I had several Bible studies in elementary school. I can't recall giving out any specific advice, but I often worry that, even though I didn't manage to convert anyone, I may have planted some seeds of faith in my studies. I did criticize the theory of evolution a lot but, thank Darwin, no one cared to listen to me.
Rainbow_Troll
JoinedPosts by Rainbow_Troll
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23
What strange counsel did YOU GIVE to others?
by Funchback inalright.... so in another thread, most of us have been counseled for some lame stuff, and the responses range from funny to shocking.. now, let's focus on you giving counsel to others.
come on, don't be shy!.
i'll begin:.
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why does no one ask questions ?
by midnight ini always felt bad for asking questions , did anyone else ?
what question did you ask or want to ask but feel it was wrong ?
mine was regarding the circuit assembly and the amount defecit anounced .. also 1975 i got a stern reply too when i was studying in the 90,s.
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Rainbow_Troll
I was never punished for asking questioning, but the answers I recieved were never satisfying.
Q: Why did Jah create predators? A: He didn't. All animals were vegetarians until the flood.
Q: How could a few hours of suffering on a stake pay for the sins of every human being that has and will ever live? A: Because Jesus was perfect and didn't deserve to suffer.
Q: Why is masturbation wrong? A: It increases your libido and thus makes fornication more likely (have any of these people EVER masturbated?)
Q: How could a good God order people to do evil things like child murder? A: God is the origin of both good and evil. He forms the light and creates darkness(Isaiah 45:7) But evil is not the same as sin. God does evil, but he cannot sin against himself.
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Disfellowshipped Brother Gives Public Talk in Kingdom Hall
by The Searcher inabsolutely beautiful!.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vbmfx4isku.
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Rainbow_Troll
That was beautiful! I think that if I had heard a talk like that when I was fifteen my departure from the bOrg could have been postponed for years.
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1914 is the Key !
by Phizzy ini thought this deserved its own topic.
it is a thought that occurred to me as i read the wt rag that i took to be polite.. it is the public one about the 4 horseman, and it struck me that they are still 100% reliant on their false 1914 doctrine to hang everything on.. if 1914 is proved wrong, what can the credibility of their doomsday message hang on ?.
we all know how to disprove the old 2520 years nonsense, but they seem to at last be hiding that, and simply claiming that world events prove jesus slung the devil out of heaven in 1914.. so, what has that old devil done since 1914, 103 years ago ?.
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Rainbow_Troll
So, what has that Old Devil done since 1914, 103 years ago ?
Well, he has brought a huge percentage of the World's people out of poverty and hunger, many diseases, physical and mental, have been cured, or alleviated, life expectancy gets longer and longer, no major war affecting the whole world has occurred since 1945, despite Trump work is beginning on Climate Change and many other aspects of the Environment.Considering that most people only turn to religion when they are miserable and hopeless, I actually find this to be reasonable. If I were Satan, it's exactly what I would do.
But all fun aside, I don't see how anyone is going to refute an event that the Watchtower describes as "an invisible return". How can anyone prove that Jehovah didn't hand his scepter to Jesus back 1914? Do we have a telescope powerful enough to peer into Heaven? It seems to me that Russell's teapot is more vulnerable than the 1914 doctrine.
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The power of cognitive dissonance
by joe134cd ini've been watching this reality tv program called "catfish".
it deals with people who have had a rough deal with internet dating e.g fake profile, money scams etc.
any way there was one episode that really stuck out to me that made me realized the power of cognitive dissonance in dealing with jws.
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Rainbow_Troll
I once read a sociological study When Prophecy Fails about a UFO cult in the midwest. The cult leader repeatedly made false prophecies: first that there was going to be a catastrophic flood, and later that an alien spacecraft would appear to beam up the cultists. No matter how many times the spaceship failed to show, the cult members never lost faith. In fact, each failure seemed only to strengthen their conviction that this nutty housewife was in contact with advanced extraterrestrials. These people simply had too much invested, in terms of both time or raw emotion, to renounce their false beliefs. It reminded me of the way some investors will refuse to let go of a sinking stock.
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How do you feel when people quote an inspirational or lovely passage from the bible?
by stuckinarut2 ina thought occurred to us today about how christians, including witnesses love to quote some lovely passage of the bible as proof of god's love, or the value of the bible.. but just because a small passage or sentence is quoted doesn't mean the whole book is to be valued.. for instance, there may be a nice sentence or comment expressed in the passage of mein kampf, but would that make the book or it's author worthy of quoting or following?
the entire book and its message needs to taken into consideration!
(obviously that author had genocidal tendencies and disturbing ideas).
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Rainbow_Troll
Since the Bible is an anthology composed by many different authors, I don't think the book can be judged by any one passage, good or bad. There are plenty of verses from the Bible that I take inspiration from; but I don't privilege them over equally inspiring verses from Shakespeare or Aeschylus. Like it or not, most of us are cultural Christians even if we don't believe in God anymore.
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“Winning the Battle for Your Mind”
by SAHS in“winning the battle for your mind.” that is the title of an article in the latest watchtower magazine, of july 2017, pages 27-30. wow, how ironic!
here is the direct link:.
https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2017488.
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Rainbow_Troll
Hey, at least this proves that the good old boys at Warwick have a sense of irony. Forgive them not, for they know what they do.
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Church of the Subgenius / jehovah1
by lancelink inwhile reading the morning news, i came upon a story about this church and the name grabbed my attention :.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/church_of_the_subgenius.
some aspects are just too close to the mark with the witnesses.
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Rainbow_Troll
J.R. "Bob" Dobbs is the true for-profit prophet of JHVH-1. I've been a member since I was 16. If I were you I'd send in my $30 before it's too late. XX-day is only 13 months and 5 days away. Praise "Bob"! -
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Feeling Alone. Need Emotional Support.
by Doubtfully Yours inplease chime in if you're one of my kindred spirit that happens to literally be trapped in due to strong family/friends ties, or plain fear of being abandoned in old age.. although leaving the org is my ultimate wish and desire, fear of the unknown, fear of how it would change my family dinamics, plain fear alone paralyzes me.
how do you cope in this difficult situation?
dy.
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Rainbow_Troll
I WAS in your situation and made the foolish mistake of outing myself before I had formed any relationships outside of the bOrg. My advice is that you build a 'double life' for yourself and only then, when you feel secure, fade.
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Baptized at a young age, homeschooled, and pioneered ...
by Wild_Thing inand all of this by the time i was 14. i was the youngest person in my pioneer school.
was anybody else in the trenches (to this degree) at such a young age?.
i look back on it now and marvel at how isolated i was.
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Rainbow_Troll
I was home schooled for a while, but I was not forced into it. When I broke my arm around age 12 after falling off the garage roof, the bone had to be set and then put in a heavy cast for about six weeks so it could mend. Naturally, this would be impossible if I had to attend a school where I constantly had to defend myself from bullies; so my mom and everyone else agreed that I should be allowed to do all my school work at home. After trying it for six weeks, I decided it wasn't so bad and later signed on for permanent independent study status.
Academically speaking, I can't say it was any better or any worse than attending public school. The books I studied from were exactly the same. I am aware that some Christian parents are actually able to exclude books from their child's curriculum that mention evolution, but I never knew any home schooled children in which this was the case (perhaps it was illegal in my state).
Some people on here have mentioned the social aspect. While I will concede that being exposed to people of different cultures could give a JW some perspective on their own beliefs and lifestyle, I think just watching television or reading non-JW material could easily serve the same purpose. I would say that, if anything, being a JW in school just reinforced my programming. Not being allowed to participate in class activities that involved holidays, patriotism, sports or evolution just made me stand out and feel even more alienated. What really opened my eyes wasn't interacting with kids of other faiths, but reading books written by adults who actually knew enough about the Bible and Christianity to make an intelligent critique of them.
Maybe there are some decent public schools out there, but if there are they must be pretty rare since I attended six that were all pretty bad (though some were worse than others). I can't imagine how any parent, no matter how apathetic or anti-intellectual they might be, could possibly do a worse job of educating their child than the typical American public school. The only conclusion that I can draw from my experiences with both public school and home school is that, unless their parents could have afforded to send them to a private school, children who are home schooled aren't missing out to any significant degree.