growing up as a jw, i always thought the ancients were scientific morons who knew next to nothing.
ashamedly, i used to run around citing isaiah 40:22 as proof of the bible's 'divine authorship' because it talked about "the circle of the earth".
as though this were somehow an unknowable before spaceflight.
Pretty damn smart..... JW world history is offensive and without doubt knowingly misleading.
Ancient Computers
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
Ancient Maths and Physics (measuring the circumference of earth)
https://owlcation.com/stem/How-Did-the-Ancient-Greeks-Measure-the-Circumference-of-the-Earth
i was wondering if someone could help me with a question.. i am a rookie exjw, i only left the organization 4 months ago and everything i've discovered (un/arc/malawi/mexico etc) i've only discovered in the last few months so you can image it's been a huge shock to me especially after after 50 yrs!.
every time i think i've heard everything, something else pops up.. now i've come across a youtube video that mention tv evangelizer jimmy swaggart and the watchtower.
i remember jimmy swaggart from the time i lived in the u.s.a and i remember the scandals with him and prostitutes etc.
Google "Rand Cam Watchtower"
You will see US government documents proving that WT owned a NAVY military company.
My best friend figured I was lying and wrote to bethel, they sent him (via the elders) a reply indicating they owned it for years without knowing. He wasn't allowed a copy of their reply. By this time I had left, he went into a major depression.
i spoke to finance experts who said WT were lying. Nobody owns a company without knowing it, obviously....
is it a common practice for jw parents to kick their children out of the home, if the child doesn't want to be a jw.
(even though their not disfellowshipped they will still get kicked out for not going to meetings etc.??).
do other religions encourage kicking family members out this as well?
The number of JW kids homeless, living with other families or partners in their teens is ridiculous. When growing up,I thought nothing of it. Now I am ashamed!
Teenagers get married, have kids, take on church roles in the JW's and these are humans still 'being baked', still incomplete with the frontal cortex still in development, vital to decision making, reasoning and consequence consideration.
I'm 36 and only now settling down to a serious life and future, to think my friends getting married at 18 or 19 even at 21.... Looking back I'm so shocked and saddened.
For some reason, JW families love doubling down with the threat of ousting a child from the family home. Myself and my brother were booted out and homeless many times for pathetic reasons. For the husband/father it is a pathetic act of machismo and badge of loyalty to the org .... a desperate cry of "make me an elder look what I'm willing to do" and for the crying mother it's a test in how brainwashed she is to deny every ounce of nature in her body so as to reject her offspring and kick it out the house,
Raise a generation of people on the belief that Armageddon is coming and rightly so, that all adults and children 'of age' will die and rightly so... if they don't obey! You end up with people who will coldly, without hesitation, see their child homeless and independent if they don't follow the JW world perspective,
I think of all the teens and people I knew who left or got kicked out back when I was a JW and now I have only the deepest admiration and sympathy, what brave, strong, free thinking individuals.
I heard of a young woman in her mid teens being kicked out the family home for being unruly. A relative of mine saw her sleeping in a bus shelter. There had been a big argument, she had claimed there was abuse in the family. The father had proudly told people how he had used her like a mop, dragging her across the floor to boot her out,. The JW opinion of her was awful, they didn't see a child in need, they saw a trouble maker. I lost my shit when I heard about this girl (I don't know her &I have never met her) and some of my family (who were in but now out and feel differently) were defending the parents decision. The brain washing in my sibling had never been so dark than when she tried to,compute how a child in need was at fault. A cult can really dehumanise all involved, the victim, the parents and the onlookers.
It's a dangerous and toxic place..... get out and get your kids out.
bbc news website has this linked on front page.. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40704990.
BBC News website has this linked on front page.
hello to all, so i did want to talk about this topic because i think it is very important to me.
i have a grandfather who faded several decades ago.
he occasionally attends an assembly and the memorial but no longer attends meetings or goes on field service.
I spent many years pondering this.
My decision came on a very simple realisation; disfellowship, disassociate, or to be marked ... these are JW terminology, they are all JW doctrine, they are all part of the rules and regulations within the JW game.
I refuse to play along with their game anymore. To disassociate is to legitimise their rules, processes, doctrines....
It's all insignificant playground BS.... so just wipe it off your shoes and walk away.
i'm sure i am not the only one to have heard this come out of the mouths of my loved ones.
it's a very painful thing to hear, especially when it comes from the people like your own parents/family.
even after i've been told that, they would say "we'll just continue life without you.
Ironically....
i had this discussion and I said... if there is a god who personifies love I have no doubt that I will be fine at Armageddon because I know my heart, my motives and how I live my life. I said, if my own family wouldn't think I deserved death then how could a just god?
This had an unusual reaction, my sibling very angrily said... "but if I spend decades going to meetings and in the ministry and you don't, that wouldn't be fair for you to survive Armageddon!"
This says it all...
He immediately realised what he said, it wasn't about sovereignty, love, justice, it was actually very unloving, judgmental and illogical.
i also reasoned that I no longer feel comfortable at the idea of everyone on earth perishing and that I would be opposed to a person/leader/God that did it. I explained that I no longer wish to have a wooden cabin in paradise at the cost of billions of people now living dying.
Beautiful cabins in the woods as per WT propaganda, exist now and if I want one that badly I can earn it NOW by working hard. To daily pray that those people who own that land now die so I can go build my own cabin there for free ...would now shame me. I remember JW's regularly picking out the nice houses in the local community that they wanted to one day steal after everyone dies at Armageddon.... how shameful.
Who wants to survive a global genocide on the side of the killer?
Why would they support and pray for a genocide just because they fear being part of it?
Why would a global genocide be appropriate just because a deity says so?
As Hitchens said of the God that would ask you to kill your ownly son on a mountain ... you don't bind him, take him up the hill and sharpen the knives... you tell the God to F Off and Suffer the consequence! ...... any alternate response is that of an unfit parent or human.
hello, i've been lurking for quite some time here on this forum, reading a whole lot and i've finally made the courage to create an account as a form of escape and in hopes to be understood and not feel "mentally diseased".
little background on me, i am a born in but i consider myself a pimo (physically in mentally out).
i feel like i've always had doubts but these doubts would sink with the meetings and the assemblies and every other little thing that drowns any doubts a witness may have.
Well done for being so brace, never forget you are in the right.... the brainwashed crowd you are swimming out of are in the wrong. They are forbidden to even ask questions, admit their doubts... that's unnatural and dishonest. Truth never needs protecting, it will protect itself. It's good to hear you are likewise now protecting your mind, heart and future! ❤️
a nearby star, ross 128, about 11 light years away, seems to be putting out some rather remarkable radio waves.
discovered by the arecibo observatory in puerto rico (the one shown in the move contact) other observatories like the allen telescope array are set to begin observations in the next couple of days to make sure the signal really is coming from interstellar space and isn't caused by instrument malfunction or radio waves bouncing off satellites.
it could be anything at this point (but very-very unlikely aliens).
"It now seems clear that the Arecibo detections were due to transmissions from Earth satellites in geosynchronous orbit. Ross 128 has a declination (which is comparable to latitude) of close to 0 degrees, which places it in the thick of a phalanx of these satellites. It was telemetry from these satellites, and not extraterrestrials, which accounts for the signals. "
SETI
i was a window cleaner, i was at the time unemployed, homeless.
i had no education to be proud of (high school one a two b's rest c's) i was a jehovahs witness.
i had been a pioneer.
Thank you for all the kind words. For those that think they are beyond turning their life around, medical schools accept students right into their 40's. I didn't graduate until early 30's. Don't hold off because of age, no matter what you want to do with your......life after watchtower.
thought i'd start a separate discussion on the subject.. those who know me know i'm struggling with faith; i want to believe, some days i do but it becomes difficult.. many believers say there is verifiable proof of jesus' existence outside of the bible.. please post this proof..
Jonestown massacre....
Belief and the willingness to die for it means sweet FA.
You will find truth in evidence and evidence alone. Sometimes the current truth is only to say we can't yet know.
