Posts by Half banana

16

Session #8: "Bullet in the Head"

by Brian J in

so at the phd today with my wife and me, and in slowly getting to the heart of matters (like peeling an onion if you ask me), the dialogue in part went like this: .

phd: if it came down to it, would you take a bullet in the head instead of giving up membership in your organization?

wife: absolutely, i would die for my faith.

Half banana

Mentalclarity puts a finger on an important point; it is a matter of enormous pride which a JW holds internally that they would die for their faith. Pride equates with valuing something and can have a positive feedback even if its actually delusional.

This is related to the fact that JW religion compensates for other things which people find missing in their life.

A witness might think "I have a crummy job and delinquent children but I have the promise of everlasting life if I remain loyal to the org". Religion is a private anchorage point in an unstable world for many people. By bringing to the surface the questionable nature of her beliefs it is likely you are threatening your wife's imagined ticket to paradise and she will perceive it as you trying to deprive her of that vital emotional anchorage.

By you stopping following the JW nonsense it will only make her ten times more determined, and I speak from experience as I think I may have mentioned in an earlier post.

Therefore If you value your wife, I would suggest you quit the criticism of her faith and look to see if you can see why she so desperately clings to the 'certainty' of JW beliefs. It may be something you can help her with, for example the inability to recognise that we all without exception die. Does she fear death? Perhaps it's related to not having some other things in life which she is missing out on such as self confidence, the lack of which leads to depending on the religious claims of others. Self confidence and self fulfillment are subtly if not overtly suppressed in JW thinking. By helping her develop her own identity and confidence in her own abilities she may feel less inclined to rely on the org.

I know its easy to say things and a lot harder to resolve deep seated emotional and psychological difficulties and differences-- but if there are genuine good intentions, a common goal or at least common ground to start with, progress must be achievable.

16

Eulogies

by redundantcartworker in

i recently attended a non jw funeral at a local church.

during the service, a couple of friends/relatives of the deceased eloquently spoke for a few minutes about the deceased with some of their fond memories and gave heartfelt, respectful tributes.. would i ( a non jw) be given a few minutes to speak at either of my jw parents funerals at the kingdom hall ?.

i guess i already know the answer, but if the answer is "no", then why not and how would they hide the heartlessness of refusing ?

Half banana

Redundantcartworker (What a good name!) I really do think that kh funerals bring out the very worst in the JW religion. How would they hide their refusal? They would probably claim that the focus of the funeral is the hope the deceased enjoyed. . . in other words it's just to promote themselves.

Their true heartlessness is the result of the leadership never trusting any creative or personalised expressions given by individuals in the congregations.

I think it boils down to simply a matter of the GB needing to maintain total control at any cost, even at the cost of hurting individual's feelings. To permit or encourage private viewpoints would create heresy and splintering, the two most dreaded threats to a high control religion. Everything they do is geared to maintaining their iron grip on members' minds and activities and that means conform or be punished.

3

What is the blindness Jesus referred to in Mathew 15:14?

by Ireneus in

in the context of speaking about human teaching and its teachers (mathew 15:8, 9) jesus said: “they are blind guides.

if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.” (mathew 15:14).

its application need not be too limited because what is being subjected to our senses is very limited.

Half banana

The first century Palestine was a Roman province and benefitted from most of the mod cons which came with Romanisation; roads, education, sewerage and baths etc. The Jews were at a low ebb and heartily influenced by the prevailing Classical civilisation with its focus on power, control and citizenship, they were urbanised and secularised. Not at all the picture we get from the Bible!

The saviour cults including the Jesus cult were irritating the state authorities because of their disregard for the liberal Roman religious attitude which consisted of respecting a plurality of gods. The Jews being monotheist helped in saviour cult recruitment and especially with a Jewish saviour figure at the centre as opposed to a Roman or Greek yet they were considered a threat to stability for persuading many uneducated peasants to their anti-state viewpoints with what the Romans considered the most frivolous claim, namely the coming to life of a traditional saviour hero. This idea in the Jesus cult was a new departure and a low point in the history of logic.

When we have Jesus' words referred to, they could not be from the Bible character, had he actually lived it was a generation after his purported death when the writing attributed to him took place. There never was a contemporary record of his presence as a miracle working god-man in the Roman world let alone a record of verbatim speech.

The words attributed to Jesus were the writings probably in the second century which would have been from the minds of the leaders of the Jesus Christ cult. (That is in contrast with the Mithras Christ cult or the Dionysus Christ cult) The "blind leading the blind"as many clever figures of speech would have been in circulation in the literate Roman world and in that milieu of religious sects publicly declaring their wares and seeking converts, such rhetoric would have been ammunition to put down traditional religious views which had become ossified.

King David and Jesus are literary characters not real beings, Heraclitus was right, ideas grow out of earlier ideas.

23

New here...

by Jacobi in

jw
friends

my name is jacobi, i am a born-in but mentally out for more or less a decade at this point (although it was cradual) and about 40yo.

i don't want to say a lot about my family, but it is a mix of going-through-the-motions, semi-actives (but mentally in), some who have left for a few reasons and one really depressed pioneer.

because people fade in and out i have managed to slide under the radar and i keep up apperances of not being all-out apostate but i completed my fade about years ago (it also helped i moved to another part of the country).. i might rub some of you the wrong way because of my views on different things like politics.. i am not a trump supporter at all and neither are most people in my country.

Half banana

Welcome Jacobi, glad you made the big leap from being a JW zombie to being a normal human.

As for your views, controversy always makes the site more interesting, remember it is only in repressive cults where disagreement is forbidden.

10

Rolf Furuli Mental Health

by oppostate in

rolf foruli, scandinavian academic and watchtower apologist, has come out with a video at times quoting figures on mental disease from the 1930's and 40's, in support of his allegation that the rate of mental problems and depression is actually only a third of what it is among the entire population.. there are numerous holes in his presentation.

for one, when jw's are da'ed or df'ed they're no longer considered jw's and only active jw's are part of the results.

those who were victimized and suffered the most mental trauma as jw's aren't even considered in the studies he mentions.. watch his video: "the mental health of jehovah´s witnesses" r. furuli, on youtube:.

Half banana

From Wikipedia on R Furuli;

In a 2004 issue of Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Lester L. Grabbe, professor of theology at the University of Hull, said of Furuli's study: "Once again we have an amateur who wants to rewrite scholarship. ... F. shows little evidence of having put his theories to the test with specialists in Mesopotamian astronomy and Persian history."[5]

Furuli here in the mental health analysis of JWs, is speaking outside of his expertise not that this automatically makes his information incorrect but his record shows that he is prepared to use his academic qualifications to promote his religion regardless of factual and peer recognized evidence.

With no further knowledge of his data on mental health, it would nevertheless be significant to point out that Furuli's first MA on Babylonian texts in 1995 coincided with the Watchtower's reappraisal of the failure of their pivotal "1914 generation" and the consequent 'excuse' of overlapping generations.

The Watchtower at that time would have been desperate to find an academic prepared to use "theocratic warfare" and support the unsupportable evidence for 607 bce as the fall of the siege of Jerusalem instead of 587 bce.

Clearly they found one in Furuli.

20

Another trolley (That's Cart to Americanos), encounter today.

by punkofnice in

i couldn't bleedin' well resist it.

there were these 2 jobo blokes standing behind a jobot trolley.

jobo, 'what's that?'.

Half banana

Diogenesister, I am greatly relieved to realise we have a safety net for our species a mere 20 light years away. Phew!

Punky I was out on the town last night (went to see Amadeus at the National Theatre--stupendo) and outside Embankment station were two young men engrossed in talking to each other with "JW org" tattooed on their foreheads, perhaps not but you know how it gives that impression. The thing was there were hundreds of thousands of passers by but not within spitting distance of the JWs who were backed up against a wall in a corner with their trolley propaganda.

No doubt they imagine they are "giving a witness even if no one listens" but for goodness sake no one even looked their way let alone listened. I suppose this is the normal futility of JW org preaching and how they work today.

14

'The videos are helping the young people.'

by Magnum in

some time ago a super-dub stopped by to try to encourage me to return to jw land.

my demeanor during our conversation was extremely serious.

i was polite, but dignified.

Half banana

"You know what? these videos are helping the JW organisation to mentally enslave their young at the earliest possible age"

29

Masturbation is not sinful, unclean, or wicked [Rebuttal to leaked Bethel video regarding masturbation]

by Mace.Bean in

jw
friends

[the following information is intended as a response to the leaked bethel video regarding masturbation.

if you are not aware of that video, please check it our before attempting to comment.].

masturbation is not sinful, unclean, or wicked.

Half banana

Good points Mace.bean and sorry you suffered Wake me. How important it is to get the right information in life. . .

LUHE, I understand that the male body absorbs unused sperm and never builds up to bursting point. "Bursting point" is probably a myth that desperate males tell their girlfriends!

A vasectomy for example does not lead to a sperm production crisis.

35

The Constant Mindchatter After You Leave

by pale.emperor in

i've been out almost 2 years now and consider myself wide awake to watchtower propaganda and well on my way to recovery from the mental abuse we've all experienced.. one thing that just will not go is that i constantly think of jwism and watchtower and get myself all annoyed at their lies and blatant twisting of facts in their broadcasts and magazines.

it's so bad that it's the first thing i think of when i wake up, then i have these mental arguments in my head proving the jw teachings false and then getting annoyed because no jw will listen even if you tried to tell them.

i call this constant thinking and mental reasoning and mental arguing "mindchatter".

Half banana

Firstly let me say your contribution here PE has been tremendous. However for the sake of your brain and relationships, the time has possibly come to concentrate, at least for a while, on other things--as Xanthippe suggests.

I reckon if you can give your education the same obsessive fervour; you will have harnessed something very useful from the experience of leaving the cult. Intellectual dissonance can be productive!

What are you studying btw?

21

Will paradise be like a 24/7 Disneyland vacation package?

by Sour Grapes in

i was thinking about the jdub paradise this morning and all of the pictures in the watchtower company's literature illustrating the new system of things.. here is a partial list of what you see in the pictures:.

pet pandas, lions, elephants.

people always on a picnic with lots of beautiful fruits and vegetables.

Half banana

The JW organisation is one big con trick. They have never got anything right so why should they be right about paradise?

All of the mentions in the Bible of the king bringinging victory over the nation's enemies followed by peace and abundance were heartfelt fantasies which spoke to the underdog tribes of goat herders in Canaan.

The Hebrew speaking exiles could just scrape a living there in the dry highlands in the worst part of the Levant but they had one thing going for them; they were literate. Paradise and freedom from Egyptian rule was their dream. They wrote about independence with ecstatic words of the hope of freedom and material plenty, the two things in shortest supply.

The political paradise never came but the texts remained and gave other people hope in the shape of the upbeat parts of the OT literature. Christianity borrowed the same words for grecianised and romanised Jews who recognised the motif from Isaiah, of freedom, peace and abundance--and the myth was perpetuated, although early on in Christianity, heaven became the fantasy reward for faithful membership.

Paradise as a religious lure is a fraud and pure fantasy.

If it sounds too good to be true then sensible people know it is too good to be true.