Posts by Scully

25

Can one person make a difference? Need your help please.

by apocalypse in

i am feeling a bit out of sorts & i need to bounce this off the board.. do some of you remember the coming out of the un scandal back when?.

have you seen the letter from the un in c of c?.

i am sitting here with that original letter in my hand.. the day before the date on this letter, i had heard about the watchtower involvement on hourglass2.

Scully

Hi apocalypse,

I remember hawkaw... even had lunch with him once, and lots more phone conversations with him. I don't remember what it was that possessed him to help out a bunch of exJWs, because he had no affiliation with JWs at all, but he was instrumental in the publicity of the JW child sexual abuse scandal that resulted in the 2003 episode of CBC's The Fifth Estate on the topic.

The UN letter isn't in my personal copy of Crisis of Conscience - we left the JWs in the mid 1990s and so had the earlier edition. The UN scandal broke in the fall of 2001. Even though I've had a couple of computers since then, my PDF of that letter from Paul Hoeffel is something I will never delete. I have it on a back up disk too. Even though we'd been out of the JWs several years by that point, it helped me personally to validate that I didn't make a big mistake in leaving the JWs. Sometimes it's tough to be the black sheep of one's family and be ostracised for having a contrary opinion to the way I was raised. I remind myself that my parents also turned their backs on the religions of their own parents when they became JWs, except my grandparents had the wherewithall to recognize that ostracising their children for changing their belief system was unloving... mine don't see it that way where I'm concerned.

Don't sell yourself short - you provided a very valuable service at a time when the information was relevant, and now it's archived here and in CoC for others' benefit. As it turns out, the WTS affiliation with the UN was just the tip of the iceberg of WTS hypocrisy. Since then we've learned all kinds of dirty little secrets that the WTS keeps hidden to maintain the appearance of being "above reproach".

Thanks again for sharing that very important document with the world.

42

Is it GOOD that God KILLS BABIES??? Help needed in debate

by Bloody Hotdogs! in

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[endif]hello all,.

my wife and i are atheists, raised and living as jehovah's witnesses.

Scully

Comatose:

Scully I don't understand your question. You think it's okay to punish a child for its parents sins?

It was more of a rhetorical question. I certainly did NOT say that it's okay to punish a child for its parents' sins.

And how does it demonstrate JUSTICE to execute an innocent child for the sins of its parents?

Jehovah is supposedly the example of true justice... yet, instead of holding people accountable for their own choices (aka, "sins"), he takes out his form of "justice" on a newborn child who doesn't even have the capacity to understand right from wrong. That isn't justice, it's barbaric.

Although, as an atheist, my personal take on what actually happened (if the story has any truth to it at all) was that the child died and David interpreted his newborn son's death to be god punishing him for taking another man's wife and having schemed to have that man killed when she became pregnant with the child.

In my line of work, newborn babies sometimes die, although thankfully with much less frequency than they did thousands of years ago. Still, when it happens, parents beat themselves up over things they may have done or not that "caused" their baby to die. They have a hard time accepting that such a terrible thing was nobody's fault. I can see David and Bathsheba going through the same sort of thought process, with or without the proclamations of a so-called prophet.

115

Public Apology Nathan Natas

by Simon in

i'd like to offer a public apology to nathan natas for making a wrong decision when i deleted him.. i allowed a combination of previous issues we'd had and input from other forum members to bias my decision which lead me to what i now, in hindsight, believe to have been a mistake.. whether you want to come back and post here or not i wanted to at least say sorry and will reactivate your account..

Scully

Happy Days!

Welcome back, Nathan Natas... this place just hasn't been the same without you.

42

Is it GOOD that God KILLS BABIES??? Help needed in debate

by Bloody Hotdogs! in

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[endif]hello all,.

my wife and i are atheists, raised and living as jehovah's witnesses.

Scully

GOD WAS THE ONE who struck the baby and it suffered a week before dying. How loving.

And how does it demonstrate JUSTICE to execute an innocent child for the sins of its parents?

115

Public Apology Nathan Natas

by Simon in

i'd like to offer a public apology to nathan natas for making a wrong decision when i deleted him.. i allowed a combination of previous issues we'd had and input from other forum members to bias my decision which lead me to what i now, in hindsight, believe to have been a mistake.. whether you want to come back and post here or not i wanted to at least say sorry and will reactivate your account..

Scully

Thanks, Simon. I've missed NN's insights and friendship here.

42

Is it GOOD that God KILLS BABIES??? Help needed in debate

by Bloody Hotdogs! in

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[endif]hello all,.

my wife and i are atheists, raised and living as jehovah's witnesses.

Scully

God does not think that killing children is okay, even when it is in sacrifice for his worship.

‘Hear the word of the Lord , you kings of Judah and people of Jerusalem. This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Listen! I am going to bring a disaster on this place that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. 4 For they have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned incense in it to gods that neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. 5 They have built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind. ~ Jeremiah 19:3-5, NIV

They have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire--something I did not command, nor did it enter my mind. ~ Jeremiah 7:31

They sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire. They practiced divination and sought omens and sold themselves to do evil in the eyes of the LORD, arousing his anger. ~ 2 Kings 17:17

They built high places for Baal in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to sacrifice their sons and daughters to Molek, though I never commanded--nor did it enter my mind--that they should do such a detestable thing and so make Judah sin. ~ Jeremiah 32:35

According to the Bible, the concept of killing children as sacrificial offerings was a "detestable thing" - it didn't even come up in his heart - and made those who practice it worthy of destruction at God's hands. Would it be any less detestable in God's eyes for JWs to sacrifice their children on the altar of the blood transfusion doctrine?

Now, I know you're discussing "god" killing children, at Armageddon™ or for such heinous crimes as teasing a bald-headed prophet. But those passages show that "god" disapproves of killing innocent children. However, those passages should give any JW with an active brain stem a jolt, one that might make them have second thoughts about signing their blood cards or the blood cards that their children carry. Those passages can plant a seed, even though you're on a completely different topic at the time.

31

My act of REBELLION

by Gojira_101 in

jw
friends

well a picture says a thousand words!

i had a tattoo done today.. it was actually interesting because as i was chit chatting with the tattoo artist, she asked me if this tattoo symbolized anything....well actually it does i told her.. me: i was a jw and they are strongly against tattoos or anything that is really "normal" for people.. tattoo artist: i know all about jw, my ex-girlfriend's family was all jw, and i remember one time going over to her parents house and her grandma sat us both down and made us read some scriptures from her bible as to why we were going to hell.. me: actually you will due at armageddon, that is the jw thing.. tatt artist: oh right that is what her grandma said.

i forgot about that, you're right.. so then the rest of the conversation was just me telling her it's a cult and i told her never listen to any jw who comes knocking.. something else interesting that happened just before i came on here.

Scully

I love my tattoo. I can still remember how excited I was when I decided on my design and planning it out with the artist.

Of course, I got some disapproving remarks when my JW parents saw it... I had anticipated the reaction and was able to smile sweetly and say, "Well, I'm forty-(something) years old and as I recall, I don't need your permission and didn't ask for it!"

Besides, they didn't ask their kids' permission to join a stupid cult 40 years ago that would ruin the family.

37

Mom who regrets ever having her two kids

by skeeter1 in

the mother who says having these two children is the biggest regret of her lifeisabella dutton, 57, says she wishes she had remained childless'i resented the time my children consumed.

like parasites, they took from me and didn't give back'.

isabella dutton would have been happier not having children.

Scully

You know what? This is the kind of thing childless people need to read before they have children. So many young women think of all the goo-goo and ga-ga cute baby stuff, without taking into consideration the enormity of the responsibility of raising children. They go into parenthood completely clueless - the baby is just another accessory that gets them attention.

While my first reaction to reading this woman's experience was horror for her children, there were parts that I could certainly relate to as well. Sadly, our society tends to label mothers as "selfish" when they try to make themselves a priority once in a while - to look after herself, her well-being, her social life, her career and expecting dads to step up and co-parent the family equally, or ideally, in a manner that empowers both parents as partners and as individuals. Nobody should have to feel resentment toward their children, and if they do, it would seem that negotiating an arrangement that allows them to take feasible steps to mitigate those feelings is in the best interests of the parent and of the children as well.

I'm kind of scratching my head though regarding this lady's admission of realizing that motherhood was a mistake for her within the first week of her firstborn's life... and then proceeding to have another child later on. At this point, she lost my sympathy because she compounded her own misery of her own volition. Martyrs get no sympathy from me, sorry.

24

just curious. How about blood?

by never a jw in

jw
friends

i have never been a jw, but i have lived literally surrounded by them since i married my wife, almost 20 years ago.

since i never raised a fuss before, i guess i was also brain-washed into thnking that their religion was harmless and the leaders were well intended.. i have been reading your comments for many months and have come to realize how harmful the religion is.

your comments have been mostly about the pain inflicted by shunning, deception in the literature, and the views on higher education.

Scully

Well, I was one of the lucky ones. I was informed that I came very close to bleeding to death after childbirth, because I was led to believe that the WTS's doctrine was correct.

I was unconscious for several hours afterward, had a hemoglobin level that was barely compatible with life, had IV fluids pumped into me for a couple of days and needed an extended stay in hospital.

The severe blood loss impacted our lives afterward too - despite hourly feedings, my body wouldn't make enough milk to breastfeed my newborn. I had to stop trying after a few weeks, because I wasn't recuperating due to lack of sleep, and my newborn wasn't gaining weight.

In the years that followed, there have been numerous statistical studies on the subject, one of which was published in a medical journal where it was reported that JW women have a 65-fold risk of death during childbirth for lack of blood transfusion. That is not statistically insignificant, as the WTS would have JWs believe. (See: http://pubmedcentralcanada.ca/pmcc/articles/PMC3496240/)

I have said this before and I will say it again here: If it were JW men whose lives were on the line due to obstetrical haemorrhage, this doctrine would never have materialized. The WTS has, time and time again, proved its disdain for the lives of women and children by compelling women to put their lives at risk at one of the most vulnerable times in a woman's life.

15

shunning and jw funerals

by man in black in

when a jw from your area dies, do you attend the visitation or funeral ?.

since i have da'ed myself, several people that i have known for years have died, and i have attended both the visitation, and or funeral.. but everytime, i have been treated like i don't even exist.

just trying to follow normal human emotions, by attending and showing my feelings to the surviving family has been alot like running into a brick wall.

Scully

I've never attended a JW funeral since leaving the JWs, and I don't think I would. Not just because of the potential for shunning, but because I would be so offended by the paltry excuse of a Memorial Service™ that spends more time pimping for the WTS than it does expressing warmth and the sense of loss for the deceased.

I'd rather send a card. That way, the person has to read the sentiments (i.e., associate with you) before seeing the name you sign the card with. You get to express your condolences, a nice memory of the person who has passed away, and sign your name in love and friendship. They can't shun it.