paranoia agent

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Posts by paranoia agent

• 
  11

  I have a live one lol

  by paranoia agent in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cov9xvrq1p8.

  check the comment section for jw raiden25256666 posts, he just called me an idiot lol.

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  paranoia agent

  So far I failed to establish a dialogue, he isn't very bright even for a jw, does not seem to realise the bad name that he is giving other jw's.
• 
  11

  I have a live one lol

  by paranoia agent in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cov9xvrq1p8.

  check the comment section for jw raiden25256666 posts, he just called me an idiot lol.

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  paranoia agent

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOv9XVrQ1p8

  Check the comment section for jw raiden25256666 posts, he just called me an idiot lol
• 
  223

  Ancient Confession Found: 'We Invented Jesus Christ'

  by Watchtower-Free in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  http://uk.prweb.com/releases/2013/10/prweb11201273.htm.

  ancient confession found: 'we invented jesus christ'biblical scholars will be appearing at the 'covert messiah' conference at conway hall in london on the 19th of october to present this controversial discovery to the british public.

  london (prweb uk) 8 october 2013. american biblical scholar joseph atwill will be appearing before the british public for the first time in london on the 19th of october to present a controversial new discovery: ancient confessions recently uncovered now prove, according to atwill, that the new testament was written by first-century roman aristocrats and that they fabricated the entire story of jesus christ.

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  paranoia agent

  bytheirworks wrote Saying Jesus didn't exist is like saying George Washington didn't exist.

  You can't prove a negative... so you can't prove someone didn't exist.

  All you can do is carefully examine the evidence presented that the person did exist.

  but saying Jesus didn't exist is like saying George Washington didn't exist.

  In which I replied: And you can't say that he did either, what I can say is that due to the lack of evidence I have no reason to believe that christ ever existed.

  bytheirworks then pm’d me:

  And you can't say that he did either, what I can say is that due to the lack of evidence I have no reason to believe that christ ever existed."
  
  1st of all, I have the choice to say whatever I want. Whether you believe me or not, is your choice.
  
  2nd, my previous argument stays undebunked.
  
  You can't prove a negative, so you can NEVER PROVE that someone didn't exist.
  
  You can only ACCEPT or NOT ACCEPT information presented that someone DID live.
  
  So the question is then: "What information are NOT ACCEPTING?

  I am curious as to why you pm’d me, you dislike discussions in the open?

  As for this post allow me to comment from top to bottom, I never implied that you are not allowed to speak your mind and I don’t think you understand that under your own terms on “prove a negative” is the non existing of jesus/Jehovah/deities, take your pick, because you are presupposing that Jesus existed.

  The rules of logic that you are applying are misconstrued, there cannot be evidence for absence therefore there can not be evidence for Christ because there is an absence of evidence. And also, rather than disproving Christ we can disprove the bible, we can disprove that there are any historical evidence for Christ who raised the dead and cured the blind.

  So your argument does not need to be debunked because it’s flawed, I rest my case on the null hypothesis, that I don’t know therefore I have no reason to believe.

  Have a great day.
• 
  9

  Spirituality versus Religion

  by Fernando in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  there seem to be many ways to explain the difference.

  the one below seems moderate - even neutral.

  your thoughts?.

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  paranoia agent

  Note that this journal uses the explanations to define spiritualism, not a great word in my opinion considering that by these terms set out on this paper sex is also a form of spiritualism. Transcendent meaning simply means meaning beyond human experience, which there is no scientific evidence for. This paper is not to prove spiritualism but to explain it's philosophical concepts on patiencs and if spiritual needs are necessary for dying patients.

  Also its important to note the criticism that this field has had - biopsychosocial

  "Some critics point out this question of distinction and a question of determination of the roles of illness and disease runs against the growing concept of the patient–medical tradesperson partnership or patient empowerment, as "biopsychosocial" becomes one more disingenuous euphemism for psychosomatic illness. [ 20 ] This may be exploited by medical insurance companies or government welfare departments eager to limit or deny access to medical and social care. [ 21 ]

  Some psychiatrists see the BPS model as flawed, in either formulation or application. Epstein and colleagues describe six conflicting interpretations of what the model might be, and proposes that "...habits of mind may be the missing link between a biopsychosocial intent and clinical reality." [ 22 ] Psychiatrist Hamid Tavakoli argues that the BPS model should be avoided because it unintentionally promotes an artificial distinction between biology and psychology, and merely causes confusion in psychiatric assessments and training programs, and that ultimately it has not helped the cause of trying to destigmatize mental health. [ 23 ]

  Sociologist David Pilgrim suggests that a necessary pragmatism and a form of "mutual tolerance" (Goldie, 1977) has forced a co-existence of perspectives, rather than a genuine "theoretical integration as a shared BPS orthodoxy." [ 24 ] Pilgrim goes on to state that despite "scientific and ethical virtues," the BPS model "...has not been properly realised. It seems to have been pushed into the shadows by a return to medicine and the re-ascendancy of a biomedical model." [ 25 ]

  However, a vocal philosophical critic of the BPS model, psychiatrist Niall McLaren, [ 26 ] writes:

  "Since the collapse of the 19th century models (psychoanalysis, biologism and behaviourism), psychiatrists have been in search of a model that integrates the psyche and the soma. So keen has been their search that they embraced the so-called 'biopsychosocial model' without ever bothering to check its details. If, at any time over the last three decades, they had done so, they would have found it had none. This would have forced them into the embarrassing position of having to acknowledge that modern psychiatry is operating in a theoretical vacuum." [ 27 ]

  The rationale for this theoretical vacuum is outlined in his 1998 paper [ 28 ] and more recently in his books, most notably Humanizing Psychiatrists. [ 29 ] Simply put, the purpose of a scientific model is to see if a scientific theory works and to actualize its logical consequences. In this sense, models are real and their material consequences can be measured, whereas theories are ideas and can no more be measured than daydreams. Model-building separates theories with a future from those that always remain dreams. An example of a true scientific model is longer necked giraffes reach more food, survive at higher rates, and pass on this longer neck trait to their progeny. This is a model (natural selection) of the theory of evolution. Therefore, from an epistemological stance there can be no model of mental disorder without first establishing a theory of the mind. Dr. McLaren does not say that the biopsychosocial model is devoid of merit, just that it does not fit the definition of a scientific model (or theory) and does not "reveal anything that would not be known (implicitly, if not explicitly) to any practitioner of reasonable sensitivity." He states that the biopsychosocial model should be seen in a historical context as bucking against the trend of biological reductionism, which was (and still is) overtaking psychiatry. Engel "has done a very great service to orthodox psychiatry in that he legitimised the concept of talking to people as people." In short, even though it is correct to say that sociology, psychology, and biology are factors in mental illness, simply stating this obvious fact does not make it a model in the scientific sense of the word. [ 26 ] [ 28 ] [ 29 ] [ 30 ]

  The psychiatry professor and author S. Nassir Ghaemi considers Engel's model to be anti-humanistic and advocates the use of less eclectic, less generic, and less vague alternatives, such as William Osler’s medical humanism or Karl Jaspers’ method-based psychiatry. [ 31 ]"

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biopsychosocial_model#Criticism
• 
  223

  Ancient Confession Found: 'We Invented Jesus Christ'

  by Watchtower-Free in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  http://uk.prweb.com/releases/2013/10/prweb11201273.htm.

  ancient confession found: 'we invented jesus christ'biblical scholars will be appearing at the 'covert messiah' conference at conway hall in london on the 19th of october to present this controversial discovery to the british public.

  london (prweb uk) 8 october 2013. american biblical scholar joseph atwill will be appearing before the british public for the first time in london on the 19th of october to present a controversial new discovery: ancient confessions recently uncovered now prove, according to atwill, that the new testament was written by first-century roman aristocrats and that they fabricated the entire story of jesus christ.

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  paranoia agent

  bytheirworks: And you can't say that he did either, what I can say is that due to the lack of evidence I have no reason to believe that christ ever existed.

  cofty: The evidence for a man by the name of Jesus is very strong, the evidence for christ is nil. Read Did Jesus Exist by Bart Ehrman.
• 
  14

  Do Jehovah's Witnesses, suffer from Stockholm Syndrome? What do you think?

  by LoisLane looking for Superman in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  .

  i believe they do.. loislane.

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  paranoia agent

  I don't know about Stockholm but I have met elders with the dunning-kruger effect.
• 
  86

  A House Divided Against Itself Falls-Luke 11:17

  by Stand for Pure Worship in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  that text reminds me of one of a handful of problems peculiar to the ex-jw community.

  second only to the wild beast's internal divisions, is the divided makeup of the ex-jw populace.

  you know the one thing that indicates jehovah's blessing upon the worldwide association of kingdom proclaimers, is not only the continued success of the preaching work, but along with it the unity and love amongst the brothers and sisters.

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  paranoia agent

  No, I haven't backed out, I just haven't had a moment to read everything. Have to admit I'm surprised by some of the comments. Some of you have legitimate gripes with the way you were treated by individuals within the organization. Some of you I believe Armageddon didn't come on your stopwatch and so you gave up. It was all about petting a Panda bear for you or having a wildebeest farm. Back to those treated poorly by a few individuals, I was treated poorly by someone on my job, does that mean I should look for other employment as a result?

  I think that you are making some assumptions, assumptions that I made when I was in about ex members, that things didn't go our way so we are rebelling. That would be the case to some, not I thought, I simply started reading more on this thread, then some books and then came to the conclusion that the fruits are rotten, in accordance to watchtower doctrine, but it is understandable that we have ex members who are angry. For example let's say you are brought up spending many hours as a jw only to find later in your life that it's a lie, you want answer and start to dialogue with elders only to be marked, you push on with your un-answered question so to be silenced again, if you are not too careful you will be disfellowshipped and the same applies if you simply change religion, and anyone including family who are jw's will shun you. Would you be angry then? I can change employment but I can not change my family or my 28 years of service, some have put themselves in harms way, others have died because of no blood or decided for others, some don't se their kids, others don't see their parents, some spend 2/4 to 3/4 of their life converting others to become jw's only to regret ever doing so. You might not agree with me on the doctrine issue but I hope, at least where this anger comes from makes sense.
• 
  17

  Email conversation with a colleague

  by zakharijah in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i just wanted to share this conversation i had by email with a jw colleague last year at easter.

  (on my professional email address).

  or how can you say to your brother, allow me to extract the straw from your eye; when, look!

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  paranoia agent

  It's also true that jw's are more like work colleagues than brothers/sisters. She certainly does not care for you, she cares for Jehovah incorporated.
• 
  29

  Child indoctrination explained by transactional analysis

  by paranoia agent in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the purpose of psychology is to explain and help others to change, if suffering from depression or anxiety or we just want to understand the other or improve ourselves there are different types of psychological therapies to help us.

  we are aware that psychologists have the know-how, just has mechanics know cars and astronauts know space shuttles and psychics, but we know they know a lot but we know very little possibly because its too complicated, it doesn't make rational sense, we don't have enought time or just like my diploma in accounting if its not put to good use it will turn into a vague memory.. look at my previous thread in cognitive dissonance, it sounds alien to many, it sure sounds to those that i explained it to, that is because its not something we normally hear about so explaining it to others these words and their context also requires a connotation from the listener for cognitive dissonance to make any sense.. my very first assignment was on cognitive dissonance in a paper titled media illiteracy or cognitive dissonance which discussed statistical discrepancies between what people said regarding their preferred news media output -tv or newspapers- and the actual sales/view/quality figures of those two media outlets, in the usa during the 70's and 80's.

  it turns out that people lied about tv news medium being higher quality than newspapers because the quality is lower than newspapers (local news recorded in many states), the truth is that nobody wants to admit (during the questionnaires for this empirical data) that watching news on tv is easier and lazier than reading.

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  paranoia agent

  Part 9

  Many who have tried to reason with those who have delusions and prejudices, if reasoning simply involved demonstrating contradictory evidence then cults wouldn’t even exist by now, but the reality is that we usually end up at a loss and or the process just takes too long, because we are not dealing with normal people (fig.4) we are dealing with people with P and C fused to A, so in theory while I have been advocating to transact in A considered productive than P or C, A can backfire. (fig.5)8

  Transacting in A a contradictory belief of their prejudices/delusions, as discussed in Part 8 regarding the conflict between P and A, will cause a form of mental anxiety known by Leon Festinger as cognitive dissonance (CD), the stronger the prejudice/delusion described below, the stronger dissonance will be required.

  “Let us begin by stating the conditions under which we would expect to observe increased fervour following the disconfirmation of a belief. There are five such conditions.

  1. A belief must be held with deep conviction and it must have some relevance to action, that is, to what the believer does or how he behaves.
  2. The person holding the belief must have committed himself to it; that is, for the sake of his belief, he must have taken some important action that is difficult to undo. In general, the more important such actions are, and the more difficult they are to undo, the greater is the individual's commitment to the belief.
  3. The belief must be sufficiently specific and sufficiently concerned with the real world so that events may unequivocally refute the belief.
  4. Such undeniable disconfirmatory evidence must occur and must be recognized by the individual holding the belief.
     The first two of these conditions specify the circumstances that will make the belief resistant to change. The third and fourth conditions together, on the other hand, point to factors that would exert powerful pressure on a believer to discard his belief. It is, of course, possible that an individual, even though deeply convinced of a belief, may discard it in the face of unequivocal disconfirmation. We must therefore, state a fifth condition specifying the circumstances under which the belief will be discarded and those under which it will be maintained with new fervor.
  5. The individual believer must have social support. It is unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand the kind of disconfirming evidence we have specified. If, however, the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, we would expect the belief to be maintained and the believers to attempt to proselyte or to persuade non-members that the belief is correct.

  These five conditions specify the circumstances under which increased proselyting would be expected to follow disconfirmation.” Leon Festinger, When Prophecy Fails, 2008, p. 19/20, Pinter & Martin Ltd

  With my own interactions and hypothesis I came to the conclusion that it is more beneficial to a)to identify the strongest form of prejudice that the person has and b) provide stronger evidence to the contradictory, to create strong dissonance*, all while transacting in Adult (I cannot stress this enough, in A you are trying, in C or P not only are you wasting time but you can also be making matters worse, that means NO aggressive, punitive or try to induce guilt feelings through conversation). This might take time and various attempts, it is impossible to put everyone in one basket but with me I had success with my parents, now they aren’t out but they are more sceptical and see the GB more as a fallible human body than mini apostles.

  In TA terms, what are doing by creating CD is for the cult member to seek cognitive consonant information that matches reality, so P and C merge out from A, becoming like fig. 4. These type of interactions in TA that are and change decision making are referred to as life positions:

  I’m Ok, you’re OK; I’m Ok, you’re not OK ; I’m not Ok, you’re OK ; I’m not Ok, you’re not OK. They are below demonstrated by the cult member as.

  1 - I’m Ok, you’re not OK – I know the truth and you are wrong

  2 - I’m not Ok, you’re not OK – I may be wrong with certain things but so are you.

  3 - I’m not Ok, you’re OK – I realise the mistakes that I have made and feel terrible

  4 - I’m Ok, you’re OK – I have resolved my crisis and accepted your criticism as valid

  Final thoughts.

  TA is usually applied to business and therapy but rarely applied to understanding cult mentality, most capable of doing so as it is in complete harmony with other psychological perspectives, simplifying and presenting systematic sketches that can easily be applied. Of course what I presented here is just relevant to cults and it’s not even one quarter of TA. One other thing I find crucially important is before we understand others we need to understand ourselves, there is book out there that has sold many copies, How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnege, this book has helped me a lot making me less stressed and less angry because of the cult as I was not aware on how little control I had of myself and how little I understood others, I apply this book and many other books to TA. I wanted to share TA to others who are not familiar with it and to stress that it is better to understand all different perspective of psychology than just one. One last thing, it is human nature that we seek our own consistencies and avoid the inconsistencies of others, we do have cognitive blind spots that we only realise when someone else points it out to us, to understand the impact that this has done in politics and marriage I want to you to read Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me by Elliot Aronson, at least once in your life.

  Next time watching your favourite show or a conversation unfolding think of which ego states they are in.

  P.A.

  * I made a video explaining in full detail what cognitive dissonance is. I can't seem to link the video so you will need to click on the link.

  http://youtu.be/D3IgH_Y0l8I

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3IgH_Y0l8I
• 
  223

  Ancient Confession Found: 'We Invented Jesus Christ'

  by Watchtower-Free in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  http://uk.prweb.com/releases/2013/10/prweb11201273.htm.

  ancient confession found: 'we invented jesus christ'biblical scholars will be appearing at the 'covert messiah' conference at conway hall in london on the 19th of october to present this controversial discovery to the british public.

  london (prweb uk) 8 october 2013. american biblical scholar joseph atwill will be appearing before the british public for the first time in london on the 19th of october to present a controversial new discovery: ancient confessions recently uncovered now prove, according to atwill, that the new testament was written by first-century roman aristocrats and that they fabricated the entire story of jesus christ.

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  paranoia agent

  Stand for Pure Worship wrote You gotta love it. A psuedo-scholar claims Jesus Christ was a fabricated character and all the atheists think they've hit the lottery. Just lookin for any excuse to tickle their own ears.

  We don't need pseudo-scholars to believe that there is little evidence to support the claim that a man with super powers existed.