Half banana

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Posts by Half banana

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  40

  How do you feel about the expression "The Truth"?

  by stuckinarut2 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  it's amazing how the expression "the truth" has become such an ingrained term used by witnesses.. "we have 'the truth'".

  "is he 'in the truth'?".

  most here have found out so many facts about the organisation, and felt the effects of being "gut-punched" as we realised these facts.. so how do you feel about the expression "the truth" now?.

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  Half banana

  It really is an easy mistake to make when leaving the org, to refer to it as "the Truth". If it was true, wouldn't we still be there?

  Ordinary people don’t talk about Truth and Brotherly Love and Holiness and God and Jesus, at least not in my post JW experience. The irony is that JWs embody the very opposite of the terms they promote! Where is there any truth in what the Watchtower has ever promised? What has the Bible or Jesus ever said which is “Truth” i.e. some incontrovertible fact which you could not have worked out for yourself.

  Indeed what the cults and religious religious communities do is use words with a special meaning attached to them. By doing this they are attempting to stitch together an invisible 'verbal' fabric which binds them into an exclusive community. Language both unites and excludes.

  Cultists need to endlessly repeat the magic words for fellow believers to believe in these things. It becomes the cultural habit which is easily copied within the group, in fact to talk the talk by deploying the special words; is a badge of membership.

  I think people who have their feet on the ground, for the sake of their mental well-being, should enjoy their fiction in the arts, not in religion.
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  46

  The real reason Chelmsford hasn't been stopped

  by Saltheart Foamfollower in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i haven't seen this mentioned yet.

  last year in the uk, shortly after the money grab that everyone had, we had a video and letter (both probably still available from atlantis) appealing for money for the new bethel and slips were handed out etc.

  this means that most uk congregations are sending a regular donation specifically for the chelmsford build.

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  Half banana

  Perhaps they have realized that the JW paradise was just a fairy tale dream so they set about creating a new earthly utopia in Chelmsford...but sadly... the funds have dried up.
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  29

  The WT in 10 years time

  by Coded Logic in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  a. in 2026 in what state do you think the organization will be?.

  ) 9million + members.

  ) roughly the same amount of members as today (7-9 million)..

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  Half banana

  I live in a hamlet out in the country. Not far from my house is a small graveyard which once also was the site of a tin-roof chapel of some obscure sect, possibly Strict Baptist. Tall ash trees have overtaken the site and now even they are dying off. Why can't the JW org go the same way?.
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  31

  Evolution is a Fact #5 - Vitamin C

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  part 1 - protein functional redundancypart 2 - dna functional redundancypart 3 - ervspart 4 - smelly genes.

  in part 4 we saw that roughly half of the 800 genes in the human genome that code for olfactory receptors are broken remnants of our evolutionary history.

  they were vital to our distant ancestors but in humans, as in our primate cousins they have been allowed to fall into disuse as our eyes became more important to our survival than our nose.

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  Half banana

  What a nice man Clambake is.

  Cofty thanks for the details, evolution has a solid history and everything humans learn about life only goes to support the theorum. Nothing in its 156 year history has detracted from its soundness, even the great advances such as Mendel's inheritance laws and Watson and Crick's revelation of the biological mechanism involved, then recently the genome analysis; all demonstrate conclusively the soundness of Darwin's great idea.

  Just for the fuller picture, I have always known that fruit bats and guinea pigs share the inability to synthesize vitamin C as with us humans and looking it up on the internet just now, trout and salmon likewise.
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  12

  A 17 Year Old's Journey To Freedom

  by DLou278 in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  hey guys!

  i have written an article on my exit from the watchtower.

  i am 17 years old and leaving has been the best decision that i have ever made.

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  Half banana

  Well done Douane! I think there will be many on this site who envy your honesty in recognising the false utopia so early in your JW career. Very well written too.
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  40

  WT Study 1/10/16 Encouraging Child Baptism And More Nonsense

  by JW_Rogue in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i've noticed that each wt lesson really only has one or two points they want remembered.

  normally they build up to these by about the third subheading.

  this week's lesson though was different, the main point was insidiously made through an experience in the first paragraph:.

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  Half banana

  Post script:

  the next stage will be to baptize the dead as the Mormons do...this way the numbers chart will look healthy!
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  40

  WT Study 1/10/16 Encouraging Child Baptism And More Nonsense

  by JW_Rogue in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i've noticed that each wt lesson really only has one or two points they want remembered.

  normally they build up to these by about the third subheading.

  this week's lesson though was different, the main point was insidiously made through an experience in the first paragraph:.

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  Half banana

  With the failure of the d2d preaching...it now takes something like 13,000 hours to make one convert, the best way the JW org has now found to keep its numbers up is to ‘harvest’ their own children.

  Yes it is indeed a trap but it’s also even worse than that; it is a form of child abuse.

  It is forcing hapless children, who have little idea of how the real world works, to make a commitment to something they have no knowing of whether they can keep to it or not.

  The trap is sprung by the lure of pleasing the parents and barbed by a no escape clause with the threat of heartless shunning by family and friends should they try to get free.

  The JW Org is without conscience and shameless in its disregard for the welfare of the young under its control... and the world is getting to know it.
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  26

  Evidence of Human Activity in Northern Siberia 45,000 years ago.

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. social
  2. current

  this information makes the biblical dating of human origins a sad joke.

  quote: " when they dated the remains, the researchers got another surprise: the mammoth died 45,000 years ago.

  that means that humans lived in the arctic more than 10,000 years earlier than scientists believed, according to a new study.

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  Half banana

  What is astounding to my mind are the sculptural artifacts from Mal'ta near the great lake of Baikal in Siberia. These 26,000 year old figurines are made not of bone or wood but fired clay. To make a ceramic sculpture requires more than an ability to make fire, it demands a control of kiln temperatures. Imagine the difficulty of living in Siberia during the Ice Age! Humans did so and of course critically they knew that controlling fire was vital to their existence.
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  37

  Infighting at the top?

  by JeffT in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  we've all been trying to decipher what is going on at the top of the watchtower organization.

  clearly, the game's afoot, we just don't know what game we're playing.

  item: the constant harping about money and donations.

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  Half banana

  You make a valid point Vidiot but the likely-hood is that one or two have arrived at the point of cognitive dissonance and are having to deal with it. If most of the seven have arrived at that 'moment of realization', i.e.that the focal JW teaching on 1914 is false, I reckon statistically two or three should now show signs of cracking.

  However the JW delusion runs so deep and keeping only the company of like minded zombies; mitigates against admitting such a heresy to oneself or straying from the prescribed path under any circumstances so that CD is less likely.

  Nevertheless some of them must surely be waking up!? which makes Eyeuse2beadub's quotation relevant; they and the whole org won't last long with such serious divisions...

  Again... would any of the governing body care to reply and let us know how they are getting on?
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  37

  Infighting at the top?

  by JeffT in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  we've all been trying to decipher what is going on at the top of the watchtower organization.

  clearly, the game's afoot, we just don't know what game we're playing.

  item: the constant harping about money and donations.

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  Half banana

  I agree Listener that something's afoot. Rank commercial strategies have replaced the older more dignified type of authoritarianism they once wielded. Are they just desperate for enormous wealth or do darker forces gnaw at the heart of the GB? Could it be a schism because of in-fighting as the OP suggests or could it be a realization infecting the body that what they teach is not supportable by Bible text?

  One Eyed Joe, thanks for that info, it shows that the GB authorized this talk as a committee decision, which to my mind means they are all conscious of its content and its intended purpose which is shamelessly to keep the flock loyal. 1914 is important, it has become the test, the touchstone teaching; if you don't believe this you are not a believer at all...you are not with the GB.
  

  How though can anyone really believe the statement “more evidence (for 1914) than for gravity”? The very broadcasting of this at assemblies only highlights its implausibility.The GB must listen to their own cant and be aware of how hollow reasoning like this actually sounds.

  I see this as a symptom of the 21st century dilemma the GB has inherited: trying to keep the Watchtower cash-cow alive when it is intellectually bankrupt and clearly not divinely guided.

  Apart from resigning from the body, the only alternative for an individual GB member who is awake would be to keep going and put up a pretense of believing. To remain within the GB you would need to be simply the finest of actors but I think with the cognitive discord buzzing away in the head his mind would finally snap and demand cessation or culminate with a total mental and physical breakdown.

  (I'm saying this for the benefit of any GB members reading here!)