im not sure if anyone has posted this before?
(sorry if so).
http://exitwatchtower.weebly.com/.
A good find stucky! Vincent is inspirational-- who of us here cannot find sympathy with him in the smug delusions we all held when we were under the JW spell?
Vincent's awakening must be a great help for others who have been lost in the Watchtower swamp and are now facing up to the challenges of real life.
they will come back to you and deny your request, ask them to ask the service department to get organizational procedures.
if still denied refuse to attend with out your lawyer present.
and then ask them who has fairer judicial practices satan's world or jehovah's earthly organization.. no recordings allowed, and definitely no lawyers!
Any formalized society is a club for socializing, for companionship or camaraderie. It may be a tennis club or Hells Angel or church group because humans essentially enjoy keeping company with those who share a similar world view, those of like mind. These social pools are where we find friends and partners.
Jehovah’s Witnesses join their paranoid club knowing well the rules-- and breaking the rules of any society has penalties.
To attempt to bring a lawyer to a judicial hearing would only enhance legitimacy of the of the tribunal. It has no legal basis in the first place hence a lawyer would rarely if ever be appropriate.
JW ‘judicial’ committees are there to enforce cult thinking and keep external influences from seeping into the religion which would otherwise weaken and dilute its power. Strict boundary marking makes for a strict cult identity and JWs are taught to be comfortable with clear boundaries, this is one of the appeals of any cult, you don’t have to think hard because the contrived rules are simple and strict. Real life is quite different!
If you deliberately break JW rules you are in effect saying you disagree with the cult. Would not the best policy then be to leave without attending the humiliating mock trial and thereby make the statement, so to speak, that you do not recognize the authority of the religion.
The JW religion functions by infantilizing all of its members, disagreement is not permitted and ritual adulation of the governing body and its role is encouraged. To strike out against this perceived authority is often the first step in personal responsibility by taking matters into your own hands and using your human birthright to choose your own path in life.
Remember this; to leave the JW organization is one of the most liberating experiences in life!
i had to go into a office close to a supermarket on a very high traffic expressway with next to no persons on the street anyway ever near.
i see this jw lady about 65 yrs old standing there alone with 2 bags of groceries staring at the catholic church one side across the interstate road and the kh across the other side of the highway.
cross bronx expressway.
JYD, well done!--you did some unwitnessing and tried to get a JW to think.
is this a title of diety or did god have a baby?
.
sorry for being so brief, typing on a phone.. i am kind of interested to see what you have to say.
A far reaching criticism of religiousness is that it deals with words that have left their normal usage and have become sacred. Then when comparing expressions, religious people have driven themselves mad trying to avoid hell and looking for the only path to heaven. A logical and coherent solution to all of the disparities of Biblical usage can never be found since in the first place they are based on myth and not fact.
So don't drive yourself mad; relax! Don't even try to reconcile the irreconcilable but do ask instead, why was this or that written?
The Bible deals with myth, imagery, hope and power-- it is not a collection of logical, factual texts. The sources of Biblical writings are submerged in folklore and astrology and the essence of the ideas of god, even in the Bible, can be traced from polytheism. The books attributed to Moses are all about the new fangled monolatry (worship of just one of the gods) and why you should ditch the others. After all the new national god YHVH will zapp you if you don't worship him.
Religion evolves, take the evolution of the Watchtower cult as a familiar example! But certainly the oldest forms of theism were built into the world view of the ancients who related the annual movements of the sun, moon and stars to their divinities. Before the "sacred texts" humans had the stars to tell them the nature of the divine and how to behave.
And the son of the Sun God was the exact representation of his very being as the sun rose every morning and was reflected in the waters of the Nile............the narrative remains but the application changes.
So don't take the Bible literally!
under "breaking news" on jwdotorg, there is a link to a court case in canada that was just resolved on may 31st.. https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/17101/index.do.
it's in regard to him being disfellowshipped, and the court says they can't get involved.
jwdotorg gives this statement about their victory:.
The moral of the story is never tangle with Jehovah's Witnesses.
At first you may be attracted to them because they seem like decent people but like all JWs you could end up wasting your life trapped under the 'bewitchment' of a dictatorial cult. Their power is real only as long as you believe it is.
In the real world regulated by enforceable law, the JW organisation for all its host of taboos and rulings, is a non runner.
after a bit of a kerfuffle over a procedural matter, my university has awarded me a degree.
(the procedural problem was caused by my independent selection of what i wanted to study).
award : bachelor of arts.
Very well done FTS-- but I hope you realise that you have dashed your chances of becoming an elder now!
Which makes me think, outside of JWs, are there any other organisations where ignorance is demanded and rewarded ?
would you join a religion which punishes you if you later on change your mind and choose to leave it?.
would you join a religion which claims to be the only one guided by god and yet has always got their prophetic utterances entirely wrong?.
would you join a religion which changes its beliefs every few years?.
Would you join a religion which punishes you if you later on change your mind and choose to leave it?
Would you join a religion which claims to be the only one guided by God and yet has always got their prophetic utterances entirely wrong?
Would you join a religion which changes its beliefs every few years?
Would you join a religion which teaches that all other religions are under the spell of Satan?
Would you join a religion which says that you must obey its ruling and deny yourself or your children blood transfusions which could save your life in a medical emergency?
Would you join a religion which claims to
have the only way to get everlasting life?
Would you join a religion which claims that higher education is harmful and mocks critical thinking?
Would you join a religion which demands that obedience to its rulings is more important than the ties to your family?
Would you join a religion which rewrites its history to conceal its glaring mistakes?
Would you join a religion which uses Biblical precedents which allow pedophiles to go unchecked among its members?
I confess I did join but these things were not clearly explained before I joined. . .
jws are taught to think in a childish, simplistic and paranoid way.. the ticket to paradise includes a gory bloodfest of unimaginable proportions.
and jws calmly and unquestioningly trust and even look forward to this happening.. what about the morality of this unprecedented solution to mankind’s problems?
(there is evidence in the earth’s crust that noah’s flood never happened so it doesn’t count as a precedent).. sweep all of your problems under the biblical carpet and you know that god will sort it all out by the ultimate act of near total genocide—or not!
Yes sir82 It is possible to reduce most ideas to an absurdity which makes it seem trivial. However, religious faith is a demand for belief in the supernatural and people are lulled into compliance by a very long tradition and are held there by the social acceptability of identifying as a believer. Humans always want to do what they see others doing! It is acceptable to believe in idiotic teachings if they are justified in the Bible however unreasonable.
I offer my reductionist thought as an indictment against lazy complacency and misplaced trust, all believers alike should stop and think how ludicrous these Bible fairy tales are if taken literally.
How can JWs get exposure to logical thought?
How did we personally shake off stupid beliefs?
Isn't it the same process of growing up and realizing there is no Father Christmas?
jws are taught to think in a childish, simplistic and paranoid way.. the ticket to paradise includes a gory bloodfest of unimaginable proportions.
and jws calmly and unquestioningly trust and even look forward to this happening.. what about the morality of this unprecedented solution to mankind’s problems?
(there is evidence in the earth’s crust that noah’s flood never happened so it doesn’t count as a precedent).. sweep all of your problems under the biblical carpet and you know that god will sort it all out by the ultimate act of near total genocide—or not!
JWs are taught to think in a childish, simplistic
and paranoid way.
The ticket to paradise includes a gory bloodfest of unimaginable proportions. . . and JWs calmly and unquestioningly trust and even look forward to this happening.
What about the morality of this unprecedented solution to mankind’s problems? (There is evidence in the earth’s crust that Noah’s flood never happened so it doesn’t count as a precedent).
Sweep all of your problems under the Biblical carpet and you know that God will sort it all out by the ultimate act of near total genocide—or not! Actually genocide refers to the death of a nation, this would be anthropocide, the virtual death of humanity as performed by a loving father, the supposed creator of humankind. Destruction will come like the visitation to earth of a wayward asteroid selectively destroying 99.9% of the planet’s inhabitants and leaving only those who listen to the governing body of an American religious corporation.
Have doomsday cults ever got it right?
Really is it likely to happen?
Firstly I want to say, like all reasonable parents,
that I love my kids unconditionally. Two of my children are PIMI and one is
POMO but with favorable words for the religion he no longer attends.
It crossed my mind to tell my two PIMI offspring that now that they have reached adulthood, as their loving father I have decided (like God!) to kill off all of my children who do not agree with me…………
Actually I won’t do this, it’s a bit melodramatic but really isn’t this what Jehovah’s Witnesses believe? Isn’t this what Armageddon is about?
it’s been very difficult, much more than i first anticipated to live a lie, (be pimo and a regular active member) i still live with my parents but i plan on moving out at the end of the year, so i really need to keep it together.
but i think people are starting to get suspicious that something is up.
i’ve stopped commenting, going on service all the time, talking at the door, and occasionally voicing something, such as a question that no one has a good answer for, that makes people think, but ahah, thinking is dangerous and wrong so that is suspicious of course.
We all feel for you Addison, what you are going through is what it must be like for thousands if not hundreds of thousands of JWs, rolling their eyes at meetings and impatiently waiting to escape. What a dire cult!
I'm with JW_Rogue here, while you still have to conform, ask simple but thought provoking questions when you encounter illogical statements as if you are puzzled-- it will get others to challenge the stupidity of JW teachings.
