I'm not one to normally notice bad WT writing (in one ear, out the other), but what was that illustration a few weeks ago about if you're supposed to pick up someone important, but you have to stop for gas or something and miss them? That even made me go, "...the hell?"
Apognophos
JoinedPosts by Apognophos
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45
Deteriorating content of the WT
by His Excellency inhas anyone noticed the recent deterioration in the quality of wt's contents lately?..
the spiritual food seems to be getting more and more shitty these days.
i have given a thought to what could really be going wrong, and if it is likely that some on the wiriting committee is consciously dishing out those nonsense to facilitate more poeple seeing ttat.
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the other side of disfellowshipping
by nowwhat? inpersonally i hate it when you come face to face with someone disfellowshiped and you can't do a simple acknowledgement or greeting.
they are obviously making an effort to be there to be reinstated.
as i recall back in the 1970's they did allow this but what is always the case some took advantage of this provision and in engaged in full blown conversations.
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Apognophos
I think most DFed ones just want to be able to make a fast exit after the meeting to avoid discomfort. It's sad.
Even when I was a true believer, I made an effort to say some warm words to DFed ones while they were in the Hall, regardless of whether I was supposed to. I'm not even a sociable person, but it just struck me as pointlessly cruel treatment to ignore them and I refused to aid and abet it.
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Double Standard re: Baptism
by lostinnj83 ini was speaking to my mother earlier this week, and she was mentioning about someone in her hall that was in the hospital.
this person was never mentally "present" even prior to getting baptized.
my mom said out of the blue "why would they allow someone who is mentally incoherent to make such a serious commitment as baptism?".
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Apognophos
Isn't there some approval on the part of the state for someone to perform a marriage, though? In that case, it's not being done by the church, just in the church, by someone who has civil authorization. The marriage "contract" is being formed between the man and the woman, not between the man and the church, unlike a baptism.
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76
Whacky comments! What the craziest comment you've ever heard?
by toweragent inlast week a sister in my new hall made the following comment,.
"a brother once told me that it is better to be wrong with the organization, than to be right and be on your own without the organization.".
wow.
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Apognophos
Yeah, the nudity one is actually pretty logical from a Biblical standpoint. Return to sinlessness = return to Edenic living.
On the other hand, I am pretty sure that I have heard at least one comment (actually, a remark from the platform) about how Jesus, being perfect, must have made the best furniture ever made, when he worked as a carpenter. It's also a logical conclusion from the Watchtower standpoint, but it still sounds absurd somehow.
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Distrust and paranoia among faders
by cedars inhi guys.
i'm interested in knowing whether any other faders out there ever find themselves feeling a little paranoid about establishing contact with other faders or former jws, just in case the unthinkable happens and things turn sour.. personally, i'm now fairly comfortable with the idea that i will be disfellowshipped or disassociated within the next year or so.
i see it as inevitable, and an essential transition in order to do what i want to do with my life.
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Apognophos
Yes, but as the last WT study pointed out, "speaking out" is the spirit of the world! They would just think you had been possessed by the Devil or fooled by apostates. That's the sad thing about the JW mentality, it's got ready-made defenses for all occasions.
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I've Come To Realize That "Facts" Don't Mean Much If A Person Refuses To Accept Them
by minimus in...and that applies to religion as well as politics.. if someone simply believes such and such is true, it doesn't really matter whether you "prove" it or not.
people will believe what they want to believe..
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Apognophos
First of all, you can lay off the pejoratives anytime. Second, you are making random claims out of ignorance with zero evidence or knowledge to back it up.
Huh?! Pejoratives? Random claims? You mean my assertion about not having proved scientific facts for yourselves? Well, I'm sorry if that was a false accusation... perhaps you can tell me what theories you have personally verified?
Third, the example you used to show that personal experience can trump science.....yeah, knowing about electricity and how it can conduct through air is something you know thanks to science. IOW, you used science to attempt to prove that a personal experience you would only be able to understand THANKS to science can somehow trump science. You might want to try that one again.
You missed my point, so let me state it more clearly. I wasn't using science to prove anything. My point was that what I felt (which I haven't described yet, but it was eerie), and how I felt it, was to my knowledge a unique experience. That is, regardless of how many people have actually experienced it, I've only heard of it happening to me. And yet I believe fervently that it happened; that it wasn't a dream or hallucination. I then mentioned that I was able to obtain a plausible scientific explanation about it, years later. In the meantime, I still believed it happened.
My story was intended as a general reflection on how we all accept personal experience over science on a daily basis. Some people claim to follow science over personal experience, and perhaps that's because they've never had an experience that clearly conflicts with what they know from science, so I'm not calling anyone a liar (insensitive to others' experiences, yes, but liars, no).
Rather, I'm simply encouraging all to consider the fact that science can't provide all the facts. I've seen nothing but agreement with this assertion from the other contributors here, because we all acknowledge that science isn't "complete" yet, that there's more to learn. Really, my statements shouldn't be considered controversial; I'm making a very basic argument here about the uncertainty of knowledge.
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160
I've Come To Realize That "Facts" Don't Mean Much If A Person Refuses To Accept Them
by minimus in...and that applies to religion as well as politics.. if someone simply believes such and such is true, it doesn't really matter whether you "prove" it or not.
people will believe what they want to believe..
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Apognophos
I mean that some forum members denigrate others who are religious, who feel evidence of God in their lives and in some (rare) cases believe that they personally heard from God or saw a vision. These selfsame, proudly atheist forum members promote science as the answer to everything, and yet it's unlikely that they verified many scientific claims on their own. They've simply gone from accepting the Bible's word to accepting the word of some men in white coats.
Now, personally I tend to side with them. I think science probably has the answers too. But I say this while acknowledging that I'm not 100% sure of anything I know. Nevertheless I still slip from time to time, and act certain of things that I really don't know from personal experience, making myself a hypocrite in view of my rationalist beliefs.
And, too, even personal experience can be faulty, because as mentioned above, sometimes our senses can mislead us, or simply differ from others' senses, and no absolute right answer is apparent (how *do* we define maroon?).
The only thing that I can be sure of, in summary, is that I have no right to mock other people for their beliefs or to sigh condescendingly over the fact that 'some people just won't accept the facts even if they're right under their nose'. I learned this lesson when I stopped being a believing Witness. Didn't we all?
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160
I've Come To Realize That "Facts" Don't Mean Much If A Person Refuses To Accept Them
by minimus in...and that applies to religion as well as politics.. if someone simply believes such and such is true, it doesn't really matter whether you "prove" it or not.
people will believe what they want to believe..
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Apognophos
My point wasn't about what is or isn't fact or what we can or can't verify, but what we have verified ourselves, and how we decided to believe the things that we haven't verified ourselves. In other words, it's difficult for any of us to talk about how "the facts" trump personal experience, and not be hypocrites.
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Blondie's Comments You Will Not Hear at the 02-17-2013 WT Study (TEMP RESIDENTS)
by blondie inunited nations http://www.randytv.com/secret/unitednations.htm.
6. in what sense can jehovahs witnesses be.
residents, and of what?.
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Apognophos
@Socrates: Yes, I thought that was an interesting detail too.
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Living Through the Brief Liberalization of Jehovah's Witnesses, Never Recovering
by TMS inwith the book crisis of conscience detailing the turbulence at bethel during the early to mid 70's, the transformation from autocratic rule to governance by committee or a body of men, many of us can speak to how that felt among the rank and file of the local congregations during those years.
we learned new concepts based in large part to research done for the aid to bible understanding volume, then we were asked or coerced into unlearning those principles, going back to the old ways.
some of us never readjusted, finding ourselves very different from our more hardline compadres.. the inertia for the changes that eventually were initiated in the congregations came from the discovery that the greek words episkopos and presbyteros were used biblically to refer to all qualified men in a congregation, not just one.
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Apognophos
Interesting. This is an era I didn't experience firsthand, and never knew existed. How sad that in the battle between "light" and "dark", the dark won. Who knows, maybe someday there will be a reversal -- or maybe that brief shift in thinking was an ill-fated fluke from the beginning. Maybe I should read the James book, now I'm curious....