Posts by Anony Mous

posted

16
JWs in the news: "‘I Slay and Pray’- Jehovah’s Witness Serena Williams Reflects on Her Faith With Daughter Olympia in a Candid Confession"
by Balaamsass2 in
1. jw
2. experiences
"i slay and pray" :).

serena williams knows how to own a red carpet.

the 23-time grand slam champion turned heads at the vanity fair oscars afterparty, dazzling in a midnight-black, off-shoulder gown.
Anony Mous

@Aclue: Katherine is still alive, she resigned her custody over MJ's kid (now 23) only last week.
@TheListener: Yes, baptized and going in service etc.
12
Diligence and Enthusiasm - LDS vs JWs
by Rivergang in
1. watchtower
2. beliefs
on a scale of 1 to 100, i would put the lds in the high 90s, and the witnesses at about minus 10.. these days (well, around here at least) one encounters the mormon missionaries all over the place.

if they are not knocking at your door, they are approaching you out in the street.

of late, this has been happening all the bloody time!.
Anony Mous

8M JWs do not preach. I would say an average of 3-4M actually go in service, most of that these days is carts and letter writing for 1-2h/week if they’re “spiritually strong” or per month if they’re your average witness.
Mormons work 60-80h/week during their missionary service.
22
What is the current Watchtower "rent charge per publisher" for Kingdom Halls in the USA???
by Balaamsass2 in
1. watchtower
2. beliefs
i was following a few threads in reddit from current pimo jws complaining about local announcements regarding halls being short on their per publisher "rent payments".

third gen and i have been out pomo for a while...so how much is this charge now?

could this be part of the recent push to get people to "come back" or get re-instated...if it even is online and 15 minutes of service per month?
Anony Mous

That’s roughly $50/month + local expenses + personal expenses (suit, briefcase, transport), we are easily looking at $1000-1500/y/pp
Family of 5, no college, …
20
Did Watchtower Really Teach That Armageddon Was Coming in 1954?
by Jerome56 in
1. watchtower
2. beliefs
in the march 2025 jw broadcast david splane in his morning worship talk mentioned that "some thought" that armageddon would come 40 years after 1914. such statements are usually meant to shift the blame of their own false predictions on to their members for speculating.

however, i was unable to find anything in print showing that such a thing was indeed taught by the society.

was this really a thing?.
Anony Mous

@finishedmystery: that’s exactly how 18xx, 19xx, 1975 and 2000 was treated. Everybody believed it (there are even recordings of it being announced at conventions) and then when nothing happens it was “a small group” of people being misled but “not me”. Cognitive dissonance at its best, you cannot find a single witness that would’ve admitted “they” believed in 1975 after the fact, hell, I set the goal of 2000 myself as a child (if the end hasn’t come by the time I’m an adult) and then completely ignored the promise I made for myself because a pioneer girl made my baptism a precondition for her and then she still rejected me in favor of a ministerial servant. I did try to leave after that by getting a worldly girl, then I met another JW girl, a little redhead that wasn’t too strict with the rules… I was really thinking of another kind of salvation and paradise back then.
9
The Watchtower Wins, Disfellowshipping stays, Shunning stays.
by liam in
1. watchtower
2. beliefs
https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/1jb6nv6/jw_vs_norway_march_2025_from_jan_frode_nilsen/.

the verdict is out.

after full understanding and decision by the state administrator, full confirmation in the appeal case by the ministry of children and family affairs, three victories in the injunction case, a full victory in the district court, we now faced a loss in the court of appeal.
Anony Mous

With all the recent European cases, the courts are violating their own laws. These laws are being used to persecute some groups (but not about these matters, the other cases are mostly around prayer in public), when it comes to JW the WTBTS has consistently been able to persuade the politicians and judges not to convict them on clear written law. The only other groups that have consistently evaded the laws as written is Muslims.
My opinion is that at various levels, the WTBTS’ pretending to have an arms-length relationship and investments with organization like the UN, shady corporations like Rand Corporation and various trusts which do work on behalf of the UN and WEF and off course the influence they get in local politics through their real estate empire seems to be paying off for them.
The thing is the WTBTS is too small for major scrutiny but big enough to be able to “convince” a few politicians and judges to look the other way, especially at a local level.
2
The latest discoveries in DNA upend some ancient history.
by Balaamsass2 in
1. social
2. current
ancient history may be revised based on new dna discoveries.

https://www.wsj.com/science/the-ancient-horsemen-who-created-the-modern-world-ba4b314d?st=mgaryn&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink.

science.
Anony Mous

I like the story, however this is sensationalist science reporting and not really what the research says.
People in that region of the world share a complex DNA imprint with European, Asian, and Middle Eastern populations, resulting in a mixed ancestry that persists to this day.
Yes you can find a trace of a tribe in the modern European population, you can also find traces of tribes from other places.
Autosomal DNA only goes back a few generations (about 200 years) at which point nobody for sure can tell who your parents were. Mitochondrial DNA can tell to some extent your matrilineal ancestry for a bit over 1000 years. 8000 years ago, forget about it, the amount of DNA you inherit (or do not) is so small beyond a few dozen generations you cannot distinguish except for large region provided they were isolated from each other not too long ago.
So yes, we did inherit some DNA which travelled around the world but you cannot distinguish ancestry with any accuracy, it is equally likely an aboriginal tribe from Australia or a shark species has a similar genetic mutation that means nothing in the grand scheme of your DNA.
Whether anyone specifically inherited that mutation or whether this is even the same mutation is also impossible to say. It is entirely possible that over the years we have lost and then re-evolved that specific sequence, that’s how small the sample is.
From a research perspective, I would give this a “interesting enough to support your PhD thesis”, not “hypothesis proven”
19
The Share of Religious Americans will continue to decline- New York Times. Why? New Pew Study
by Balaamsass2 in
1. watchtower
2. scandals
locally, in northern california i have seen/heard a drop in jw and mainstream church attendance especially in person attendance.

(exception: a new creepy local new-age charismatic/pentecostal group: "bethel church" 11,000 and growing mega church(kundalini yoga/sex combined with prosperity gospel, trumpism, guns, rock music, dancing, glitter, speaking in tongues, and faith healing).. for me this paragraph sums it up regarding jehovah's witnesses: " ...smith described organized religion to me as having become a “polluted” idea in the american mainstream, because of the publicity around sex abuse scandals and financial malfeasance in many different faiths in the ’80s and ’90s as millennials came of age.

“the scandals violated most of the virtues believed to make religion good,” smith wrote.
Anony Mous

Christian church attendance has been declining for certain types of churches. There we see a decline of 30% or more in the past few decades, however Atheism hasn’t become much more prevalent, only increasing by 2%. Question is where did those people go. Around here most seem to go to non-denominational churches that aren’t politically affiliated and aren’t counted towards a major religious group.
There has been a notable increase in church attendance among millennials, with 39% reporting weekly attendance, up from 21% in 2019. Especially the traditional Latin Catholic Mass has seen a major bump.
So the numbers don’t really square up, these old traditional media survey/pollsters aren’t connecting with the majority of people and you basically end up polling an increasingly irrelevant portion of the population.
12
"Johnny The Bethelite" - VINDICATED!
by Nathan Natas in
1. watchtower
2. scandals
years ago rick fearon hosted on his six screens podcast a person identified as "johnny the bethelite" who talked about goings-on in watchtower headquarters.. johnny talked about the experiments with cart work.. johnny talked about pedophiles and child pornography in jw headquarters.. people claimed "johnny" was a fraud.

a fake.

cart work is everywhere.
Anony Mous

I don’t think Johnny ever said something most of us already didn’t know. Cart work was being rolled out (lol) when I was still “in” they just didn’t want people to make it their main priority. Child abuse is as old as the organization itself, the fact there aren’t more investigations is the real problem.
I mean, at one point didn’t he say the JW were connecting their headquarter sites with tunnels and bunkers - not sure how many millions they have, but 30 miles of underground tunnels at $200M-2B/mile and that’s just two of their sites and from experience, the bedrock there is about the equivalent of marble.
26
What are some of the more exceptional self-authenticating claims made by Jehovah’s Witnesses?
by Vanderhoven7 in
1. watchtower
2. beliefs
let's start the ball rolling with two connected claims.. the religion of jehovah’s witnesses is the one true religion.

all other religions are satanic, including all the churches of christendom..
Anony Mous

The name itself Jehovah’s Witnesses betrays their aggrandizement.
They are witnesses of God himself, which is scripturally the role reserved for the Messiah.
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are witnesses of Jesus.
Jesus' works are a witness of him.

Scripture is a witness of Jesus.

Jesus' disciples, including John, are witnesses of him.

People who encountered Jesus are witnesses of him.

They claim to be one or more of the above, but not of Jesus but of the godhead himself?