Passing through again, Jerry. Heinous as they are the crimes of the Watchtower pale in comparison to those of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, past and present. Given the choice I'd prefer seeing Rome dismantled, much as I'd delight in the end of both.
Nickolas
JoinedPosts by Nickolas
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45
Many Member Just Want to Believe
by OnTheWayOut inif you are/were an active jw, you are now here on jwn so, for whatever your reasons, you woke up to some degree- hopefully a great degree.
so what i am saying may not apply to you.. i know that if i had not already left, i would have stormed out on the day they studied "overlapping generation.
" i am quite confident i couldn't have stayed for such an obvious switcharoo just to make the end seem imminent and try to explain how wts was wrong, but not entirely wrong in the past.. but i had to wonder how that change (or others) didn't cause most jw's to walk out.
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45
Many Member Just Want to Believe
by OnTheWayOut inif you are/were an active jw, you are now here on jwn so, for whatever your reasons, you woke up to some degree- hopefully a great degree.
so what i am saying may not apply to you.. i know that if i had not already left, i would have stormed out on the day they studied "overlapping generation.
" i am quite confident i couldn't have stayed for such an obvious switcharoo just to make the end seem imminent and try to explain how wts was wrong, but not entirely wrong in the past.. but i had to wonder how that change (or others) didn't cause most jw's to walk out.
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Nickolas
My perspective is against the backdrop of faith and the greater damage it does. Unqualified belief in fantastic things. What flavour that faith assumes is of lesser significance. What the Watchtower teaches, how it controls the thoughts of its adherents, is a variation on a common theme. A particularly insidious variation, to be sure, but a matter only of degree. Some of the most ardent critics of the Watchtower, including many of those frequenting this forum, steadfastly cling to a less strident variation of the very same faith espoused by the Watchtower. TTATT is subjective if the residual truth they perceive is every bit as unlikely. Do not these people also deserve to know the truth about the "truth" that they perceive? I think so, if they can handle it and thrive. If a secular one such as I - and I had assumed in incarnations past you as well - can be construed as occupying one end of the spectrum and an active Jehovah's Witness the other, the ones who have cast off the yoke of the Watchtower but still cling to their faith in improbable things are far, far more similar to the Jehovah's Witnesses they loathe than they are to me. The enemy is not the Watchtower alone, as much as it is a formidable aspect of it. I'm sure you will recognise this closing to Sam Harris' famous letter:
This letter is the product of failure—the failure of the many brilliant attacks upon religion that preceded it, the failure of our schools to announce the death of God in a way that each generation can understand, the failure of the media to criticize the abject religious certainties of our public figures—failures great and small that have kept almost every society on this earth muddling over God and despising those who muddle differently.
Nonbelievers like myself stand beside you, dumbstruck by the Muslim hordes who chant death to whole nations of the living. But we stand dumbstruck by you as well—by your denial of tangible reality, by the suffering you create in service to your religious myths, and by your attachment to an imaginary God. This letter has been an expression of that amazement—and, perhaps, of a little hope.That said, I suppose I would be almost as content if my wife converted back to Anglicanism, although we'd still not be on the same page.
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Many Member Just Want to Believe
by OnTheWayOut inif you are/were an active jw, you are now here on jwn so, for whatever your reasons, you woke up to some degree- hopefully a great degree.
so what i am saying may not apply to you.. i know that if i had not already left, i would have stormed out on the day they studied "overlapping generation.
" i am quite confident i couldn't have stayed for such an obvious switcharoo just to make the end seem imminent and try to explain how wts was wrong, but not entirely wrong in the past.. but i had to wonder how that change (or others) didn't cause most jw's to walk out.
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Nickolas
It would appear the Watchtower is winning because she is still in and happy to be in. Certainly no contemplation of divorce on her part, since she and you have a kind of détente she is content to maintain. Would it be you who would contemplate divorce if you came to the realisation that your efforts to get through to her will never succeed? That she will be in until she dies? I think not. Love does indeed conquer all.
You could be describing my wife, Jerry. She loves life in much the same way, with much the same energy and enthusiasm. She is one of the most positive people I know. Certainly more so than I. She has the capacity to light up a room. Lift spirits. But it is all within a context that there is a purpose for it all, a reason, a grand plan, something that comes afterward. Take that away and the spark might fade from her eyes, and that I could not bear.
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Many Member Just Want to Believe
by OnTheWayOut inif you are/were an active jw, you are now here on jwn so, for whatever your reasons, you woke up to some degree- hopefully a great degree.
so what i am saying may not apply to you.. i know that if i had not already left, i would have stormed out on the day they studied "overlapping generation.
" i am quite confident i couldn't have stayed for such an obvious switcharoo just to make the end seem imminent and try to explain how wts was wrong, but not entirely wrong in the past.. but i had to wonder how that change (or others) didn't cause most jw's to walk out.
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Nickolas
Thinking my metaphor for futility might be misunderstood. Perhaps "banging your head against a wall" would have been more appropriate. The context is your ongoing and ostensibly patient conversation with your wife. It is admirable. You haven't given up. After all this time and after all your gallant efforts she's still in. I admit to have given up. I have put forward evidence and arguments that are devastating in their clarity and logic but they bounce harmlessly off her faith. While I watch myself grow older in the mirror I have come to accept that I will not get through to the love of my life. Not entirely resignation. There is also the "be careful what you wish for" aspect of things. If I managed to get through and the light went on inside her head the possibility of unintended consequences is considerable. I think she is one of those people who need faith to be happy. If those people lose their faith and for the first time in their lives clearly perceive the oblivion that awaits them it might just be beyond bearing. Perhaps terrifying. It's a corollary to the canard that faith is good because it gives one hope. The counter that that "good" does in no way bear on the question of the veracity of what is believed is beyond challenge, though maybe beside the point.
You have no doubt read the famous Marx quote in context:
Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.
It wasn't a derrogatory dismissal of religion as usually taken but an acknowledgement that religion dulls the pain of reality.
I still prefer single malts. Think I'll get another one now.
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Many Member Just Want to Believe
by OnTheWayOut inif you are/were an active jw, you are now here on jwn so, for whatever your reasons, you woke up to some degree- hopefully a great degree.
so what i am saying may not apply to you.. i know that if i had not already left, i would have stormed out on the day they studied "overlapping generation.
" i am quite confident i couldn't have stayed for such an obvious switcharoo just to make the end seem imminent and try to explain how wts was wrong, but not entirely wrong in the past.. but i had to wonder how that change (or others) didn't cause most jw's to walk out.
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Nickolas
I admire your determination, Jerry, but do you never get the feeling you're pissing into the wind?
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CONFESS or COVERUP
by Terry inthe disconnect from the family of humanity......the snap of that fellow feeling......the cold indifferent shrug as each person dries up and hardens into a mere thing in a kingdom hall.....is a withering away of all that is noble, pure and innocent.. and when that icy moment sets in the rest of the world vanishes into an invisible nothing in the heart of that strutting and proud lump of human flesh called jehovah's witness.. it is the first of many deaths they will endure.... where does it begin and where does it end?.
perhaps by defending huge lies?.
if you are complicit in a crime against humanity you have two basic ethical choices:.
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Nickolas
Old whine in new skins, Terry.
The Republic article is refutable. Just some non-JW's interpretation of what she thought a JW was saying to her. Besides, he may have been one of those "running ahead of Jehovah". The Watchtower has never denied the existence of those pathetic ones. They pretty much stomped all over them in 1976. That there were many, many of us at the time really only underlines how pervasive the shameful thing was and how much more direction and control from above was needed. Isn't it obvious the author of the Truth book was, himself, running ahead of Jehovah and it somehow got past higher scrutiny? Of course that's what happened. There's no other explanation. It was probably Ray Franz' doing. Must have been.
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Death and perspective
by Separation of Powers ini realize today, at this moment in time, at this moment, this exact moment in my life the absolute futility of everything.
i sit here, at this desk, in front of this screen, my head is spinning and my mind wanders through all those moments of interaction with someone who has just left this life.
no, he wasn't a family member, he wasn't even a friend really, an acquaintance, a casual work related interaction.
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Nickolas
Just passing through. Your post is the first encountered. Interesting contradiction.
Do you believe by virtue of our lives on this planet we leave an infinitely indelible mark at the same time you perceive the absolute futility of everything? Have you only just begun, I wonder? The epiphanies about life, I mean? There are greater ones to come.
I can't tell from your post. Are you a Christian? I nearly interposed the adverb "still" but stopped short. Maybe you are and have neither desire nor intention to change that aspect of your life. Might be best. There is hope in Christianity. Once you truly perceive fully the futility of life, your own life in particular, you may prefer you hadn't. Or it may liberate you. Or both.
I'm guessing you're in the closet. On the outside a Jehovah's Witness, on the inside someone who expresses his truer self in an anonymous forum. Living with duplicity is more difficult than one might think. It has a way of eating away at your sense of integrity.
Seems to me a few years ago your intelligence got offended. What you were being told was true didn't add up. So, you opened the door just a crack and peered through onto new perspectives for the first time and you have then taken time and deliberation to interpret what you saw, what you are seeing. You are understanding. The first time takes the longest. Much like the process of digestion. You opened the door a crack and you saw something enormous and complex. At some point, perhaps you have already been there, your eyes widen with greater understanding and you will reflexively open the door wider.
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Poll--How Many Believe In God, Do Not Believe or Are Not Sure Of His Existence?
by minimus ini believe in god but i'm not sure of anything....what about you?.
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Nickolas
There is no god.
In the final analysis it isn't important. What's important is what puts you at peace with the world and what makes you and the people you love happy. If it's belief in God that's cool with me.
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340
Fallacies about Faith
by tec inpeace to you!.
this thread is about false things (some) atheists think theists believe.
this is not a thread about false things that atheists think about theists.
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Nickolas
Were we talking about blind faith or what one holds to be true, or is it the same thing? It takes a lot to budge me from my reality but I can't count the number of times my paradigm's been shifted. I once believed in a god. Imagine that. You and I are convinced that what we currently believe is true, but if we're rational we'll accept that what we believe can't possibly be absolutely true. I perceive you are an atheist like me. We don't believe in gods. Fine. Same page. Our individual perceptions of reality are otherwise not the same. Likewise what is ridiculous to you may be rational to someone else and more importantly integral to their happiness. If what they believe causes you unhappiness I might suggest the problem isn't with them.
Edited: OTWO, my faith in you is restored. Whatever that means.....
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340
Fallacies about Faith
by tec inpeace to you!.
this thread is about false things (some) atheists think theists believe.
this is not a thread about false things that atheists think about theists.
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Nickolas
Same page nicolaou. Faith in something greater than ourselves crosses a line when it does harm, as defined by causing unhappiness or suffering in ourselves or others. Those kids on the cover of the May 22, 1994 Awake come to mind. Very doubtful the parents of those kids were evil but their faith brought them their worst nightmare. Steven Weinberg on good people and all that.
I'm doing quite well, thank you Tammy. :o) Hope the same for you. Anti-theist is a better noun. Of the adhominem variety. Attack the person instead of the idea.
OTWO, you made me smile. First from seeing your familiar avatar and then from what you said. Did you really say that? You have become less subtle during my hiatus (to which I'm about to return.)