I was born into the religion and for years I went through the motions of meeting attendance, field service, baptism, and "studying" the Watchtower so that I could later paraphrase what I highlighted at the meetings, but I never really put in the deep study required to "make the Truth my own," or "prove the Truth" to myself. When I finally did examine the arguments of the Watchtower and the "evidence" they used to support their arguments I slowly realized they were full of shit. After that, I just sat in the back at the meeting and read up on logic, secular humanism, (to build a decent framework to replace what I had been taught all my life) and Harry Potter (for entertainment) until I was finally able to move out of my parent's house.
Saethydd
JoinedPosts by Saethydd
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29
Do you remember when you realised it was all bulls£&t
by moley ini remember when my faith left me.
i used to enjoy meetings and used to participate but then all of a sudden i was finding myself bored shitless at meetings.
i was taken off the theocratic ministry school for not attending when i was due to give a talk and not long after did something naughty and got disfellowshiped.
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Do you celebrate Christmas?
by LovingLifeNow indo you celebrate and how long have you been out?
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3 years for me and yes i do..
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Saethydd
Last year was my first time celebrating Christmas and my best friend made it really special for me, this year that same person has become my girlfriend and I'm looking forward to the holiday even more. Neither of us is religious but we still enjoy all the beautiful decorations and festivities.
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For those who are athest, or non-christian, how did you come to this decision?
by Tameria2001 ini'm not asking this question to cause an argument or accuse, but i am honestly just wondering?
for those of you who are now atheist or non-christian, how did you come to this decision?
i hadn't given this much thought until about a year ago.
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Saethydd
After I got disfellowshipped the elders told me that they felt I sinned because God wasn’t real enough to me. So I gathered up many books and set out to “make Jehovah real to me.” I decided to start by confronting the little nagging doubts I had in the back of my mind about creation.
For perhaps the first time in my life I actually delved deep into the theory of evolution and considered the writings of many experts and came to the conclusion that the literature the Watchtower had given me on the subject was wildly misleading. At this point I was very confused and didn’t know which sources to believe so I decided to learn about logic itself and discovered what logical fallacies are, I realized that JW arguments are almost entirely appeals to authority, and that primary authority is supposedly the Bible, so I decided to research that. As I researched the origins of the Bible I realized that it’s authorship wasn’t as clear cut as I had been lead to believe. Some books had been written at completely different times than I had been told, many events where at best uncorroborated by any other sources and at worst directly contradicted my multiple independent lines of evidence. Not to mention the many books that were arbitrarily declared “apocryphal” by different groups of men and different points in history. I determined the Bible was not a reliable source nor a good authority to base any argument on so the Watchtower and any other religion based on the Bible had no true basis for their belief system. As of now I haven’t found any religion that does have a sound logical basis for its particular set of beliefs so I am an atheist.
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You're in the Army Now: Jehovah's Witnesses No Longer Exempt From Finnish Draft
by Tahoe inhttps://sputniknews.com/europe/201809211068220658-finland-jehovah-witnesses-army/.
the finnish government has ruled that the current law allowing jehovah's witnesses to avoid military service, in place for several decades, is discriminatory and contradicts the constitution.. .
in the future, finnish jehovah's witnesses* will be obliged to either serve in the nation's military or perform civil service on the same terms as everyone else, the government ruled, submitting a corresponding proposal to parliament, national broadcaster yle reported.. according to the 1987 law, jehovah's witnesses were not only freed from the military draft, they were freed of any obligation to perform community service as a pacifist alternative, a common option among other young people in finland.
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Saethydd
I think someone should show the Finnish courts the video of a Governing Body member saying that Jehovah’s Witnesses are not pacifists and don’t necessarily reject violence as a rule. (After all, how could they do that at still worship the violent god of the Bible?) -
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Id like to share a story
by scruffmcbuff inas i spend more time here, things id forgotten come back, mostly bad and some i plan to share eventually.. but this one is happy, one of a sunday talk by a new elder from nigeria in our hall.
i remember the intro word for word.
id like to share it with you.. "brothers, sisters, newly interested ones.
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Saethydd
Now that I swear on a daily basis this story seems even more ridiculous. Getting so worked up over a harmless word like “shit” while at the same time allowing people to hear graphic descriptions of violence from the Bible or see them in a Bible drama is incredibly silly and contradictory.
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Need some advice (am I a bad person)
by Jayk ina little back story.
i met this women she was a coworker friend mine (found out she used to be a jw also).
one night after we got to drinking, things almost heated up.. she came on to me (she leaned in and tried to kiss me) i turned her down because i knew she had a bf.
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Saethydd
It’s hard to say. Has she come on to other people before when she’s drunk or was it just you? Is she satisfied and happy in her current relationship or is she only staying in it because she would feel guilty, (or he would make her feel guilty) if she tried to leave? In my experience, if someone who is in a relationship tries to kiss someone who isn’t their partner, then there are issues that need to be addressed, and at least one member of that relationship is going to be unhappy long term if those issues are not discussed.
I don’t think you’re a bad person for suggesting she not tell her boyfriend, however well-intentioned though, I don’t believe it was in her best interest. If her relationship is going to work and be happy long term it must have honest and open communication. Despite what some people believe, preserving a romantic relationship (even a longstanding one) at any cost, isn’t always the right move. In my opinion, if you have to lie to someone to preserve a personal relationship, then it’s time for that relationship to come to an end. Either the other person can accept and care about the real you or they can’t, and if they can’t accept you for who you really are then why are you wasting your time?
Not all relationships will last until our lives come to an end, more often than not those unsuitable relationships slowly fade away as each person slowly changes, and making a relationship work successfully through these slow changes on both sides requires a lot of honest communication and understanding. However, there are also cases where the changes come rapidly and the relationships can die violently. One example of that can be seen when a JW comes to an epiphany about their beliefs and needs to leave the religion, a large number of their relationships can evaporate over a short period of time.
Romantic relationships can be especially bad about outliving their suitability, especially after they get to a certain point. This is because in a romantic relationship people can get tied together by so much more than the relationship itself. They might live together, have joint bank accounts, share a cell phone plan, buy a house together, have kids, etc. The more ties like that there are, the harder it is to get out of a relationship that is no longer suitable, and it’s even possible to end up with all of those things in a relationship that was never a good fit in the first place.
Romantic relationships are very hard to get right, especially at a young age. My theory is that this is related to the tendency to be dishonest during the early stages of courtship. Now I don’t mean overt lies when I say use the word “dishonest” here, rather I’m referring more to the tendency people have to repress who they really are in an attempt to present someone they believe would be more appealing to their partner. Sometimes this sort of repression can go on for years, all the while they stay in the relationship and build those extra-relational ties I mentioned, not because they are happy and allowed to fully express them self, but rather because they are simply afraid of being alone.
Sorry, I know that’s probably longer than what you’re looking for, I’ve just thought about this topic a lot.
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PIMO to POMO
by MaybeSo inok i'm ready for the transition.
i am not writing anything to anyone or writing some dumb letter.
the calls and visits trying to get me to come back will soon follow, the family guilt trips will intensify, loss of friends- really more like cult member associates, how the hell am i supposed to do this?
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Saethydd
Have you considered the tactic of moving to a new congregation, going o the meetings until your publisher card arrives then just stop going?
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wt on education..
by zeb ini have just watched the glass smashing on the wt video on education.. please consider these experiences from the opposite side of that "coin".. i have heard young ones say out-loud on the mike in the kh that "jehovah is my special friend.."these ones who were at the top of the wt 'tree' pioneering, putting in the hours etc but, it followed that soon saying that pivotal statement they dropped their pioneering, faded, picked up the girl/boyfriend and suffered being dfd.. so where did their wt "education" leave them?
it left them as young adults naive to the world, unskilled, with no qualification to offer any employer and having to replace their former family/associates/friends with new ones.. ( dont get me going on shunning) in some cases with little success as we have read here where they moon about for months or longer unable to emotionally heal after the leaving or df'ing and also others with such a turn around they would never have believed it possible... there was a wt that related how a brother (!
) followed an interest in history and left the truth.
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Saethydd
The higher ups in the Org are right to fear people going to college. The knowledge and critical thinking skills I gained in college are what helped me smell the bullshit and then make the plans to leave.
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2018 JWBroadcasting "Higher education is useless" video CLIP
by Not_Culty insept 2018. https://vimeo.com/288327363.
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Saethydd
I don’t know about the GB but several years back the CO’s wife for my circuit needed an operation and they flew her to a South American country (Brazil I think) to have it performed cheaper than it could be in the states.
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2018 JWBroadcasting "Higher education is useless" video CLIP
by Not_Culty insept 2018. https://vimeo.com/288327363.
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Saethydd
Yeah I know right, I go to college with all these people that want be useless shit like “doctors” and “engineers” who just want to “make the world a better place.” What a bunch of pathetic creations of Satan huh? Why didn’t they have the good sense to do something worthwhile with lives like join a crazy religious cult that would take an unhealthy level of control over their lives?