Posts by Apognophos

20

JW's donations going to sexual abuse cases?

by Ginx in

i read somewhere on the internet (don't recall what site it was) that jw's donations are going towards sexual abuse cases.. is this true?.

where can i find solid evidence regarding this matter?.

.

Apognophos

blondie, the disaster relief situation is a bit different, because accounting laws basically require them to spend money on what it is donated for. So if someone writes "for Katrina" or "disaster relief" on the memo line of their $15 check to the Society, the Society has to spend that $15 on that specific purpose. This is a problem because if they get more money designated for a certain cause than what they can reasonably spend on that cause, they end up with untouchable money sitting in their bank. Of course the less gracious take on things is that the Society doesn't want to spend as much on disaster relief as they could, and would like to re-purpose most of that money. In either case, converting money designated for disaster relief into general income by rebuilding homes and then having the insurance payout for the home damage granted to them by the home owner is pretty damn clever.

Anyway, Ginx, I think you see that one way or another the Society has to be paying for the settlements, whether through "allegation insurance" or simply paying it all out themselves. It doesn't matter if they have an account set aside as "sex abuse insurance" on the books. The only way that they are not spending any donations from Witnesses on sex abuse settlements is if they have an account set aside and only money gleaned from investments and real estate goes into that bucket. Even in the case of real estate sales, those profits are only made possible in large part by the free labor the brothers and sisters supply in having remodeled and maintained the buildings they are selling. However, I think it is unlikely that the Society would see any reason or have any legal requirement to maintain a distinct revenue stream for settling lawsuits.

This leaves the other possible responses by a believing JW, which are that (a) the stories are phony, planted by apostates to make JWs doubt, or (b) the allegations are false but it's safer to settle than to leave it to the courts of Satan's world to decide a verdict, or even (c) they're true but the perpetrator was never really a JW, or else they were but they went apostate before they molested the child. This last point is sort of a meaningless red herring, but Witnesses will mentally squirm out of things any way they can if they don't want to accept something.

39

why didnt God just do this?

by sowhatnow in

for one thing, i cant get past genesis, but no matter.. when god told adam and eve if you eat from the tree youll die.

so why did he not simple let them die and not allow the offspring to?.

you see, if i was a god, and i told two people that, id let them die , .

Apognophos

that reflects the jewish concept that sin was introduced to mankind by the original sin of Adam and Eve and that's who evil came into the world

Well, that's true. I was focusing too much on the curses pronounced on Adam and Eve, but the fact remains that they ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and it "opened their eyes". Apparently that means that we inherited the potential for evil thoughts from our first parents. So I stand corrected on that point.

My intention was to make the point that it was only post-Paul that Christians began to say that man was created perfect. This was because the idea of God had advanced from (a) a powerful man who created life from clay, or a tribal war god (in the oldest Jewish stories) to (b) the most powerful tribal god (later Jewish writings), to (c) a unique, omnipotent, omniscient being (Christianity, modern Judaism?). So Christians could no longer conceive that this kind of God would ever create something flawed.

Thus they changed the Jewish concept of inheriting death and "sin" (the potential for evil thoughts) into the inheriting of "imperfection" (a general failure of the body and mind to function as God originally intended). They ignored the significance of the tree of life in the Eden story (viz, that we were not created to live forever, but required the tree to sustain eternal life) and they ignored the fact that God only pronounced specific curses on man and woman.

Now that we know about DNA, this leads to an incredible deviation from the original Jewish thought, because a science-minded Christian is left to try to ponder how imperfection actually works on the genetic level. How did Adam's sin cause his DNA to become flawed? Which workings of our body are flawed and which still function as intended? Were we supposed to have body odor, to get gassy from time to time? Were women really designed to bleed every month? And why did God design Adam and Eve with a genetic booby-trap triggered by disobedience? Et cetera.

Paul would be totally baffled by this whole way of looking at things. When he said that Jesus was needed to redeem us from Adam's sin, he didn't mean that Jesus was perfect like Adam -- he meant that Jesus was another son of God in human form. That's why there's a genealogy tracing Jesus back to Adam, "son of God". God was the father of two humans, Adam and the incarnated Jesus. That's why Jesus could be the redeemer, according to Paul -- not because God somehow prevented the baby Jesus from inheriting genetic imperfection from his mother.

32

Jehovah's organization growing like never before: but bible studies are way down. Huh?

by kneehighmiah in

jw
friends

so the governing body likes to keep claiming incredible growth.

at the same time they claim bible studies are way down.

are the finally admitting what we've known all along, that they can no longer recruit outsiders?

Apognophos

Heh, nice question, kairos. I can think of some people that don't know they're Bible studies. For example, a lady who occasionally talks to a friendly JW acquaintance over the phone. She doesn't know that as soon as they're done talking and they hang up, the JW basically pumps her fist over getting a b.s. and another hour of time in.

17

A big bang from a previous universe compacted into one big mass makes more sense than out of nothing....

by EndofMysteries in

jw
friends

i've been learning a lot more about the universe, galaxies, planet formations, etc.

it's amazing how stars are constantly recycled, they form from gathering all the dust/gas/mass around them, the heat and pressure as the mass gets larger, producing stronger gravity, and depending on it's makeup creates fusion, turning into a star, then when it dies, it turns into a supernova, explodes, and sends it's matter out there for other stars to form,etc.

now galaxies do the same thing, and supposedly in many billons of years many galaxies will have eaten others, and if blackholes or something pulling in all the stars and mass is at the centers of these galaxies, then eventually everything would turn into one huge mass.

Apognophos

Last I heard, the prevailing scientific opinion is that the universe is going to continue expanding, not compact back together. And how would life survive a Big Crunch anyway?

More importantly, as Simon indicated, you've just pushed back the origin of things to a previous universe, which doesn't make anything more plausible, just more remote.

I think the real question is whether you've read anything about abiogenesis. The abiogenesis theories out there now make life's formation sound pretty plausible, within our own universe, on this very planet, with no need to pawn off the problem on another place and time.

That being said, it would be foolish for any of us to act as if we can really explain how This all came about. The universe is ultimately unexplainable and probably will continue to be for quite some time. Keep in mind that we just invented the light bulb a little over a century ago. Science has a long way to go before we can expect to know all the answers.

39

why didnt God just do this?

by sowhatnow in

for one thing, i cant get past genesis, but no matter.. when god told adam and eve if you eat from the tree youll die.

so why did he not simple let them die and not allow the offspring to?.

you see, if i was a god, and i told two people that, id let them die , .

Apognophos

To be clear, though, the Genesis account does not speak of sinfulness or imperfection being inherited. That's a Christian concept introduced by Paul. The only things being inherited according to the story itself were the specific curses on man:

Man:

- Enmity with snake (will have his heel bitten, now that snake is low to the ground without his legs).

- Ground will not be as fruitful.

Woman:

- "Sorrowful" pregnancy and painful childbirth.

- Enslaved to man through sexual desire.

And snake:

- Legs removed, and will now (literally, or perhaps poetically) be eating dust.

- Will get its head stepped on by man when it attacks, since it is now low to the ground.

But I agree with your basic reasoning point, EdenOne, namely that from both the Jewish and the Christian standpoint, God chose to design us a certain way which allows imperfection or a curse to propagate to each one of us. He could simply have chosen to not design us that way.

8

Inactive for how long?

by Powermetal4ever in

jw
friends

as the title says: how long does it take to be inactive in fs before some elders comes knocking on the door?

or calling or whatever... any experiences?

how was it for you guys?

Apognophos

Yes, depending on their personalities, you might hear from them as soon as you become "irregular" (a zero-hour month within the last 6 months), or after a couple months of irregularity when it becomes clear that the first month wasn't a fluke.

11

Interview with an "Unbelieving Mate" (UBM): Gary Neal

by garyneal in

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Apognophos

Thanks for your story, I found it interesting. You don't mention in detail what your current beliefs are, but you still identify as Christian. That surprises me because it sounds like you do not have faith in the Bible as God's word anymore, which would make you more of a deist, wouldn't it? I might have misunderstood your position.

@Simon: I tend to attribute the gender inequality to men just being less spiritual, generally. I don't know if garyneal would agree with that, as he was naturally a spiritual person his whole life, but I think most men are (perhaps pig-headedly) trying to be self-sufficient and do not want a big boss in the sky telling them what to do. Women are also "networkers" and are more likely to want to go to community functions (like church) in order to meet their neighbors and make friends. That's my slightly sexist take on the subject, anyway.

112

Scientists Should Not Dismiss Genesis So Quickly

by Chris Tann in

nasa discovery proves the bible scientifically accurate.

the debate.

for decades there has been a long standing debate between science and religion as to the validity of the biblical genesis account of creation.

Apognophos

Sorry that people are not always kind here, Chris Tann. The reason is that they have all been where you are now mentally, and have moved past those beliefs, so they have no respect for them now. The problem is that they forget what it's like to believe that way, and don't remember how they would have wanted to be talked to at that time.

An additional contributing factor is that we do have a couple disingenuous Christian posters here who do a copy-paste-and-run on the forum from time to time, with no interest in having a conversation, and your OP made you look like another one of them. I guess you didn't mean to paste all that, so it was a miscommunication.

Anyway, you asked for specific points to respond to, and I wanted to remind you that I gave two examples of problematic points in the Genesis account in the third post in this thread. Thanks.

37

Do Jehovah witnesses exploit the most vulnerable in society?

by Blind_Of_Lies in

jw
friends

during my final few years being active with the jws i noticed that the vast majority of people who were studying or joining the group in general where those that the rest of society would consider disabled and/or severely mentally ill. now by disabled i dont mean i lost my leg in nam kind of disabled... in some cases these people were mentally retarded, had the minds of children, were severely abused as children or even as adults and as a result had personality disorders that put them on the edge of society.... and then we had the full on crazies... about 15 years ago one of the brothers who worked at the local welfare office somehow started a study with a person who was a paranoid schizophrenic.

he met her because she was a client of the welfare office.

she got handed off to a sister who studied with her, then started driving her to her doctors appointments, and to get grocerys, and took her to congregation events.

Apognophos

I agree, although I would hesitate to call love-bombing a "tool" because it's not something that JWs employ intentionally. There's no training or articles that encourage them to do more than simply welcome people to the meetings; it's mostly a natural response from people desperate to have new fellow believers, which cools off once the person is no longer a new face.

Although there are other avenues to help needy ones, I'm not aware of any support groups or governments that send people door to door looking to help people. So it's not surprising that JWs are effective at claiming these people. Many people won't even answer the door if they don't know who's at it, because they have no need for a stranger at their door to offer them anything. Whereas there are people who are praying to God for help, for a sign, for answers, and then, bam, one day the JWs call after they were praying, and this one (not such a) coincidence motivates them to join the religion.

So it's hard to see how we can undercut the Society in their ability to reach these people unless there were qualified clinical workers proactively going door-to-door offering help to people. Or, at the very least, if ex-Witnesses went out in their own kind of ministry to give an anti-witness (though negative messages are not anywhere near as effective as positive ones). It seems that Witnesses are the only people who are sufficiently motivated to spend time going to people's doors, however.

6

Can you imagine what that would be like?

by cookiemaster in

hey guys, here's something to think about.

in my country there's a small town of a few thousands people were most people are jws.

can you image what's like living there?

Apognophos

Wow, that could be a recipe for losing one's mind. A real life Watchtowistan!