Reflecting On Death

by Charles Gillette in

jw
friends

reflecting on death.

i can't remember, maybe steve jobs before he died.i thought i would share it with you and see what you think about it, and i'm quoting i think from his book.. "i'm about fifty-fifty on believing in god.

for most of my life, i've felt that there must be more to our own existence than meets the eye.. i might be overestimating the odds 50/50 out of a desire to believe in an afterlife.

Half banana

CG you voice a popular opinion on death. We value ourselves enough to think that surely there is more to it than this? We were handed this down from those who lived before us but death is the norm and rationally there is no alternative.

I remember at the age of four and visiting friends with my parents where a car accident in the street had recently killed a five year old, a neighbour of our host. The sadness generated in this discussion taught me the finality of death. A dozen years later I had adopted the JW viewpoint and all the baggage which goes with it.Twenty seven years afterwards I escaped and thought OK we die but it was unreasonable to ever have thought otherwise.

It has been and continues to be the most exiting thing ever possible to live and control our life for the time we have it, we can only make the best of the experience and not waste it on religion. But I seem to be an extremist here!

One response to the shortness of life is art. We have enjoyed or rather endured the religious take on mortality, why not and reflect on what poets and writers have said about the value of our lives:

This Quiet Dust was Gentlemen and Ladies

This quiet dust was gentlemen and ladies
And lads and girls;
Was laughter and ability and sighing,
And frocks and curls;

This passive place a summer's nimble mansion,
Where bloom and bees
Fulfilled their oriental circuit,
Then ceased like these.

Emily Dickinson

Who pondered deeply on matters existential. Thanks for reminding me Saethydd

68

The paranormal.

by Lost in the fog in

i know that a lot of the people on here have turned their backs on the idea of a deity deciding that god does not exist.

but what about the unseen spirit world generally such as poltergeists, jinns, voodoo, etc.

if you have become agnostic, atheist, or just don't care since leaving, do you think that there are spirits out there or have you decided that is also hokum?

Half banana

Remember all human experience, every event, every situation, everything seen heard smelled or felt is mediated through our infinitely complex electro-physiological human brain

---and we have a great capacity for imagination and self delusion.

21

Is the org. Laying the groundwork for no earthly paradise?

by nowwhat? in

in stephen letts annual meeting talk he spent about 15min.

talking about how the garden of eden compares to our spiritual paradise that we are currently inhabiting.

he didn't mention the earthly paradise until the very last sentence.

Half banana

Cults are run by the leaders and for the leaders, they are the beneficiaries not the drones who do the work and devote their lives to their master's dream. The leaders control the discourse and they manipulate the minds of the workforce. No disagreement with doctrine is possible so the drones keep their heads down and feel in solidarity with their comrades.

The scene has changed however and it is no longer possible to kid the eight and a half million people that Armageddon is perpetually just round the corner. Today the internet and people like us have a customer record of what the downsides of the religion are, shunning, waste of time, waste of life, low self esteem etc.

Now the GB are in deep doo doo, big drop in income, big rise in expenditure and few new members to pay for anything. There is no expansion only contraction, selling off the infrastructure for maintaining normal running expenses. This will suffocate any business.

The GB will have to rationalise their lack of progress and failures. They most reluctantly and grudgingly did so about five years after the 1975 fiasco and effectively said in the Watchtower; stop complaining, we still have our friends don't we? --pathetic. They could do the same with the idea that although the paradise will come we just gotta keep at it; more drudgery, more obedience, less hope. And they, the GB, with less money and diminishing likelihood of success have got to work increasingly harder keep the drones on board.

I don't think they will ultimately have success, they may push the spiritual paradise to the hilt but it won't convince everyone. Their days of glory are gone forever.

21

Is the org. Laying the groundwork for no earthly paradise?

by nowwhat? in

in stephen letts annual meeting talk he spent about 15min.

talking about how the garden of eden compares to our spiritual paradise that we are currently inhabiting.

he didn't mention the earthly paradise until the very last sentence.

Half banana

Good point nowhat? I have felt for some years that they might end up doing this very thing saying that the paradise is really the 'spiritual paradise' among the brothers (some paradise!)

The Sunday Watchtower study will say: Brothers you may be forgiven for being so worldly in hoping for a material paradise but you are forgiven! It would be the excuse, yes excuse that the JW promises of a literal paradise were so very wrong and misleading but new light cannot be ignored. (vomit)

However only the most deluded-- and by George there are many delusional Jehovah's Witnesses-- will actually lap it up. The rest, the majority would leave. End of cult.

26

Elders encouraging young ones to live in a fairy tale

by Addison0998 in

so one of the elders at the meeting tonight addressed to parents in his talk, “if your child wants to flip burgers for the rest of their life, because that’s is the only job that will allow them to have a schedule for full time service, you would want to support them the best you can.” he has also said told parents that if their children already have plans to go to college, even in the near future, they should try to do everything to stop them.

there’s so much ranting i could do about that alone, but to make matters worse, this is a considerably well off man.

he has his own buisness, a nice house with an additional room he added on last year, and him and his wife just took a lavish european trip.

Half banana

Phoebe notice how it was those who were conscientious JWs who have come off the worst............

Those halfhearted ones who hedged their bets and got educated and a good job or a pension were ok.

Of course the governing body have all they need in this life and as my non-JW mother used to say sardonically when in a good situation, "all this and heaven too!"

The GB have a lot to answer for -- don't ever listen to them.

12

How Religious Fundamentalism Hijacks The Brain- Psychology Today

by Brokeback Watchtower in

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mind-in-the-machine/201810/how-religious-fundamentalism-hijacks-the-brain.

in moderation, religious and spiritual practices can be great for a person’s life and mental well-being.

but religious fundamentalism—which refers to the belief in the absolute authority of a religious text or leaders—is almost never good for an individual.

Half banana

The only ones who can't appreciate what fundamentalism is are those taken hostage by it. It's like a lobotomy, very difficult to reverse.

10

Watchtower's 49 Date Failures Mostly Ditched Without Fanfare

by FatFreek 2005 in

watchtower's apparent obsession with calendar dates is legendary.

what follow's are snippets from the main article.

link will follow.. .

Half banana

A really good list FF. Jesus got it wrong in the first century and Jehovah's Witnesses imagining that the Bible is prophetic, always get it wrong, There is no such thing as "God's kingdom" its just a marketing ploy for Christian religions.

26

Elders encouraging young ones to live in a fairy tale

by Addison0998 in

so one of the elders at the meeting tonight addressed to parents in his talk, “if your child wants to flip burgers for the rest of their life, because that’s is the only job that will allow them to have a schedule for full time service, you would want to support them the best you can.” he has also said told parents that if their children already have plans to go to college, even in the near future, they should try to do everything to stop them.

there’s so much ranting i could do about that alone, but to make matters worse, this is a considerably well off man.

he has his own buisness, a nice house with an additional room he added on last year, and him and his wife just took a lavish european trip.

Half banana

To be a JW means to give up your own thinking, which is a desperately bad idea by anyone's standards.

Instead of rational thought you are obliged to receive the thinking of a cult which covers over the bald fact that its predictions of the "time of the end" have always been wrong and always will be wrong. There is no such thing as the time of the end, it is one of the fictions implanted in he brains of unthinking JWs to create both hope and anxious dependence on the governing body.

The reasonable thing to do is to escape the cult compound with its fairy tale mentality as soon as possible and make up for the mistake of being a JW by getting a college education.

25

Hello

by Hendrixgrip in

hi, this is my long overdue introduction.

i’ve been visiting this site since probably around 2011. in that time, i’ve taken a lot from these discussions and never contributed anything.

i’m not sure that i have much to contribute these days because i just don’t pay too much attention to wt land.

Half banana

Welcome to the site as a poster Hendrixgrip you are most welcome here!

Looking at the references in the older publications (which you have kindly supplied) just demonstrates how fragile if not foolish was the basis for their portentous claims.

The JW belief system is a house of cards. . .

8

The 24 Prophetic Failures of Watchtower's Most Heralded Date, 1914

by FatFreek 2005 in

the year 1914 would be disappointing.

perhaps even more so than the great disappointment which happened some 70 years earlier at the hands of a a baptist preacher, william miller.

it placed target years of 1843 -- 1844 on the map of popularity.

Half banana

It's interesting to get a new insight from your quotations FF: so Armageddon according to the Watchtower and Russell had begun in 1874 and was to finish by 1914. History has however proved all JW predictions wrong.

The fact of the matter is that the organisation which is now called JW org but in 1914 was under CT Russell's direction, believed that the year 1914 was the date by which the full influence of God's kingdom would take effect on Earth, i.e.paradise in the absence of God's enemies, this having already begun in the heavens in 1874.

The laughable thing is that the exact opposite happened; instead of world-wide peace in 1914, the First World War began. The modern Watchtower spin on the events of that time is pure deceiving claptrap.

JW leadership are masters at reinventing their past. Actually to tell the faithful today that they got 1914 right --as they do-- is an out and out falsehood-- but they have no conscience.

The JW governing body are so thoroughly deluded and arrogant that they think they have a divine right to lie, it's little wonder they want all of their old literature burned.

Half banana

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This Quiet Dust was Gentlemen and Ladies