The people who say it's never gonna fall point out that it's been around for 130 years. But all of those scandals happened in the last 35 years. This is a recent thing, and the problems are accelerating. The lack of elders and the fact that 2/3rds of young people leave will doom it. They don't make converts, they are losing most born-in membership, and the entire organization is built around being ... an organization. Once they lose the infrastructure to maintain branch offices and the whole Catholic-esque hierachy, they fall apart because they won't survive the transition to decentralized groups.
Liberty93
JoinedPosts by Liberty93
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49
Is there anything that could actually bring down this farce of a religion?
by stuckinamovement init seems as if they have survived it all.
bad press such as articles on molestations, neutrality, blood, defections of high ranking officials, crazy changes in doctrines, financial stresses, passage of a 100 years without one prophecy coming true.
yet they are still going strong with new members being recruited at a faster level than those who leave.
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49
How do I cut off pioneering?
by bottleofwater ini'm 19 and trying to get a job.
my dad won't pay for my college if i don't pioneer.. if i get a job, i can't pioneer while in college.. i can supposedly work and study, but i need a good way to get rid of pioneering (it was never my idea in the first place - blame the parents with their social coercion).. if i stop pioneering, i will be told by my parents that i don't love jehovah (not that i care what they say).. how can i do this as painlessly as possible?.
i want to move out someday and have enough money to do this.. by the way, if you read my started topics you will see my situation in more detail and that my dad is the coordinator of the boe..
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Liberty93
Dude, forget all of this stuff about fading or faking. Hit the road and don't look back or you'll spend a very long time as a slave. Go get a job somewhere, move if you have to, find a place to live, and then worry about the rest.
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86
Some christmas spirit, WT style!
by bohm inwell, i know its a bit self-serving since i allready posted this in jwfacts thread http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/bible/199939/1/watchtower-images-required, but i think its quite funny and things have been kind of serious around here for the past couple of weeks.. it seem to me that when jahs chanel have desided (im kidding, they has been told) the one and true god really hate christmas and will kill you in nasty ways if you go ahead and celebrate it, it provide a pretty compelling case for not celebrating christmas.
but the governing body can make an even stronger case than that: not only will jesus cry and clice you up if you celebrate christmas, you will also have a really bad time.
wow!.
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Liberty93
Oh, and someone said that was bad photography work. But consider how it makes you feel. What are the unspoken messages in the skewed camera angle, etc?
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86
Some christmas spirit, WT style!
by bohm inwell, i know its a bit self-serving since i allready posted this in jwfacts thread http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/bible/199939/1/watchtower-images-required, but i think its quite funny and things have been kind of serious around here for the past couple of weeks.. it seem to me that when jahs chanel have desided (im kidding, they has been told) the one and true god really hate christmas and will kill you in nasty ways if you go ahead and celebrate it, it provide a pretty compelling case for not celebrating christmas.
but the governing body can make an even stronger case than that: not only will jesus cry and clice you up if you celebrate christmas, you will also have a really bad time.
wow!.
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Liberty93
Has anyone on here ever had the thought that Jesus became an apostate and was not only disfellowshipped by the Faithful and Discreet Slave of his day, the "Pharisee class," and was eventually killed by them?
I don't mean this as some snarky point - I'm being rather serious. Jesus went up against men who, by all the accounts in the first century, were chiefly concerned with making absolutely certain that they did not contravene the Law, but who did so by adding on so many extra obligations that no normal man could keep them, and he was expelled for doing so. Consider if Jesus came to the Kingdom Hall today - he wouldn't turn in service hours, rather helping people he found; he wouldn't play the gossip game; he wouldn't comply with all of the minuatiea and regulations added on by fallible men who neither enter into the Kingdom of Heaven themselves nor allow others to go in.
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Here's a vile little poem to darken your inbox
by under_believer inmy forever true-believing, born-again-jw mother just sent this to my daughter.
i love how this is saying "jehovah please murder 6 billion humans so i can be happy.
" remember, folks: things are worse than they ever have been in the entire span of recorded human history, and you can't possibly hope to endure.
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Liberty93
I seem to have remember Jehovah being a better poet in the Psalms than when he replied to the "poet" who wrote this.
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12
Did you feel you missed out as a JW kid/teenager?
by BlackTwisted ini am not gonna lie, i know i did somewhat, and here's my story of it.. .
i remember my mom and her girl-friend (yes, she was bi-sexual, her gf was a lesbian.
) and my mom's gf..um..let's call her jill (not her real name) was very..well, not very but was somewhat strict almost over everything, i remember i couldn't evfen watch that 70's show!
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Liberty93
No, because I did alot of it anyway. I mentally seceded from the Witnesses when I was 13 or 14.
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107
Need to vent/ask opnion/advice on new renter in my house
by bluesapphire inokay, so my girls all moved out and we had three empty rooms and a lot of bills to pay.
so we decided to rent the upstairs room with its own bath.
we also have a three car garage and the single car garage is fully drywalled, has its own entrance and is huge.
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Liberty93
Blue,
Being molested isn't a problem like losing your job. Things like that leave people completely broken. Were you molested? Have you ever had a situation push you to the point where suicide looked like an attractive option because it was better than spending the rest of your life exhausted mentally and physically?
If not, then don't judge her. Judge her actions, but not her. False friends have probably helped her for years to keep from facing her problems, but I guarantee you that she isn't using you. She's lonely, lost, and desperately afraid in a world that demands far more from her than she can ever give. Trust me, I know. This has happened to people in my family.
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has anyone looked into Buddhism?
by poor places ini've started reading a book called the modern buddhist's bible and i'm liking a lot of things about the religion so far.
of course i don't know much yet, but there seem to be some very good points to buddhism.
one thing i love is the emphasis on "killing" the ego (or whatever you might want to call what buddhists try to do with their egos!).
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Liberty93
Regardless of how you feel about Buddhism, just sit down and give it a try.
You don't have to attend any services, or read any special books, just sit indian style a comfortable position with your back straight, head slightly down, mouth closed, and breath in and out slowly through your nose, and pay attention to your breath.
That's really all it takes to start. Try it for 15 minutes and see where you go.
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41
has anyone looked into Buddhism?
by poor places ini've started reading a book called the modern buddhist's bible and i'm liking a lot of things about the religion so far.
of course i don't know much yet, but there seem to be some very good points to buddhism.
one thing i love is the emphasis on "killing" the ego (or whatever you might want to call what buddhists try to do with their egos!).
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Liberty93
Poor places,
The emphasis isn't on killing the ego. In Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche compares our situation to being like a monkey in a room, able to look out through the windows at the world, but not able to actually interact with it. He says, "The more the monkey attempts to destroy or control the walls, the more solid and oppressive they become, until at some point ... Each time he seems about to achieve pleasure, he is rudely awaken from his idyllic dream; but his hunger is so demanding that he is not daunted and so continues to constantly churn out fantasies of future satisfaction. The pain of disappointment involves the monkey in a love-hate relationship with his dreams. He is fascinated by them, but the disappointment is so painful that he is repelled by them as well."
From a Buddhist standpoint, that's basically what we do every minute of every day - either fill ourselves with memories of the past, or churn out fantasies about the future, constantly missing the experience of the beauty of consciousness. The belief in an inherently existing world of seperate and inherently existing beings locks us into a pattern where we stop interacting with things as they are in this perfect present moment and instead interact without our concepts about those things in a game of hopes about the future and fears about the past. This, I think, is the point of Buddhism - work hard and attain your own salvation from the gods and demons in your heart by realizing that your inherent nature is actually, for lack of better terms, a perfect manifestation of the unspeakable and inconcievble state of enlightenment in a form free of fixity and solidness.
Being nice, or being calm, are good, but are absolutely not the point, and to say that they are strips Buddhism of the power that it possesses and which most "religions" lack - to realize that YOU ARE already the very thing you want to be, and that what you're searching after is something far more magnificent and splendid than anything you could have ever imagined.
For what it's worth, the vajrayana, with which I am familiar, says nothing about homosexuality. The Dalai Lama was speaking for himself, and was most likely talking about rules of conduct for practitioners of outer tantra where cleanliness and purity are of paramount importance. The Dalai Lama is emphatically NOT a "Buddhist pope" - while he is well-respected, he only speaks for himself, and the only people obligated to listen are his students. Neither is masturbation. The person who said that needs to read the stories of the mahasiddhas who took street hookers as consorts to attain realization... I've never heard ANY lama say anything against being gay, and it is definitely not out of some desire to avoid losing students.
Also, if I were you, I would avoid lineages like aro g'ter (the meditation courses that got mentioned) or the "New Kadampa Tradition." Aro g'ter was basically invented wholecloth by a guy who abandoned his teacher, and are famous for inventing texts and and using photographs of their group's founder with unwitting lamas to make it seem as if they are supported. In vajrayana, lineage is of paramount importance for the transmission of the uncommon practices that help you to realize your nature. This guy basically tried to create his own lineage, which is a GIGANTIC no-no. NKT has a whole host of problems that they try to conceal. It's more Witnessy than I'd care to mention. If they aren't protesting the Dalai Lama, they're trying to deal with the latest sex scandal or using someone who has been a member for less than a year to give teachings. You'd be far better off to go with someone reputable. is an issue we all encountered as Witnesses - we thought that we were just being opposed by wicked opposers and apostates, until we started thinking and realized that we were in a very problematic group. You'll notice the same thing with aro g'ter and NKT - the only vajrayana buddhists who don't say that they are very problematic groups are the people still on the inside. If you take teachings with them, you'll probably have to start over if you go to any other teachers. I've also heard some really, really freaky stories about the NKT, but I won't go into those here, because not everyone might believe me. :-p
But enough about that. You should really read Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche's stuff. He was a lama who came over to the West from Tibet in the 1960s and knew how to talk to westerners like few people could or can. The great advantage of CTR, in my eyes, is that he didn't water-down the traditional teachings into "just be nice and calm" type stuff, but he also didn't tell people that they couldn't questioning. That's the big difference between Buddhism (and dharmic "religions") and the Abrahamic religions - in Christianity and whatnot, questioning and doubt are suspect at best. In Buddhism, they are NECESSARY.
Sorry if I was long-winded. :-p
Liberty
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12
Electronic Cigarettes?
by pr0ner ini'm working for this company blu cigs.
what are you general opinions on them?
i'm going to be doing pr and events stuff for them in the future.
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Liberty93
Yea, but if you use dickheads as a market, won't that pigeonhole your product?