Posts by Half banana

12

Something's Gotta Give

by pale.emperor in

i've been 100% alone since my df last month.

i'm dead to my family now, unless i return to their cult - so i recently made contact with 3 former jw's that were in my cong when i was in my youth.

to my surprise, they all had exactly the same doubts and reasoning i had and said even though they've been out 6-7 years they "still feel tied to it in some way" and "feel guilty celebrating xmas or birthdays".

Half banana

PE, it was good to find friends who were JWs. In fact it is a good thing to make new contacts and friends after having been locked into the Watchtower social club. Keeping company with sensible non-JWs is a real a help in losing the insane JW way of thinking.

When we leave the org most of us follow a familiar pattern. The anger, the shunning, the new found freedom and the unfamiliar need to think for ourselves. Actually we have to be constantly re-thinking EVERYTHING for quite a time.

While we are doing that, things continue to drop into place and we become normalized, we realize the enormity of the hold the JW thought-vice once had on our brain.

After a while I think you might agree, perhaps not yet but later on, that the need to reform the JW org is futile. If it is not God's exclusive "spirit guided organisation" then it may as well be disbanded...and the sooner the better to prevent any more harm being done to people's minds, education, well-being and self esteem.

48

Animals not meant to eat meat

by Carl in

jw don't believe in evolution .

how come animals teeth are designed to chew meat?

sharks for instance have razor sharp pointy teeth these are not to eat vegetation .

Half banana

I would be interested to hear any argument or good reason why anyone should listen to what the Bible says...but in the absence of such, I cannot see how an old book of myth borrowed from pagan sources could be the work of an almighty creator god. How can you defend the Bible?

48

Animals not meant to eat meat

by Carl in

jw don't believe in evolution .

how come animals teeth are designed to chew meat?

sharks for instance have razor sharp pointy teeth these are not to eat vegetation .

Half banana

Carl get a grasp on the fact that the Bible has nothing to do with telling us anything practical...it is a story book for the illiterate of the Iron Age based on Bronze Age myths.

The tiger shark has an interesting take on survival of the fittest: whilst still in the womb the embryonic sharks attack each other until there is one left who in turn will go out into the sea and having eaten all its siblings will go on to pass this ruthless strategy to a new generation.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrqgPjZ07Ts

Did the vegetarian God slip up here?

Or is it not a perfect demonstration that Darwin's big idea is right and that Genesis and vegetarian lions are just a bunch of primitive folk tales?

60

Are they either leaving or going full on 'cult mode'? No quarter.

by punkofnice in

it might just be me imagining things.. i hear things from my jw spies.. from all that's being said, it seems to me that the rank and file(tm), are either waking up to the scam and fading/leaving.

they are going full on 'cult mode' and acting like 'spiritual police'.. is it just me and my imagination?

have others noticed this?.

Half banana

I like Cha ching's point that they leave it up to the next generation of gb to clean up the mess left by the earlier incumbents and find their own excuses and spin as to why Big A has not yet come.

The poisoned chalice is handed down to a new set of leaders who keep the lie of paradise on the move like a Chinese juggler keeps his plates spinning on a stick.

It must appear like a game at the top of the JW (dis)organisation.

150

Start A Butterfly Garden!

by Bonsai in

jw
friends

time to take a break from debating religion.

take in a breath of fresh air and be healed by the wonders of nature around you.. how many of you have a garden?

how many have a nice flower patch to go with your vegetable garden?

Half banana

My Collins Guide to the Insects indicates you have a Magpie Moth.

Until this week southern Britain has had a damp dull early summer, hardly saw the sun in June (which is our sunniest month of the year!) hence as you say Xanthippe, very few butterflies...just a succession of Red admirals...always welcome, the odd Brimstone and a few Great whites or cabbage whites as I've always known them.

The real show is when the Tortoiseshell butterflies arrive in September and swarm on the Buddleia

How about you people in far flung places, what butterflies do you see ?

12

My 1st Unwitness

by HappyGal in

i have seen the witnessing carts pop up around our city.

there were no such carts when i left the jw's in the 1980's.

since leaving the organization i have survived (and thrived) by: .

Half banana

Well done Happy Gal! I love confronting JWs on their trolleys here in England but recently they have become hard to find. Come to think of it I don't see them calling on the doors in my area either.

11

Speculation about GT

by aintenoughwiskey in

what were/are your speculations about the great tribulation.

unless those days were cut short no flesh would be saved?.

Half banana

Footnote on Josephus' exaggeration of Jerusalem's population. Have you seen a city of one million? It would not have fitted into the space which Jerusalem then offered. The population of the empire's capital city Rome at that time was only about 800,000!

Jerusalem, a provincial town, from a Roman perspective; probably had something like 50,000 residents with some estimates as low as 20,000.

Jerusalem's population today is only 800,000+ and only 500,000 of them are Jews. You cannot believe everything you read...investigate first methinks.

11

Speculation about GT

by aintenoughwiskey in

what were/are your speculations about the great tribulation.

unless those days were cut short no flesh would be saved?.

Half banana

Ignore the lot of it! It's all a complete waste of time and effort.

You will be none the wiser for believing in 'holy' writings which were only propaganda in the first place.

Once you leave the JW cult you never again need to speculate on the meaning of the Bible...it is a whole lot better to learn about useful things instead.

And Vanderhoven, don't believe Eusebius either...he was a lying toad with everything to gain by writing a revisionist history of Christianity to favour his patrons.

However I agree that the words put into Jesus' mouth refer only to those days with no sense of it being an antitype, but as a prophetic marvel, a commentary used by the early Jesus-cult writers wishing appear authoritative. After all Jerusalem's fall was bound to happen.

The words foretell that the stars will fall from the skies...now there's hyperbole if you like or crass ignorance would be another way of putting it! But since prayer will apparently avert the disaster from happening in winter (Mar13:18,19) it doesn't sound as if the writers really know what they are talking about........like most of the Bible.

9

When did "The Truth" become "The Truth"?

by stuckinarut2 in

it struck me that while the society and witnesses in general use the expression "the truth" for being a witness, it opens a can of worms..... i mean, when did the society become "the truth"?

after all, as we well know (and feel free to list examples please), the doctrines and teachings, and procedures have changed so much since the organisation started, that what was once "truth" is no longer so and vice versa..... maybe the conversation between jesus and pilate was correct : "what is truth?

".

Half banana

Stuck, we here are not apostate... we simply have "future truth".

9

When did "The Truth" become "The Truth"?

by stuckinarut2 in

it struck me that while the society and witnesses in general use the expression "the truth" for being a witness, it opens a can of worms..... i mean, when did the society become "the truth"?

after all, as we well know (and feel free to list examples please), the doctrines and teachings, and procedures have changed so much since the organisation started, that what was once "truth" is no longer so and vice versa..... maybe the conversation between jesus and pilate was correct : "what is truth?

".

Half banana

The truth was that Jesus arrived in heavenly glory in 1874. He did, he did! and by 1914 paradise was to cover planet Earth. Ok, that didn't work so instead, let's say that 1914 was the end of the Gentile times and that the generation who saw 1914 would also see Armageddon, most certainly by 1975. Without a shadow of doubt! Ok then, some people just got a bit too enthusiastic (in particular the leaders) so let's all speculate: it has to come within a hundred years of 1914! No wait a mo, Jesus must have got it wrong; when he said "The generation that sees these signs" (his own contemporaries) he actually meant to say some overlapping generations as specified by the Watchtower Bible and Trap Society way off in the distant future.

Truth in the Watchtower is rarer than hen's teeth.