Posts by notjustyet

187

The reason behind why the ex-JW community can never match Jehovah's Witnesses' success.

by Stand for Pure Worship in

jw
friends

an average of five kingdom halls being constructed daily, almost 8 million brothers and sisters, dissemination of bible literature in 595 languages, 111,795 congregations worldwide, distribution of 179 million bibles available in 116 languages, 239 countries where jehovah's witnesses have a presence, etc.. need i go on?.

on the other hand........... crisis of conscience, freeminds, the awaa, jw.net, ummmmmm........hmmm........idk six screens or something?

not exactly working out for you guys.

notjustyet

Jws are 1/10th Of 1% of the worlds population.

Name one thing that the Jws have done that a secular group could not have accomplished.

Believing with all your heart and soul that you are part of a gods one chosen religion can do wonders in getting people to work their hearts and souls for the leaders of the group so yes the are some large numbers in printing etc, but in reality, nothing supernatural about it at all. Its all in their minds, and obviously it seems to be enough.

A a side note: Is a Proverbs 4:18 considered a prophecy showing how in the last days the leaders of gods chosen religion has to continually change their teachings due to god giving these leaders incorrect information? And if so, what is the reason that god would not have given them the correct information the first time so that those, like us, that do research will read these false incorrect claims and decide that a god would not do this as it would cause people to doubt this group as having the truth.

If a teaching has been changed and the latest teaching is considered the "Present Truth" could you say that the prior beleif is a "past lie"?

Could you guarantee that there would not be any other changes to the doctrine? If not, then you are admitting that what is being taught now could be wrong. Could you be making life and death decisions based on this wrong information. Could you let yourself or a loved one die due to the no blood policy only to find out that the policy changed soon afterward?

NJY

9

Progress made with dad... but he still believes in the blood doctrine

by ILoveTTATT in

jw
friends

so.... my spiritual journey has led me to agnosticism, i really have a hard time believing that the bible, with so many contradictions and errors, and worse, with so many people trying to change its contents and who have actually achieved it, can be god's word.. i personally believe that i should just "do what i do" and live by the motto "yolo" (kidding).... no but really, i believe that i should just try to use my common sense to determine if something is right or if it is wrong.

with that, many things are simplified.

opening the door for someone that walks by?

notjustyet

Here is an excerpt from leavingwt DA letter found here at jwfacts.com

http://www.jwfacts.com/pdf/leavingwt-da-letter.pdf

The Bible is silent on the topic of blood transfusions. However, I am deeply interested in how God feels about the matter . The following illustration has been helpful to me: If you were robbed and a thief demanded your wedding ring, would you refuse to give it to him if he threatened to kill your spouse? Would you reason: "This ring represents my marriage to my spouse and that's more important than my spouse’s life"? Such reasoning is seriously flawed yet this is the exact reasoning used by Watchtower to support its ban on certain types of blood transfusions. Yes, blood is a symbol of life, but life itself is certainly more valuable than the symbol!

To me that pretty much nails it down to show how silly it is to refuse blood, the symbol, that would save the thing it is symbolizing.

NJY

83

Stands For True Worship. I am turning myself in......

by DATA-DOG in

just answer this question in an honest and unbiased way, free from any circuitous reasoning or speculation.

if you do so, i swear to my heavenly father, that i will call the elders tonight and turn myself in.

any active jw may answer this question.

notjustyet

I think that the video from youtube explaing the Walsh trial in Scotland where Fred Franz and Hayden C Covington might be appropriate right about now.

NJY

25

How to DF 2 People With ZERO Proof! New YouTube video and article

by RayPublisher in

this story is quite remarkable and no doubt many will appreciate it being told.

it is telling for several reasons; it highlights the fact that the watchtower organization can expel and marginalize anyone for literally anything if they are crossed.

they did that to ray franz back in the early 1980s and they recently have done it to these fine folks.. there are some six pieces of documentation in the account and it is in some ways a complicated mess, but it really boils down to a couple of active witnesses informing on someone to the elders.

notjustyet

I watched the video and I appreciate all the details with dates etc. I did have a few questions.

Is it the norm for the WTBTS to send out letters stating that they are representing local elders now? I thought that the concensus was that the locals elders were on their own when it came to lawsuits.

Also, do you think that the WTBTS attornies got invloved possibly due to the registered letter inviting the 2 jws to the judicial committee was already in the mail before the local body of elders got the local attornies letter stating no further contact?

On the other hand, I wanted to point out that while the video seems to have the facts and dates etc nalied down the way the information does not seem that it comes across as fair and balanced. The jokes, side comments, innuendos (sp?) extra pokes at the elders and WTBTS attornies, tone , inflection etc , to me, shows a bit of one sidedness that I would imagine one would not want to share with those viewing the videos.

If the goal is to get on the fence lurking JWs to see the facts of the "case" then the way this video comes across would probably tend to allow the JWs to view it as coming from a person with a "grudge" against the WTBTS etc, exactly what the WTBTS would want a lurking jw to think about us "apostates"

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the videos that you make and have been out for a few years now, but I honestly feel that if I were just starting to lurk around a bit, it would have a tendency to make me think the info coming from some of the ones on youtube etc was biased.

Hey,.. donlt hsting on me for sharing, hoping to just pass that info along without any hurt feelings. Am I the only one that sees this video as being heavily biased?

NJY

188

A Manual for Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian

by cofty in

a manual for creating atheists offers the first-ever guide not for talking people into faith--but for talking them out of it.

peter boghossian draws on the tools he has developed and used for more than twenty years as a philosopher and educator to teach how to engage the faithful in conversations that will help them value reason and rationality, cast doubt on their religious beliefs, mistrust their faith, abandon superstition and irrationality, and ultimately embrace reason.

- amazon.... "boghossian has provided an indispensible chart book for all of us who must navigate the rising sea of magical thinking that is inundating america today.

notjustyet

I recognized the name and remembered a video I came upon a year or so and wanted to share this as it has to do with faith which has been brought up within this thread.

Enjoy,..

NJY here Scummydross over at jehovahswitnessrecovery.com (hope to be able to change my name here in the future lol)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp4WUFXvCFQ

60

A one sentence reply that could jolt a JW

by HBH in

jw
friends

my mind was wandering last night, and i though of this as a reply to a jw.. "oh, your the people who believe 8 men in brooklyn, ny are directing the world's only true religion.".

the sentence is a fact that they can't deny, but clearly shows delusion.

any other one sentence "stingers"?.

notjustyet

"Will you promise that the WTBTS will never change a doctrine from this point forward?" They will have to answer a resounding "No, I can't do that" to that question.

Then come back with " Then you are admitting that some of the things you believe, right now "could" be wrong, beliefs that you use to make life and death decisions could in fact be wrong. You could lose your life or the life of your child due to blindly following faulty beliefs"

NJY

36

No one in JW religion has a title that elevates them above others! I did not know this fact!

by Faithful Witness in

from jw.org (while waiting for new bible to download, i clicked on the link for "christian," which asks the following question...).

"are we christians?

we are christians, for the following reasons.

notjustyet

SFPW,.said,

I consider elder, CO, pioneer, etc. more or less labels, not necessarily titles. Furthermore, nobody in the congregation is more elevated than anyone else in the congregation. We all just have different roles and different responsibilities or privileges. A CO can't tell you what to do and neither can an elder, neither can the GB or the Writing Department through the literature. The only thing they can do is provide Bible based counsel or suggestions that we'll take into consideration out of humility and recognition that they're where they are because Jehovah's spirit caused it to be.

While the CO etc may not say "You have no other option but to do this" they do hold, metaphorically speaking, your entire social network, family, possibly even your lively hood over a "barrel" , as it were, so that you will not be able to interact with this group, if you do not, well, how do you say, "Comply" with our understanding of what is best for you.

So whether a group of people are "physically" prevented from being interacted with , such as in a prison, or "mentally" prevented from being interacted with, such as being DFd which results in shunning. It ultimately is the same.

NJY

48

What Was Your First Experience In Exposing Yourself To "Apostasy"?

by minimus in

jw
friends

as a young teenager, i would look at "apostate" books at the city library.

i was always intrigued as to what was sooo bad and other than a few writings of some that seemed like they hated the witnesses, i would clandestinely look at literature, especially in "christian" bookstores.. it took years for me to finally disconnect.

i will say that ray franz' books enlightened me the most!.

notjustyet

One of the first times that I can remember is when, I think it might have even been this site, was stopped temporarily from being a pro Jw site to just a page

with some explanation that they were shutting down and some links to some apostate sites.

I remember reading that page and wondering, What the heck is going on here? I look back now and wonder if that instance was when, I have heard and am not sure about how this all went down, Simon was originally running this site as a Pro Jw site, got hit with some apostate drive bys and possibly was told by the brothers to shut down the site, put up the temp page, then it looks like after I saw that, re-branded this site to be more open minded, if you will.

Does any of this ring a bell or was that a totally different site?

NJY

31

Since most JW's HATE giving talks and doing meeting parts, why does the Watchtower Society still require it?

by yadda yadda 2 in

jw
friends

i loathed giving talks and doing meeting parts.

i dreaded all assignments.

i was intelligent enough and always did a good job, but all my jw life (born in to mid-30's) i enjoyed giving talks about as much as a visit to the dentist.. i am sure that 90% of all jw's similarly dislike it.

notjustyet

Here is what I think is the reason.

Taken from this page on Cognitive Dissonance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

Check it out,,,

The more severe a task the person performs for a group, the more interesting or worthy they must reason the group is to prevent dissonance.

Note: I made an edit below (**) and replaced "sever" with mild, as they had "severe" in both cases.

NJY

Effort justification paradigm [ edit ]
Further information: Effort justification
Dissonance is aroused whenever individuals voluntarily engage in an unpleasant activity to achieve some desired goal. Dissonance can be reduced by exaggerating the desirability of the goal. Aronson & Mills [17] had individuals undergo a severe or mild "initiation" in order to become a member of a group. In the Mild (**) -initiation condition, the individuals engaged in an embarrassing activity. The group they joined turned out to be very dull and boring. The individuals in the severe-initiation condition evaluated the group as more interesting than the individuals in the mild-initiation condition.

All of the above paradigms continue to be used in fruitful research.

Washing one's hands has been shown to eliminate post-decisional dissonance, presumably because the dissonance is often caused by moral disgust (with oneself), which is related to disgust from unsanitary conditions. [18] [19]

47

Question About 607BCE and How That Date Was Picked - Help JW Scholars

by Comatose in

so i've been sharing some a little at a time with my sister.

she is married and very scared of actually learning too much.

she doesn't want to ruin her marriage.

notjustyet

The following is just speculation about he CTR arrived at the date of 1914 initially.

I was wondering if CTR was not trying to reverse engineer that date. I think he already had 1874 as Christ presence, and I believe he added 40 years to that due to some Jubilee rule. Not sure, SO,... SO,.. he used the 2520 years from William Miller to start looking backwards to see what Bible event happened around that time so that he could start counting forward to be able to justify his date of 1914. 586 or 587 BCE was close enough to work with to hitch his beginning date to.

NJY