Half banana

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Posts by Half banana

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  24

  BURNING AMBITION by Jehovah's Witness YOUTH: "I want to clean toilets in Bethel for the rest of my life."

  by TerryWalstrom in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  as i have written previously, i crashed a discussion between a young j-dub and his baptist workmate who were having.

  a religious debate outside starbucks.

  this was months ago.

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  Half banana

  Perhaps he had irritable bowel syndrome?
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  25

  So much "growth"! JW Land double sided coin

  by thedepressedsoul in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  i'm finding it more and more funny how every wt article for the public or congregation, including jw broadcast talks about all this "growth" and how fast jehovha's organization is speeding up!

  yet everything behind closed doors, insider information, elder letters and sales paint a very different picture.

  i have news for you gb members!

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  Half banana

  The imperative for the individual and collective GB member is to honour their appointment as custodians of the sacred Watchtower cash-cow.

  Everything else is subordinated to this end. The pride they hold in this role has only been revealed by their antics on the JW TV; a bunch of ignorant pedagogues, a living example of the proverbial blind guides. (I used to think they must be decent people before they became visible, yet I knew Knorr was a grumpy old bugger)

  When it comes to money matters (and money matters most of all), the JW doctrine is ever flexible to meet the needs of the moment. When doctrine become implausible... which it routinely does, it can always be rationalised by tweaking Bible texts to give the famous Watchtower spin by presenting something as “God’s will”...and the sheep, with brains on hold, can only follow. Just think... if the sheep are told something by the GB that it is God’s will; that cements it for the follower, he or she is not permitted to say or think “Oh no it’s not!” Or question “How do you know that?”

  As a business venture the imperative is to be rich enough to do what you want and the management need money to keep their message prominent to bring in new punters. Using a publicly accessible TV station is surely the commercial rationale of the moment for an ex publishing company with a cult agenda.

  For thirty or more years they have been getting a fairly consistent number of new publishers, averaging something around 175,000 per year. As the membership steadily increases notwithstanding the disfellowshipped, the faders and the deaths, the effort vs results indicates a significant drop in efficiency. It now takes something like 13,000 hours of witnessing to make one new JW. In other words the message is no longer all that popular and in future it will continue to decline in appeal as the internet arbitrates religious questions with its democratic freedom of information.

  Money and membership numbers are the only true Watchtower values which denote operational success. Through years of selling pointless literature printed by virtual slave labour; the WTBTS amassed great wealth and great wealth earns great interest. At the same time there exists is a lot of momentum of loyalty through family membership built up over the century and whilst there are fewer converts in the educated and richer West, there are enough old JW families to perpetuate the religion through their offspring alone. So this is the trend: the org is growing through breeding and not by preaching. This makes me think that the same could eventually happen in the third world where expansion does exist for now, that a saturation point will come and the JW org will nevertheless be in control of even greater wealth and large numbers of dim-witted believers loyally breeding new child members... just like they did in the Catholic Church.

  There is however a dramatic difference; the Roman Catholic Church has a magisterial hold over its vast but diminishing membership based on the myth of an apostolic inheritance from Jesus’ appointment of Peter. The Watchtower religion makes its claim by contrast as a doomsday cult, not of this world, which can never claim the ‘earthly’ authority as does its envied and supremely successful rival.

  The authority of a doomsday cult arises from the confidence in the accuracy of its predictions...
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  43

  Yet more trolley (in)activity

  by konceptual99 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i am currently having to spend a little time waiting for an appointment in the vicinity of a central london station.

  whilst waiting i am catching up on some work in a cafe.

  i can see a couple of trolleys and have been watching them for around an hour now.. not one person has stopped to take literature.

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  Half banana

  I was in central London two days ago with twenty minutes to spare and felt like doing some JW-baiting (bit like bear-baiting but not so bloody). But when I got to Oxford Circus tube station the resident JW was chewing the fat with a passing fellow believer. I felt like interrupting and saying "Do you mind but you are already converted and I want to have an exclusive and devastating argument with this lady". I didn't... heigh ho.
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  23

  Facing up to the reality of the world

  by purrpurr in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  since becoming atheist i have been paying more attention to world events and issues.

  this is giving me some worry's when i see what's going on.

  as a jw i could just dismiss stuff saying "armageddon is coming, jehovah will look after us" etc etc now of course i can't do that.

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  Half banana

  Purrpurr, congrats on arriving at reality! Yes the old publishing religion gave a sense of security which was a false comfort but real life has to be negotiated with rational values and common sense... and of course there are horrible things around us not the least of which are those caused by religious fundamentalism.

  My own experience was to realise that there is no god even before I left the org. The meetings became unbearable, the crassness of the preaching from the platform made me squirm inside, I felt even though I was forty years old I was being treated like a child. I had an overwhelming feeling that I was not flourishing under the WT regime, I was getting nowhere quickly I was being stifled mentally and intellectually. I wanted to shout out at the meeting and say, stop this is madness! But sensibly I didn’t as I had planned to fade asap.

  In answer to your situation ”how do atheists cope?” I would say firstly that atheist people (who are not a homogeneous group) get along fine just as religious people do. It’s true that True Believers like JWs put all their emotional eggs into the one basket of spiritual hope, take that away and they are floundering...and that is what I think you are talking about.

  What characterises the human animal is their active intelligence in understanding situations and I think that to leave the depressing cult allows for a wonderful opportunity for personal growth. I was told on leaving school that I shouldn’t go to college, so, fool that I was, I became a window cleaner. (If you want to fail in life---join Jehovah’s Witnesses!)

  Upon leaving the org, I began to study hard and started on my first college course at the Open University (UK). I love learning at uni level, it has given me the broad view of the power play in history and in society and illuminated for me more detailed information on my favourite subjects some of which relevant to my work as a designer. Good education gives a person confidence, or rather shall I say it gave me confidence and great pleasure... which are the very things taken from you as a JW drone.

  So I’m suggesting that to counter years of religious indoctrination; firstly gain an understanding of what life is actually about; read and know why the org is wrong, catch up on education and secondly develop your own talents, make your own objectives...and really enjoy achieving them ‘cos the world is actually a wonderful place and full of lovely people!
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  45

  People should learn more about the Bible flaws

  by opusdei1972 in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  i have noted that the main problem for those who are seduced by the watchtower society is their ignorance about the bible itself.

  people who believe that the bible is the word of god usually ignore the studies on textual criticism and how scientific criteria forbid absurd stories like that of the global flood.

  so, i strongly believe that students in schools need at least an obligatory course on "the bible" through the point of view of science and the textual criticism.

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  Half banana

  What planet do you come from Lorenzo Smith? You want your cake and eat it as well.

  Education means being led out to where you would not be otherwise able to travel intellectually. To have, or even need faith, is the reverse of education, it is the blinkered, inward looking cultural impulse to appear acceptable to others in your chosen community and it is based on nothing other than wishful thinking. The contrast between faith and knowledge must first be fully understood and then faith removed from the discussion if one is to get a proper education. Faith is whimsy, only knowledge from evidential and testable (disprovable) sources make for useable information. This fundamental cornerstone of the western intellectual discourse dismisses at a stroke the whole shebang of religion with its faith and other holy drivel. Religion and mythology were the socially unifying tools which enabled mankind to hobble along before the clarity of the scientific method for determining realities. Times have changed.

  The Bible is nearly all drawn from paganism...Surface reading of the texts ignores the primitive and universal folk myths from which the Bible finds its origins. Its stories are these much older stories bent around Jewish and later Greek ideas dressed up and as holy imperatives and delivered for political cohesion. To imagine that it is God’s inerrant word is just ignorance, to believe so was socially acceptable in the past but today it no longer stands up to scientific scrutiny. It remains a very important collection of historical texts but to believe that it is from God is naive.

  Forget the edicts of the past, move forward and base your judgement on knowable things...the Bible is on a par with fairy stories.
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  42

  How much damage has internet done against the The Watchtower Society ?

  by opusdei1972 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  in the beginning of internet the society was worried about the information published exposing its falsehood.

  so, i wonder how many people lost the society on account of forums and web sites like this.

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  Half banana

  I agree Brokeback, it’s a bit early to determine the real cause for the decline in expansion of the WT but surely the proliferation of negative information on the internet must be involved. With few new members coming in, the rot will start showing and discourage the existing members who will be mainly “born-ins”.

  The folly of the governing body is imagining that Big J is going to bless their work whatever medium they use...”God is richly blessing his people, just look at all the honest hearted ones coming to his holy organisation” (pause for vomit). I hope the internet with its openness and ready access to universal information will demonstrate this to be a myth. I hope that the internet will be the death of them and the sooner the better.
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  28

  Was It Designed? Rabies Purposeful Mode of Transmission.

  by Island Man in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  was it designed?.

  rabies' purposeful mode of transmissionrabies is caused by a number of lyssaviruses that attack the cells of the nervous system disrupting their normal function.

  symptoms include painful spasms in the muscles of the throat and larynx of patients, accompanied by a strong aversion to drinking liquids - hydrophobia.

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  Half banana

  Here's something I posted on the Yuku forum a while back which belatedly answers disposable heros request:

  Was it chance or intelligent design?

  The wonderful ichneumon wasp is a marvel of God’s creation. In her effort to give her offspring the very best chance in life, the female seeks out a grub, caterpillar or pupa, often already buried in the safety of a log. By tapping and sensing the vibrations from a suitable host, she drills down to her victim through the wood. This is no small feat for a wasp but her ovipositor has metal molecules in its tip and ably performs the task. Next she lovingly paralyses her victim and then lays her eggs within its still living flesh. This gives the grubs hatching from the eggs a chance to devour fresh meat as they grow. Only the best for the ichneumon grubs! However, not quite so much fun for the paralysed caterpillar being eaten alive from the inside. Ah! The wonders of intelligent design by a loving and thoughtful Creator.

  But, you might think that this is cruel? How could a loving God, who has given mankind in these very last days a loving organization to direct people to the truth, do such a thing? Of course nothing in intelligent design is without a divine purpose. The ichneumon wasp in all its glory is nothing other than a prefiguring of the feeding activities as directed by the ‘faithful and discreet slave’.

  Firstly they find a victim then lovingly paralyse their minds so they cannot move away and whilst held in this state they are effectively bled to death mentally and emotionally and often financially as well, so as to give up all their gifts and their very lives for the furtherance of the kingdom interests. (This means in practise the enrichment of the earthly organization and the aggrandisement of its chief officers in Brooklyn). So what might appear on the surface to be mindless cruelty in the natural world... is in reality just plain mindless cruelty.

  Chance or by design? The cunning way the WTBTS gains wealth, property, mass mesmerisation of its followers, and authority over the minds of its paralysed victims---all tend towards the inescapable conclusion that they are using-------INTELLIGENT DESIGN.
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  6

  New Light! - Old bulb was getting dim.

  by The_Doctor10 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  'this old bulb is about to go out, let's just unscrew this old light, screw this fresh one in, new light, we have new light!'.

  it's always bugged me how you only see big doctrinal changes, "new light," happen right around the same time the "old light," is about to blow out.. this "over-lapping generation," teaching is the perfect example, "old light" was about to be extinguished as being impossible to maintain, "new light brothers, we have new light!

  " and everyone is amazed, when all it is is a stop-gap fix.. "new light," is synonymous with, "buying time.

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  Half banana

  Yes Faye, this is the classic new light. How could you take the 144k number literally and find yourself with 150k believers all going heavenwards at death let alone all the supposed faithful in antiquity?

  New light is just a miserable confidence trick where the tricksters have to think on their feet because the dim-witted believers will believe anything they are told so long as it is faintly plausible. One hundred and fifty thousand JWs was going to get the leadership busted so with sleight of hand a new idea would distract them from the contradiction.

  Actually the idea of the “little flock” was stolen by the Judge from the pen of another Bible Student called Alexander Freytag who opposed Rutherford on the death of Russell and who was consequently banished from the Watchtower. He began his own Russellite based adventist religion which is still active in mainland Europe today. It prescribed clean living, not smoking, vegetarianism and pure air breathing in anticipation of life in a new world. Sigh!
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  58

  My introduction and confession

  by elderINewton in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  well another big bad elder here just wanting to say sorry.. i'm sorry that so many were treated like crap, and shown that god's love is not to be found around jehovah's witnesses.

  i'm sorry that inadvertently i've likely taught many to judge and as such see that racism permeates every corner of the jw world, else why else would someone be of the world, or even inactive.

  i'm sorry i sat in on a jc, and voted to df.

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  Half banana

  Greetings and welcome to the real world Newton.(Isaac Newton was a genius but not actually a very pleasant individual to have met!) This stupid old religion truly messes with the mind.Living an honest life directed by common sense and proper information is infinitely better than the tripe the Watchtower produced. So glad for you that the other half can see it too.

  Do tell us more on how you are coping...
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  22

  Master piece!

  by coalize in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  what we can read in the wt 10/15/2015... they have really no shame!.

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  Half banana

  What wise words the Watchtower want to encourage ”If in doubt throw it out”. So all doubting JWs are you listening? If you have any doubts about the JW organisation (and the majority do so) then throw THEM out!