Posts by Anony Mous

  • joe134cd
    27

    I think I may be becoming an X-X-JW

    by joe134cd in
    1. jw
    2. experiences

    i think i may be moving on shortly.

    i officially joined this web-site 12 years ago as pimo about to exit the organisation.

    i had spent about a year before that, as just a none commenting member.

    1. Balaamsass2
    2. Rattigan350
    3. Dave500
  • Anony Mous
    Anony Mous

    Good for you, many do find their way out if you can cut ties completely. I was hoping to be on that way, but then I seem to keep getting pulled into the painful and disastrous results of their policies through close and extended family that are still ‘in’.

    I’m probably going to be around here for another decade or so, hopefully after that I can make that same transition and just have it as a bad history.

  • Vanderhoven7
    21

    Examples of Watchtower flawed interpretation of Bible passages?

    by Vanderhoven7 in
    1. watchtower
    2. beliefs

    asking jehovah’s witnesses to interpret specific passages is a great way to demonstrate their interpretive abuse.

    got any clear examples?.

    1. TD
    2. Dave500
    3. Vanderhoven7
  • Anony Mous
    Anony Mous

    Their flawed interpretation starts at Genesis 1:2 as they already rewrote that chapter to fit their theology and it continues until Revelation.

    Genesis 1:2 NWT says and God’s active force was moving about over the surface of the waters.

    Whereas the Bible says: the Spirit of God (a separate entity within the Godhead) was hovering over the waters.

    Given their re-interpretation of the deity of both God, Holy Spirit and Son (Jesus according to Christians), they basically reject all scripture and simply pick and choose select verses that seem to fit (and even then they may have multiple interpretations of the same verse or use the same verse to support multiple beliefs).

  • ThomasDam21
    33

    Do JWs see the org falling apart?

    by ThomasDam21 in
    1. watchtower
    2. beliefs

    i have been away from the jw cult for many years.

    i don't have any family i talk to that are in it.

    so i don't know if the jws as a whole are seeing the cult fall apart or if they or the majority of them are head in the sand la la la the end is neigh.

    1. Anony Mous
    2. Journeyman
    3. Anony Mous
  • Anony Mous
    Anony Mous

    Great:

    God recreates/re-forms the person in the heavens as a spirit - with their memories, personality, etc

    How is that entity not a soul and how does it transfer to heaven. They must be transferred somehow, purely physically speaking some 'energy' must go from here to there.

    Here is the problem with the non-immortal soul/spirit belief of the JW

    1) The belief is that your body and your spirit and your soul are just different names for the same thing (your physical body and your personal attributes; the soul is not immortal; spirit is your life force and also not immortal). Physical bodies cannot enter heaven, when you die, your life force and your soul dies with you. Let's assume that is a true statement.

    2) God recreates a "body" for you in heaven with your personal attributes, it by JW standards is considered a "soul". Since your "spirit" is your animating life force, you cannot be created a "spirit" since "spirits" have no personal attributes or will (eg. the Holy Spirit according to JW interpretation is not a person, but God's force and has no will).

    3) Per the Bible and according to JW the body dies and cannot enter heaven so it cannot be the 'same thing' that was on earth, yet, JW believe the body = the soul. Thereby statement 2 and statement 1 cannot be true at the same time, it's a logical contradiction.

    You can extend 2 to include people resurrected. If God did not preserve your soul, spirit or body, how will he resurrect you the way you were. "From memory" sure, but then God DID preserve an aspect of your soul or spirit if not your body. Just like converting a letter with a signature from paper to digital and then printing it out again, is still legally considered a valid signature, just because you converted it into something different, doesn't mean it is no longer "the thing".

  • ThomasDam21
    33

    Do JWs see the org falling apart?

    by ThomasDam21 in
    1. watchtower
    2. beliefs

    i have been away from the jw cult for many years.

    i don't have any family i talk to that are in it.

    so i don't know if the jws as a whole are seeing the cult fall apart or if they or the majority of them are head in the sand la la la the end is neigh.

    1. Anony Mous
    2. Journeyman
    3. Anony Mous
  • Anony Mous
    Anony Mous

    @journeyman: What you describe as JW theology, very few people actually know how to answer those 'difficult' questions. So if a kid asks a logical question, then parents often don't even know WHAT they believe because they've been trained that asking questions is wrong, and looking up answers to those questions on yourself is hard.

    Unlike my kids in church, they go to Sunday school, have a pretty good knowledge about what they believe and what the Bible says. My other kid is raised with her JW mother, doesn't go to Sunday school, doesn't know at all what to believe, especially because we do go to church, she hears the things and it makes sense but in some places conflicts, she has a very hard time right now because the JW tell her a parody of what "Christendom" believes about hell and souls, then she goes to church and it actually all seems to make sense and not at all the parody that JWs hold other Christians to be.

    It's a really weird thing, and something a lot of ex-JW's either experience or "don't want anything to do with religion" they'll never experience it and keep a really wrong JW idea about what churches are and do. Most churches are not at all like JW, they are not at all like what the media or the JW parodies them to be. And that is the same for most other religions, I have a Buddhist friend and when I first left JW and met him, we talked about his believes, all I knew was from that WTBTS conversion literature which I knew backwards and forwards because I was in the foreign language field for years. So I asked him if that is what he believed and he looked really weird and said, no, that's actually a really old and anti-Buddhist propaganda that people like Mao used to prosecute them. That was eye opening to me, he invited me to Temple and yes, it is not at all what the JW books told me about. So as an ex-JW, if you're interested in other people's religions and having conversations with them about it, first re-learn everything you know by visiting their 'churches' and talking to them.

    So yes, the question is valid, if you don't have a soul, then 'what' goes to heaven if you're anointed. It can't be the fleshly body, which the explanation of God will just reconstruct a body, although not supported by the Bible, is a possibility, but if your body doesn't have a soul and the spirit is just your animating energy which dies when you die, then "what" goes to or becomes created in heaven, because even the JW believe that there is no 'flesh' only 'spirit' in heaven. The explanation that at the very end, God converts their soon-to-be-dead body/spirit/soul (which they claim is all the same thing) into something like a soul that then goes to heaven is a valid explanation, that actually fits within the Biblical interpretation of souls/spirits.