https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/anti-conversion-bill-passed-in-karnataka-assembly-amid-opposition-protest-3348450.
"Noting that in recent times religious conversions have become widespread, he said there have been mass conversions with allurements and through force, disturbing peace and leading to mistrust among people following different religions.
The Bill does not take away anyone's religious freedom and that anyone can practice the religion of his or her choice, but not under pressure and allurements, Mr Jnanendra said."
i am posting this because i know there are many people that have had experiences that cannot be explained by natural means.
i am a ghost hunter, as a hobby.
my hobby is to disprove ghosts.
Although I do not believe in ghosts, being an Atheist who leads an evidence based life, I actually believe in very little.
What I do feel is the correct approach to metaphysical things (are they things ?), is to go along with Shakespeare where he has Hamlet say : "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Not that I think Ghosts etc will be proven to exist, but I think a greater understanding of the human mind will explain even further the mechanisms that prompt a lot that cannot be fully explained at present.
why do you think many jws are hostile and rude?
or is that just my imagination?.
mark jones writes: the vast majority of jehovah’s witnesses are nice people.
" If you mean on line, then they are very defensive and if they think you are one of “those apostates” they won’t think you deserve politeness. "
Yes ! I have crossed swords with a few on line. What also annoys me, and it is a subtle form of rudeness, is they condescendingly talk down to you, when trying to explain or justify J.W beliefs, little do they know that most of us know more than them about those beliefs !
As someone else pointed out, they soon descend in to an Ad Hominem attack, then Report you, and Block you. The other despicable move is to accuse us of lying, but never say what untruth we have told !
Rudeness and ignorance abound in the J.W org, even the D to D is rude really, calling on someone uninvited to sell your brand of nonsense is not Polite !
it was the summer of '72.
i was 24 but had been the presiding overseer or congregation servant of a small congregation in the county seat of an arkansas county for about 3 years.. my regular pioneer wife of nearly four years was big and pregnant, with our attempts at birth control unsuccessful.. one of my wife's several bible studies was with a young woman named brenda whom my wife had encountered in door to door work.. brenda had two young children she could barely handle and was married to a very countryfied arkie named henry who worked as a chicken catcher, one of the most difficult jobs at the local chicken plant.. brenda eventually revealed that she'd been raised as a jw, but was never baptized, having left home to marry henry at age 14. she spoke of her family in texas, mentioning her mother and two older sisters, all jws she said.. one morning, just before the meeting for field service, we noticed a small car in kingdom hall parking lot.
my wife and i were parked to one side of the hall in our aluminum nashua house trailer.. two young women got out of the car and soon joined us for the meeting for service, identifying themselves as brenda's sisters from texas.. the two girls, ages 17 and 20, were distractingly beautiful, with the eldest decked out like a magnificent southern belle including hat and heels, her high-end clothing accentuating her very obvious curves.. with no one else showing up for field service, it ended up just the four of us in the car group with the two texas girls in the back seat.. starting our time at a not-at-home, the 20 year old asked if she could accompany me to "hear my presentation.
I don't know if it is an age thing that kicks in men who are over 70, but I have been musing on a good number of instances when I was offered sex with attractive young JW women, I refused in every instance, because similar to the O.P I was married to a loyal woman , and I believed in loyalty to her in return.
It was hard sometimes, in both meanings of the word !
The bullet I really missed was the girl who looking back wanted not just sex, but to wreck my marriage and have me as her husband, she had obviously calculated the Divorces (she was married too) and the possible DFing as being worth it, but she was a Witch, and may have worked out how to do it and come up smelling vaguely of roses. Because not much later she did that, got "scripturally" divorced some how, and then married a guy, a much younger JW, who had been single until then.
the use of the divine name in the nwtcgs
romans 10:9, 13
identifying jesus as jehovah
Really, if you understand the origin of the god Yahweh, all this discussion is pointless, or worse in fact, rather silly.
the wt calls itself christian while at the same time insisting that its witnesses don't mix with other christian groups but remain separate.. to be no part of the world.. i was mulling this over recently in my personal bible reading.
in the first century that demarcation would have made sense because apart from your fellow worshippers the rest of mankind were going to be jewish, roman, polytheistic, pagan, or (i guess much like today) didn't really care.. christians had no worries about meeting up with other people who believed in jesus the same as they did even if there were minor differences depending on who had first taught the gospel message to them.
but nowadays there's not just one christian group against the world, there's lots of "christians" out there.
" 38 “Teacher,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”
39 “Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, 40 for whoever is not against us is for us."
our witness friend who during covid grew his beard has been hassled by elders who asked him "why" he chose to have facial growth.
he for real, had to give an answer why.
this is pharasees total rubbish.
It was always total nonsense bullshit. President N. H. Knorr wanted the j.w's to mimic the "standards" of Corporate America, which he thought was the thing that was the highest of standards. Hence the suits, corporate hairstyles etc etc.
This was indicative of his, and even the present G.B's, parochial view of things.
The world has moved on, about 20 years ago, and gone from long Hipster beards, back to stubble. It is noteworthy that Jesus melted into a crowd, and escaped being apprehended, by looking like every other Hip bloke of his day. J.W's I can pick out as "weirdos" even when driving through a Town far from home. Because of imposed, nonsense, bullshit, non-Biblical "standards".
there are certain wt terms that sound biblical but really just puff up the pride.
hundreds of times the wt has used the term honest-hearted in their literature.
it sounds biblical, if for no other reason because we hear it so often in jw circles.
An old technique, but proven to work, we see it in advertising, and political rhetoric and propaganda. The Org. love it.
how many of you would have spent the hours "pioneering" if it weren't for the pats on the back and being looked up to as someone special in the congregation?
i will admit that back in late 1970's i attempted to aux pioneer during a campaign because it was promoted and seemed the right thing to do,but i didn't get the hours and it was stressful trying to...and i didn't feel like a cheerful giver.
i never attempted it again.
Looking back, I guess I did it because it was the "right thing to do", back in the late 1960's. My older siblings had both Regular Pioneered, so I did for a while, then dropped down to Aux, one month on, next month off, to earn money while "off".
Before long I started courting my wife to be ( she is still here ! nearly 52 Bloody years, and she won't take the numerous hints) and had to earn money to pay for our Wedding and gawd knows what, she was no good with money, at the time.
I only did one more stint of Aux. in the late 80's I guess, I really don't know why for sure, it wasn't to impress, or "the right thing to do" or anything, I had got beyond that by then. I must give my motive some thought, but suspect it may have stemmed from the Elders exhorting us to Pioneer, and not doing it themselves, so I picked on an Elder I knew hated D to D, and got him to sign up, to "help" me !
thesis: when someone who is given a responsibility mistakes that responsibility for authority, bullying is very likely to occur.. jesus spoke an illustration recorded at matthew 24: 45-51 which well illustrates this thesis.. jesus asked, “who really is the faithful and discreet slave whom his master appointed over all his domestics, to give them their food at the proper time?
happy is that slave if his master on arriving finds him doing so.
truly i say to you, he will appoint him over all his belongings.
The Parable of the Discreet and Evil Slaves is.......... guess what ?........ A PARABLE, not a prophecy. To make it a prophecy is a nonsense, and logically would mean that all of the recorded parables of Jesus were prophecies.
In a vain effort to bolster their claim that Jesus' parable is a prophecy, and refers to the G.B of J.W's, the Org. did attempt to prove just that, the prophetic nature of most of Jesus' parables. Their attempt was obvious arrant nonsense, and has been abandoned in recent times, except for this one parable.
