Posts by Rainbow

29

The true cost of being raised as a witness

by stuckinarut2 in

how do you view your upbringing as a witness?.

most of us who were raised as witnesses would appreciate that some aspects of our upbringing were ok. a foundation and measure of stability came with it.. but, it struck me too, that we also lost so very much!

and we lost a lot of potential.. by this i mean, we need to look at not just what we lost, or what was deprived of us, but what that ended up costing us as adults into the future.. if i take $10 from you, you have lost just $10.. but, if you were going to use that $10 to buy something that would end up earning you $1000, then i actually took $1000 from you!.

Rainbow_Troll

WTWizard, I like the way you write. Are you, by any chance, the reincarnation of James Joyce?

18

Violent Games/Movie

by Saethydd in

all through my childhood, i was told about the evils of violence (and magic) in entertainment, i doubt i could count the number of movies and video games i wasn't allowed to enjoy for that very reason.

i did always watch movies and play video games with a certain amount of violence in them, but i was careful to keep it at the teen/pg-13 rating.. in the last year or so though i've started trying out games like skyrim, fallout 3, and thief.

(since i still live with my parents i'm careful about where and when i play them.

Rainbow_Troll

I don't play violent video games myself and I personally find simulated gore and murder distasteful (though I enjoy kungfu/martial arts movies on an aesthetic level). That said all of my experience and knowledge of psychology tells me that there is no causal relationship between violent entertainment and real violence. You may as well suggest that people who watch porn are more likely to have sex.

The most that can be said is that violent people like violent entertainment. Gee, who would have guessed that?

29

The true cost of being raised as a witness

by stuckinarut2 in

how do you view your upbringing as a witness?.

most of us who were raised as witnesses would appreciate that some aspects of our upbringing were ok. a foundation and measure of stability came with it.. but, it struck me too, that we also lost so very much!

and we lost a lot of potential.. by this i mean, we need to look at not just what we lost, or what was deprived of us, but what that ended up costing us as adults into the future.. if i take $10 from you, you have lost just $10.. but, if you were going to use that $10 to buy something that would end up earning you $1000, then i actually took $1000 from you!.

Rainbow_Troll

What you are saying is definitely true, but I try to look on the bright side:

Since JWs don't date I got into the habit of being celibate and thus didn't fall into the parent-trap that most twenty-somethings do. That means one, two, possibly three less innocent children did not get born into this shitty world. The same goes for their descendants. I've potentially spared hundreds of people from living terrible, empty lives simply by remaining a virgin.
Being exposed to a cult so early has effectively immunized me against every form of group-think. I'm probably much more skeptical and independent than I would have been had I not been a JW.
Field service was excellent for overcoming social anxiety. Most people are utterly terrified of knocking on a stranger's door and trying to sell them something. But I'm not intimidated in the least.

41

Anyone read the latest Awake (on the supernatural)?

by LoveUniHateExams in

just read some of this latest awake on the org's webshite.. it begins by talking about the 'supernatural' - wizards, witches, vampires, etc.

- their popularity and why they might appeal to people.

then it goes on to state the wt belief that someone is 'behind it'.. now, i like a few horror/scary films - when i was a kid, i always actually liked being a bit scared by them, tbh.. the silence of the lambs, a nightmare on elm street (1984), the ring, the witch, the thing (1982) and a few others are all great, imo.. they are just genres and subgenres of film, that's all.

Rainbow_Troll

Phizzy16 hours ago
The JW Org Cult is full of Mediaeval superstitious nonsense.
Satan is used as a tool to instill fear, i.e "Stay away from anything demonic, or you will stop serving Jehovah".

It's totally messed up my mom's life.

She bought a house about 17 years back and intended to live in it for the rest of her life. For years everything was cool until she started hearing things. She thought it was demons, but it sounded to me like rats were living in the walls and perhaps some raccoons were squatting in the basement. Then there were some electrical problems, which she blamed on demons, though I convinced her to get an electrician over there (he fixed it).

But things just got worse from there. She says the demons would not only make noises, but pull the covers off her at night. Then they possessed a bed in another room and caused it to jump up and down. She eventually put the house up for sale and moved into an apartment. Since she had already gotten a reverse mortgage on the place and wasn't living there anymore, the bank only gave her a limited amount of time to sell it. When it didn't sell within their time frame, it went into foreclosure and my mom lost everything!

My mom still lives in her apartment and guess what? The demons have followed her. They tried to kill her recently by causing a light fixture to fall and nearly miss her head. One also tried to possess her by entering her mouth when she yawned, but she coughed the demon out (no kidding!).

I don't know what to believe. Maybe she's just nuts or maybe there really is something going on; probably a little bit of both. What I do know is that none of this would have happened if the Watchtower hadn't fostered fear of demons in someone as gullible and emotionally vulnerable as my mom. It's criminal! It's like telling a child who trusts you 100% that if she doesn't do as she's told, the boogie man will eat her!

My mom had it good! She was retired, paying no mortgage, and actually getting paid by the bank just to live in that house. Now all she has is social security and a $500 a month rent that she will have to pay until she dies.

Thanks a lot Watchtower.

41

Anyone read the latest Awake (on the supernatural)?

by LoveUniHateExams in

just read some of this latest awake on the org's webshite.. it begins by talking about the 'supernatural' - wizards, witches, vampires, etc.

- their popularity and why they might appeal to people.

then it goes on to state the wt belief that someone is 'behind it'.. now, i like a few horror/scary films - when i was a kid, i always actually liked being a bit scared by them, tbh.. the silence of the lambs, a nightmare on elm street (1984), the ring, the witch, the thing (1982) and a few others are all great, imo.. they are just genres and subgenres of film, that's all.

Rainbow_Troll

Thanks for the movie Schnell. It reminded me of why I chose the dark side all those years ago and never looked back.

8

New "Become Jehovah's Friend" Video - The Ransom

by pale.emperor in

: https://www.jw.org/en/publications/videos/#mediaitems/allvideos/pub-pk_e_26_video.

sickening propaganda for our young ones.

they've laid off on the "armageddon will be here soon" angle and now it's all about "hope".

Rainbow_Troll

I've often thought about how sad it would be if it were all true. Imagine being a JW in the new system knowing that disfellowshipped friends and family are gone for good and will never be resurrected, while you will live for an eternity without any hope of seeing them ever again.

I think this may have been a unconscious incentive for me leaving the WT. I knew that, even if it were all true, I would never see my father again, nor my aunts, uncles or cousin. My worldly friends would be gone too. So there was less to look forward to in the new system.

16

How to respond when JW's invite you to the memorial

by krismalone in

the yearly rejection of the blood of christ aka jw memorial is coming soon.. jw's will be engaging in an invitation campaign.

elders are instructed to personally visit inactive ones or faders.

some sarcastic ideas of how to respond to the memorial invitation that will scare or piss off the cult members:.

Rainbow_Troll

I like answer #3.

I just tell anyone who asks : "While I am not Christian, I feel no need to desecrate its holiest rite by deliberately rejecting the body and blood of Christ. Jesus was cool and I will not go out of my way to insult him."

It won't work, of course, but it's fun to give them a brief glimpse of how crazy their cult looks to the rest of the world.

Some might see that reply as smart assed of me, but this is how I really feel about the matter. As much as I hate Christianity, Satanism is just silly. Rejecting Jesus and desecrating his emblems is stupid and only proves that the person doing it left Christianity for the wrong reasons.

But, if you ARE Christian, this would be an excellent opportunity to invite them to a real eucharist. Actions are much more persuasive than arguments. I think if a JW ever had the gonads (or ovaries) to participate in a real mass, they might realize just how joyless and empty their memorial is by comparison.

49

Infinity versus nothing

by Fisherman in

some people like to believe in something others believe in nothing; so in what location did the substance that expanded into the time/space universe exist before the big bang?

where did the energy that caused the big band come from?

how did the substance that became the big bang change from being inert and sterile and come to life to having the properties and drive that it does?

Rainbow_Troll

the nature of the universe, and secondly a similar issue, any reference to the concepts involved have to fit in with your pre-existing paradigms.
Physical no? and conforming to scientific realism? Or do you believe that the universe is like the trinity?

Anyone who believes that light can behave like a wave or particle depending on the experiment may as well accept the Trinity. Tossing out the aether derailed astrophysics and turned Science into a mystical religion.

19

Craziest thing you ever did during intermission at a Circuit Assembly

by Esse quam videri in

1970 - there was a local drag strip a few miles away from the hall rented for the circuit assembly.

i was 18 , tim o. was 16 and wayne d. was 18. wayne had a 1955 chevy 4 door, 6 cylinder and fresh paint job.

tim had his dad'ss 1965 chevy half ton.

Rainbow_Troll

I broke into parked cars, stole picnic baskets, and lured bored JW girls behind the bushes.

80

The Fundamental difference between Islam and Christianity

by ILoveTTATT2 in

jw
friends

ever since i came out of the witnesses, i've become very political.. i've heard lots of arguments back and forth for many things.. in the u.s. there is the argument that it is "racist" to want to deny entry to muslims.

while there is freedom of religion, there is also the very valid concern of maintaining democracy and a justice system that is based on modern values.we as exjw's constantly quote the pew center for statistics on jw's such as: they are last place in the us for members of a religion that go to university, and second-last for poverty levels of members of a religion.

we accept those statistics and mention them as proof of how damaging the jw's are.now, let's use the same center for some very scary statistics on islam:http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/22/muslims-and-islam-key-findings-in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world/.

Rainbow_Troll

Yesu, you make a fair point.

While Qur'anists continue to identify as Muslim, other Muslims consider them heretics and they are heavily persecuted in Muslim countries (a Quranist blogger got imprisoned in Cairo not so long ago).

I guess I see the Qur'anist vs. Orthodox debate as similar to the Catholic vs. Protestant debate. When Luther challanged the traditions of the Catholic Church I am sure many no longer considered him Christian and if his revolt had failed there would be no such thing as a Christianity divorced from Catholicism. But Luther succeeded. Thousands of common people listened to him and intellectuals like John Calvin used their learning to build upon his dissent. Now we have millions of people who utterly reject the Pope and many of the traditions of the Catholic church; and yet these people consider themselves to be Christians. Is the pope going to tell them they're not?

If Qur'anism is able to take the Muslim world by storm the way Protestantism took the Christian world, I think we could have hundreds of thousands of Qur'anists who yet consider themselves Muslim and are recognized as such by the non-muslims as well. Whether or not this ever happens is an open question, but if liberal Muslims want to justify their unwillingness to live under sharia law, this is the only option I see for them.

Diogenesister13 hours ago
Rainbow _Troll Can you tell us anymore about these " satanic verses"? About these daughters of Allah please?

Records of pre-Islamic religion are sketchy at best and some Muslims will even deny the Satanic verses incident ever happened; but here is what I know:

Allah, the Muslim God is actually a contraction of Al-Ilah or "the god". Al-Ilah was the creator deity of the pre-Islamic polytheists of Mecca and he had daughter goddesses who were also worshiped there. Most Muslims will vehemently deny what I have just said, for obvious reasons, but so what? Anyways, in comes Muhammad with his gospel of one God. "Al-Ilah", he says, "is the only true God and I am his prophet!". The priests and merchants of Mecca are indignant and for good reason: Mecca was a popular holy site and they made a lot of money from the chumps who would make pilgrimage there to worship the gods of the Kabba. Threats are made on Muhammad's life (though they can't be carried out due to tribal politics). He and his followers are persecuted without mercy. The stress gets to the prophet so he tries to compromise with his opponents. All this time he had been uttering revelations which would eventually become the Qur'an and now he utters a new revelation that you won't find in any version of the Qur'an extent. He says:

"Have ye thought upon Al-Lat and Al-‘Uzzá and Manāt, the third, the other? These are the exalted gharāniq, whose intercession is hoped for."

Muhammad's enemies are appeased by this rather equivocal sentence but Muhammad is racked with guilt. He's no charlatan. He really believes that he is receiving revelations from Allah and this wasn't one of them. He soon retracts his new 'revelation' and the persecution of Muslims resumes. End of story.

Rainbow_Troll

Posts by Rainbow_Troll

Phizzy16 hours ago