Vidiot, I’m sure you are right, some unfortunate people have nothing but trouble and injustice in their lives, divine retribution is all they might hope for...many must be JWs. Also there are those who have nothing to lose, so to become a JW is a step up in the social ranking, from the gutter up to the lowest rung of the ladder. For others who have no chance of ever achieving anything in life; simply the impossible hope of eternal paradise is enough for some to stick with it...but they are very sad people.
Half banana
JoinedPosts by Half banana
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10
The perpetual End of the World
by Half banana inone thing common to human culture is a belief that god will punish a dissolute world.
the earliest reference i have encountered is from a cuneiform tablet 4800 years old:.
an assyrian clay tablet dating to approximately 2800 bc was unearthed bearing the words "our earth is degenerate in these latter days.
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Just how is JW org doing?
by Half banana ini started posting on the ex community about five years ago since two of my children have remained under the jw spell.
back then i had little tangible hope of seeing the downfall of the org.
i now see evidence of big cracks forming in their hermetic carapace..
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Half banana
Well said Vidiot. My point still stands I think; some years ago there were no signs of decline yet now there is evidence of stagnation at the very least. I think due to 1/ the western world waking up to the cultic nature of JW thinking not being acceptable in advanced societies 2/ negative publicity; Conti et al. 3/ financial difficulties due to the aforementioned.
It is not apparent that the tipping point has arrived yet but the signs are strong. One does get the impression that the GB are anxious.
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42
How many of you think.......
by punkofnice in..that the governing body are only in it for money and power?.
how many of you think the gb are all/some are sincere?.
okay, i know this has been asked before but i can't find the thread and there are newbies here.....and i like the sound of my own voice.
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Half banana
Punky, you mention one thing which never crosses their cosseted brains, the harm they do and repayment for that harm. Perhaps now is the time to seek redress?
To submit yourself to the org is to be deprived of liberty and be stunted in emotional and intellectual development. What financial compensation can one ask from them for this harm they do?
JW children are deliberately deprived of expanding their understanding of life because the GB wants compliant zombies not thinkers. They say all you must do is ”listen and obey”. This is the talk of tyrants; they must know they are hurting people. Their rationale is “WTS first” because that means continuation of their privilege and its prideful perks.
When I was a Jdub I suffered from a permanent sense of anxiety, I would say I lived a blighted life and it all fell away after I left, what a taste of freedom! Of course many grow away from the cult and leave their soul destroying edicts behind but to be a faithful JW means to live an unfulfilled life, wasted on the undeserving bunch of religious nutters in charge.
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Statue of Marsyas died on a stake?
by enigma1863 inso jws have been spreading this picture around claiming it supports the roman torture stake belief.
this is the statue of marsyas the satyr, a greek mythical creature.
he lost a challenge to apollo and was flayed.
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Half banana
The essence of JW condemnation for a cross comes from their distaste for all things pagan. They reveal their own early Christ-cult notion of separating themselves from things unholy, worldly or contaminated by religious practice they consider false. Catholic Christianity chose the cross as its symbol, a stylised torture instrument, and the WT as part of affirming its own identity chose to disassociate itself from this emblem. As a fundamental selling point, their rhetoric is always to make themselves appear pure and separate from the world, an impulse borrowed from much of the OT writings, especially in connection with the setting up of the henotheistic (one god among many) identity of worship of the pagan Yahweh.
Their attempts are in vain! What the JW org can never achieve is freedom from pagan beliefs. Christianity is sourced almost entirely from pagan folk myth, just condemning the cross for being pagan is to not see the wood for the trees. They are fixated on making the distinction between a cross and stake but miss the fact that “crucifixion” at the saviour hero’s death was a key element of the pagan story, the death at a specific time.
If you are still interested in my theme; around two centuries before the beginning of the calendar it was observed that the equinox occurred at the time when the path of the sun crossed the line of the equator as seen on a primitive armillary sphere. The overlapping lines formed a “cross” as in a saltire or St Andrew’s cross (like an X but on its side). At the spring equinox, (day of equal daylight and night) the northern hemisphere sees a marked increase in the intensity of light as the sun favours the north and correspondingly moves away from the southern hemisphere. Events had always been explained by the heavenly movements and this early technical discovery was incorporated into the prevailing worship of the sun god Mithras. From then on he was often depicted standing on a plinth with the equinoctial cross engraved on its sides. This was to reinforce his lofty role as a Sun God... and when was he crucified? As were all the christs, they were Sun-Gods: born annually at the mid-winter solstice and sacrificially died annually at the spring equinox in other words “at the cross” of the spring equinox. The Catholic Church had great interest in persuading its many Mithras worshippers to embrace its fusion “catholic” faith. In the fourth century it finally absorbed and fused together, or syncretised important pagan beliefs establishing Roman Catholic orthodoxy, thereby gaining mass political allegiance from the believers. This called for incorporating much of the Mithraic dogma... including its need for the Lamb of God to die on a cross at Easter.
NT religion uses double entendre to speak its catholic message.
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Just how is JW org doing?
by Half banana ini started posting on the ex community about five years ago since two of my children have remained under the jw spell.
back then i had little tangible hope of seeing the downfall of the org.
i now see evidence of big cracks forming in their hermetic carapace..
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Half banana
I started posting on the Ex community about five years ago since two of my children have remained under the JW spell. Back then I had little tangible hope of seeing the downfall of the Org. I now see evidence of big cracks forming in their hermetic carapace.
They had always bragged about using new technological developments in promoting themselves (or God as he used to be called!) and with the decline of print on paper they have had to turn to the internet. This has been done reluctantly because the money from magazines and books were the very making of the Watchtower Corporation. Millions of pieces of literature printed on low-cost paper by ‘voluntary’ labour and with free marketing and distribution made for its billions of Dollars. They are now denied the enormous returns they made on their publishing enterprise. Instead they are now property developers milking the wealth out of the flock who are no longer mortgaged but "pledged" in perpetuity for KH’s the congregations will never own. A scam worthy of the greatest accolade in accountancy crime! (but it's all in a good cause folks!...)
The internet has inherent problems for an autocratic religious cult. Internet exposure has a self regulating and democratic element which the Org had never encountered before. Its antics are now open to public gaze. Anything which doesn’t chime with the zeitgeist of transparency, democracy and modernity gets the downturned thumb from the viewers. Brain-dead JW zombies will not be affected but potential members are now warned off by our very vocal ex JW communities. I suggest that the Org had flourished only because they controlled their one dimensional propaganda but they have now lost that in the new freedom of information which the internet has brought... what we might call the “true” new light!
Couple this with the downturn in income and the shameless money grabbing; the JW org, for all its glitzy TV studios, is greatly weakened.
How do others read the situation?
Are the troubles at the Tower just the result of internet exposure?
Do I have real grounds for hope in their decline?
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86
What are you gonna do when the existence of god is disproved?
by Doltologist inin 1897, j.j. thomson discovered the electron.
this was the first constituent part of the atom which, for 2,000 years, was thought to be indivisible.
today, we know of 18 elemental particles following the recent discovery of the higgs boson, the so-called god particle.. back in 1897, most people believed in god because there weren't even any theories as to how the universe came into being.
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Half banana
Dolto, I was speaking personally, for me...god is an irrelevance and that being so makes for greater peace of my mind. I absolutely agree god should be irrelevant for all just as it is in scientific research. However science does not claim to supply existential comfort, which belief in a god does.
As for 1897 and alternatives to divine origins for the universe--- perhaps you have overlooked that Darwin's evolutionary bombshell exploded back in 1859? The thinkers of the day especially TH Huxley and the like, recognised evolution denied the need for a divine creator and the idea has continued filtering down ever since.
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Statue of Marsyas died on a stake?
by enigma1863 inso jws have been spreading this picture around claiming it supports the roman torture stake belief.
this is the statue of marsyas the satyr, a greek mythical creature.
he lost a challenge to apollo and was flayed.
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Half banana
Just imagine if you were going to crucify a member of a governing body, how would you do it? Firstly, you must get some timber ready and nail him or her to it, a cross piece looks more dramatic. Whatever type of scaffold you use it is still called crucifixion since the purpose is to torture your victim to death. After all, the saviour Dionysus was crucified on a vine! Funny how Jesus said “I am the vine”............. Jesus though went for the traditional cross probably because the Roman Christ, Mithras (The Good Shepherd and Lamb of God) went for that option too.
If on the other hand you wanted to flay a member of a governing body, firstly you would first have to decide whether you wanted to do it whist they are alive or dead. Either way you then you simply hang them on a stake or any handy support, probably by the hands as with Marsyas, which can be tied together, and then begin flaying. A messier, bloodier option and sounds more frightening but always handy to have as a good threat to keep people on the righteous path.
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Has science replaced the bible? WT June 1 2015
by stuckinarut2 ini picked up a printed copy of the june 1 2015 public edition wt..... before the end of page 1, the stupidity is already evident.. they quote a dictionary, but don't list which one.. they quote a "world- famous physicist", but don't give his name.
the quote looks like it is edited to fit their reasoning.. they quote "others", but no reference to who they are is provided.. the next page quotes "a popular science writer" who??.
then the classic line "jehovah's witnesses respect each person's right to make a decision on this matter".
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Half banana
The practice of not giving citations for the source of academic information is both impolite and ignorant.
The consequence, as Stuck has implied; only the fellow ignoramuses will continue with it. This is a selection process (think of evolution) whereby WT literature will be exclusively for the ignorant and by the ignorant.
If the Org still exists, what will it look like in a few years time if this trend continues? What sort of members do they want; just those with learning difficulties? Will they condemn all learning which does not originate with them? Will they start to say that God hates education? Will they start saying that God only loves the most stupid and ignorant people... like the leaders of the cult?
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86
What are you gonna do when the existence of god is disproved?
by Doltologist inin 1897, j.j. thomson discovered the electron.
this was the first constituent part of the atom which, for 2,000 years, was thought to be indivisible.
today, we know of 18 elemental particles following the recent discovery of the higgs boson, the so-called god particle.. back in 1897, most people believed in god because there weren't even any theories as to how the universe came into being.
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Half banana
God is an irrelevance. Thank God I realised God is no more a reality than Satan is back when I was still a JW. -
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Breaking News: Anthony Morris III comments on Ireland legalization of gay marriage.
by cappytan in#notsatire.
thanks to wifibandit and pixel for collaborating on this.
more to come.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxce4duetw8.
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Half banana
Where is that quiet mystique of reverence which the GB held before the star spangled JW-org TV exposure?
In tatters I think!