Posts by DangerMcDanger

16

New Member

by DangerMcDanger in

my name is jimbo, i'm almost 20 years old, and i live in southern california.

here we go, here's my story (i feel like i'm in an aa meeting haha):.

i was invited by a friend who, looking back, i could tell was buttering me up for months so she can lunge on the perfect opportunity to invite me to a meeting.

The chaperones is something I could never get past. Every date you go on is supposed to have a third wheel until you decide to get married, even the person you decide to date tends to be arranged by the elders and what not. It's ridiculous. I was always madly frustrated by the fact that I could never be alone with a girl even out in public. Being alone with someone doesn't make you so horny that you want to start having sex on the street corner! Those people are afraid of that though and it's sad to see. I remember one friend telling me, "I've only been alone with a girl once and I felt so guilty that I called my mom and had her pick me up." I had to fight back laughter when he told me that.

54

God's Word and Modern Man

by TheLiberator in

i have drawn the conclusion that when god speaks, he is using the language and the concepts of the time.

he is not revealing a new scientific understanding when he speaks.

that would be distracting from the point being made.

DangerMcDanger

@cofty, What I was saying about believing different ideas based on date and location is that it doesn't negate a truth claim just because there's variety. Richard Dawkins made two points:

1. People only believe religion because they are indoctrinated, so it isn't true.

2. If you were born somewhere/sometime else, you'd believe something else, so all religion is false.

My counterpoint to #1:

The truth is, all knowledge we have is indoctrinated. Science, math, languages, politics, history, etc. It's taught to us for free for twelve years and more if you please. Yet, just because we were indoctrinated to believe all of it does not mean it's all false. Religion isn't any different. I used science as an example not because I'm some creationist that fights the flow of science (I'm not), but because the science you learn is also indoctrinated from a very young age throughout your adulthood. It does not negate it's legitimacy.

Apart from that, as I mentioned before, there has been an international revival of religiosity. Sociologists were predicting in the 80's that by our time religion would diminish to near non-existence. In fact, great intellects have been predicting that for centuries. Historically, secularism is always a trend and trends do NOT always predict the future. Deism was popular during the Enlightenment era, positivism was popular during the late 19th century and early 20th century, existentialism dominated philosophers for a solid century, etc. It's funny, there's been a remarkable resurgence of theism with modern-day philosophers.

Counterpoint to #2:

Different ideas based on time and location also does not negate its legitimacy. I used examples of how science has modified its teaching over time. Yet, with the logic of point number two, science too should be nothing more than a fraud. But it's not. All knowledge is taught without inherently knowing it, such as science, history, mathematics, and *gasp* religion. That does not mean it isn't true.

Addressing this point of religion and violence, religion has been a minority of problems throughout history. Religion has been the cause of only 7% of all wars, 2% of all deaths from wars, and not even half a percent of all deaths throughout human history. It's nothing more than propaganda. If we're speaking about specific religions here, Islam is responsible for the vast majority of religion-related deaths and over half of all religious wars. The 20th century was the bloodiest century in all of human history, which was dominated entirely by secular wars.

You did not debunk my point about Darwinism. I wasn't saying it wasn't true, I was saying science birthed Darwinism which people used as a justification for genocide, like with Hitler. Hitler's greatest influences were Darwin and Nietzsche (19th-century existentialist philosopher), which he largely used to justify his abhorrent evils. You're sidestepping my point.

You're also sidestepping my point on weapons of mass destruction. You instead went on about the contributions science has made, which I'm not disagreeing on. Science is wonderful. However, science has also undoubtedly made some frightening inventions as well. You say, "What we do with science is a moral decision," yet I say the same about religion. Religion is a tool for people to find spirituality, yet what people do with that is a moral decision. You're applying a double standard for religion simply because you don't like it. What we do with ANYTHING is a moral decision. No one blames the gun for the killing, they blame the killer! What I am trying to convey about science creating weapons of mass destruction is that I could blame science for all the killings in the past century, yet you wouldn't be too fond of that and it would be a logical fallacy. It's the same thing with religion.

What I was also trying to say about the broken condition of man is that the real root of all evil isn't science, religion, politics, etc. It's the broken condition of humanity. All of those topics are neutral and don't care one way or the other, but humans aren't neutral. This Enlightenment idea of evil coming from purely outside sources and not us couldn't be further from the truth. When it comes down to someone dropping an atomic bomb (science), a terrorist beheading a woman for not wearing her hijab (religion), or a politician starting a new war (politics), these are all the results of decisions made by humans. Not religion, science, or politics, but humans. Which reveals there is something internally broken inside of all of us. Obviously to differing degrees as we're not all war-mongers, but our brokenness exists nevertheless. Also, the most fair and peaceful world is entirely untrue! The 20th century was bloodier than the previous 19 centuries combined! Are you aware of the tensions among nations throughout the entire world? The immense poverty and starvation? The middle east? World War 3 could be right around the corner and you're saying we're living the best period of time in human history.

You should also thank religion for science, since the world of modern science was birthed out of the church! For centuries it was the church that funded new discoveries in science. All of the greatest scientists for centuries were deeply religious, mainly Catholics as well. There are plenty of religious charities that have fed the hungry and cured the sick. The Catholic church is the largest provider of healthcare in the world. Feed My Starving Children, Red Cross, Salvation Army, etc. All religious organizations or founded on the basis of religion. Also, Yale, Oxford, Princeton and Harvard? Started out as seminaries. Some of these schools even still have religious mottos. Thank goodness religion existed to get the ball rolling on all of that!

Also, as for China believing in different fossil records, Google Peking Man and what the Chinese believe about it.

Thank you for taking the time to read all of my posts despite how large they grow, I truly appreciate it. Dialogue like this is fun. You are a bright fella as well.

11

Comment from Examining the WT Daily May 22

by Dreamerdude in

somehow i missed this silly comment in the wt study las year.

i just have been daydreaming.

but wt wants tomane sure i get the point.. "after the death of the apostles, satan fomented apostasy, which flourished for many centuries.

DangerMcDanger

@Dreamerdude, Speaking of Paul warning about future events, take a look at Galatians 1:8:
But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God's curse!

I personally believe Paul was predicting Mormons with that verse. The supposed angel Mormoni preaching a new gospel to Joseph Smith and all.

About the OP, historical records, everything from Paul's writings to the canons of all the Church Fathers, reveal that the Apostle's Creed (written in the 4th century and still used by every mainline church plus fundamentalists) has always been the basis of all doctrines for Christianity. There is NO historical evidence that any bizarre doctrine of the Watchtower was ever worshipped by first-century Christians, especially a unitarian position of God. So, JW's have their history wrong, actually.

13

What not to do when trying to fade...

by Nihilistic Journey in

1. do not get drunk before a pearl jam concert.. 2. don't register to vote while drunk.. .

3. do not get your picture taken while registering to vote while drunk before a pearl jam concert.

4. do not give drunken permission for the newspaper to run the picture on the front page!.

DangerMcDanger

You saw Pearl Jam?? I'm so jealous! They're one of my favorites and I've been trying to see them for years, but I always keep missing them when they swing around SoCal!

16

New Member

by DangerMcDanger in

my name is jimbo, i'm almost 20 years old, and i live in southern california.

here we go, here's my story (i feel like i'm in an aa meeting haha):.

i was invited by a friend who, looking back, i could tell was buttering me up for months so she can lunge on the perfect opportunity to invite me to a meeting.

DangerMcDanger

Thank you for the warm welcomes, everyone! I forgot to mention this on my OP, but the friend of mine that originally invited me to my first congregation meeting is no longer a JW. Speak of irony! When she told me we talked on the phone for two hours about how abhorrent that cult is and how much happier we are. She quit months after she got baptized, too, where she was crying over the "greatest day of her life".

@zeb, Oh yeah, they'd blame every Christian doctrine they don't agree with on pagans. It was always historically inaccurate, too. When it comes to the Trinity, they said it was never a formal doctrine until Constantine converted to Christianity in the fourth century and the Roman Empire started liking Christianity. That's not true at all, historical records from the Church Fathers recognize that during the first century they worshipped Jesus and the Holy Spirit as God along with the Father. The use of the word Trinity was also first used in the second century. But nope, deny facts and blame everything on the pagans.

@KateWild, I hate that, too! I was talking to an ex-JW friend of mine that kept referring to them as "the truth" out of habit, and eventually I interrupted her and asked her, "Why do you keep calling it the truth? You and I both know it isn't." She laughed, agreed, and started calling it, "The lies." Lol.

@Ding, My latest interest is philosophy of language. I find myself always analyzing the ideology behind words, how certain terms and phrases are used to convey an underlying meaning. JW's have mastered this, most of them without realizing they're doing it, and it's fascinating, actually. Scary at the same time, but fascinating. I love studying cults and their varying techniques of brainwashing, conformity, and control. Language is the most powerful tool they have. It eerily represents a washed-down version of Newspeak.

@Pete Zahut (nice username btw), Well, where I live there's a high concentration of JW's and Mormons. With Mormons it makes sense, because wherever there's wealth there's Mormons, and my city is an upper-class area. Mormons own half of the businesses around here (no joke either). As far as JW's, that confuses me a little. There was a study on types of religious people with the highest amount of education, and Jews and born-again Christians ranked number one with JW's at the very bottom. Given that most of them never go back to college, you'd think they couldn't financially support themselves out where I live, but here they are in large numbers. So, just about everyone out where I live knows who JW's are. As far as the hate I'd hear, it was mainly just mockery of them in passing. Back when I lived out in Minnesota, I only heard of JW's existence twice in my life and knew literally of nothing out here. When I moved out here, I met several of them at my work and my co-workers would gossip about how brainwashed they are and how JW's are in a cult. Both of which is true.

16

New Member

by DangerMcDanger in

my name is jimbo, i'm almost 20 years old, and i live in southern california.

here we go, here's my story (i feel like i'm in an aa meeting haha):.

i was invited by a friend who, looking back, i could tell was buttering me up for months so she can lunge on the perfect opportunity to invite me to a meeting.

DangerMcDanger

My name is Jimbo, I'm almost 20 years old, and I live in southern California. Here we go, here's my story (I feel like I'm in an AA meeting haha):

I was invited by a friend who, looking back, I could tell was buttering me up for months so she can lunge on the perfect opportunity to invite me to a meeting. The way she presented it with all the pamphlets sounded appealing, plus I didn't bother listening to all the hate against JW's because I tend to drown out white noise like when it comes to most topics in life anyhow. At first, I loved what I was learning. I thoroughly enjoyed the studies and what they were teaching me. A family of five (two parents, two sons, and daughter) had immediately practically taken me in as their own. They helped me earn my driver's license, buy my first car, get a new job (old one was cutting my hours heavily), pay my rent when I was hitting financial struggles, and more. I live out here in California all by myself, so I was flustered by how generous and loving everyone was.

Yet, that started to change when Google became my friend. I'm the type of person that really likes to hold ideas under scrutiny before believing them, so I decided to do a little research on the history of Jehovah's Witnesses and the Watchtower. For any that haven't seen it, jwfacts.com is a great website with hours of intense information that I poured over. I also discovered this forum almost immediately and became familiar with people on here. I've actually been checking on this website on and off for about a year since I left. Anyway, regardless of what I was reading on the Internet, I decided to hang around. I'm usually a fairly open-minded person that likes to see and experience both sides. I reasoned, "Well, there's arguments against every ideology, religious or not, so I'll only know if I keep experiencing it for myself." Only, my experiences turned sour rather quickly. Watchtower doctrine never made any sense and I always found myself performing mental gymnastics to rely on the Bible for it. The trinity is a classic example. I won't delve into it too much, but I'll say that it's impossible to read the New Testament without seeing a strong correlation between the three figures in the Trinity. Once I also learned about the Jewish context of many passages in the Bible, it became evident that the people who wrote the New Testament clearly saw Jesus and the Holy Spirit as God along with the Father. Even the NWT Bible couldn't edit out certain passages that revealed this (and they've edited a lot of passages). When I got to experience watching someone shunned, I was appalled. He was such a kind, gentle young man, and it made my stomach churn to see even his mother sitting in an aisle apart from him. Their constant discussions about "worldly" people and how corrupted every church is. Funny, most of them have never even been to a real church and others haven't had a "worldly" friend in years to decades or ever. The congregation tried pressuring me into quitting college and joining their Bethel program instead. Whenever I would skip a congregation to sleep in or attend other plans, my phone would blow up and I'd get shady glances the next time I saw them. I could go on, but you all know where I'm coming from. After seven months of attending that wretched cult, I stopped going. I told the oldest son of the family I mentioned that I wanted to branch out and I'll let him know if I ever decide to rejoin (but I never planned on setting foot in a congregation again).

I still wanted to explore many religions, so I went through a process of intensely studying world religions, theology, and topics of philosophy relevant to religion. I remember sitting in my room and pouring over books and articles for hours on end. After a while, I decided that Christianity is the most probable outcome of any worldview (I can tell most people here would shake their heads at that, most of you are atheists I've noticed), so I now attend a non-denominational church. It's so nice. I'm free to criticize and explore all kinds of theology, I'm surrounded by people who are genuinely loving and are generous out of the goodness of their hearts and not because they want to convert me, no one is trying to force outlandish life decisions (like not being alone with someone of the opposite sex, what a joke), and more. It's a serene feeling when I compare my JW life to where I am now.

Anyway, I'd like to end this with a question: Is there anything that triggers you back to your JW life? You know, something that's nostalgic and has probably ruined it for you? Me personally, the word "worldly" is bothersome to me now. I remember the sick feeling I'd get in my stomach when hearing that word among JW's, because it's a manipulative tool for conformity. What about you guys?

54

God's Word and Modern Man

by TheLiberator in

i have drawn the conclusion that when god speaks, he is using the language and the concepts of the time.

he is not revealing a new scientific understanding when he speaks.

that would be distracting from the point being made.

DangerMcDanger

@Cofty, I wasn't being serious about not believing in science. I was using an example of how saying, "Believing religion involves indoctrination through one's childhood," is wrong. Let me lay it out like this.

1. Believing religion involves only indoctrination through childhood teachings.

2. That kind of knowledge would vary based on location and time of birth.

3. Therefore, religion is false.

Yet, your knowledge of literally everything would vary based on location and time of birth. In China, you'd believe a totally different arrangement of the fossil record. What you'd learn about evolution in textbooks would look wildly different. If you were born in 900 B.C., you'd think the universe was eternal and the earth is flat. Just because there are varying ideas does not mean you can throw it all out the window and say all of it is false. There are different trains of thought even within sciences. So, let's throw all of science out the window, yeah? No, that's ludicrous.

P.S.: Science builds weapons of mass destruction and kills millions of people. Science births Darwinism, which was Hitler's justification for the Holocaust. I could go on. Yet, science isn't responsible for any of this and neither is religion, but the broken condition of man is. People will use anything justify their evil. People have killed each other over music for goodness' sake.

@Smiddy, I am none of those things, but thank you for the broad generalizations. Why do atheists act like all religious people are stupid? There are great minds within varying fields of academia that are deeply religious. Not only that, 95% of the Earth's population is religious. So, I guess everyone is just stupid except the 5% of atheists, right? Let's be sensible here.

54

God's Word and Modern Man

by TheLiberator in

i have drawn the conclusion that when god speaks, he is using the language and the concepts of the time.

he is not revealing a new scientific understanding when he speaks.

that would be distracting from the point being made.

DangerMcDanger

Saying, "Only people raised under religion are religious," is flatly wrong and also a logical fallacy.

Logical fallacy:

It isn't remarkable that all people taught evolution in schools believe in evolution? Or that the Earth is round? Or that atoms exist? Or the basic principles of mathematics? At birth, we are all born without this kind of knowledge, neutral to it really, but over the course of twelve years we are indoctrinated to believe it to be true. If we were born in 800 B.C., we'd all believe there were only four elements in the world, that the Earth is flat, and the origin of the Earth is water. Therefore, I choose to reject anything regarding science and mathematics that modernism teaches us.

Really, you can apply that point made against religion and use it to debunk every form of knowledge. Yet, there's some double standard for religion that people care about.

On a side note, Richard Dawkins is terrible at trying to be a philosopher, is full of logical fallacies, and makes very shallow arguments. Not an intellectually honest man in the least bit when it comes to religion. Brilliant biologist, terrible thinker in philosophy.

Second, Christianity has a very high conversion rate. There is also a revival of religiosity internationally that has baffled sociologists. In the 80's, sociologists predicted what was called the secular theory, that religion would no longer exist as the world grew more modern. Today, sociologists universally have abandoned such a theory. Throughout history, secularism has always been a trend that comes and goes, but never manages to overcome humanity like it claims it will.