Posts by Anders Andersen

38

Your Jehovah’s Witness Is Showing

by David_Jay in

since i just signed up and posted a few times without doing this yet, here is my story..

i think that i became a jehovahs witness because of my immaturity.

i had some quirky personality traits, and i joined finding that i fit in because, as i said to myself: these people get me.

Anders Andersen

DJ,

I enjoyed your post.

Two weeks after reading it, a dear still-in friend started a conversation about my current viewpoint.

Couple of days later he sent me an email to get some things of his chest (in a nice way) about our conversation.

Amongst other things he wrote "it bothers me that you present your new views as the truth"

My reaction: "My whole life I have been trained to think my beliefs are *the* truth, and to spread them accordingly. So I guess in our conversation 'my Jehovah's Witness was showing'."

Thanks for making me aware of a potential post-JW pitfall.

29

What's next?

by Grey Goose in

jw
friends

hi everyone.. thanks for the welcome a few days ago, it was nice to hear your support.. this is a pure speculation thread, but what do you think the next changes are going to be?.

will we see tything come into play?.

more evangelical style meetings?.

Anders Andersen

I don't remember the exact quote, but many years ago (while still in) I read a statement about cults in general being applied to JW by a sociologist:

Whenever a cult reaches a certain mass/point, it will either go mainstream or it will become even more extreme loose most of it's members.

I do remember that I mentally saved those words for future reference, just to make future me be aware of possible cult behaviour in JW land.

If the WT do not handle their current cash flow issues well, it will be the latter option.

If they manage to survive for some time, it will be the former option. In that case I could see:

no more 'we are God's only true people, everyone else follows Satan' rhetoric
1914 will fade into oblivion by not referring to it anymore
shunning becomes a matter of conscience
refusing blood becomes a matter of conscience
service hours will not be a goal anymore, or a standard by which spiritual health is measured
144.000 not literal anymore

@Finkelstein,

Afaik the 2 monitor setup is more or less mandatory now (at least in my W-Europe country.

31

The GB know it's all lies and wants to dismantle the WTS ... then what?

by Simon in

so imagine the gb have a sudden attack of honesty and realize "crap, this whole thing is lies - we're not god's spokespeople at all !".

how do you dismantle a religion that has +8 million members in a responsible way?

you can't just publish a watchtower saying "we were wrong" because that would be irresponsible - you need to let people down gently, put people off gradually.

Anders Andersen

IslandMan and Simon,

Thanks for mentioning the Worldwide Church of God / Grace Communion International.

Never heard of them before.

Two things I find very interesting about this group are:

Their official apology for previously held beliefs now deemed wrong. A still in dear friend of mine claimed the FDS did apology for 1975 and 1914 expectations, and quoted me some examples. I asked him where the sincere apology from the FDS is, where they take full responsibility instead of blaming others. The WCG/GCI example shows how it could/should be done.

Some of their new beliefs are the direct opposite of what they previously believed. They taught only they had the truth, all other churches were evil Satan stuff. Now they embrace other churches as being true. Yes, these changes cost them 50% members, but they're still there. And so will the Watchtower for many years. WCG/GCI doctrinal changes prove that no sudden change in doctrine, no scandal can be big enough to open everyone's eyes. Let's just hope we can get the ones we love to wake up...

27

Constant out-of-context quoting; how do Writing dept. cope with that?

by Anders Andersen in

i am just wondering here: almost every single quote in jw literature for which a source can be found, is taken out of context..

personally, i have checked almost every quote in the 5-questions brochure, some on dating and the cross in reasoning book, and some in magazine articles i found interesting..

just checked the "they envisioned a universe subject to whims of gods" quote in the feb 2016 awake..

Anders Andersen

@SBF,

Indeed, the Borg is normally very careful to not misquote.

That's why I consistently speak about quoting out of context instead of misquoting.

The example in the OP may not be the most clear example of quoting out of context, but to me it looks like they intended to have us understand:

"Encyclopedia says [Ancient peoples (except Bible people) had this idea about how Gods influence the universe.]. They were wrong and superstitious.
Opposed to their wrong ideas the Bible is scientifically correct and does not lead to superstition"

But the actual quoted source intends to convey:

Ancient peoples (including Bible people) had this idea about how Gods influence the universe.

But maybe some fine details of the meaning of what was written were lost on me, a non-native English speaker.

@Diogenesister,

Well I don't know if they buy it themselves. And I don't know what's worse: being a smart but very unethical writer who doesn't believe what he's writing, or being a supposedly smart writer who is too blind to actually understand what he is writing about...

27

Constant out-of-context quoting; how do Writing dept. cope with that?

by Anders Andersen in

i am just wondering here: almost every single quote in jw literature for which a source can be found, is taken out of context..

personally, i have checked almost every quote in the 5-questions brochure, some on dating and the cross in reasoning book, and some in magazine articles i found interesting..

just checked the "they envisioned a universe subject to whims of gods" quote in the feb 2016 awake..

Anders Andersen

@SBF,

They wouldn't (though you never know with JW).

Problem is, the Awake is making a case that Bible religion is better than other ancient religions, and to support that view they quote a source that more or less states that all ancient religions are the same.

Also, WTBS admitting that Bible religion is similar to Aristotle's evil satanic philosophy? *gasp*

GB (and most RF) will not survive that :-p

27

Constant out-of-context quoting; how do Writing dept. cope with that?

by Anders Andersen in

i am just wondering here: almost every single quote in jw literature for which a source can be found, is taken out of context..

personally, i have checked almost every quote in the 5-questions brochure, some on dating and the cross in reasoning book, and some in magazine articles i found interesting..

just checked the "they envisioned a universe subject to whims of gods" quote in the feb 2016 awake..

Anders Andersen

@Blondie,

Good job. Same here...I was flabbergasted when I really researched the 5-questions brochure and found misquote after misquote.

Going through all the sources mentioned in the brochure, there is no way a honest person still refuses to accept the evidence for evolution.

Whoever wrote that brochure is either really blind, or evil, or now disfellowshipped...

And still I'm surprised I find evolution a dirty word.

And still I'm disappointed when I find more misquotes.

27

Constant out-of-context quoting; how do Writing dept. cope with that?

by Anders Andersen in

i am just wondering here: almost every single quote in jw literature for which a source can be found, is taken out of context..

personally, i have checked almost every quote in the 5-questions brochure, some on dating and the cross in reasoning book, and some in magazine articles i found interesting..

just checked the "they envisioned a universe subject to whims of gods" quote in the feb 2016 awake..

Anders Andersen

@DarkKnight

You may not realise this, but accepting the fact of evolution is compatible with believing in a God or gods.

Official policy in Catholic church is that evolution is a scientific fact*, and the biblical creation story is to be understood as an explanation how humans are spiritually dependant of God.

Many people who understand and accept evolution (including scientists) believe is a God that kickstarted and/or guided evolution.

Accepting evolution is not compatible with a literal understanding of Genesis, as is the case with JW.

There is no way just 2 humans were created 4026BCE and everyone came from those two. There is way too much evidence directly contradicting that.

So the only people who can never accept evolution are the fundies with a literal explanation of Genesis, and a theology built on that explanation.

*) In fact, the earlier mentioned scientist Francis Collins is main science advisor for the Vatican

27

Constant out-of-context quoting; how do Writing dept. cope with that?

by Anders Andersen in

i am just wondering here: almost every single quote in jw literature for which a source can be found, is taken out of context..

personally, i have checked almost every quote in the 5-questions brochure, some on dating and the cross in reasoning book, and some in magazine articles i found interesting..

just checked the "they envisioned a universe subject to whims of gods" quote in the feb 2016 awake..

Anders Andersen

I am just wondering here: almost every single quote in JW literature for which a source can be found, is taken out of context.

Personally, I have checked almost every quote in the 5-questions brochure, some on dating and the cross in Reasoning book, and some in magazine articles I found interesting.

Just checked the "they envisioned a universe subject to whims of gods" quote in the Feb 2016 Awake.

Where the Awake article argues that the Bible is different, the original source continues to argue that also Biblical views are included in the earlier statement:

Created during rotighly the same period and in the same regions of the world, Aristotelian philosophy and Biblical accounts of cosmology and cosmogony are, not surprisingly, congruent in some respects. Aristotle's teleological explanations assumed that the world was fulfilling a purpose formed by a superhuman mind; Christian philosophy also is inherently meaningful and purposive.

https://archive.org/stream/EncyclopediaOfScienceAndReligion/Encyclopedia%20of%20Science%20and%20Religion_djvu.txt
So once again the literature quotes a source, and leads the user to a conclusion that is the direct opposite of what the quoted source intended to say.

But I'm wondering: don't the people in Writing dept. read the whole article before quoting?
Are they doing this on purpose or are they just dumb?
How do they live with their misrepresenting the facts, assuming they drink the KoolAid just as much as all of us did and are actually decent human beings?

22

Bob up and down Naked.......Really???

by Giordano in

after meticulous research here are the documented scientific pronouncements of the wtbt$.

“air baths are good for preventing colds.

what you do is strip naked mornings and evenings and then bob up and down for a while.” golden-age feb 1926 pg 310. .

Anders Andersen

Can we combine this naked bobbing with field service? :-D

10

Evolution, Critical Thinking, and Other Things the JWs Never Told Me

by David_Jay in

after reading several threads on the topics of evolution and theism, i thought i would share what happens to you when you go to college and get a real education on things: you learn that some of the arguments and stands of jehovah's witnesses are moot to begin with.

i never double-checked the "modus operandi" about many things, and boy, did i have some real learning to do.. for instance, why are jehovah's witnesses so against evolution?

it only proves their point.

Anders Andersen

Nice post.

I can already hear the JW muttering.... "What would Matthew know about generations anyway...filthy tax collector that's what he was!"