldier77 in

okay, something that has always been a side point but still a rather ridiculous rule is that brothers cannot "serve" if they have a beard/goatee/anything more than just a moustache.

at least in the states, i've heard of some congregations in some countries allow this, but they are the exception?

your experience?.

techdotcom

The only priciple that really applies is showing humility and meekly following the direction of the elders and the higher ups in the societies power structure. You cannot outright refuse an order from an elder or higher without a sound scriptural reason agianst it. There is no burden whatsoever for them to show a sound reason for it. The simple justification that someone could be "stumbled" is more than enough. Failing to humbly follow their direction is grounds to punish. That punishment may be the removal of privledges and could, if the person showed a rebellious nature, include disfellowshipment.

This type of petty control and lack of balance is one of the fundamental issues I have with being a witness. To most who are active, this is dismissed as being a little thing and should not be harped upon or used to cast doubt on the "Truth" in general. They simpley have been too well trained from using sound judgement and will tend to follow without question (openly anyway) any rule, or suggestion without a regard to it being scriptural, ethical, or moral. After all it is not for "man to judge his own footsteps".

To me, however, all people have both the right and responsibility to judge the correctness of thier actions. While a person may choose to do something to "fit in" and this facial hair rule might apply, there are too many of these petty restrictions and controls without sound scriptural basis for me to simply ignore. These rules by themselves would not be such a deal breaker for me if it were simply social deterents (frowns, disaproval, ect.), irratating and judgemental, yes, but unethical, no. To enforce these petty behaviours with the possibility of the most extreme punishment that witnesses have, disfellowshipment and death at the big A, makes this both unethical and tyrannical. Granted, usually all that happens is removal of some 'privledges' but ANY outwardly noticable rebellious attitude could result in a Judical Commitee at some point.

In fact if I were to speculate, I would think that this type of seemingly little and petty rule helps weed out those who have an independent spirit thru the simple aggrivation of how utterly rediculous it is.

Sorry for the spelling/grammatical errors to the grammer nazis. In a rush and didn't want to cut and paste from MS Word.

260

Who Are Your Past Circuit Overseers? It's a small world..

by mentallyfree31 in

who were your past circuit overseers?

i'm sure a lot of us actually know mutual people, as the co's relocate all over the country.. here's a few from the southeast us: (let me know if you recognize any names and post yours too please...).

ellwood johnson (new york/philadelphia area for several years also).

techdotcom

Andy Cole I remember but honelstly I stopped paying attention to who they were.

45

Honest Question..........

by thraxer68 in

well, first off, iam new to the forum here, i registered maybe a week ago???

sometime around there, but anyway, i do have an honest question.

i guess a little background about me might be helpful and if not, at least therapeutic.

techdotcom

While I don't share you faith God or the Bible, I think Earnest said it well:

I have to say in all this time there has been no single answer and, as far as I am concerned, no answer at all.

In my opinion, problems with the Witnesses and potential issue with any belief system, religious or not, is the tendancy for all of us to want to throw away the uncertainty of life and bask in the comfort of certainty. It has been my further oberservation that this comes at too high of a cost, both to induviduals, and to society in general. While there have been many great and good people of faith and good things can be attributed to many religions, many of the most horrible people and most heinious works can be attributed to people of strong belief doing what they "know" to be right.

Keep asking questions, and enjoy.

18

Smurfs

by Aussie Oz in

i noted on another thread the mention of 'smurfs' and a certain jws dismissiveness of the matter.

which got me to thinking as tonights episode of southpark is about the student councel wanting to kill smurfs..... does anyone remember this one that did the rounds here in my part of oz:.

a child took a stuffed toy smurf to the meeting as a cuddle toy and partway through the meeting the smurf got down from the chair, declared it was tired of listening to this rubbish and walked out of the hall!.

techdotcom

Yeah, I remember that story. What cracks me up about the JW's is that they like to think that they are without "superstitious dread" and yet took this story at face value with no doubt that it was true, all the while being terrified at a harmless childrens show. I've slowly been trying to help my wife understand what the word "superstitious" really means and not to be so afraid of peoples imagination.

She cringes about my daughter watching the Twilight movies but let's it slide. At some point hopefully she will notice that the house and daugter are not possessed and put two and two together.

Still its a long road when you grow up around superstitious fear to get it retrained in a more rational way.

32

Talking to two J dubs on a busy downtown street

by ldrnomo in

so im out of town for a couple of days for a software seminar.

it didnt start until noon yesterday so i took a walk down a busy street famous for its shopping and as i got to the end of the stores and the beginning of apartments i noticed two women standing on the sidewalk in front of what i later noticed was a kingdom hall.

as i started walking by giving them a smile and a polite greeting the one that was older, they were both young based on my terms the older in her 30s middle to late the younger in her 20s probably late.

techdotcom

By the way your segue way into your critique raises a question. If you hate to do it then why do you? Is it a sacrifice you feel you need to make to help out a lesser intellect?

Lol. Sorry, I do get critical sometimes (and I wouldn't say I exactly hate doing it either). Still I also don't mean to be discouraging. I just know the mindset and if you did make them think, and they double check the figures, I'd be willing to bet they write the whole thing off with a smug "he just made that stuff up, I'm sure glad our faith is strong enough to see past those sort of deceptions". And they will totally miss the point you were trying to make about how the long the big A takes, the more people that will not be JW's and will be killed. (see I just did it agian)

Still if it made them think at all maybe they will get the point at some time too.

32

Talking to two J dubs on a busy downtown street

by ldrnomo in

so im out of town for a couple of days for a software seminar.

it didnt start until noon yesterday so i took a walk down a busy street famous for its shopping and as i got to the end of the stores and the beginning of apartments i noticed two women standing on the sidewalk in front of what i later noticed was a kingdom hall.

as i started walking by giving them a smile and a polite greeting the one that was older, they were both young based on my terms the older in her 30s middle to late the younger in her 20s probably late.

techdotcom

then I told them there were about 3.5 billion people on the earth and it the growth rate of the earth was 10% per year

Where did you get this figure? The numbers I've looked up show a growth rate of the world as about 1.1%

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth

Qoute from jw facts at http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/statistics.php:

n the 5 years prior to 1975 the number of publishers was increasing at an average of 15% per year. During the 1980?s and early 1990?s growth continued at over 5% per year. This has fallen to between 1 - 2%, hardly more than the world?s population growth of 1.2%

These number seem to be in basic agreement.

Since your basic conclusion is correct, I hate to criticize. However, if you are really interested in being the light of reason and intellect to the those who have been lied to and mislead, then it hardly seems like a good idea to either lie outright to prove your point, or to simply guess without really looking up the data.

51

Should a Christian see the movie "AVATAR"?

by skeeter1 in

jw
friends

i give the movie a 6.5 score.

the scenery was wonderful, but the plot was not zipped up well.

it sort of follows the story-line of "dances with wolves", but in space.. .

techdotcom

Setting precedents for our brothers and sisters and spreading our opinions is not good and there are articles for that. We cannot dictate something that Jehovah has left up to our choice.

You might want to tell the brother who gave the talk at the end of our circuit assembly. He read all the definitions that had to do with spirits inhabating 'Avatars' and then mentioned how there were other definitions too...

Then he goes on to compare the definition of the word with how angels came down to earth before the flood. "And how the demons must be rejoicing" with the movies success at the box office.

He admits there are other uses of the word and apparently did not even read a synopsis to see which definition applied to the movie. He never mentioned the other aspects that could have caused some to be bothered if they wanted to be picky. Violence, sex, semi-spiritual content with the planet itself being the Navi's god. Nope, he used the single WRONG application to imply that the movie somehow could be a symbolic depiction of preflood earth and the angels coming down.

You know what several people said when I mentioned this.... "They research this stuff, he can't just say whatever he wants up there...." Sometimes I want to laugh and cry at the same time.

The other sad thing is that even those who know he was off base about the movie will most likely just chalk it up to "imperfection" and still trust any other thing that come out of someones mouth on stage no matter how wrong without even bothering to check on something that might have set off a warning bell in their head.

11

Proverbs, should you read this material to your children?

by cyberjesus in

5 trust in jehovah with all your heart and do not lean upon your own understanding.

6 in all your ways take notice of him, and he himself will make your paths straight.. .

i called on the phone the other day an ex-jw friend of mine.

techdotcom

To me it seems as bit of a contradiction. No matter what you do you must make a choice to do it. You have no other option than to lean upon your own understanding as that is where all decisions start, in your own mind. You can choose to follow blindly or even in a more moderate fashion anything that someone else says but you still made the judgement call to begin with that it was the wise thing to do.

You and only you must shoulder the responsibility of deciding what is right and wrong, even if that decision is to adopt the rules and morals of others. You cannot escape that. Many religious people fail to understand that even in putting thier burdens on Jesus/God/Jehovah/Allah/whomever that they had to at first make the determanation to do so. Also, once the decision has been made to use the bible or some other seemingly wise source as the basis for ones life, you must then think and decide how to apply those principles to your own specific circumstances. Even when authoratative and controlling religions like the JWs create a multitude of rules and regulations to try to cover it all, they cannot. Even then some grey are invariably exists and must be dealt with by the induvidual.

Bottom line is: If we do not place at least some trust in our own judgment then how can we be certain that what we "chose" to follow is the correct path in the first place.

PS - I am sorry for the redundant nature of my points but it truly seems that people have a hard time seeing the full ramifications of that scripture and simply accept what they have been told with little thought, and in doing so, failed in thier responsibility to choose the right path for them.

199

Are you an active Jw or an ex-jw?

by XPeterX in

active unbaptised publisher here.you?

(though i already know the answer for some people).

techdotcom

Ah Bane, you've sucked me in agian.

Tech, Insanity is bad talking a religion for years after you have left it. That is insanity.

Certainly, I could not agree more. However, I think the clinical diagnoses would be closer to obsesive disorder, or maybe PTSD. So is the fixation for visiting web sites that you know are forbidden to your faith, yet here you are. We all deal with our issues in different ways and sometimes it can take the rest of our lives, however long it lasts.

¨Try that approach to your body of elders etc.¨ Again, old apostate tired hat. They don´t want someone like me exposing them so they draw that card....AGAIN AND AGAIN....Since they CANNOT take the heat they try to use that old apostate logic. It fails everytime.

Ignoring the fluff in that sentance, in my understanding you basically state: Your argument is invalid because it has been used before. Huh? explaine how prior use invalidates my position? Then a blanket statment that it fails every time. What supports that statement? Have you tried talking to the elders about your activity on this site and how appropriate it is for a JW? Have you asserted your right to master your own faith? (you might have to explain what you mean exactly) Also be sure to include your derision on the instructions from the "faithfull and discrete slave" on exposing yourself to the "seductive reasoning" of apostates.

You are in effect, by disobeying such clear instuction, guilty of appostacy yourself.

In short: In my opinion, you display all the anger and agression of someone with some deep seated doubts about what you believe and, in your fear, lashing out at those who threaten your sense of stability. If you are here, it is my assertion that you WANT to be here so that even if you cannot find the courage to express your true feelings, you can be close to your fellow apostates. Although your approach is disfunctional at best and I would suggest some professional counseling.

69

The God Delusion

by alice.in.wonderland in

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/the_god_delusion.

the god delusion is a 2006 bestselling non-fiction book by british biologist richard dawkins, professorial fellow of new college, oxford, and inaugural holder of the charles simonyi chair for the public understanding of science at the university of oxford.. .

in the god delusion, dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence.

techdotcom

Oops, my bad tammy. No offence intended, just completly disagree with the initial belief and the statement that it's then even possible to use science to enhance belief in any way.