That's why we begin with The Illiad, it is filled with rape, murder, hatred, human sacrifice, and other good, clean violence. Stephen Mitchell has a new and very readable version out: no flowery language to get in the way of all the hate. Excellent!
Posts by Sulla
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36Thank you watchtower...
by punkofnice in..having been raised in your nutty cult i now have confusion over my world view!.
as i'm a brit we don't go in for therapy.
i tend to see it as some bloke trying to ask about freudian sex associations from my childhood.
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218
Does anybody still believe in God and the Bible?
by tornapart ini just want to know out of interest how many here still believe in god and christ and that the bible is god's word.
my faith in the wts is gone but i still love god and his son.
i've noticed that many here have lost their faith in god as well as the wts.
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Sulla
Of course, designs, the contrast is between a religion that has Jesus as the sine qua non and a religion that has the conspiracy theory as the sine qua non. If the JWs were Christian, I think we would see more substitution into different Christian religions rather than into no- or fuzzy religion. My hypothesis is that atheism and not Christianity is the 'nearest neighbor' to JW-ism.
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36
Thank you watchtower...
by punkofnice in..having been raised in your nutty cult i now have confusion over my world view!.
as i'm a brit we don't go in for therapy.
i tend to see it as some bloke trying to ask about freudian sex associations from my childhood.
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Sulla
Punk, the scandal of the JW mind and the scandal of the JWs self is ultimately the same: there isn't one. The (re)discovery of these things cannot be expected to be easy.
But, where would one begin to go about finding these things? My recommendation, if you care, is to go back to the beginning. Start with The Illiad, think on it, question how it makes you respond to it. Read about the work. Then repeat with Shakespeare, Dante. Stay away from scripture: you have been miseducated in the proper way to read it and it is poison to you now. You've spent many years forcing reality to fit with the conspiracy theory that is the JWs such that you have trouble understanding your own self. People think these works and others get at the truth of our selves, so start there. God speed you.
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218
Does anybody still believe in God and the Bible?
by tornapart ini just want to know out of interest how many here still believe in god and christ and that the bible is god's word.
my faith in the wts is gone but i still love god and his son.
i've noticed that many here have lost their faith in god as well as the wts.
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Sulla
It is interesting to see the degree to which XJWs locate themselves on a spectrum mostly tilting toward aggressive atheism. Obviously, this isn't everyone, but if the responses are at all typical of XJWs as a whole, then we have an interesting pattern.
It is interesting because these are people who went to church four times a week, if you include field service. That's pretty religious, by most reckoning. You might reasonably expect that people unhappy with the JWs substitute into a similar sort of religion: another new American religion, Islam, maybe, or even mainine Protestantism, given the relative market share. I mean, if you drive a BMW and you get sick of BMWs, you expect to substitute into something similar; you don't expect to substitute to a Chevy or Maserati.
My hypothesis, in case anybody cares, is that the JWs are not a Christian religion at all. What they are is a club for conspiracy theorists who happen to use scripture as their source text. Didn't have to be scripture, could have been pyramidology (!) or numerology (!) or Protocols of the Elders of Zion. We see this in every aspect of the JW ouvre: the Great Apostasy, Constantine's maneuvering, the interpretations of every apocalyptic paragraph to some important item in the JW history: everything proves everything else.
The important thing is that the JWs don't attract religious people: they attract people who aren't really serious about their own religion, or people who are unattached to any religion at all. When people become dissatisfied with the JWs, they go (or go back) to the nearest thing to JW-ism, which is atheism, generally speaking. Often, the anger of the XJWs also becomes focused on the source documents of the conspiracy theory: scripture.
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17
In a funeral... or when the JWs want to show they're different
by hijosdelawatch ina couple of days ago i went to the funeral of an old age brother in his 80s.. well, that was the typical jw funeral although his daughter and the rest of his family are not witnesses.
as you know the brothers don't wear black clothes nor they show lot of sadness as a "prove" they believe in resurrection.. the problem this time is some of them went too far.
two sisters had red clothing and at the entrance a group of brothers were literally laughing.
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Sulla
Well, my grandfather died last year. He was, near as I can tell, and atheist. My immediate family are JWs: my father is well known and well connected, while my brother in law is a CO. It's that sort of family.
Anyhow, the memorial service consisted of a) a friend of Grandfather's delivering a eulogy and b) my father delivering a JW apologetic talk for ~20 minutes, complete with dutiful JWs in attendance flipping to each of the scriptures.
I'm sensitive to Quendi's cautions regarding the unwholesome habit of over-generalization and I understand the possibility that not every single JW funeral everywhere is a complete disaster. Still, I think my experience might be called typical, since I know the JWs to be such gaping maws of selfishness and pride that, to borrow a phrase, they are the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral.
Seriously, the memorial service for a man who was not a JW, filled with people who are not JWs, turns out to be all about the JWs? Sorry, but I think it's typical.
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18
How much longer will 1914 be preached??
by OneDayillBeFree inwas in the city today and saw an old factory with the year of its beginning painted on the wall saying "since 1914", and thought "thats a long time ago".. i believe the teaching of 1914 will slowly fade away and be forgotten in about 10-15years, give or take... it's seriously starting to lose its touch.. millions now living will never buy it.... but since it's a hardcore doctrine of jdubbies and the watchtower used to pinpoint the coming of jesus(invisible), the start of the famous "last days", the 144,000 and part of the reason the govering body have their power, they will have to find a damn good explanation and another alternative.
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or it could just remain unchanged.... .
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Sulla
The hard-core take it very seriously. I know a guy who, when buying a house in a new development, purchased the one with the address 1914. Cute. But, Sulla pater has chosen the e-mail address, [email protected]. If they change the doctrine, he will need a new address.
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GAME OVER argument
by johnnyc in[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng /> </o:officedocumentsettings> </xml><!
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Sulla
Sorry, Johnnyc, but I think you're mistaken. They aren't going to become a more mainstream religion because they aren't a religion at all. They are a club for conspiracy theorists. They are all like those people who take Holy Blood, Holy Grail or Da Vinci Code or pyramidology seriously, which, as it happens, they did. For them, scripture is a secret map, the decoders of which will find the way to untold riches and power.
And, by short-circuited logic, everything proves everything else. It's why logical arguments are not generally effective on JWs, it was never about a logical argument.
Everybody thinks they've found the solution to the JW problem, the "game over" fact. They haven't. There isn't a solution. Sometimes people wake up, mostly they don't. And the reason they don't is for the same reason they chose to become JWs in the first place.
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Theological Arguments, Human Realities
by AllTimeJeff inas i have sunken to a new low in condescending posts (according to botchtowersociety, who truthfully is an expert on all things bullshit), it did occur to me that discussions, debates, and mud slinging insult matches on this board often have a common root.. let me put out there that i am not an atheist, nor an agnostic.
frankly, i respect your right to believe that god is a trinity.
that he is jesus.
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Sulla
Well, Tec, I never said that every single JW was arrogant or intellectually lazy, so if that's not the case in your experience, then everything's fine. For that matter, I don't know that I've ever claimed that I was not arrogant or prideful.
What I have said is that converting to the JWs is a signal of those sorts of attitudes. And what I have said I mean by that is that JWs attract a disproprotionate number of intellectually lazy and arrogant people. Please take the time to read that twice: I literally cannot make the point any clearer than that, ok?
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161
Theological Arguments, Human Realities
by AllTimeJeff inas i have sunken to a new low in condescending posts (according to botchtowersociety, who truthfully is an expert on all things bullshit), it did occur to me that discussions, debates, and mud slinging insult matches on this board often have a common root.. let me put out there that i am not an atheist, nor an agnostic.
frankly, i respect your right to believe that god is a trinity.
that he is jesus.
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Sulla
Well, let's see. Arrogant and stupid JWs on other sites seem to have a problem with what I say. One wonders if arrogant and stupid ex-JWs have a problem with what I say here. Tough to know without more data, really.
But, and this is just a theory, I think that JWs attract the arrogant and the intellectually lazy in disproportionate numbers. One of the ideas I have is that, merely coming to a point where you leave the JWs does not change the underlying personality. If so, then ex-JWs would also tend to be intellectually lazy and arrogant in similarly disproportionate numbers.
Suppose that's true for a minute. I think the easiest thing for an ex-JW to do after leaving is to fall into a sort of hipster atheism. JWs are notoriously anti-Christian to begin with and we are all living in a aggressively secular society. Hell, I did the same thing for a while, thinking that the failure of the JWs was also an indictment of religion in general. But nothing could be easier, right? It allows you to put what you feel is maximum distance between yourself and the old, discredited ways (much like, after a bad breakup, one might insist that the next relationship will be with someone as opposite as possible). It makes few demands of your time or intellect. It enables you to indulge in your antipathy for Catholics, which you had before anyhow. What's not to like?
But, you know, this might be the sort of board that really just wants to chat about how much the JWs suck and how great we all are that we are doing that anymore. We pretty clearly don't want to hear that joining the JWs also points out a flaw in our character that still needs to be overcome. When we hear that, we make it a point to come tell me to fuck myself. Twice. But maybe that's my problem, too?
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161
Theological Arguments, Human Realities
by AllTimeJeff inas i have sunken to a new low in condescending posts (according to botchtowersociety, who truthfully is an expert on all things bullshit), it did occur to me that discussions, debates, and mud slinging insult matches on this board often have a common root.. let me put out there that i am not an atheist, nor an agnostic.
frankly, i respect your right to believe that god is a trinity.
that he is jesus.
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Sulla
Ok, so you're not quite done yet. Gotcha. Keep at it, I can tell this is helping.