Posts by Scully

13

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver - WT buildings in Brooklyn shown in clip

by Scully in

jw
friends

see the video clip, at approx 2:55 in this segment:.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6rbaqwz1xc.

i don't know what it means that donald trump's son-in-law's father (charles kushner) bought those buildings, but thought it was interesting..

Scully

Not knowing, apparently, is not a good enough excuse according to the law, and especially not according to WT.

Surely their massive legal team did their due diligence in researching the source of the money??

13

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver - WT buildings in Brooklyn shown in clip

by Scully in

jw
friends

see the video clip, at approx 2:55 in this segment:.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6rbaqwz1xc.

i don't know what it means that donald trump's son-in-law's father (charles kushner) bought those buildings, but thought it was interesting..

You're right: in the big scheme of things money and property changing hands is really not a big deal. But, from the perspective of a JW who believes their Organization™ is above all reproach, and would *never* take money from anyone whose values didn't mesh with their published values, it is a pretty interesting scenario.

After all, if you can be DFd and labelled as corrupt beyond redemption for smoking or using the swimming pool at the YMCA or buying a lottery ticket or accepting a bribe or selling cigarettes in your corner store, how can they justify selling their property to someone with such a corrupt history? Could it be that they are party to a money-laundering scheme?

All I'm suggesting is that this transaction could possibly raise some eyebrows and maybe even open some eyes among some JWs and cause them to investigate other scandals within the Organization™, such as the ARC and other sexual abuse scandals, the UN Library Card scandal, the stocks held in trust that brought them dividends from Phillip Morris (tobacco products) and so on.

The WT has a lot of do-as-we-say-not-as-we-do rules, but the one that comes to mind is related to "a little leaven (corruption) ferments the whole loaf (renders the entire [whatever] corrupt)" Gal 5:9. Individual JWs are expected to aspire to the most stringent and rigorous standards in their day-to-day lives, yet the Organization™ itself just does whatever it wants in order to further its own aims. Also recall the story of Jesus throwing the money changers out of the temple, due to their corruption, and defiling their Holy Place with usury.

I think it might be an interesting episode to share with JW family members (with full disclosure that John Oliver has a potty mouth and isn't afraid to use it).

13

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver - WT buildings in Brooklyn shown in clip

by Scully in

jw
friends

see the video clip, at approx 2:55 in this segment:.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6rbaqwz1xc.

i don't know what it means that donald trump's son-in-law's father (charles kushner) bought those buildings, but thought it was interesting..

Scully

See the video clip, at approx 2:55 in this segment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6RbAQWZ1Xc

I don't know what it means that Donald Trump's son-in-law's father (Charles Kushner) bought those buildings, but thought it was interesting.

19

Jehovah Witnesses Unaware They Are Fulfilling Bible Prophecies

by Wakeupcall2u in

jehovah witnesses unaware they are fulling bible prophecies.

for many of us witnesses that have left either as stricken lost sheep or unlawfully disfellowshiped please consider that our brothers & sisters in the synagogues of kingdom halls are misled & need our help in trying to pull them out of the fire.

the test now on them is about just how they are treating their unlawfully excluded (disfellowshiped) brothers & sisters, as foretold at isaiah 66. at present they sit in judgement on us the growing great crowd who have come out & they are prepared with hard- heartedness to condemn their brothers & sisters to a final everlasting death, by running away as spiritual cowards refusing us a cup of life giving water (truth) matt 10: to explain the apostasy in their temple the disgusting thing in the holy place.

Scully

Simon:

Religion is a touchstone for mental illness and illiteracy.

If all caps titles and lack of punctuation doesn't convince anyone, I don't know what will.

OUTLAW:

Be grateful he knows what a period is used for......LOL!!

My Kingdom for some flipping paragraphs!

19

Being homosexual in a JW house hold

by Jean in

i could not find a topic about this if there is one ooops.

it is hard to speak with my mother or any other witnesses about this, their response is "its ok to be gay just don't ever 'act out.

acting out = being with someone even if its a healthy consensual legal relationship between two adults its still wrong.

Scully

Don't allow the JWs to sell you the mind-f*ck of believing that by pursuing your own happiness is somehow a rejection of them. They're the ones who choose intolerance and conditional acceptance over accepting a person for who they are.

I wonder how they'd respond to the thought that some scholars believe Jesus was gay?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2012/apr/20/was-jesus-gay-probably

There are other scholars who believe that David's relationship with Jonathan was homosexual, even though he married women and had children with them. Maybe he was bisexual, or was gay but needed a 'cover story' in order to protect his kingship. Given that he was God's Chosen One™, you'd think that if God objected to his relationship with Jonathan, he would have picked someone else - the same goes with Jesus.

Just some food for thought. YMMV

10

Special Public Talk - 2017

by Nicholaus Kopernicus in

during yesterday's public talk, i noted the speaker did not make a full reference to the first outline point following the second reference to romans 12:21 - "but keep conquering the evil with the good".this first outline point as i call it, is as follows: "be willing to forgive others whenever there is a basis for doing so".

interesting conditionality i thought!

it references the aw of june 8th 1995 page 10 paras 6-7. in part it says there... "what though, if others sin against us in a more serious way, deeply injuring us?

Scully

"Christians are not required to forgive those who practice malicious, willful sin with no repentence."

Does that include The Seven Loathsome Things in Brooklyn/Warwick (and their predecessors) for bald-faced lying to the millions of JWs around the world for over a century??

10

Indoctrination or insistence on being right?

by OutsiderLookingIn in

nobody likes to be wrong.

so after being taught that they have "the truth" for so long, is it that jws just don't want to admit that they are wrong so they'll keep going in the same direction rather than reversing course?

this is different from indoctrination when you truly believe what you're saying.

Scully

I think there are psychological forces involved, beyond the indoctrination.

Like Stockholm Syndrome, for one, where people in abusive relationships make excuses for their abusers, show them loyalty and devotion. The longer a person stays in this type of relationship (especially if the abuse is not physical) the more likely they're in for the long haul.

Sometimes, people just can't tolerate leaving a bad relationship, and make excuses for staying in a bad situation. "It's good enough for me to stay/not bad enough to leave"; "I don't know how to be on my own without ____"; "I've invested too much of my life/money to pull out now"; or the infamous "Jehovah will fix things when it's time".

People involved in the stock market also make these kinds of excuses when their stocks start doing poorly "It'll bounce back"; "I have to stick with it to earn back the money I lost"; "It performed so well before, it will again." The brokers encourage this kind of thinking to keep stockholders from bailing en masse in a state of panic.

Elderly JWs often have no alternate social structure other than the people they've known from the KH and Circuit Assemblies™. They've Loyally™ distanced themselves from family members who aren't JWs or who have left the JWs. There really isn't anywhere else for them to go considering they'd have to start over from scratch. Many are disappointed that they aren't yet in the Paradise™ they were promised, but to cut bait now would mean admitting that their entire lives were wasted on lies. That thought is just too overwhelming for them.

11

Another Blood Question

by Cold Steel in

village idiot » by the way, [one's wife] can be disfellowshipped for allowing her child to have a transfusion.. just a side question here, but what if the husband allows a child to receive a transfusion over the objection of the wife?.

let's say the wife joins the jws but the husband doesn't?

then, nine years later the husband allows their child to receive the transfusion.

Scully

A 15-year-old, especially one that has been Baptized™ as a JW, would have Watchtower's legal teams argue on his behalf that he is a Mature Minor™ capable of making a so-called "informed" (ie, indoctrinated) choice to refuse a blood transfusion.

The fact that he is not Baptized™ as a JW, Watchtower's lawyers would argue against his choice to have a blood transfusion, saying that he does not have the capacity to make such a decision.

Frankly, if a 13-year-old girl can obtain birth control without parental knowledge or consent and can obtain an abortion (in Canada, at least) without her parents' knowledge or consent, it completely throws the argument out the window that a 15-year-old is not in a position to accept a blood transfusion against his parents' wishes. He's choosing to live. His parents are choosing to gamble with his life.

25

A baffling physics question

by FatFreek 2005 in

for several weeks i've been treating myself to a hot chocolate milk (well, soymilk) before bedtime.

some 16 oz soymilk which i heat on high in our microwave oven.

this is just enough time where the liquid begins to bubble along the top edge.. i then take it out of the microwave and place it on my kitchen gram scale, stir it good enough to redistribute the heat, then reset the scale to zero grams.. next, i squeeze in the hershey's sytup, "special dark mildly sweet chocolate" (fat free) into the warmed soymilk till the scale reads some 30 grams.

Scully

How much of the liquid adheres to the spoon (via surface tension) whenever you stir it?

To know that, you'd have to weigh the spoon after stirring your beverage to see if it has gained weight.

70

Apologists saying that the JWs shouldn't be banned, what the hell!??

by Crazyguy in

it's been brought to my attention that there are xjw that say they support the witnesses and don't think russia should ban them.

i would just like to remind all of you that jws are guilty of murder, causing higher rates of suicide, covering up child molestation, and keeping members in prisoned because if they leave they loose family, financial support, possible employment etc.. sure their not strapping bombs to their chests but they easily get members to kill themselves with their blood policies.

they are an extremist group!

Scully

One of the backbones of the WTS is its history of growth during times of persecution.

In Thirty Years a Watchtower Slave, Schnell described direct orders from Rutherford for JWs to create social unrest in order to challenge the laws against door-to-door preaching. JWs were arrested for defying Caesar's Law™ and WT lawyers represented these JWs in court in order to "legally defend and establish" the JW religion and its preaching work as legitimate expressions of religious belief, protected under the Constitution of the United States.

Similar behaviours followed in Canada, especially in Quebec under its Premier, Duplessis. These acts of civil disobedience were a direct attack against the Catholic Church's opposition to JW activities. James Penton (before he was DFd from the JWs) compiled a volume of legal victories enjoyed by the WT in Canada, and the growth of the movement in the aftermath.

Every governmental push against Watchtower has resulted in pushback, not just from WT's own legal teams, but from JWs around the world. It makes JWs more entrenched when they feel that they are seeing prophecy fulfilled, when Jesus' words about persecution against his true followers seemingly takes place (even when WT officials are the ones provoking the governments in the first place).

My family started associating with JWs in the early 70s, and the one thing that seemed to tip the scales permanently in favor of the JWs was the outbreak of persecution in Malawi. I was only just in the early grades of elementary school when we were gathered for a Circuit Assembly™ in a school auditorium and heard about the horrible things that JWs were suffering in Malawi. We were asked to write letters to the President of Malawi decrying the persecution of innocent people. What we didn't know was that it was the government's denial of land ownership to Watchtower that was the trigger for Watchtower to forbid JWs from having a 25¢ government issued identification card, which incited further government action against JW citizens.

Meanwhile, in Mexico, Watchtower could not erect Kingdom Halls, but *could* label their properties as "cultural societies". JWs were not permitted to partake in Mexico's military service (just like they were not permitted elsewhere), but individual JWs could pay a bribe to an official to stamp their cartilla to indicate that they had completed their military service, and Watchtower turned a blind eye to this corruption. We never heard about these goings-on that were concurrent with what was happening in Malawi, except to hear them boast about the phenomenal growth of the JWs in Mexico.

Persecution, whether it is real, imagined or manufactured (as is Watchtower's modus operandi), is a fantastic way to bond people to leaders, to get people to side with the 'oppressed' members of their faction, and to rally the troops so to speak. Whipping up the emotions of other JWs ("our poor Brothers™ and Sisters™ in _____ are being arrested and having their property seized") puts the entire JW population on Red Alert that Armageddon™ must be closing in! It's a sign!!

The way to dismantle a group is for outsiders to be indifferent to these groups. When outsiders become indifferent to JWs, JWs become apathetic, as we've seen in the last decade or so, with numbers dwindling, young members leaving and looking for a way to better themselves without the religion.