Posts by Half banana

114

Evidence for a Young Earth

by Perry in

for additional information:.

Religious belief is a perversion! The religious mind has been persuaded to prioritise feelings above fact whereas common sense tells us decisions for action should be based on knowable things and not mystical ideas, however appealing.

This is not to say that we cannot enjoy delving into the further reaches of the human imagination...we all love that... and we are all beneficiaries of human creativity. The perversion is in believing certain works to be literally divine.

If this faculty of creative thinking did not exist we would not feel human but then neither would we need to look at the naturally occurring anomalies of science to defend a creationist viewpoint since the overriding evidence confirms that evolving life has existed on this particular planet at the level of backboned animals for half a billion years...and for many times longer than this whole period at the single cell level. Stromatolites (accretions of fossil bacterial mats) being conservatively dated at 3.5 billion years before present.

Fundamentalists have placed the imaginative cart before the practical reasoning of the horse and imagine an invisible sky god doing all sorts of unprovable things just like our primitive forebears believed...If you were to take this god notion out of the religiously muddied waters the; clear truth of evolution remains.

There is pleasure in pursuing imaginative works but great satisfaction in understanding the structural realities of the cosmos.

What motive do you have to deliberately remain being snagged in the imaginative mode of thinking Perry?

32

Our Letter to Our Family

by What Now? in

our families have cut off contact with us for the last several months.

they found out that we were celebrating holidays with our non-witness family.

our families were our last tie to the organization, as our former friends stopped associating with us about 3 years ago.

Half banana

You really gave it your best What Now, I hope you and your immediate family can cope and grow and prosper without JW influence. Given time your mother might change her stance.

14

shunning

by zeb in

jw
friends

in the awake!

of 8th jan 1947 it states that shunning is a pagan practice and is "all together foreign to bible teaching".. hope this helps some..

Half banana

"The authority for excommunication, they [the Roman Catholic Hierarchy] claim, is based on the teachings of Christ and the Apostles as found in the following scriptures: Matthew 18:15-19; 1 Corinthians 5:3-5; 16:22; Galatians 1:8,9; 1 Timothy 1:20; Titus 3:10. But the Hierarchy’s excommunication, as a punishment and “medicinal” remedy (Catholic Encyclopedia) finds no support in these scriptures. In fact, it’s altogether foreign to bible teachings. Hebrews 10:26-31.
Where then did this practice originate? The Encyclopedia Britannica says that papal excommunication is not without pagan influence, “and its inadequacies cannot be adequately explained unless account be taken of several non-Christian analogues of excommunication.”
– Awake! (Jan 8, 1947) p. 27.

ref: AvoidJW.org

The Awake is talking about excommunication and the wrongs of the Catholic Church. I like the mention of "medicinal remedy" which is how the Borg sees it.

Back in those days the WT was not a hierarchical religion (or "organized" as the WT slightingly called them)...today they follow the RC Church in being both hierarchical and in using excommunication.

Note too that they referenced their research source in the Wt (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

45

RC Was Worse Than I thought...

by JW_Rogue in

i was visiting with my family and it seems the rc was worse than i thought.

now they all seem to think that "we are so close to the end" and that the "brothers are really preparing us for the gt".

some even saying that soon our message will change to a judgement message for mankind and talking about how we need to improve "everything we do".

Half banana

A good parallel Dozy, and what with those remaining in the org getting less education, being less discerning they are all the more likely to be convinced of the tripe which the Watchtower pumps out.

It is beginning to sound like a desperation measure to talk of sending out judgements...as if they have any authority to make something like a judgement. Who are they to judge anything?

After all they have never got one prophecy right in their whole existence.

1

The Orwellian Doomsday Cult and its use of HOPE.

by Half banana in

if you are the financial managers of a doomsday cult what you have to do is keep the punters permanently in expectation of the end.. failures of prophecy are par for the course in the snake oil world of selling armageddon and paradise.

all humans when in trouble can activate an escape from their troubles through possession of the emotion, manufactured in the brain which we call hope.. people who have cried “wolf!” ten times already can no longer be trusted.......”those who saw 1914 will also see the end of the system of things”.............how many lives were thoroughly wasted on this tripe?

how does a doomsday cult survive after its inevitable and repeated prophetic failures?

Half banana

If you are the financial managers of a doomsday cult what you have to do is keep the punters permanently in expectation of the end.

Failures of prophecy are par for the course in the snake oil world of selling Armageddon and paradise. All humans when in trouble can activate an escape from their troubles through possession of the emotion, manufactured in the brain which we call HOPE.

People who have cried “Wolf!” ten times already can no longer be trusted.......”Those who saw 1914 will also see the end of the system of things”.............How many lives were thoroughly wasted on this tripe? How does a doomsday cult survive after its inevitable and repeated prophetic failures?

The most obvious emotion after a cult date failure would be disappointment and then regret but if you are stocked up with religious hope and the living examples of others sharing your (delusional) hope; you are buoyed up for hope is the antithesis of regret. Hope gives us the will to go on. Only through faith in the unreliable fairy tale book of the Bible and human HOPE can JWs continue to believe in the Watchtower edicts after a disastrous and public confirmation of false prophecy. Even after 1914, 1915, 1925 and 1975 by mind manipulation through relentless propaganda machinery; it was possible to convince the gullible and uneducated, contrary to all evidence and reason that your belief system comes from God, as the experience of the WTBTS shows.

What you do is keep bleating on that God will not disappoint his loyal ones, then demand: keep drinking the spiritual cool aid from HQ, stay within the fold and don’t stray or you will become bird food at Armageddon.

Promises hope and threats.

Humans, especially the poor, the uneducated and the distressed need hope, we all need hope! But the Watchtower marshals the needy to serve its own interests. The Orwellian Watchtower Doomsday-Cult supplies hope..............not the reality, no! Never does it deliver on that, but it supplies, at arm’s length a religious hope of immortal life eventually in a Watchtower controlled paradise.(Could it really be paradise then?)

It will cost you your personal choices of friends and even marriage partner, it will determine your life style, limit your education and probably your chance of a good career. You will shimmy around with a bunch of like minded zombies and you will all be deluded together in an opaque bubble but still you will have and share a delusional HOPE.

It appears that hope, however irrational can be orchestrated by religious cults to the point where people will sacrifice their very lives for this never- to- be- realized hope.

Isn’t this what the Watchtower doomsday cult does?

71

Confusing Opinions with Facts

by cofty in

in a discussion about the best flavour of ice cream everybody's opinion is equally valid.. in a discussion about the shape of the earth or the origin of species everybody's opinion is equally irrelevant.

only objective facts and evidence matter.. confusing these two categories is a common feature of conversations in this forum.

people deserve respect, errors do not..

Half banana

@ little_Socrates, you have chosen a good name, why not try the Socratic method?

The Socratic Learning Method (SLM) is a constructivist learning approach consisting of four key steps: eliciting relevant preconceptions, clarifying preconceptions, testing one’s own hypotheses or encountered propositions, and deciding whether to accept the hypotheses or propositions. The Socratic Learning Method is particularly useful when one has to evaluate a proposition contradictory to one originally held belief, or when one has to generate and evaluate one’s own hypothesis in the face of new information. (Source: Carnegie Mellon University)

29

Help - I'm going to be conducting the watchtower study

by Saltheart Foamfollower in

it looks like i'm going to have to take the watchtower study for a while so i thought i'd seek help.. i wont be outing myself or stating anything too controversial, but so far i have come up with the following tactics : 1) ask questions which will get people thinking even if it is about something insignificant - developing a questioning mind is the key to discovering ttat as far as i am concerned.

2) highlight any extreme points so that some might realise they are extreme.

3) highlight any good points - helping others in need for example - just because it is the right thing to do.. if anyone has any general comments which could help, please post them here.

Half banana

Your appointment to conduct the Watchtower study is obviously by means of the Holy Spirit........

but getting people to think sounds right.

Try leaving a question which will be answered ambivalently in the individual's mind, perhaps highlight an absurd scripture such as Isaiah 45;7 "I make peace, I create evil, I am Jehovah who doeth these things". ASV. Something to keep them thinking afterwards to start them asking the right sort of probing questions.

See if you can reduce the congregation membership by half within three months!

48

JW Video Armageddon to occur before 2040

by Listener in

sorry i thought it was a new morning worship video but it is 6 months old and has already been discussed on here.. it is presented by gb helper k flodin and about this generation.

the delusion and hypocrisy runs deep.. he reminds the cult members not to speculate because they aren't supposed to know the day or the hour.

then he proceeds to speculate that armageddon will occur before 2040.. https://tv.jw.org/#en/video/vodprogramsevents/pub-jwbmw_201511_3_video.

Half banana

And there will be pork in the trees in the morning.

21

What does the Armageddon Genocide Actually Accomplish?

by xjwsrock in

why murder 8 billion non-believers to just turn around and resurrect 20 billion other non-believers?

.

Half banana

To put things in perspective; to resurrect one person would be the most amazing miracle.

It is now understood that the number of people who have ever lived stands at just over 100 billion.............

Once you start to believe Bible stories as if they are true; you can be persuaded to believe anything however stupid.

19

Critical Thinking-is that phrase a stigma?

by PaintedToeNail in

jw
friends

when i first heard the term 'critical thinking' it was as a teenager during a watchtower study.

the study went on to elaborate how we shouldn't be swayed by critical thinking.

there was no explanation that the term didn't mean 'to criticize' thoughts and words, but rather that it means 'to objective think and to evaluate thoughts and words'.

Half banana

When you wield mind-control over a group of people who self regulate for total conformity; words can mean precisely what the cult leadership wants them to mean.

Tony Morris has already pronounced on the subject of “critical thinking”.............

“It’s kind of amazing that once you learn critical thinking, once you remove yourself from it and then take another look from a different perspective. How manipulative it is. How the ‘double think’ is right there in your face.”

This fatuous, almost grotesque explanation of what critical thinking is, exposes a fatal flaw in the credibility of a large corporate organization. The unbelievable crassness of this quote from his assembly speech a couple of years back should alert any outside enquirer to the dismal depths of ignorance which come from the very top of the JW org. It should also flag up a red alert to the JW who still has any residual intelligence left in them.

Tony Morris has declared to the zombie masses that critical thinking is BAD...like carbon dating is BAD and homosexuality is BAD and other religions are BAD (apostates however are way beyond BAD!) It is easy to put people off things isn’t it?

@Stuckinarut, I like your word ‘analytical’, this has not yet been stigmatized by the seven holy baboons of Brooklyn. To analyse is to question the validity of the sources of the information, to contextualize, to question assumptions about the subject; to ask does the received wisdom on this stand up to a logical, factual, semantic and philosophical investigation etc.

Yes with rational analysis, the Watchtower doctrines fall at the first hurdle. It’s little wonder they condemn critical thinking and the higher education which depends on it as a matter of course.