I wanted to wait before giving my own answer, just to keep my OP more neutral, but I was in the same boat as you, Phizzy. I didn't believe that the God I worshipped was one who would destroy all those reasonably good people. The adult JWs I grew up around would sometimes say about a teaching, "Well, maybe there'll be some new light on that some day" as code for "We agree this doesn't make sense so let's assume that God will fix it in due time and just focus on the beliefs that we do agree with". So I figured this was one of those teachings that would probably be subject to "new light" eventually and didn't think much about it.
Apognophos
JoinedPosts by Apognophos
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Did you expect all non-Witnesses to die at Armageddon?
by Apognophos inapologies if this has been asked before, but i couldn't find a thread where the focus was specifically this yes-or-no question.
reach back in your memories to when you were at the peak of your faith in the religion, and tell me honestly:.
"did you, personally, believe that non-witnesses would die at armageddon, even if they hadn't gotten to hear the message at all?".
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New theory on GB or the mysterious people who profit from all the money going to the WT
by EndofMysteries inwith all the money grabs and shady things going on, you wonder how can they actually believe they are representing god and even believe in god and still be doing these things.. then i thought, what if a trend started awhile back, people who gave up everything and got high in the org, but also since they got high up, they were privy and learned things that convinced them it was a lie.
now if they remained believers, they may end up like ray franz, a true believer wouldn't want to deceive people seeking god, they would be afraid of god's wrath.. since as is shown on this board many also become athiests, some could have become so while still in and in high ranks.
at this point they think of their options, a. leave, screwed, welfare, older they are the harder to adjust and everybody turns on them or b. kind of shady but the org and everyone put them in this position and they will turn on them in a heartbeat with no remorse so he is going to beat them to it and insure the rest of his/their lives are well taken care of and going to get rich off it.. so those higher ups who turn athiest opt for option b since they don't believe in any god and since the whole org will turn on them for disagreeing and not believing and leave them with nothing, they will instead keep working their way up, start companies for the things wt already buys, turn it into a big cash cow for themselves.
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Apognophos
I also think your core idea is plausible but I think you led into it with a couple non sequiturs, so you almost lost me.
First you talked about money grabs. Well, the Society needs money to run. We simply have no way to know what their expenses are for printing and other "Kingdom activities" so we don't have any basis for saying that arrangements like the new "eternal mortgage" indicate a lack of sincerity. Why can't the leadership be sincere while also looking for new ways to fund their work? Remember that expansion is taking place mostly in poorer countries now, so the average donation per publisher may be dropping significantly even as printing costs have skyrocketed.
Secondly, it isn't necessary for someone to be a secret non-believer in order to be interested in getting rich from doing business with the Society. I think there probably are some brothers who own companies that are used heavily by the Society. But this doesn't require them to be "secret atheists" or even sincere but hypocritical. Hey, if the Society wants to use their company, then who's to say this is unscrupulous?
I realize that you're suggesting a more thorough comprehensive bilking of the Society by some higher-ups, and I don't rule out that possibility, but I wanted to separate the most likely part of your idea from the more fantastical part. Personally I don't think that climbing the ladder tends to show someone that the emperor has no clothes. I suppose that has been the case for some idealistic brothers, but when you have a "company man" mindset, you don't get fazed by things that happen as you gradually get promoted through MS, elder, PO, CO, DO....
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Did you expect all non-Witnesses to die at Armageddon?
by Apognophos inapologies if this has been asked before, but i couldn't find a thread where the focus was specifically this yes-or-no question.
reach back in your memories to when you were at the peak of your faith in the religion, and tell me honestly:.
"did you, personally, believe that non-witnesses would die at armageddon, even if they hadn't gotten to hear the message at all?".
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Apognophos
Apologies if this has been asked before, but I couldn't find a thread where the focus was specifically this yes-or-no question. Reach back in your memories to when you were at the peak of your faith in the religion, and tell me honestly:
"Did you, personally, believe that non-Witnesses would die at Armageddon, even if they hadn't gotten to hear the message at all?"
Since people constantly bring this up as a big problem with Witness beliefs, I wanted to get a sense of the ratio of this teaching's believers/non-believers. Though I don't know if this group's former beliefs can be representative of the beliefs of the average JW who has chosen to stay in the religion
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Is God in creation and not the bible?
by thedepressedsoul ini have been struggling the last year to find my belief.
what the witnesses have to me is not the answer the more and more i dig.
on the other hand, i cant seem to accept evolution no matter how hard i try, the existence of everything from nothing doesnt not work with my type of thinking.
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Apognophos
prologos, I was saying that evolution does not say that everything came from nothing. I think you misread my post. As you indicate, before evolution could happen, abiogenesis had to happen, and before that planetary evolution, and before that stellar evolution, and before that....
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Is God in creation and not the bible?
by thedepressedsoul ini have been struggling the last year to find my belief.
what the witnesses have to me is not the answer the more and more i dig.
on the other hand, i cant seem to accept evolution no matter how hard i try, the existence of everything from nothing doesnt not work with my type of thinking.
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Apognophos
I do encourage you to ask questions about evolution if you are having trouble accepting it. It could be that you just have not encountered a decent explanation of it yet. It doesn't teach, for instance, that everything came from nothing.
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How to traumatize your kids while baking cookies
by rebel8 inhttp://cultprevention.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-novel-way-to-traumatize-your-children.html.
well dubs may corner the market on messing with children's heads, but there are other contenders.. .
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Apognophos
Haha, nicely written.
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local needs "are you spiritually grown up?"
by sylvlef inyesterday local needs was this theme.
are you spiritually grown up.. summary: if you are between 18-35 and not ms or elder, you lazy idiot are like a child.
at this age, especially if you grew up in "da trooooth" you have no issue with jw.org doctrine right (how do you know...?
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Apognophos
Xanthippe, your post really resonates with me. It's the small-mindedness that I can't stand. It's largely what started me on my way out of the org. These people have no ambition for personal achievements or self-expression, no desire to contribute to society. They're just culture-less bumps on a log.
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My difficulties in writing academic essays, contrasted with the same difficulties by NK elites
by fulltimestudent ini struggle to write good academic essays.
i'm never happy with the result of my labours.
i've had a few hds, but still feel they lack something.. for some months, i have been pondering why i have this problem, and the realisation is becoming clear that my problem is the result of having my brain washed clean by jesus for 40 years (my period of enslavement to the wt cause).
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Apognophos
I want to know what an HD is too, besides a hard drive. But the article was very interesting. Scary to think that a country could be so fully in control of the information its citizens are raised on (cue the conspiracist posts saying "And you don't think that happens IN AMERIKA?!?").
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DINOSAURS - What do Jehovah's Witnesses Believe?
by Bloody Hotdogs! inas part of my deconversion catharsis, i have been building a(nother) website to highlight some of the more ridiculous jw beliefs.
im a looong way from done, but i wanted some early feedback on one article: dinosaurs.
http://www.jwbeliefs.com/dinosaurs/.
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Apognophos
Wow, that change in the Enjoy Life brochure is remarkable. I would have expected to see the dinosaurs being removed from '78 to '82, not added! I'm really just amazed right now.
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DINOSAURS - What do Jehovah's Witnesses Believe?
by Bloody Hotdogs! inas part of my deconversion catharsis, i have been building a(nother) website to highlight some of the more ridiculous jw beliefs.
im a looong way from done, but i wanted some early feedback on one article: dinosaurs.
http://www.jwbeliefs.com/dinosaurs/.
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Apognophos
Therefore, water can either orbit the earth (something like the ice rings of Saturn)
Yep, that's what I was getting at. Evermore has posted the standard argument that if the canopy was high enough to be ice, it would have raised the temperature considerably when it fell. I'm honestly not sure anyone has actually proven that rigorously, but it seems believable given that we are talking about 40 continuous days of rainfall.
And the argument that, in any form, that much water would have obscured the sun, moon and stars seems pretty irrefutable. Even as ice the canopy would probably be so thick that it would block or distort the light.
As for the effect on carbon dating - I’m going to have to re-think that… my head hurts.
Okay, so I'm sorry for wasting your time with that, just forget you read it :-| I did some reading on C14 dating, and it turns out I didn't understand the process. I thought the breakdown of C14 came from atmospheric radiation, but that's what produces C14. C14 just naturally decays at the same rate no matter what, which I should have known.
So actually I guess creationists can suggest that, since the canopy lowered the radiation reaching our atmosphere, that would mean less C14 was produced. So that would mean that a pre-Flood sample would contain a lower ratio of C14 to C12 at a given age than scientists would expect. In other words, they would overestimate the age of the sample because they would think it must have been around a lot longer to have decayed down to that ratio.
This is what I get for not reading about dating methods since I stopped being a believing Witness. I guess I still have a lot of self-education to do.