when you finally and officially exited the cult, whether it be by disfellowshipping, disassociating or fading - what was the first things you did that are considered "worldly"?.
for me, it was like crash landing on another planet that looked like earth but was completely different to the earth i knew.
i wanted to learn everything that i thought i already knew.. first things i did:.
The first defiant thing I did as soon as I left was to go on a university course on paleoanthropology.
My marriage had been dead for years because of my religious scepticism but my children were still youngish so I remained with them. About a year or so later, stolen weekends away with a female JW "unbeliever" was akin to becoming restored back to humanity....sweet salvation!
i was just thinking back to some parts i conducted.
when other publishers were involved in the part, its success often depended on how well rehearsed the participants were.
timing, proper interplay of dialogue, dramatic impact, etc.. as the one giving the part or as one drafted to do a demo, did your elders require rehearsals?.
When I was a pioneer and "living the dream" (and I knew alanv ^ Hi Alan!) I was in a cong which actually tried to make the meetings interesting! By doing rehearsals and by having a continuity sentence or two to connect each speaker and his subject to the next one; it really improved the quality of the meeting. It created the appearance that the JW delusion was thriving.
But hey to what end? To bamboozle pathetic individuals to waste their lives in a death/money cult and deprive yet more people of their liberty!
would you agree:.
there are three main paths in life?.
secular, religious or spiritual?.
Just shows how his speech writers wanted it to be...you can more easily control people if you narrow down their choices.
friday, september 30. one thing i have asked from jehovah—it is what i will look for—that i may dwell in the house of jehovah all the days of my life.—ps.
27:4.. as part of jehovah’s organization, what joy we now have in telling others about god’s promised new world!
(2 pet.
Well analysed Divergent.
And we used to put up with drivel on a daily basis!
the healings, feeding the five thousand, walking on water, resurrecting the dead.
none of it happened of course but let's take the bible literally and say that it did.. so?.
didn't magic practicing priests perform 'miracles' in a contest with aaron?
The character of the “god-man saviour” existed for millennia before the name “Jesus”was appended to it. They were all born in a cave, of miraculous birth with oxen present, performed miracles including giving sight to the blind and raising the dead, had twelve followers, died sacrificially etc etc.
Since the character of the god-man saviour was a pagan folk tale and a theatrical persona with counterparts in all middle eastern religions, the idea of such a man was in the minds of the population already in the first century.
If you believe in Jesus as a real person, answer this question; how likely is it that Harry Potter will come to life as a real person?
For those are precisely the same odds of Jesus being a real person. No doubt this is why the Roman authorities in the early centuries thought the Jesus cults to be ignorant and mischievous with their stupid ideas because they taught the most preposterous things such as a god-man coming to life in Judea. What a brilliant rumour for the downtrodden and gullible......and what a potential market in priestly spiritual advising!
As a footnote to demonstrate the universality of the god-man saviour story, by the fourth century, opportunistic Judean tourist guides were taking the Jesus faithful to a cave and not a stable as the purported birthplace of the messiah...because as everyone knew; god-men were born in caves. Caves of course were very convenient for stabling animals. Remember that by the fourth century the Bible had only just been compiled and was not distributed as was the case after the invention of moveable type a thousand years later........... but the folk tales with the idea of a cave, were there in the folk consciousness.
Everyone knows Jesus grew up in Nazareth. Nazareth was a thriving small community by the fourth century but but as archeologists have shown and contemporary maps and the absence of contemporary references indicate; it did not even exist as a place in the first century... yet the gospels claim it was where Jesus lived as the son of a carpenter. Carpenters need tools and a workshop and a market. Like Nazareth in the first century; Jesus, Joseph and Mary too were stories, not historical realities.
The miracles were stories for the gullible to believe that God was revealing himself to them.
the healings, feeding the five thousand, walking on water, resurrecting the dead.
none of it happened of course but let's take the bible literally and say that it did.. so?.
didn't magic practicing priests perform 'miracles' in a contest with aaron?
I can't believe that Jesus existed as a real person because his character with all his miraculous accomplishments had already existed as attributes of earlier "god-men".
Nevertheless I would then answer your question by recognising these fantasy miracles were spoken of to convince the gullible that "Jesus is your man!" not Mithra or Dionysus, Attis or a dozen other god-men. So come along and get free food at the local Jesus- cult temple and we'll all worship together and get saved.
A couple of thousand years earlier Horus walked on water as the sun god 'walks' on water when low on the horizon in the morning. And Horus also raised his friend Lazarus!
pure speculation here but i'm wondering if - with the numbers flat-lining - that the gb will stop giving country by country stats, or perhaps at least some of the statistics.. we used to get a monthly stat in the km - then that was "simplified" to "highlights".
only the "good" stuff.
then with the new clam workbook, no stats at all.. i wonder if the yearbook will soon only contain "positive" spun stats.
I agree Alan, it would be depressing for the bros to clinically observe the diminishing numbers of publishers and it would accelerate the decline so they must change their tactics.
They would of course spin numbers decline by dredging up a scripture to show that it only proves that Big A is just around the corner.
So I expect the yearbook to change its role in future, no figures just feel-good experiences for the faithful.
Nothing they say ever has any critical meaning, it's all spin and waffle however and wherever they present it.
i asked an old jw friend of mine why so many baptized individuals leave the jw religion.
"did it ever occur to you, old friend, that maybe they know something that you don't know and have valid reasons for leaving?
", i asked.. his response set me back for an answer.
Lol Xanthippe!
I realised that the idea of god is a human invention, there is no turning back after that.
patient blood management arose out of bloodless medicine and alternatives to blood transfusions.
pbm has been accepted as the standard of care in australia and has been implemented into the health care systems of other countries such as canada.
a prominent promoter of pbm has been aryeh shander from englewood hospital in new jersey.
Vidiot, I wuz thinking more that they are trying to steer blood treatment methods to favour themselves (by going "bloodless") rather than convert the medical establishment and doing it by stealth, underhandedly. The Australian hospitals have fallen for it already.
It's a wonder no responsible medic can see through their cunning plan and expose them.
patient blood management arose out of bloodless medicine and alternatives to blood transfusions.
pbm has been accepted as the standard of care in australia and has been implemented into the health care systems of other countries such as canada.
a prominent promoter of pbm has been aryeh shander from englewood hospital in new jersey.
Generally I imagine that in the educated world of medicine no one expects or recognises that a religious fundamentalist trojan horse has arrived within their camp... but surely that is what the JW inspired Blood Management team seem to have achieved.
Well done and thank you for your researches--- please carry on your good work Birdie.