Posts by Half banana

96

Oh Boy! Beards are "stumbling blocks" again ... from Stephen Lett

by freddo in

jw
friends

so this week's midweek meeting video about stumbling others has lett spouting and gurning rubbish again.. if you can't take the whole 9 minutes go from 5:50 to get the context and 6:45 for the "beard" mention.. https://youtu.be/ezv1ici5cwo.

oh, well - at least they shoot themselves in the foot with this doublespeak.

single.

Half banana

Brothers please, it’s not kind to mock the afflicted, I think you are all being unfair to members of the divinely appointed governing body, give these poor men some slack!

The longer the holy JW cult continues the further away from common sense and reality they go. Insulated from normal people and normal life they are off in a psychotic dream world of their own making.

Just how do you imagine you would end up talking and thinking if you were forced to living your life in a magic bubble in fairyland?

16

Did Ancient Jewish Worshipers Ever Make Changes to the "Holy' Scriptures?

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

if you have the time and the means to visit israel right now, you can see something that few modern people have seen.. at the israel museum in jerusalem, a very special document will be on display.

the museum's website heading describes it as:.

genesis retold: an exceptional dead sea scroll.. .

Half banana

Folk tales which are at the core of Bible texts would have originally been transmitted verbally within families and probably by itinerant storytellers. The majority would have been illiterate and little the worse for that but to them the idea of something written down would have had almost magical implications and if the illiterate were told these markings on vellum or cut into stone were the words of God, by association they would be revered as sacred.

Once “sacred” is applied to anything, people’s expectations rise beyond reason and the if the words were assumed to be from god then the medium of transmission would also have to fittingly be perfect and immutable. Notice how the Genesis here is called “apocryphon” or secret text, creating a sense of mystery and awe.

However as shown here with the Genesis scroll, any manuscript is subject to deletions, alterations and additions. Each cultural centre holding texts might view their own copies as the authentic ones for status reasons but in reality there could be no authentic sacred versions. Nevertheless it would be a religious coup to claim that all other versions but your own were the true words of God and no doubt this trick was played on the peasants. Once successfully accomplished, the influence of the preacher and his synagogue would have been greatly empowered.

The various manuscripts in circulation accumulated additions (you have supplied the evidence FTS) and were edited over time. The idea that there was an original Bible is absurd, even the Jewish writings today (Tanakh) do not constitute what Christianity calls the OT. Even after the collection of books known as the Bible were given the imprimatur in the fourth century by the Roman Church they still kept revising it. The Protestants later deleted about seventeen of these books. Nothing is fixed or sacred, the reality was fluid and subject to prevailing religious orthodoxy.

29

Please explain!

by Freedom rocks in

hi please can someone explain this in laymans terms for me coz i be ever got it as a jw and still don't.

it doesn't make sense to me.

bible chronology indicates that god’s kingdom was established in heaven in 1914. this is shown by a prophecy recorded in chapter 4 of the bible book of daniel.. overview of the prophecy.

Half banana

Finky, all theology is nutty!

Imagine a long established and respected academic discipline which is devoted to a thing which is both undetectable and non-interactive.

9

A challenge to believers

by Half banana in

nothing is ever fixed, laws change and religious myth evolves.

no doubt the habiru (hebrew) forebears of the jews when arriving in the levantine highlands cherished their stone age practices and sacred rituals.

child and human sacrifice was a grim stone age social mechanism to make for balance, loyalty and control within a tribe.there was no connection then with an almighty spirit, polytheism ruled the hebrew mentality.

Half banana

Nothing is ever fixed, laws change and religious myth evolves. No doubt the Habiru (Hebrew) forebears of the Jews when arriving in the Levantine highlands cherished their Stone age practices and sacred rituals. Child and human sacrifice was a grim Stone Age social mechanism to make for balance, loyalty and control within a tribe.There was no connection then with an almighty spirit, polytheism ruled the Hebrew mentality. Human sacrifice only came to an end when outlawed by the civilised Romans.

It has to be understood that the Jews had no claim to any special privilege or divine favour any more than their neighbours did back then and no more than we could claim today for our chosen beliefs. The impoverished Hebrew speaking Bronze Age goat herders in Judea lived in a world driven by superstition and fatalistic belief in the gods including their holy warrior mascot Yahweh.

Why are we still discussing their primitive beliefs as if it they are holy, as if ever they had any meaning for us or for mankind. Wake up people! the mythology of 2600 years ago has long been superseded and we arbitrate knowledge through evidence and questioning that evidence, no longer has superstition any place in choosing a path in life today-- if we are sensible.

The challenge:

If you believe the Bible to be holy, please demonstrate from evidence and logic why anyone today should know that something or anything is holy.

15

Facing my own mortality!

by eyeuse2badub in

i’m 71 years old now.

seven decades plus.

but, i put that in perspective owing to the fact that my older brother died in 1992 at the age of only 51. it was a very sobering time for me even though i was only 45 at the time.

Half banana

Death is just nature's way of telling you to slow down. . .

29

Please explain!

by Freedom rocks in

hi please can someone explain this in laymans terms for me coz i be ever got it as a jw and still don't.

it doesn't make sense to me.

bible chronology indicates that god’s kingdom was established in heaven in 1914. this is shown by a prophecy recorded in chapter 4 of the bible book of daniel.. overview of the prophecy.

Half banana

Freedom Rocks, did you know that it gives great peace of mind when you realise that the stories in the Bible are meaningless. They may have some dubious moral instruction but it usually comes with the threat of "I'll kill you if you don't obey." Great!

Prophecy is a game for idiots. There can be no reliable prophecy anywhere and there never has been any. The prescientific world relied on soothsayers (truthsayers) and auspicious moments to do things. The prescientific world of the Bible, Judaism and Christianity was squarely based on superstition. Therefore any interpretation of the Bible, since it comes from this past unenlightened world, is simply hocus pocus.

The Bible is truly useless as a guide for knowledge or prophecy, it was written to enslave the poor and ignorant-- you can safely chuck it in the waste bin and be assured that it won't come back to bite you.

111

Is he interested?

by Sunnybear in

i met a wonderful man on match.com several months ago.

on our first date, there was amazing chemistry and we ended up having sex.

it was not planned, it just happened.

Half banana

To mess emotionally with a Jehovah's Witness is to invite disaster into your life.

Truly you would regret getting more deeply involved with this man who is already wrestling with his conscience (if he has one) because sex outside of marriage is a religious offence for JWs.

If you want to remain sunny Sunnybear, please do not listen to the teachings of this paranoid toxic cult and look for an honest partner who instead will put you and your interests above and ahead of his religious obligations.

26

A spy's life is a lonely one

by LevelThePlayingField in

so i have been awake since about this time in 2013, so about 5 years.

and the craziest thing about it is that now, no one, and i mean no one know's i am an apostate.

meaning, that i don't believe the jw minds set/beliefs at all, and no one knows it.

Half banana

Level, well done for waking up! I remember the intense frustration of going to the meetings having woken up and in my case already having become an atheist. To watch the illogical drivel and indoctrination being encouraged on the platform made me want to shout out at the stupidity of it all. I held my tongue! So I sympathise with you!

I did enjoy walking out of a meeting half way through never to return to the kh, it was a sweet moment!

I did try and sow seeds of logic like contradicting someone's assertion that the Watchtower is never wrong but the conditioning of JWs is one of social conformity above and beyond reason. JW thinking tramples on logic because it places a greater value on keeping alive the hope of living forever in the panda petting dream world. JWs are permanently egged on to keep believing this pie in the sky nonsense by the witness community which is what JW club membership is all about.

So the difficulty is always finding how to pacify the emotional needs and breaking the social taboos not just exposing the faulty reasoning. This is hard enough but your average JW is almost hard wired to ignore dissent even it it is logical...it's a wonder any of us made it out!

However, sowing seeds of scientific facts (no Adam, no flood) and the errors of JW revisionist history should make a difference, it's probably the best we can do under the circumstances.

8

I Got a Response from the Washington Post (JW article)

by TerryWalstrom in

dear terry,.

thank you very much for your note.

i really appreciate all the information you provided on jehovah’s witnesses and the personal experiences you shared in this email.

Half banana

Well done for getting your criticism of the JW org across Terry. Their cult leadership imagine they are divinely inspired and therefore above the law.

What buffoons! the truth will catch up with them thanks to the information revolution.

13

Accepting Your Shadow(Jungian)

by Brokeback Watchtower in

when looking inside one's self to find your authentic self requires a brutally honesty with yourself.

the shadow side of ourseelves is where we stuff a lot of things we don't like about ourselves, stuff we have repressed, not all is bad stuff, some very good.

understanding your shadow side and unrepressing things in it can restore balance to the psyche and make one more whole and more creative as the psyche becomes unstuck from denial and suppression of natural instincts.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg1cvp4u5sy.

Half banana

You have supplied two very good You tube presentations Brokeback, best seen in sequence, the first explaining “the shadow” and the second how to set about addressing the integration of the shadow with one’s real self resulting in being a happier, self-reliant and a more complete individual.

A JW on the other hand, driven by his or her unthinking Watchtower loyalty is bound to ignore Jung’s wisdom and instead guiltily suppress the dark side of their nature.

They are led to believe that their JW persona is the real self, alas! it is only a functional mask, so conflict ensues.

These wrong attitudes compound their psychic problems and makes them ever more dependent on the leadership. In doing this the Witness is in fact infantilized-- that is, made to remain with child-like characteristics which simultaneously give yet more power to the paternalism of the governing body.

This is how cults operate.

JWs with doubts are led to ask “Where else can I go?” You could try reading Jung for a start.