The Watchtower stance is no different to the possibility where God says you must cast out heterosexuals as spiritually unclean. How many "strait" JWs would be prepared to abstain from sex or become homosexual just to please God or the JW org?
Half banana
JoinedPosts by Half banana
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174
Awake #4/2016: Homosexuality
by Designer Stubble inthe new awake is up on jw.orgwith the legalization of gay marriage in many countries, they decided it was time to show: "what does thebible say about homosexuality?
"does the bible promote prejudice?still, some people would say that the bible promotes prejudice against homosexuals and that those who adhere to itsmoral code are intolerant.
‘the bible was written at a time when people were narrow-minded,’ they claim.
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Why education is a killer for doomsday cults.
by Half banana inif you were to read the watchtower literature and you believed it to be the exclusive divinely inspired interpretation of the bible, i suggest that you would not be learning anything useful, instead you would simply be absorbing the indoctrination of the jw org..
what is the difference between indoctrination and education?.
take any passage from the watchtower this sentence for example which assumes significance in the end of six thousand years of human history in 1975: “how then does this fit in with god’s timetable?”.
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Half banana
If you were to read the Watchtower literature and you believed it to be the exclusive divinely inspired interpretation of the Bible, I suggest that you would not be learning anything useful, instead you would simply be absorbing the indoctrination of the JW org.
What is the difference between indoctrination and education?
Take any passage from the Watchtower, this sentence for example, which assumes significance in the end of six thousand years of human history in 1975: “How then does this fit in with God’s timetable?” It asks.
Let’s de-construct.
The question includes an assumption that God has a' time-table', is that normal for gods?... and for that to be possible there has to be the assumption that there is a God in the first place.
We need not go there for the moment but let us have a look at how ideas are embedded or nested in other broader cultural assumptions. The WT text speaks of six thousand years of human history recalling earlier assumptions that each Biblical day of creation was seven thousand years long, therefore with a millennium of kingdom rule still to go (according to WT doctrine) six thousand years from the creation of man would have significance. (Incidentally these notions like all of the early Watchtower teachings and most of the Bible; are borrowed beliefs).
To get at the truth we have to ask; who says that the world was created in six, seven thousand year “days”? Where is the evidence? Who says we are all descendants of Adam and Eve? Where is the evidence? What evidence is there for the divine origin of Bible texts? Why do the Bible texts conflict so much? Why were the Bible books selected from existing texts and put together by the Roman Catholic Church? Why should we trust the Bible as being true? etc.
Such assumed ideas as divine creation, divine retribution and salvation through sacrifice are repeated ad nauseum over time by preachers, it has been passed down from parents to their hapless offspring to create a respected mythical matrix in which all and any religious belief can flourish. Because of this JWs can rely on certain assumptions on which to build their particular doctrines, they can nest their own spin within an existing framework of unsubstantiated religious belief. Religion avoids scientific analysis, it relies instead on "holiness".
We might summarise indoctrination then as assumptions built upon assumptions repeatedly given to an audience already conditioned to receive it uncritically. This is very much at odds with education.
Education means not being told what to believe but ”to learn how to learn,” and that requires questioning the truthfulness of any statement or proposition offered. This requires using questions like how do we know this is true? Where is the evidence for this?
Assumptions are a total waste of time, a critical evaluation of all information is vital for truth to emerge.
The Watchtower since it start, has spewed out completely worthless twaddle, its vast catalogue of wrong conclusions have demonstrated its uselessness over time. One cannot logically use anything it has said as a foundation for further conclusions. Conversely educated reasoning can be built upon because critical analysis and fact is at its foundation.
Does your religion strongly discourage higher education? If the answer is yes, it must have something to hide. I think of the Watchtower like a nasty fungus which can only spread in the dark, it is the daylight of education which destroys it.
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Geoffrey Jackson - "Satan, don't take my hair!!!"
by OrphanCrow incars, plasma tvs, shopping malls...all come from satan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ivkrnxzzes.
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Half banana
Imagine what an an organisation would look like like if it were controlled by seven emotionally stifled, under-educated, clockwork clowns? -
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A truly creepy 2007 public talk by Ciro Aulicino - You Will Be With Me in Paradise
by Tatiana ini searched for this here and didn't find any posts about it.
i just found this while searching for info as i was debating a jw on another site.
this is the most mind-blowing, spaced-out, insane bunch of mess i've ever heard.
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Half banana
The accuracy of the geology is uncanny! ---not. It's the ravings of a five year old, it's a child's guess at what happened after he read about Pangea. Pangea broke up about 200,000,000 years ago! The JW org is SO out of date!
Its tripe, it's hype, it's deranged...let's have more of it!
And remember dear brothers and sisters, if you have any questions on geology turn straight away to the fount of all knowledge: the Watchtower publications (it will addle your brain but that's how we like it).
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Half banana
I just want to amend something I wrote and intended to qualify but I was timed out of editing my post after spending too long doing research on the matter.
Russell's booklet "The object and Manner of Christ's Return" of 1877 said that the failed 1874 Adventist claim for the return of JC was not a failure, it happened... but invisibly. This was through reliance on the Emphatic Diaglott's rendering of the Greek word 'parousia' meaning 'presence' instead of the traditional 'coming'. This was the critical contribution which Russell thought he was bringing to mankind. Secondly it was the founding message for the reason for Watchtower magazine starting in 1879.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”....................................Lewis Carrol
Prominent in the minds of the religious Christian majority in USA was the idea of Christ's visible return as in the scripture "Every eye will see him". Russell said yes, but not all at the same time! And then gave weasely reasons to support it.
I believe that his enormous popularity as a preacher in the first fourteen years of the nineteenth century was due to giving a positive spin on the end of the world and a verbal certainty and conviction to the fulfillment of Bible promises on the return of Christ.
When dealing with religious ideas, logic is irrelevant. Whether there was WWI or not, Russell failed as a Bible prophet as have all his forebears and successors including JWs, because religious belief is independent of facts and world events, it has no substance, it is just spin and hope.
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"do not go beyond the things written"
by stuckinarut2 inthanks to bu2b and splash who mentioned this quote in another thread!.
but i thought it deserved a thread all of its own, such is the impact of this:.
the very best example of going beyond the things written comes from a 2008 watchtower.
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Half banana
Have you ever thought how limiting this idea is in the first place: " not going beyond what is written". It is a crafted expression of the early Christ-cult leaders (Paul and his ghost writers) to induce obedience to them.
The acceptance of this instruction narrows an individual's thinking and falsely assumes that written text is sacred. Nothing is sacred except life itself.
Assumptions are always foolish principles to live by.
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Half banana
JW Rogue I think the JW religion would have continued on a similar track with or without WW1 starting in 1914.
The prophesied date of 1914 according to Russell (who borrowed his ideas from others) was to have been the latest date for the destruction of all God's enemies and the restoration of the Earth under Christ's rule. Most significantly though, and with great financial consequences, it was also promised to see the visible return of Christ.
By the end of the nineteenth century The Russellites had been just a local affair around Pittsburg but so I have read, announcing the actual date for the "second advent" of JC was Russell's special baby which began after the turn of the century. It was publishing this prophecy which brought fame and attention for Russell from the whole world as a syndicated preacher.
It was a great disappointment for Russell and co and a public failure of his credibility but he postponed the date, as all doomsday merchants have to, to 1915 and as ever , to no effect. He did announce to Bethel that the world had in fact ended...like you do.
It was only later probably in Rutherford's gloss on Russell's predictions that the mention of 1914 was seen to be a divine insight. Rutherford's WT in the twenties, I believe began the idea...and the Watchtower always builds castles on its own myths.
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Are the anointed really "lovely people"?
by purrpurr ini've personally never met any of those who claim to be anointed but the other jw's who have are always unanimous in their praise of how lovely and what wonderful people they are.
and i don't mean the gb i mean common or garden anointed.
i was told that when they speak about being in heaven that they almost "seem to glow".. is this right?
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Half banana
My experience was with elderly JWs who took the emblems in the late nineteen sixties to the eighties. To outsiders they certainly would have been considered odd or nutty but then people born at the end of the previous century were not socially homogenised by television and the other media in the subtle way we are induced to conform today. The other consideration is the fact that old people are often losing their mental sharpness, if they ever had it.
I am actually very glad to have known a local old 'partaker' in London UK who in the 1930s had worked with Rutherford himself in New York. He was at the end of his life and losing his memory a bit, also he was treated shabbily by the elders in the cong. When I began to see gaping flaws in the JW vision, I broached the matter with him and he replied confidentially for me to keep my own counsel, which I did... and accelerated the long fade.
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Why is Mother's Day wrong?
by stuckinarut2 inso why is celebrating mother's day wrong according to witnesses?.
is it not an opportunity to show respect to the giver of life (mother) and therefore god, the originator of families?.
does it not give an opportunity for members of the family to give a hard working mother a day off?
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Half banana
I wonder if the time will come with declining membership, when they will start listening to their critics and accept Mother's day and birthdays and all sorts of commonplace traditions just in an attempt to retain numbers?
It is a possible future for the cult to be a more easy going, chummy thing with laid back "conscience decisions" on the above matters. The key to WT success is not doctrinal truth which is an impossible ideal for any group but to control a large membership which equals income and power for those at the top.
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Mexican new GB member
by sp74bb inmore light for our ex jw members.... http://www.extj.com/showthread.php?27719-the-show-of-apple-jam-by-president-s-brother-the-accounting-chaste.
in patterson there is a group of brothers, all of them baptized after 1975, a group of them are candidates to all new gb membership, as soon as new places will be included or some members will passed away.
clear details and info tell us that a new gb will be a us citizen with mexican background.. really funny to see that we can give light to our ex jw family months before it comes public :).
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Half banana
Yes the mandarins are usually Anglo-Saxon/German, with a token African at present.The outstandingly successful Christian cult is the Catholic superstition and just as with the Papacy, it was a good political move to have a representative from the latin south at the top. Where the RC church leads, the Watchtower will follow.