Max Divergent
JoinedPosts by Max Divergent
-
19
Knocking on a Kingdom Hall door
by trujw ini have been thinking latley about having a little fun.
i want to dress up in a suite go to the kingdom hall during a meeting and knocking on the door to offer them a religious track.
maybe i will record it and put it on youtube.
-
-
-
19
Knocking on a Kingdom Hall door
by trujw ini have been thinking latley about having a little fun.
i want to dress up in a suite go to the kingdom hall during a meeting and knocking on the door to offer them a religious track.
maybe i will record it and put it on youtube.
-
-
Max Divergent
You could let them know you're on a life saving work 'advertising, advertising and advertising', that 'religion is a snare and a racket', that they need to 'face the facts' including that 'millions then living are now dead'.
Why put yourself up for something that starts fun and ends in a major headache?
Yeah, but what major headache could result? Assuming there's no personal fallout, nothing illegal is proposed. And if it's a bona fide religious message (rather than my tounge-in-cheek suggestion) then it's probably a protected religious activity just like the JWs work is. You could even find old JW legal cases and do what they did years ago, went to court over and won.
Or..... here's the template for a bona fide religious message you can adapt to suit the Old Testamnet rejecting JWs...
-
15
Classic 1969 footage from the BBC on 1975...
by wizzstick infound this on you tube:.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4as2abu8cm4.
relevant jw bits are from:.
-
-
Max Divergent
Good find! Hard to deny the expectation of 1975 didnl texist back then or that the publicaitons were manipulted to exclude the exact statement when it was openly reported on 6 years before the date.
the brother trying to prove 1914 calls 607 BC the start year "according to Witness chronology". Mmm
An honest JW explaining 1914 honestly, well, well, well... Anyone know what happened to that bro? Was he purged? Or did he wake up to himself and start talking Watchtower-truth?
And what is that Englishwoman's thing from that era (1969) with speaking without moving the lips? They end up with a wierd look and sound. Margaret Thatcher did it too. Is it a socila class thing?
-
147
Your views and ideas on forum areas and organization?
by Simon inthis may come as a shock to some people, but the current forum structure was kind of thrown together without much real thought and then evolved a bit over time.
there are a few things that particularly grate on me and areas where i don't think the subjects work particularly well.
'friends' is a bit vague and becomes a dumping ground, news & world events vs politics & current affairs is hard to decide sometimes, child abuse is a scandal but isn't contained withing 'scandals & coverups' etc.... with a new forum platform imminent, it's a good time to solicit ideas to improve things.
-
-
Max Divergent
I use 'Active Topics' view and see the forum name more as a category than an actual forum.
I think keeping forums broard and spliting them up as much by 'tone' of the conversation rather than topic might address some of the perennial issues. So, support and discussion is open to anyone. Debates etc is open to those willing to sign up and log in. That lessens the 'It's a bad witness to wavering JWs to be rude to each other' consideration.
And a lot of the 'fluff' is useful to people at one stage or another, so 'Life after the Witnesses' is intended to encompass everthing a JW needs to know about the world but couldn't ask an elder: politics, relationships, work issues, health, jokes, exploring new ideas etc.
How about:
- Open / JW / Life after the Witnesses (Support and discussion)
- Open / JW / Personal Experiences & Opinions (Support and discussion)
- Open / Watchtower / Beliefs, Doctrine & Practices
- Open / Watchtower / Scandles, abuses and cover-ups
- Open / Watchtower / History [thanks SBF]
- Open / Forum / Messages
- Open / Forum / Messages (auto delete in 6 months)
- Members / JW / Life after the Witnsses (inc. adult, politics and debate)
- Members / JW / Personal Experiences & Opinions (inc. adult, politics and debate)
- Members / Watchtower / Scandles, abuses and cover-ups (inc. adult and debate)
- Members / Watchtower / Criticism, activism, campaigning
- Members / Forum / Apostofests and meetups
- Members / Forum / Messages
- Members / Forum / Messages (auto-delete in 6 months)
- Members / Forum / Technical and forum support and comment (auto-delete in 6 months)
Do music and You Tube threads (there are heaps) need their own forum? Or do they just fit into whatever theame the music or You Tube is about?Trouble is when the links break you get zillions of dead posts.
Plus, have some comprehensive FAQs about how to post You Tubes and all that usual forum support stuff. Maybe some general articles (not threads, just articles, maybe crowdsourced) can be permenently posted in a prominant place summarising some of the ideas in the 'best of' threads on the topics that keep coming up... how to fade, how to reason critically, what logical falacies are, what evolution is, the 'must read' list for departing JWs, what alternative beleif structures exist and what each is all about: from Christianity to paganism to athisim, how to get an education and a good job etc etc.
Having the option to post anything into Messages and have is go after 6 months (or whatever) whould let people put somthing short-term / trival up if they want without people being surprised by a clean-up later.
Just my thoughts. Really I'd just be happy with a spell checker...
-
34
Former COs that Become Inactive
by Bob_NC insome long years ago a circuit overseer told me that the area he was from had several former cos that had "left the road" as they call it and were just sitting on their laurels.
he said that they don't pioneer and some were irregular publishers.
a different co made a remark to the effect of "you think that servants or pioneers live a restricted life, cos are under the supervision of the service dept.
-
-
Max Divergent
The C.O who made ghengis khan look soft,Han Hubler ??...think he may have been a close relative of Hitler by the way he behaved.
No, it wasn't Hubler. I never met him. I think this facist was Phillip somthing. A young-sh guy, maybe 40 somthing. I never talked to him.
In the E/MS meeting he went through everyone's service record - not sure he named names, but everyone knew that if we wanted to stay in our positions we personally, and the publishers in our groups, needed to have bigger numbers on their reports. The brothers were all just silent and squirming: it was a pretty liberal body, but the conservative elders were slowly gaining ground and now they had a new ally. The CO's talk to the cong was just a watered down version of the same shite.
I got pulled aside over my reports a few weeks later by my liberal friend elders. In any case, my reports were completly fabricated and were designed to show a steady decline from about 10 or 12 in the old days to 3 to 5 or lower as I became 'sick'. I tried 'forgetting' to put one in one month and my friend the Secretary said not to worry, he put in 12 for me (four times the reality, and he knew it).
In retrospect they must have been desperate to keep liberal allies as MS with the hope of getting them on the elder body to keep the balance their way. But I must have seemed to have let them down by claiming ill health and asking to be removed. Not what they expected.
They fought and fought with me to just to be seen more in the FS and to put in bigger numbers and everything would be ok. But what I was really doing was leaving the truth. I got announced as deleted the meeting before a long planned and lengthy vacation, then never, ever, ever went back to meetings and had no contact with any JWs. That was 15 years ago.
All good now.
-
11
Shock at the Doctor's office...
by Odrade ini had a routine doctor visit this morning with a primary care.
she happens to be someone i saw once about 9 years ago during a brief swap in insurance providers.
shortly after that visit, our insurance changed and the doctor was no longer on the "approved" list.
-
-
Max Divergent
And it was probably blood that tipped me over from doubting to being sure it was all false.
I was visiting a hospital and ended up in an elevator with a patient in a bed being wheeled from theatre to her room. I saw a bag with bright orange blood and recognised it as cell saver blood. I thought that was just a blood transfusion with a gimmick and if the 'abstain from blood' things was a binding law from God, then that person was in violation. I also wondered how complicated adherence to 'abstain from blood' was and how volumes and volumes of words could be wrtten on what that meant. So, if cell saver was OK, so was every other blood product. And I thought cell saver blood was OK.
Then I recognised her.
I used to have my book study at her house in my old congo. On the ward was a man wating for her: he looked like an elder and he seemed OK with the bag of blood dripping into her arm.
That was, there and then, the end of my acceptance of the blood ban. That practice, cell saver, just didn't seem to meet 'abstain from blood' as described by the WTS and the blah, blah, blah surrounding it was just a smokescreen of fine sounding words to conceal a fundemental error. If cell saver was OK (and I thought it was), then 'abstain from blood' was irrelevent to modern medical treatments in my view.
End of being a JW.
End of pretending to be a JW took a bit longer.
-
11
Shock at the Doctor's office...
by Odrade ini had a routine doctor visit this morning with a primary care.
she happens to be someone i saw once about 9 years ago during a brief swap in insurance providers.
shortly after that visit, our insurance changed and the doctor was no longer on the "approved" list.
-
-
Max Divergent
As a JW I never felt right about having that 'chat' to my doctor and never ever did, it seemed like something a freak would do. So I ignored the suggestion and just talked to the doc about medical things.
I had a blood card in my wallet, but I always hated it being there: it did two things, 1) make me look like a freak to any non-JW who saw it, and 2) protect me from questioning from JW's who might notice its absence if I didn't have one. Oh, yeah, and put my life at risk too. On balance I thought it was better to have one for JWs to see.
But I seem to have a vauge memory, and this may be a wishful one, that as I got closer to leaving that there were a couple of shortcomings in how it was filled out: like undated, or unwitnessed or somthing, and that I was quite content with that. Or maybe it was blank? I can't quite remember. Or maybe each year it just got less complete. I do remember my wife chiding me about it though. And my book study conductor suggesting he have a look at it for some reason one day and that I had to make an excuse: he didn't persue it.
Once Mrs Divergent saw through it all too, we had a little ceremony burning our cards in the backyard. Happy day.
-
34
Former COs that Become Inactive
by Bob_NC insome long years ago a circuit overseer told me that the area he was from had several former cos that had "left the road" as they call it and were just sitting on their laurels.
he said that they don't pioneer and some were irregular publishers.
a different co made a remark to the effect of "you think that servants or pioneers live a restricted life, cos are under the supervision of the service dept.
-
-
Max Divergent
(or Slaman? - he was of Iranian or Iraqi origin I believe) yadda
I think might have spelt it Sleiman (?) and called himself 'Persian' which probably means Iranian in modern terms.
I still remember ... how impressive he was as a speaker ... I wonder what happened to Joe and where he is now yadda
He was brilliant. I heard he was living in NSW and happy and well.
I also remember Carl as a substitute CO in WA... I kept clear of him... Jaidubdub
Very wise. I tried to, and sometimes suceeded. Usually failed. I went into his house once: he had big white leather couches. He was hard work. So was Pam. He was an ultra conservative.
Joe was still a JW when he left WA Jaidubdud
How the memory condences things! He couldn't have stayed in for long after WA though.
-
261
Evolution is Crap, there I said it!
by Crazyguy inok i started another thread and every one jumped on me because i was trying to take the theory of evolution out of the mix and most here seem to believe in it so i will just say it.
the theory of major evolution is crap!
the theory is falling apart.
-
-
Max Divergent
Last but not least evolutionist can not explain how the laws of physics came about under the evolutionist theory.
Crazyguy was, of course, right about that in his OP.
I think cosmology includes the study of how the universe came to be the way it is, including the laws of physics. Evolution is possible because the laws of physics work they way they do: they did not evolve. I think physical laws came to be just after the big bang, but I stand to be corrected.
If there are other universes (as the multiverse hypothosis allows), I understand different laws of physics may apply in other universes. And that's nothing to do with evolution either.
But, either way, evolution works in accord with the laws of physics and is not an explanation for them.
-
34
Former COs that Become Inactive
by Bob_NC insome long years ago a circuit overseer told me that the area he was from had several former cos that had "left the road" as they call it and were just sitting on their laurels.
he said that they don't pioneer and some were irregular publishers.
a different co made a remark to the effect of "you think that servants or pioneers live a restricted life, cos are under the supervision of the service dept.
-
-
Max Divergent
Joe Sleighman was a DO in Western Australia (WA), or maybe had just left WA (in Australia, not Washington state), when he departed the JWs. I understood him to have just stopped attending and to have 'gone apostate', but never got the full details. I really liked Joe. That was mid 1990s.
As I remember it, he was the first of three consecutive overseers to go from the same circut (Joe being the DO for that circut) in Perth, WA. I won't introduce anyone else's full name, but Alan H and Phil T were the COs who were subsequently DFd. I never knew what happened to Alan, but he and his wife seemed good company. They had a flash car (a gold Holden Calais I think it was) and he and his brother, so the story went, had made some money in business before both went onto the circut. I remember having lunch with Joe and Alan and their wives about that time. None of them wanted to talk JW stuff, and Joe spent most of his lunch reading The Australian (the local serious broardsheet. I reckoned that was cool).
The next one was Phil T from Queensland. He was a great guy, and looked just like Dr Phil. He had some marital issues and ended up DF as a result, but so far as I know he remained loyal.
The next CO they sent in was a corporate arsehole who made Ghengis Khan look soft and indulgent. They also had Carl O, ex-bethel, as a substitute inbetween times. He was never fun. Before them there was an old guy who just kept saying things like 'and where were you in 1952?'. He was a bit dottty, I think.
I spent a horrid overnight at bethel about the same time. It was truly awful. It set me as much on the path to apostacy as anything else. Dozens of married couples on construction sharing this space about the size of two basketball courts with sheets draped over a frame between them for 'privacy'. People wandering about like zombies who had been alive before they went. Spooky magazine art paintings on the walls. Mission brown everything. Bizzare breakfast chatter and frightening 'morning worship'. All the usual stuff in God's house.
The bright spot was a dude in a room by himself with a computer on the internet (it was new at the time) near the printing room. He had this great clip off CNN he just kept watching over and over. He may have been on the way to madness, or apostacy, but he seemed a bright light in a crazy place.