Welcome Jacobi, glad you made the big leap from being a JW zombie to being a normal human.
As for your views, controversy always makes the site more interesting, remember it is only in repressive cults where disagreement is forbidden.
Half banana
JoinedPosts by Half banana
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23
New here...
by Jacobi inmy name is jacobi, i am a born-in but mentally out for more or less a decade at this point (although it was cradual) and about 40yo.
i don't want to say a lot about my family, but it is a mix of going-through-the-motions, semi-actives (but mentally in), some who have left for a few reasons and one really depressed pioneer.
because people fade in and out i have managed to slide under the radar and i keep up apperances of not being all-out apostate but i completed my fade about years ago (it also helped i moved to another part of the country).. i might rub some of you the wrong way because of my views on different things like politics.. i am not a trump supporter at all and neither are most people in my country.
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Rolf Furuli Mental Health
by oppostate inrolf foruli, scandinavian academic and watchtower apologist, has come out with a video at times quoting figures on mental disease from the 1930's and 40's, in support of his allegation that the rate of mental problems and depression is actually only a third of what it is among the entire population.. there are numerous holes in his presentation.
for one, when jw's are da'ed or df'ed they're no longer considered jw's and only active jw's are part of the results.
those who were victimized and suffered the most mental trauma as jw's aren't even considered in the studies he mentions.. watch his video: "the mental health of jehovah´s witnesses" r. furuli, on youtube:.
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Half banana
From Wikipedia on R Furuli;
In a 2004 issue of Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Lester L. Grabbe, professor of theology at the University of Hull, said of Furuli's study: "Once again we have an amateur who wants to rewrite scholarship. ... F. shows little evidence of having put his theories to the test with specialists in Mesopotamian astronomy and Persian history."[5]
Furuli here in the mental health analysis of JWs, is speaking outside of his expertise not that this automatically makes his information incorrect but his record shows that he is prepared to use his academic qualifications to promote his religion regardless of factual and peer recognized evidence.
With no further knowledge of his data on mental health, it would nevertheless be significant to point out that Furuli's first MA on Babylonian texts in 1995 coincided with the Watchtower's reappraisal of the failure of their pivotal "1914 generation" and the consequent 'excuse' of overlapping generations.
The Watchtower at that time would have been desperate to find an academic prepared to use "theocratic warfare" and support the unsupportable evidence for 607 bce as the fall of the siege of Jerusalem instead of 587 bce.
Clearly they found one in Furuli.
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20
Another trolley (That's Cart to Americanos), encounter today.
by punkofnice ini couldn't bleedin' well resist it.
there were these 2 jobo blokes standing behind a jobot trolley.
jobo, 'what's that?'.
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Half banana
Diogenesister, I am greatly relieved to realise we have a safety net for our species a mere 20 light years away. Phew!
Punky I was out on the town last night (went to see Amadeus at the National Theatre--stupendo) and outside Embankment station were two young men engrossed in talking to each other with "JW org" tattooed on their foreheads, perhaps not but you know how it gives that impression. The thing was there were hundreds of thousands of passers by but not within spitting distance of the JWs who were backed up against a wall in a corner with their trolley propaganda.
No doubt they imagine they are "giving a witness even if no one listens" but for goodness sake no one even looked their way let alone listened. I suppose this is the normal futility of JW org preaching and how they work today.
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'The videos are helping the young people.'
by Magnum insome time ago a super-dub stopped by to try to encourage me to return to jw land.
my demeanor during our conversation was extremely serious.
i was polite, but dignified.
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Half banana
"You know what? these videos are helping the JW organisation to mentally enslave their young at the earliest possible age"
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Masturbation is not sinful, unclean, or wicked [Rebuttal to leaked Bethel video regarding masturbation]
by Mace.Bean in[the following information is intended as a response to the leaked bethel video regarding masturbation.
if you are not aware of that video, please check it our before attempting to comment.].
masturbation is not sinful, unclean, or wicked.
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Half banana
Good points Mace.bean and sorry you suffered Wake me. How important it is to get the right information in life. . .
LUHE, I understand that the male body absorbs unused sperm and never builds up to bursting point. "Bursting point" is probably a myth that desperate males tell their girlfriends!
A vasectomy for example does not lead to a sperm production crisis.
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The Constant Mindchatter After You Leave
by pale.emperor ini've been out almost 2 years now and consider myself wide awake to watchtower propaganda and well on my way to recovery from the mental abuse we've all experienced.. one thing that just will not go is that i constantly think of jwism and watchtower and get myself all annoyed at their lies and blatant twisting of facts in their broadcasts and magazines.
it's so bad that it's the first thing i think of when i wake up, then i have these mental arguments in my head proving the jw teachings false and then getting annoyed because no jw will listen even if you tried to tell them.
i call this constant thinking and mental reasoning and mental arguing "mindchatter".
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Half banana
Firstly let me say your contribution here PE has been tremendous. However for the sake of your brain and relationships, the time has possibly come to concentrate, at least for a while, on other things--as Xanthippe suggests.
I reckon if you can give your education the same obsessive fervour; you will have harnessed something very useful from the experience of leaving the cult. Intellectual dissonance can be productive!
What are you studying btw?
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Will paradise be like a 24/7 Disneyland vacation package?
by Sour Grapes ini was thinking about the jdub paradise this morning and all of the pictures in the watchtower company's literature illustrating the new system of things.. here is a partial list of what you see in the pictures:.
pet pandas, lions, elephants.
people always on a picnic with lots of beautiful fruits and vegetables.
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Half banana
The JW organisation is one big con trick. They have never got anything right so why should they be right about paradise?
All of the mentions in the Bible of the king bringinging victory over the nation's enemies followed by peace and abundance were heartfelt fantasies which spoke to the underdog tribes of goat herders in Canaan.
The Hebrew speaking exiles could just scrape a living there in the dry highlands in the worst part of the Levant but they had one thing going for them; they were literate. Paradise and freedom from Egyptian rule was their dream. They wrote about independence with ecstatic words of the hope of freedom and material plenty, the two things in shortest supply.
The political paradise never came but the texts remained and gave other people hope in the shape of the upbeat parts of the OT literature. Christianity borrowed the same words for grecianised and romanised Jews who recognised the motif from Isaiah, of freedom, peace and abundance--and the myth was perpetuated, although early on in Christianity, heaven became the fantasy reward for faithful membership.
Paradise as a religious lure is a fraud and pure fantasy.
If it sounds too good to be true then sensible people know it is too good to be true.
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Daniel explanation
by Freedom rocks incan anyone explain to me please about the statue in the daniel prophecy coz i've always been curious about what people have discovered about it?
do the jws have the only explanation?.
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Half banana
In keeping with much of the Bible's source material, the image in the Book called Daniel is a watered down version of an old piece of Greek literature from the eighth century BCE. It is first found in a work by the poet Hesiod in his "Theogony" which means the origins of the gods.
His metal image represents a fabled era of gold supplanted by silver, then inferior bronze etc. It refers to a golden race of a golden age and a decline down to inferior base metals; an exemplar of the the contemporary Greek "myth of the races" that there had been a number of step changes in civilization which had started from a perfect high point.
Socrates, "the father of Western philosophy" refers to Hesiod's account which shows that this meme from literature had survived two and a half centuries already.
The writer of the the Book of Daniel, was not Daniel but whoever he was, he was aware of Hesiod's image and probably learned of it through Socrates or his philosophic offspring, Plato or Aristotle. All three of whom make mention of it. The unnamed writer Of Daniel, soon before 167 BCE, certainly employed Hesiod's memorable literary image of the metal colossus, giving Nebuchadnezzar's dream a striking focus. With it, in the manner of a prophet, he was able to tell how he thought things were going to be for immediate future in the second century BCE game of thrones. Clearly with the language and learning of the Classical world at his fingertips he was in a position to manoeuvre his religious readership towards certain directions in Maccabean Judaism.
The prophetic tenor of Daniel has resonated with apocalyptic Christianity especially since 1840 and is responsible for gross "end times" hype and speculation, especially by Adventists and their progeny Jehovah's Witnesses-- none of which has had the scintilla of truth about it.
The book called the Wisdom of Sirach was written around 180 BCE and quotes all of the canonical Jewish texts omitting Daniel, which is one of the many reasons to understand the late dating of Daniel.
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Kingdom songs
by Jrjw inanyone got any ideas on how to get kingdom melodies out of my head.
keep finding myself singing them without realising and it's getting annoying lol.
hopefully they'll disappear with time.
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Half banana
From house to house..........
Rubbish tunes, although not all of them, especially those stolen from classical composers.
As a practical suggestion Jrjw, instead of witness music why not replace them with stonking melodies such as Bach's; Auf wachet or Sleepers awake in English. If you google it you can compare different performances, orchestral, organ, piano and choral and there you are you have a beautiful new earworm to replace the awful old one.
Try Dvorak's; Song to the moon, from Rusalka and give it the same treatment with different singers.
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Gordon Nehemia - Finding God's holy name with full vowels
by Da.Furious ini was just sent a link to a jewish scholar that apparently he has found 1,000 manuscripts with yehovah and latest discovery is one with vowels that supports the spelling yehovah.
so this pits the myth that jews have forgotten the name into rest.. i got excited jws about the finding in support of the nwt showing the name as it should be.. just wanted to share this with you guys.. link to the blog and podcat: https://www.nehemiaswall.com/1000-manuscripts-yehovah#more-13611.
also link to michael rood (blog:https://www.michaelrood.tv/) interview who is his friend:.
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Half banana
There is little significance in knowing how a certain group of Semites, at a certain time wished to pronounce the name of the lesser god Yahweh, an ox-headed idol from the Canaanite pantheon. How should we pronounce Yahweh’s brother god Chemosh? It really doesn’t matter.
Not only does pronunciation change over time but it is significant that the name was given a substitute name for superstitious reasons for a long period of Jewish history.
Really, what does religious hocus-pocus do for anyone?