Posts by Half banana

24

If you sit down exactly in the middle of a crop circle and meditate on your navel and say the right mantra, a flying saucer will come down above you and a long tube will descend and it will suck you up the tube and you will go up into the flying saucer. You then will be taken to an alien planet where they will purify your body and your blood and you will never catch a cold again and you will live on a paradise planet and pet soft furry animals in a beautiful garden and you will have lots of colourful fruit and everyone will wear permanent smiles and it will look exactly like a New England fall all the time and all the women will wear ironed summer dresses and all men will wear ironed short sleeved shirts and everything will be............................ and..................and

And then you will wake up.

496

This is What I Would Need in Order to Believe

by cofty in

sometimes theists challenge atheists about what evidence would be required before they would believe.

various unlikely scenarios are offered in reply.

i have taken the bait myself in the past.. i think the correct answer is much more ordinary.

Half banana

If you live your life using only the information about those things for which evidence exists, God or gods become an irrelevance.

We have five direct senses by which we negotiate the world, how could it ever be possible to know about something, such as God for instance, which is not detectable by our five senses?

The Bible is just a collection of ancient literature edited and sanctified by religious demagogues.

Are you believers not able to smell a rat?

18

The "Paradise" as promised by the Watchtower

by Saethydd in

i was thinking today about the descriptions of the future "paradise" presented by the watchtower, and i was struck by something about it.

most of us are aware that the watchtower promotes an interpretation of the apocalypse that would result in the immediate execution of 99.9% of the population with no hope for resurrection.

additionally, we have been told about the large group of people that are supposed to side with satan at the end of the thousand year reign of christ.

Half banana

A valid point Saethydd, perfect people like Adam and Eve can sin! Will Big J have to be testing people all the time in the JW paradise to catch them out or to prevent the arrival of a new Satan? Will he in his infinite loving kindness provide another saviour for the new sinners?

When scrutinized the idea of perfect people in a perfect society can only ever be a dream.

We don’t question the logic or reality of our nightly dreams but Biblical dreams are no different! No one ever has or could ever realize the dream of perfection.

To cling to unrealistic hopes completely wastes our potential in making our own lives more fulfilling in the here and now-- in the only life we will ever get.

When it actually comes to attempt a realization of the dreams promised by the Watchtower, it is about as practical as building a snowman on a tropical beach.

4

March 5 WT study "yeartext" Notes.

by waton in

par 5: "--noah could not make the flood come any sooner,--" but wt used to teach we could "hasten the day" by doing enhanced full time preaching.

par7: "--we know jehovah has promised to destroy--" -- we are convinced -- not one day longer--" -- noah a preacher, faithfully proclaimed the warning message--" no word of that in the actual account, because just to keep the copper tools sharp would have been a full time job.

but we know, we are convinced, wt said so.

Half banana

Surely, the more they prattle on using Noah and other childish fables as if they really happened:--- in time most of JWs will wake up!

Or are they attempting to have an organisation with a ban on members with an IQ of 50 or over? Already they are on the lowest educational and social achievement level.

102

Any atheists here? Have you come to terms with your new reality?

by kpop in

jw
friends

alone, without my safety net of "god" being there to remember me when i die.

after much consideration, examining science, history and using logic, i have come to the conclusion that there is no "god" at least certainly no loving, personal "god.

" shortly before my final conclusion was reached, i read an excerpt from an expression attributed to marcus aurelius, .

Half banana

I think that the scariest thing in the world would be if there were a real living god.

Thank God there isn't!

Clearly as JW membership demonstrates; paradise remains a seductive alternative world designed for those prepared to ditch reason for investing in a salesman’s dream.

No one has ever claimed or could ever claim the prize of immortality. Laid out on the dissecting table under the light of reason; the idea soon looks like what it is; a fairy tale belief.

For those who worship an invisible and unknowable spirit, it is a comforting thought that this troublesome life is only temporary. Sorry folks, this troublesome life is actually all there is................

So in a spirit of human kindness, get on and make the very best of it!

8

Are they studying the Truth book in Sunday's photo?

by berrygerry in

this got buried in a thread, so i'll ask in a new thread.. in the 2017 convention program is this photo for sunday.

can someone with better eyes tell me if those are truth books?.

https://assetsnffrgf-a.akamaihd.net/assets/m/1102017403/univ/art/1102017403_univ_lsr_lg.jpg.

Half banana

What nauseating language the smug Watchtower writers use: "the answer came" as if from God in the form of the "Truth" book: The Truth Which Leads to Everlasting Life-- what a con!

Could any less truthful book ever be published?

As I recall, it made out that the world was going down the tubes anyway by 1975 what with famine and pollution etc, so you might as well give up and join JWs.

How about the alternative title "Religious Spin which leads to Cult Enslavement"?

The JW org are proud, yes very proud of their dire history of dissemination of blatant ignorance. I don't know of any one case where a reader got everlasting life... and has anyone noticed that the world did not end in 1975?

9

Does anyone here want to be saved or have the urge to worship?

by Half banana in

i don’t know about any of you but does anyone else share my lack of impulse to worship anything?.

i became a jw when still at school and had been puzzled at the time by the posters outside of evangelical churches telling me to repent and come to jesus and be saved.. for me it was an irrelevance, i never felt like being saved...what from?

i was happy as an exploring type of child, i never knew of anything wanting to be worshipped and i didn’t need to worship anything either..

Half banana

I don’t know about any of you but does anyone else share my lack of impulse to worship anything?

I became a JW when still at school and had been puzzled at the time by the posters outside of evangelical churches telling me to repent and come to Jesus and be saved.

For me it was an irrelevance, I never felt like being saved...what from? I was happy as an exploring type of child, I never knew of anything wanting to be worshipped and I didn’t need to worship anything either.

Alas!...................... I got sucked into the JW cult which I then allowed to deprive me of a proper education. Armageddon after all was coming any minute now so why bother! I remember the schoolmaster saying to me in his strong Welsh accent, “Half banana you have got your horizons cluttered up with something,” and he was absolutely right!

Like a hapless insect, I had fallen into the slimy trap of a carnivorous plant called Jehovah’s Witnesses. We swam together in that cloying juice safe and isolated from reality. It had affected my world-view; I was trussed up and fit for nothing except being a Watchtower zombie, alive but trapped.

Nevertheless I did not fancy actually worshipping the rather gloomy and tetchy God Jehovah; I went along with it because I imagined JWs had "the truth."

Any others who never needed salvation or had the desire to worship?

15

Observations from an Ex-Elder Part 3 - Why not create multiple Adam & Eve's?

by doubtfull1799 in

i saw a post the other day on another forum (think it was reddit) that put forward the idea that god should have created multiple couples, not just adam and ever.

this idea was so simple and brilliantly logical, that i wish i'd thought of it, but i cannot claim credit!

but it really got me thinking of the practical implications and benefits.... if god had simply created multiple couples instead of one, he would in one foul swoop have solved the problem of incest, as well as have prevented 6 thousand years of human tragedy and a ransom sacrifice being needed etc.

Half banana

Doubtful1799, it takes a while to reconfigure the brain after being one of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The old basis for belief was what the Society told us to believe, all of it was without a solid evidence base. One reason it is hard to stop being a JW is that we were running in comfortable well worn religious grooves in close company with others believing the same rubbish and never allowed a moment's reflection to question anything!

When we wake up we begin to see the logical fallacies of Biblical belief and learn about real life. For example anthropology museums abound with evidence for human activity going back hundreds of thousands of years. Stone tools go back millions of years. We have genome evidence of Neanderthal populations interbreeding with Homo sapiens before becoming extinct in the period just after forty thousand years ago. We have records in the archaeology of modern humans from around that same time enjoying a new and flourishing culture making art, paintings and sculpture, sewing, efficient hunting using spear throwers and boomerangs. They created sound dramas using the acoustics of the caves; they used torches and lamps to illuminate their wall paintings. I could go on but suffice to say, scientific knowledge has determined that Adam and Eve are nothing more than fable.

There is no evidence for Adam and Eve but there is a mountain of evidence for humans in prehistory not the least by their skeletal remains.

If Jesus came to buy back what Adam lost, what about those humans who lived before “Adam”? And if Adam and Eve didn't exist, then the fundamental Christian belief of the ransom makes no sense at all.

52

Convention program 2017 AM3

by George One Time in

https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/convention-program-2017/friday/.

why would our beloved gb member be on the top picture of the program?.

any ideas?.

Half banana

Why a picture of King Morris the third; the next best thing to Jesus and it's hard to find of photo of him.

39

June 2017 Watchtower - Jehovah's Sovereignty is at stake if you disagree with us

by Listener in

four years ago the watchtower made the following demand.

all of us must be ready to obey any instructions we may receive, whether these appear sound from a strategic or human standpoint or not.

they are not content with obedience and in the upcoming june watchtower they have this to say -15. how does respect for theocratic headship reveal our love for jehovah’s way of ruling?15 what is our response to divinely authorized headship?

Half banana

Yes thanks Listener this is a meaty topic.

After admitting that they are not inspired; the GB say that the vindication of Jehovah’s name is paramount. Firstly if the GB is not inspired and liable to make mistaken organisational directives................ why then listen to the JW governing body at all?

Second, the idea that an omnipotent divinity needs to clear his name and show everyone he is sovereign and has the right to be ruler; smacks of human frailty. Why would an omnipotent being descend to vain human values of “I’ll show them who’s in charge?

The idea that God needs to vindicate his name is ridiculous.

It’s a lofty sounding slogan to appeal to the unthinking but it’s a distraction from the fact that the governing body of Jehovah’s Witnesses are not inspired and never will be. They have nothing to demonstrate any evidence of attracting divine attention, they have never got anything right throughout their whole history and virtually all of their doctrines are found elsewhere in other religions. The internationalism and internal cooperation can also be found elsewhere.

They now want to propagate the expression "respect for theocratic order." They mean; continue going to the meetings. They know they have been wrong but they demand respect. They don't deserve it!

Wakey wakey Jehovah's Witnesses!