Posts by schnell

39

Why Is it the Girls who Hang in There?

by snugglebunny in

jw
friends

having seen many, many people leave the org over the years, i have to say that, when it comes to married couples, it's almost always the man who makes the first move to leave.

conversely, when it comes to being converted into the witnesses, more often than not it's the wife who joins up first.

although that wasn't the case with my own parents, my father became converted and my mother followed very reluctantly..

schnell

You know that I'd be curious to know as well.

It really isn't a firm rule, but people who are led along by social ties and irrational faith seem especially susceptible.

15

In Honor of Jimmy Olson October 31, 1973

by sparky1 in

in memory of jimmy olson, i have provided a link to his story below.

many who now post here are new to the forum and i felt it was necessary to honor his memory.

although i never knew him, his brother was my roommate for a time at watchtower farms.

schnell

That's so sad...

Bethel always sounds like complete hell.

16

The Anointed Class: Do They Have Spirits?

by Cold Steel in

i realize that the anointed class inherits heaven while the great crowd inherits a renewed planet earth, but how and when are the anointed chosen?

are these people born with spirits or do they grow them as they live?

when they die, they don't sleep but go right to heaven, right?

"Don't you want our kids to have what we had?"

by schnell in

my wife just asked me this.

my answer, in no uncertain terms, is no.

we both grew up in the dub religion.

schnell

@scratchme1010, yeah it also means that certain older brothers and sisters she admires, and who admire her, do not actually have the truth. That's hard to take.

I also think she's close to waking up, but I don't want it to be too late before she does, and I certainly don't want to force it.

29

If the GB changed a major teaching, would all witnesses just go along with it?

by stuckinarut2 in

so if the gb changed its "bible based beliefs" on some teaching, would witnesses all of a sudden change their individual beliefs too?.

witnesses like to claim that "their bible trained hearts and minds" make them believe as they do, but we know that the reality is that all witnesses hold their "deep seated beliefs" according to what they have been told to believe.. so what would cause the average witness to question those that dictate their "personal convictions"??.

thoughts?.

schnell

Who was i to think i knew better than Gods chosen channel?

You mean, "don't lean on your own understanding"?

Ugh. My friend told me that recently when I showed him how the flood couldn't have happened. That little verse in Proverbs is key to their mind control.

When you go back and read Proverbs as a thinking atheist, you see pretty clearly that at least on the surface, it's a letter from a father telling his sons to stay away from thugs and hoes. If it was intended any other way, it's pretty odd to start out with that.

But no, cults need that mind control measure.

36

Why are JWs so sensitive to criticism?

by Half banana in

i remember a roman catholic priest acknowledging on the bbc that the outrageously anti-clerical tv comedy father ted was a humorous mocking of his church but an acceptable thing.. try mocking the jw religion to a believer and the result is so very different.. just why is it that jehovah's witnesses can never take even the faintest hint of criticism of their religion?.

schnell

When I was a kid, I started writing a parody of the Bible stories and shared my wonderful creation so far with my dad and mom.

Dad... really really REALLY didn't like how 11-year-old me pegged Eve as a social inept who'd simply never spoken to anybody else and thus awkwardly gave it all up to a snake.

41

What Comes After the Watchtower Collapse?

by schnell in

i was going to put this in my thread about pyramid schemes, but i thought it's discreet enough to warrant its own.

1) there are many faithful jws.

2) there are many men and women who could take control and fill the void if the watchtower collapses.

schnell

"Hey guys! So, a lot of you know about our recent lawsuits. LOL embarrassing, right?! Well we need some money now, we've done our downsizing and such, we're paying our legal fees, etc. etc. And ya know what else? It may surprise you that we have a means to protect our investment at Walkill which so many of you invested your time and energy and money into... We have to pay some contractors back for a remote control lake. Hurricanes, amirite?!"

21

2013 NWT - Conveniently Circular

by theunbeliever in

this is my first post.

as i am currently disfellowshipped, i have no one else to discuss these things with.

even if i was actively associated with the dubs, i suppose i'd still have no one else to discuss this with.

schnell

The "Jesus believed it, therefore it must be true" argument is circular reasoning. It's a fallacy. If Isaiah 40 onward wasn't written by Isaiah, and the writer who wrote Luke wrote that Jesus read from Isaiah 61, that *should* cast doubt on either Jesus or the gospel attributed to Luke.

And if a scribe copying this in the *second* century continues from chapter 39 to 40, so the hell what? Seriously, Insight, you're hilarious.

Great call on the circle thing, too. It's not the only place you find a flat Earth in the Bible.

21

2013 NWT - Conveniently Circular

by theunbeliever in

this is my first post.

as i am currently disfellowshipped, i have no one else to discuss these things with.

even if i was actively associated with the dubs, i suppose i'd still have no one else to discuss this with.

schnell

It's funny that they go right to Isaiah 40. I personally love the Insight book's statement on that. Insight On The Scriptures is unintentionally hilarious at times.

Unity of Writership. Certain Bible critics in modern times have contended that the book of Isaiah was not all written by Isaiah. Some claim that chapters 40 through 66 were written by an unidentified person who lived about the time of the end of the Jews’ Babylonian exile. Other critics pare off additional portions of the book, theorizing that someone other than Isaiah must have written them. But the Bible itself does not agree with these contentions.
(...)
Jesus Christ himself, when he read from “the scroll of the prophet Isaiah” at the synagogue in Nazareth, was reading fromIsaiah 61:1, 2.—Lu 4:17-19.
Furthermore, the Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah (IQIsa, believed to have been copied toward the end of the second century B.C.E.) contains evidence that the copyist who penned it knew nothing of any supposed division in the prophecy at the close ofchapter 39. He began the 40th chapter on the last line of the column of writing that containschapter 39.

13

"Don't you want our kids to have what we had?"

by schnell in

my wife just asked me this.

my answer, in no uncertain terms, is no.

we both grew up in the dub religion.

schnell

My wife just asked me this. My answer, in no uncertain terms, is no.

We both grew up in the dub religion. We both grew up pretty happy. She in particular is close with her JW family. They call and talk every single day, where I go days without ever talking with my family. I am sure that that's really it.

She has so far refused to watch anything or read anything about the organization's faults. So far. She does see the logic in doing so, but she's resistant.

I have assured her that this is public information. Public information is not my fault, or her fault. She isn't doing anything wrong by educating herself.

I have also told her that we do not even live by JW standards. We don't get our morals from the Watchtower. Both of us cuss, watch movies and shows that Tony Morris wouldn't appreciate (or maybe he would privately, who knows), and we both take what we learn at the meetings and filter them to our own personal standards. Because hey, we like to think for ourselves, yeah?

We do want to have kids. And we *do* know a pedophile in our congregation, a young man with extreme ADHD who escaped a conviction several years ago and thus is not a registered sex offender. He is known to the elders. I told her that I knew another pedo in another congregation. And I know exactly the video to show her a glimpse of the MAGNITUDE of this problem with a compilation of material...

https://youtu.be/ULsWB2AvxVc

Hell no, I don't want my kids there. But will she watch this? Not yet. Not yet she won't.

I just, I don't get it.