We are ordinary human beings. Ordinary human beings communicate with words. If there is a god who created us with the ability to communicate with words then he has an obligation to speak to us in clear simple language. I'm sorry but Jesus Christ may have the title "the word of God" but he came and went 2000 years ago. To me if there is a god the ball is in his court. Until then you are entitled to pretend you hear some deity speaking to you but don't do anything it says.
scotoma
JoinedPosts by scotoma
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69
Not Sure What I Believe In Anymore
by nuthouse escapee ininside my head is a tangled ball of wool when it comes to what i believe.
i have days where i believe in a creator and other days when i don't.
then there are times when i refer to this as believing in 'something' but what exactly this something is, i have no idea.
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Transactional Analysis
by frankiespeakin infor those who like this type of thing:.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/transactional_analysis.
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scotoma
I read all of Berne's books. I especially liked "What do you say after you say Hello".
It helped me see the futility of trying to change people. You have to know the theoretical stuff to make change. At the same time if you know the theoretical basis of TA it no longer is magic. The magic of cure only works if the therapist is viewed as someone who knows the "magic words".
Quick therapy works for a short time. Long term therapy helps the client live through and past their problems.
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16
I like watching fighting, does that make me a bad guy?
by Theocratic Sedition injust got done watching the jones/belfort fight and a few of the fights leading up to the main event.
every time i say i'm not gonna watch this stuff any more, i end up watching some more.
not only watching, but enjoying it.
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scotoma
No it doesn't make you wicked. It just means you are a very ordinary, average, run of the mill human male.
As long as you don't get any serious leadership position little harm is done. Eventually nature will rob you of your testosterone and you will cry when you watch old Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan movies.
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scotoma
OTWO was speaking about a "false" self vs "authentic self". That is a false dichotomy. I say we are always our "selves". Sometimes our "selves" are disoriented due to inaccurate information about the world.
An infant is unsocialized. It is intent that its needs are "miraculousy" taken care of. Socialization is learning that there are other people in this world. Our first disorientation comes from believing that we are totally dependent on these "others" for our needs to be satisfied. Of course an infant can't see the big picture, but as it does see a larger context it comes to understand more about how everything works and what's expected. Maturation requires the organism or "self" to make informed decisions and eventually realizes that its information may need tweaking to conform to reality. So there is never a question about whether a self is authentic or false.
Black and white? You are either dead or alive. Aristotle defined psyche as the capacity to feel, sense, think and act. Each "self" is some hierarchy of these capacities. People are thinkers, doers, feelers and seers in some combination.
I know I am generally open to the possibility that I may be wrong and I have changed my views many times. I rigorously keep challenging my own as well as others views. My toilet reading is usually books on logic and critical thinking. Toilet reading because I can't take more than a page of that at a time.
The heritibility of Openness to change has been demonstrated in quite a bit of research. Do a search on the five factor model and openness to change. You will find evidence there.
I'm glad you asked for a clarification of my statement about getting people to believe lies. I was referring to the fact that organizations that try to get you to join their fraternal state use love/friendship more than argumentation and presentation of proof or evidence to get people to join. So if you are going to coax them away from that state you have to appear more loving than their group. But the problem is that along with the love bomb you are often simply offering them another more conventional and generally accepted lie.
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scotoma
OTWO:
I said close to 2000 psychology books. Not 2,000+ but 2,000- still close.
Obviously you have a pretty good grasp of psychology without reading so many books.
I like your point about "mis-guided energy". That puts it in the proper context and steers clear of ambiguous ideas about some authentic self.
Our self is always authentic. I prefer the word "disoriented" self. Garbage in - Garbage out.
There is a dimension of the Five Factor Model of personality called "openness".
The standard bell curve applies to the distribution of this trait.
People high in openness to experience are always challenging the status quo and authority. They tend to be more creative and less rigid. They also tend to be liberal vs conservative.
Life crisis' can push a person into re-examining their orientation. Those who are low on openness don't do a good job at challenging the options set before them. They are especially vulnerable to religious conversion. Once they make up their mind it is very hard for them to change it. These are people that don't want to be bothered with the challenge of constant re-evaluation.
A lot of people leave JW's and continue to believe in God and the Bible and all the fantastic false promises that are the fabric of all religions. These mainstream religions are made up of people that are willing to risk their life in warfare even killing fellow believers in other countries.
Openness to experience is highly heritable. This suggests that perhaps some peoples "authentic selves" are really gullible and resistant to change. Others "authentic selves" live their lives challenging everything.
Hassan does seem to have toned down his techniques. While we can't say for a certainty that love never fails we can be sure that if love doesn't work then nothing will. Telling people how much they are loved gets them to believing lies. Telling them how much they are loved can get them to believing in the more conventional lies of their non-JW relatives.
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Thinking People vs.Non-Thinking People
by minimus inmost jws do not think.
they feel.
they are told a certain thing and they simply accept it or just don't care all that much what the real facts are.
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scotoma
Thinking is overated.
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20
Thinking People vs.Non-Thinking People
by minimus inmost jws do not think.
they feel.
they are told a certain thing and they simply accept it or just don't care all that much what the real facts are.
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scotoma
Here is a fact:
A Pew Research Center Poll from July 2009 showed that only around 6 per cent of U.S. scientists are Republicans; 55 percent are Democrats, 32 percent are independent, and the rest "don't know" their affiliation.
It's so reassuring to know that republican ideology isn't contaminated by those ignorant, arrogant, ivory tower scientists. Republicans know that God will take care of the poor, if not in this world, then in the world we will all be raptured to in the near future. Republicans don't need to worry about the condition of the earth since it is destined for destruction.
Thank God for Republicans.
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Have you met anyone on the Governing Body?
by Christ Alone ini posted on another thread about a couple of my experiences of meeting the governing body while i was in brooklyn.
i wanted to see if anyone else had any experiences along these same lines.
i met most of the ones that were current during the 2001-2003 years.
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scotoma
I had Barber as a district servant in the early 50's. I was just a little boy 5 or 6. But I thought he was strangely shy.
He never looked at the audience and appeared to be reading all of his talks.
A circuit overseer later told me when I was older that Barber's speeches were all memorized and that he sometimes would be paging through the song book while he recited his talk. Apparently he was shy - probably Asberger's Syndrome.
Karl Klein was fairly close to my parents. Him and his wife stayed with us a couple times.
He would start out a conversation with a leading title almost like a headline. One time he started out saying "There are no more Giants".
Realizing he needed to follow that up with some "amazing" insight I asked "What do you mean?"
He said, "Well their was Russell, then Rutheford, and then Knorr but now those Giants are gone and things are run by a Governing Body." He was presiding on the Governing body and called attention to that saying, "For example, right now I have the most important job on earth but somehow it doesn't feel that way." Being a brash young man with little respect for authority I asked him point blank "Who was the Giant Killer?"
He drew a blank look and became silent or should I say "discreet". I personally lost half of my faith in the Watchtower when they started rotating positions in the top teaching positions. I resented that because it presumed that all these guys had equal talent and ability. I was conducting the school at the time and refused to be appointed to Elder because I thought they did away with that concept back when they allegedly established theocratic order back in 1938. I felt the elder arrangement was kind of a coup d tat. The fact that Klein ended the conversation affirmed to me that there had to be some controversey over that whole deal.
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scotoma
Another concept that is thrown around is "authentic self". That's some real BS (bogus science). Even supposing there is such a thing as "authentic self". What even are the dimensions of "self" that you could compare an "authentic self" with an "unauthentic self"
The very fact that some of you get upset over my criticism of the mighty HASSAN is troubling.
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scotoma
Sizemik:
"No difference". Yeah! No two snow flakes are alike either. Who cares. I'm talking about really significant differences. Differences that make a difference.
I agree that there are non-religious organizations that have authoritarian structures and leaders also.
My main point is that cult fighters are not exempt from scrutiny. They have an even greater responsibility to defend their practices based on peer reviewed evidence.