Posts by TonusOH

me i slowly came to see religion was a crutch we use to dream of a better "afterlife"....i feel half my life was wasted building an organisation that had no criminal mastermind behind it...just alot of mislead people looking for leadership.

if your still religious explain why..

TonusOH

I became an atheist before I decided I was no longer a JW, although by then I had long since faded. I just kept telling myself that I'd return at some point, not realizing that somewhere in my head, I'd given up on the organization. The bright side is that I did not seek out "apostate" material until after I had left, so there was no question about whether or not I'd been 'tricked' into leaving. It took a good long time, but I figured it out on my own. Basically, I tried to make sense of god as both a being and a concept, and found that -once I dropped the presupposition that he was real- I couldn't.

I don't fuss with whether I am agnostic or atheist. I am open to the idea that a god or gods exist, but so far I have not found one that makes sense to me. The ones that are supposed to have a deep interest in us, yet never show their faces (except, apparently, for the occasional piece of burnt toast), who desperately need us to care about them (on pain of eternal punishment), who blame us for their bad designs... they don't make sense to me. A god that is indifferent to us, who sees us as a science experiment and is not at all concerned with our individual well-being... that makes more sense of the universe and world we live in. But in that case, I'm not obligated to worship it, believe in it, or care about it.

I don't know if the universe requires a creator, or if it's some kind of accidental self-regenerating thing. I leave that to the astronomists and physicists. Without the concern of an afterlife or the belief in any of the gods we know, I don't feel a need to worry about it. It'd be nice to know, but life is short and it's pretty awesome when you're enjoying what is instead of worrying about what might be.

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

TonusOH

He still doesn't appear to have grasped that he's made things worse. He made a big public deal about the "lies" told about him and how his team of legal-beagles were going to set things straight.

It's like that old saying: "If I had 3000 euro for every person I added to the litigation..."

I think he cannot deal with the thought that his detractors feel that they are correct, or feel vindicated, or just have a reason to cast aspersions (or even just point and laugh). He's long past the point where he should have learned that trying to 'win' on the internet (or trying to get your opponents/critics to admit you won) doesn't happen, and only leads to a lot of unnecessary anxiety.

It's kind of fitting that he commented on Will Smith's situation; like Smith, the thing that Evans will regret most is all of the ammunition that he gave to his detractors, none of it necessary. Smith may never live down a 20-second video of him slapping Chris Rock. Imagine if he'd posted a self-incriminating, rambling, embarrassing train-wreck of a video that was more than 90 minutes long...

29

We are now around 25 years past the point when Armageddon was to arrive as PROMISED!

by nowwhat? in

absolute worst case scenario, the last of the generation that saw the events of 1914 would have died off would be in the mid to late 1990's!

so we were told in the 1980's!

so now we 3/4 of another generation past that!.

TonusOH

The problem with end-times predictions is that they're so obviously made-up. The Bible has lots of dates and numbers and symbols, but it doesn't have a consistent or clear guide for defining them. So it's easy to come up with a calculation that conveniently places the end of the world on a date within our lifetimes. No one ever believes that we're just another generation that will come and go without seeing the most momentous event in human history... it has to happen in our day!

I recall hearing or reading the calculation that Harold Camping used to determine that the end would come in 2011. It was so odd and unintuitive that I couldn't believe that he ever thought it was legit. On the one hand, self-delusion can be very powerful. On the other, I can't imagine a person being that deluded for so long. But I think a lot of the people who make these predictions really do think that they're on to some amazing hidden cosmic secret. It sure beats convincing yourself that you're really Napoleon.

13

Do Jehovah's really have true Bible studies?

by RULES & REGULATIONS in

frequently asked questions.

if i accept a bible study, will i be pressured to become one of jehovah’s witnesses?.

jehovah’s witnesses love teaching people about the bible, but we never pressure anyone to join our religion.

TonusOH

As far as I was concerned, JWs didn’t have true bible studies. What they HAVE with potential recruits are really ‘literature’ studies.

That's a great way to put it. And it's been like that since the beginning. Russell claimed that true understanding could only come by reading his Studies in the Scriptures books; that if you regularly read them, you wouldn't need to read the Bible at all. And if you didn't read SitS regularly, reading the Bible wasn't going to do you any good.

His ego was almost as big as Lloyd Evans's.

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

TonusOH

I can't imagine his doing multiple hour rebuttals being the driving force of his channel.

I always preferred his shorter videos, especially those "sushi" ones he did that were a few minutes long. Those required him to focus on a specific point or argument, and I think he was better prepared and more concise. I couldn't sit through the multi-hour videos, and I saw no benefit to the talk-by-talk and point-by-point videos covering entire assembly programs. One of the best parts of leaving the organization was not having to grind through eight hours of 'instruction.' I wasn't going to do that again, even if it was the MST3K guys doing it.

I think his best option now is to (1)admit he screwed up and promise his remaining supporters (and any potential return/future supporters) that he's dedicating himself to getting his life in order. (2)Get back to short, focused videos on current JW news and info --including the rebuttal sushi videos-- and don't do anymore personal stuff. (3)Stop being an asshole. I'm guessing that 1 and 3 just aren't going to happen; he'll probably try to ride it out and won't realize that it's not working until he's well past rock-bottom.

10

JWs are always the victims... Depending on where you're standing

by neat blue dog in

two wt pictures of an adult child leaving home, one to be a jw, and one to leave the jws.

in one, the caption says his family are 'opposing' him, but in the other he's apparently hurting them.

depends on where you're standing.. .

TonusOH

That's been the approach for as long as I can remember. When you are not a JW, they urge you to 'have an open mind' and 'willingness to listen to other/new ideas.' When you are a JW, they warn you against the threat of 'worldly thinking' and the dangers of listening to 'false information.'

Be as independent and free-thinking as you need to be, to allow the JWs to lure you in. After that, think only approved thoughts, or risk being removed from the group (an action which will be blamed on you!).

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

TonusOH

One can scubadive in warm tropical waters and see sex workers in the same trip.

If he'd just said "I'm going to be doing some snorkeling," he might have avoided so much angst!

10

Law of Diminishing Returns

by Rattigan350 in

the law of diminishing returns states: the law of diminishing returns is an economic principle stating that as investment in a particular area increases, the rate of profit from that investment, after a certain point, cannot continue to increase if other variables remain at a constant.

as investment continues past that point, the return diminishes progressively.. from 1900 through the 1980s, the more witnesses that got baptized and pioneered, the more bible studies that could be had and the more additional witnesses that could join and then congregations would get bigger and they would divide and form in other areas.

but in the 1990s the law of diminishing returns kicked in, particularly in the bigger cities.

TonusOH

I think the internet has had a large impact, which might be why things began to change in the 1990s. It has gotten progressively harder to keep membership away from dissenting views and damaging information, as the internet went from a large and sloppy repository of information to a much more streamlined and accessible medium for learning anything you want. It is almost impossible to keep the sheep ignorant of your past when there are websites where you can read actual scans of original books and magazines. The dirty laundry is everywhere now.

And for prospective witnesses, it's a quick web search and suddenly you know a lot more about the JWs than they would like you to know. How many interested people became disinterested after a couple of hours of research?