Posts by Half banana

55

Here's a view on homosexuality for you...

by konceptual99 in

...right from a pro-jw site in response to a post about the relative seriousness of homosexuality.

all you can do is reason from the scriptures, which you appear to have done.

homosexuality is as serious as bestiality, or adultery and fornication.

Half banana

All you can do is reason from the scriptures (JW post on another site)

This defeatist mentality is at the root of the JW belief. Instead of thinking there is only one set of rules by which we must organize our lives it makes greater sense to take a leaf from reality and not run your life on hocus pocus from the ancient world.

We are born with undifferentiated sexual proclivities and usually early on, sometimes after a little experimentation we realize where our natural interests lie.

Homosexuality exists, not from choice or by design, it is simply a fact of mammalian life on Earth. Religious people fear things which do not accord with their childish concept of what an invisible spirit creator decreed, i.e God made man and woman and they had sex and the woman gave birth to children. No room for homosexuality or bi-sexuality there.

How crushing this must be for those of the minority who do not fit the Biblical prescriptions. How disgusting for Jehovah's Witnesses to blindly follow the Bible and each other in asserting their hurtful ignorance.

16

New Brochure: Answers to 10 Questions Young People Ask

by Designer Stubble in

https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/teen-questions/1 who am i?2 why do i worry about my appearance?3 how can i talk to my parents?4 how can i fix my mistakes?5 what if i’m being bullied at school?6 how can i resist peer pressure?7 how can i deal with the pressure to have sex?8 what should i know about sexual assault?9 should i believe in evolution?10 how can the bible help me?basically a compilation of previous wt articles.let's take chapter 9 on evolution:statements as quotes below are really going to help jw teens defend creation: [quote]“if you were walking through the forest and discovered a beautiful house, would you think: ‘how fascinating!the trees must have fallen in just the right way to make this house.’ of course not!

it’s just not reasonable.

sowhy should we believe that everything in the universe just happened to come about?”[/quote][quote]“imagine that someone told you that there was an explosion at a printing plant and that the ink spattered onto the walls and ceilings and formed the text of an unabridged dictionary.

Half banana

Absolutely Xanthippe, not only do the WT conflate evolution with the arrival of life but they entirely miss the point of the theory, deliberately so, which is that evolution occurs in small increments with the organism utilizing a small variant which favours its reproduction. Big changes come very slowly.

So the illustration of a house in the woods arriving by the fall of trees and the tired one of an explosion in a print works is so inappropriate as to be laughable. Unless of course you are a JW with a mental age stuck at the level of a 5 year old. Four year olds might buy magical creation illustrations but perhaps not so many six year olds?

(I have to admit though because there is nothing in everyday life like evolution, a simple illustration of the process is very hard to find.)

Naturally teaching as if to a five year old is desirable in a doomsday cult as having your audience unquestioning and unsophisticated like children are makes it easy for mind manipulation.

Sad and vile at the same time.

11

Watchtower State

by nelim in

i was watching a documentary from last week about saudi arabia.

there are many human rights violations going on, supported from islam ideology.

apparently is(is) is an off-shoot of saudi society.

Half banana

A neighbour of mine working on intelligence security for the military was in Saudi Arabia at a small conference. He was with a colleague, a black man, a Canadian who was sent by the company as a technical consultant. The host speaker announced, "There is a black man here, we can't have this , take him out".

Yikes!

35

“Even if this wasn’t the Truth, I need the structure.”

by Londo111 in

i remember many years back a fellow ministerial servant saying this to me.

he felt that even if jehovah’s witnesses were not the only true religion, the regimented routine of meetings and field service and the strict rules and enforcement provided a beneficial structure for his life.

at the time i thought if this wasn’t “the truth”, i’d have no need for all that “structure”.

Half banana

I find the more I leave Jehovah’s Witnesses behind, the better my life

Thank you Londo for such a good reference for leaving the JW delusion.

On the other hand there are those who by nature or by being born into a repressive religion are either taught to be dependent or who inherently have a need for external control due to their insecurity or anti-social tendencies.

As a JW I noticed unsettling examples of how the Watchtower with its strict boundaries served as a behaviour regulator for individuals with serious problems.

One example was one local JW who told me he would be an armed robber if he didn't have the religion. Even more disturbing, by being privy to data on prisoners in the UK there were serious sex offenders who were JWs, for whom the threats of Armageddon did not do its trick. Note how the notorious 'Yorkshire Ripper' (who will never leave prison) has adopted the Watchtower regime.

The lesson surely is to become self reliant with adult reasoning based on a factual understanding of our world?

This involves good education...not threats of punishment for moral infringements.

36

Understanding The Bible ... The "Linchpin" Effect

by Littleleslie in

understanding the holy bible.. .

after many years of study of scripture, our bible study group has discovered something very important that needs to be realized or absorbed, before one can come to a correct understanding of the bible.

we call it, the "linchpin" effect... .

Half banana

Sorry to dampen your enthusiasm but the Bible was never written to be "The Bible".

It is just a collection of ancient texts, re-interpreted by partizan scribes for use by religious authorities in demanding control over their followers.

To believe there is any "message" in the Bible is a complete waste of time. To believe there is a missing message is approaching paranoia.

28

Where does WT get their money?

by Dreamerdude in

i assume they get most of it from cash donations and assets left in wills.

there may also be some income from invested assets.

i guess they get a lot of money from old jws who die childless or with only df'd kids.geographically i assume they get it mostly from a few countries that have many publishers and strong economies.

Half banana

A snare and a racket, a racket and a snare.

15

Old books!

by arwen in

jw
friends

found some old books of my ex.

any suggestions??

is it worth ebay?

Half banana

Arwen try and get something for them by all means... but looking at your picture just reminds me how utterly worthless the contents of those books are are. The claim is that the authors alone have the key to everlasting life. How absurd!

The main consequence of the WTBTS producing those sad looking books is that from the sales of them they have amassed their worldly billions. All the JW org have achieved for humanity is to mesmerize a vast following of dependent drones addicted to religious hectoring and the false hope of paradise.

No wonder those who have left are angry.

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

We don't get that much rain in southern England. London gets slightly more than two inches per month fairly consistently throughout the year with a bit of a spike in October. It always rains in heavy showers in May but with plenty of sun as well, ideal growing and planting weather.

@Bonsai, I tried to find the botanical name of your stinky vine without success, can you help me with it?

I grow the deep purple flowered Dracunculus of the Arum family which I disturbed as I was weeding, the bulbs look like big turnips at the moment as the leaves come late. The flowers of this vegetable horror not only stinks of rotting flesh which attracts flies but gives you a headache as well. Ahh! the beauty of God's creation.

14

Why did Jehovah want to kill Moses?

by Doug Mason in

on the way, at a place where they spent the night, the lord met him and tried to kill him.

but zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin, and touched moses' feet with it, and said, "truly you are a bridegroom of blood to me!

it was then she said, "a bridegroom of blood by circumcision.

Half banana

Note the stone age knife being used betraying the story's stone age mentality.

43

Waking People Up With Well Thought Out Comments

by JW_Rogue in

is it possible to have an effect from the inside?

with well thought comments that reveal more of the history of the organization?

the next book we study will be "god's kingdom rules!

Half banana

JW rogue, sympathy bro! I know others in your situation. One thing you are probably driven to is to live inside your head as it were, to think about reality outside of the JW delusion and enjoy the real world that way. To physically leave suddenly of could make matters worse.

Perhaps in your casual comments you could stress the facts that the early Christian congregation seemed to think that welfare within the community was a priority (widows and orphans), The GB couldn't care a fig about the welfare of their followers even for the suffering of victims of sexual abuse. In fact the more they suffer the more dependent they become...

JWs I think, might be likened to a troupe of high-wire artists who have all fallen into the safety net...that is the KH community. from their viewpoint there is nothing underneath the net left to save them. It is this crippling vision of their place in life which holds them there in fear.

People who believe they are worthless will punish themselves and make bad choices.

The Watchtower of course encourages this since fear and worthlessness are the very factors they routinely exploit. The only people useful to the organisation are those who are guilt ridden, emotionally and educationally stifled and who therefore remain totally dependent on it to give them the imaginary fix of paradise .

Suggestion 1

Have you thought about building up your wife's self confidence as opposed to her abject religious dependency? A new job or new interest?

Suggestion 2

How about continuing to take it slowly, keep them on your side but sharing things you have learned which get the family to start thinking for themselves? Make some allies in your mild scepticism, preferably including your wife.

Suggestions 3

Expressing the oddness that if Big J was behind the JW org, surely, you would have thought he would get his dates right? The WT teaching for seventy odd years that the generation which saw 1914 would also see the end? JWs have never got a prophecy right...nor did Jesus get his generation prophecy right. Mark 9,1.

It's a trap all right!