i could only think of weddings and wedding anniversaries .
JWs don't consider the memorial of Jesus death pagan, they think it is "scriptural".
But they never for one moment stop to think that sacrificing a human for the sake of others followed by communal eating the flesh of the sacrificed body and drinking its blood has chilling echoes of full blown pagan ritual.
The Bible is drawn from paganism.
one thing that surprised me shortly after joining this site was the number of individuals who, after experiencing the deception of being a jw and the hypocrisy of the “truth”, switched to being catholic or “born-again” evangelists.
it seemed to me like jumping from the hot pan into the fire.. i don’t want to piss anyone off for his or her choices.
i feel everyone is free to believe what they may.
There are those on this site who pm each new ex JW God-believer to get them onto the Jesus-as-saviour delusion as an alternative to the Watchtower delusion.
Religious and spiritual "belief" have a very long pedigree as the earliest examples of writing bear evidence. (Have you read Gilgamesh?). Not only have reverence for God or gods been instilled into the young of every preceding generation back to the Stone Age but vast and revered organisational colossi such as the RC Church exist, bearing testimony to the need and success of sustaining existential comfort by idealized yet foundationless belief in a spirit world.
The RC Church had long ago reached the point where its dogma is believed not because it was true or even found in the Bible but because of its own magisterial authority, cemented by time, tradition and the vast number of followers. Can billions of followers be wrong? Can millions? It is the very route the WT society would love to take but need a lot more money to achieve! Plus the fact that doomsday cults are limited by their necessarily impermanent nature.Yet religious belief still works as a makeshift patch to cover deep psychological problems and insecurities and ironically for JWs, many of them of the WT's own making.
However Etude, you speak of the ultimate conversion. My response is to suggest that it happens when we grow up (at any age) and start to use reason and testable evidence as the basis on which we make our important decisions.
on http://avoidjw.org/2017-regional-convention/ you can find the talk outlines of the regional convention this year.. i looked into the final talks each day and found these releases to be announced:.
on saturday:.
new magazine-size book entitled "lessons you can learn from the bible".
The main theme of the last couple of annual assemblies is, “Please, please don’t leave the org!” Times are hard in Watchtower Land. The GB this year is resorting to scare tactics to stop the dim members from escaping the compound.
The wonderful internet and improved education everywhere else is overtaking the mental complacency found among Jehovah’s Witnesses who are pressured into avoiding worldly learning.
Taking the Bible literally, no longer sits well with most people and yet JWs are taught to believe without question or reasoning-- which means that they are being taught to be gullible and to trust only the words of the governing body.
I think the Bible account of Lot and Co is in the "ripping yarns" category. It is also so awful that by highlighting fire and brimstone from the heavens, immoral dealings and magic happenings as an assembly (video) drama, it will only awaken more doubters and firm up the resolve of those thousands who are already on the cusp to leave the organisation.
Get out while you still have some functioning brain left!
fantastic find on ancient human remains.
wish satan would stop doing this as clearly humans have only been on this planet 6,000 years!.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39842975.
Thanks for posting this nswtg. Only the other day a JW at my door told me that there is only a small bagful of bones of "early humans" in existence. This might have been true in 1840 but by the end of the 20th century scientists are studying the skeletal remains of 6,000 individuals who lived before modern Homo sapiens.
It would only take the skeleton of one or two pre-humans to prove the case for human evolution.
To think that JWs are still being told to believe what was true a century ago is fraudulent and a feeble attempt to stave off reality.
I think early humans were probably less gullible than JWs are today!
i had an interesting conversation with a fellow ex-jw yesterday.
for the sake of this post lets call her "katie".
katie is a former pioneer who suddenly stopped attending meetings and managed to be left alone by the elders.
The more extreme and absurd the GB get..... the more the disenchantment will grow.
the "what does the bible really teach?
" book says we cannot speak to the dead (page 64) and that the dead do not hear (page 58) but on page 68 the book has jesus talking to a dead man and the dead man apparently hearing and responding.
the same thing happens on page 69 when peter talks to a dead woman and the dead woman apparently hears and responds.
Thank you for replying Amy, I thought your quotations from the WT literature were excellent examples of the abounding contradictions you find in JW belief, well spotted!
When confronted with these problems, everything to a JW is subsumed under two irrational but foundational anchor points. The first is that the Bible is inerrant and secondly that the governing body of their religion is divinely guided in doctrinal interpretation of scripture.
When contradictions arise the response is not to see them as contradictory but awaiting further "light" to be shed in explanation. However bizarre or paranoid the beliefs, JWs are emotionally committed to them for fear of losing their approval within the their chosen religious community and for the prospect of reward in a future earthly paradise.
i'm just confounded.
are the french people eager to destroy their country?
they elected a man who is quoted as saying that "terrorism is going to be part of daily life in france for years to come.
"terrorism is going to be part of daily life in France for years to come."
Isn't that being a realist as opposed to an idealist?
i think the disfellowshipping abandonement arrangement in human relationships also to be a heavy contributor to this malady:.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/borderline_personality_disorder.
borderline personality disorder (bpd), also known as emotionally unstable personality disorder, is a long-term pattern of abnormal behavior characterized by unstable relationships with other people, unstable sense of self, and unstable emotions.
Without evaluating the scientific criteria, I would say from personal experience that borderline personality disorder describes certain JWs known to me. Whether is is to be found in the same frequency in the general population is another matter.
Nevertheless the submersion of one's own personality and rights to free expression and lifestyle choices are characteristics of JWs which are promoted relentlessly by them.Those individuals who have been brought up on this mental diet along with fearful threats for disobedience are likely to find themselves intimidated into submission. Given a natural disposition or being with mental health problems would only reinforce the problem.
Whatever is the case; the JW religion destroys people's self esteem and confidence to live a free and fulfilling life as mature individuals.
the "what does the bible really teach?
" book says we cannot speak to the dead (page 64) and that the dead do not hear (page 58) but on page 68 the book has jesus talking to a dead man and the dead man apparently hearing and responding.
the same thing happens on page 69 when peter talks to a dead woman and the dead woman apparently hears and responds.
It is only in myths that the dead can hear.
the "what does the bible really teach?
" book says we cannot speak to the dead (page 64) and that the dead do not hear (page 58) but on page 68 the book has jesus talking to a dead man and the dead man apparently hearing and responding.
the same thing happens on page 69 when peter talks to a dead woman and the dead woman apparently hears and responds.
Amy, you are clearly concerned with what the Bible actually means. I suggest that you are on to a loser in this cause because there is no integrated, comprehensive "meaning" to the Bible.
It was never written from scratch with a meaning in mind, research shows that it is a collection of texts promoting worship of the tribal gods containing uplifting but unreasonable hope in saviours of one form or another. It also carries a large dose of warning threat of calamity for disobedience.
A better approach, should you have the time and inclination, is to understand the reasons why the Bible was collected together as an anthology of ancient handwritten texts.
Another avenue would be to find out why the human psyche has formerly depended on religious fantasy above scholarly and scientific fact.
It is completely possible to waste one's life believing things which have had the label "Holy" attached to it.
Far, far better is to answer questions starting from the base of concrete reality-- as opposed to the book of the shenanigans of the Hebrew God or the rantings of the Christ cults in the Greek scriptures.
