Posts by Afterburn

98

One simple photo to sum up the heartless and hypocritical attitudes of many Jehovah's Witnesses

by nicolaou in

jw
friends

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this was taken in london yesterday by a twitter user still managing his fade so i can't be more specific than that.

disgusting.

Afterburn

I have seen lives wrecked because of this, and that I try to caution anyone who does it.

Drearyweather,

I have been investigated by two elders for someone claiming that I was a spy for the Federal Government, sent in to monitor the activity of Jehovah's Witnesses, I have been formally counseled by an elder (with another elder present) for making comments that were over the heads of some (him, in that case), I have been investigated by two elders for a report they'd received about me not correcting a 19 year old who claimed he'd been given a foregleam of what life would be like in paradise, and all manner of other stupid and petty ridiculousness.

I'm not surprised that you were an elder.

Please, explain your statement above. Whose life have you seen ruined over claiming, on a social media site, that they knew what was happening in a scene from a picture?

I strongly suspect you have overstated your case. I invite you to explain why I should accept that you have not done so.

More worse, we become what the WT wants us to become.

We became that the moment we left their cult, Drearyweather. A worldly person. They do not need us to be anything other than that to shun us for the sin of having once been a JW.

I do not do or avoid doing any thing at all based on how the WT would perceive it, nor based on how any of Jehovah's Witnesses or former Jehovah's Witnesses would perceive it.

If you feel otherwise, then more power to you.

Maybe I was unclear in the comment you responded to, but I thought I made it extremely clear that I feel otherwise, and think otherwise, and that I don't appreciate anyone (especially, former or current JW elders) condescendingly preening authority they don't have over others.

I do not need your permission to feel otherwise, and that was my point. Your offered perspective is that judging opinions offered about a picture is a valid thing to do based on the Slippery Slope Fallacy:

... by that reasoning you can excuse any behaviour that an ex-jw displays towards a JW. Because surge of emotions can get better of us.

No, Drearyweather, by my reasoning you have no position from which to judge the opinions or emotions of others. No one "wronged" any person shown in that picture by making a personal observation of their own perspective on what the picture depicts. Get down off that high horse you're still riding on, you're still running roughshod over people, pressing them into your personal mold of "ethical behaviour."

I lived daily in fear of "what if" while in that cult. I will not silently tolerate people seeking to create that same vibe out here, where worldly people live. This isn't the cult.

12

More political leanings

by scary21 in

jw
friends

just wondering how many here have read "atlas shrugged" by ayn rand, and what you thought about it ?.

Afterburn

Consider: Had Galt not been the one to arrive at what the character called "Objectivism" but, instead, that concept had been arrived at and adopted 100 years earlier ... Galt would likely have never been permitted to go to University, or to have any opportunity for advancement beyond his father's garage.

Once he succeeded, personally, he adopted an ideology that permitted him to comfortably shut the door behind himself. Selfish vanity.

12

More political leanings

by scary21 in

jw
friends

just wondering how many here have read "atlas shrugged" by ayn rand, and what you thought about it ?.

Afterburn

In my opinion, Ayn's work is a welcome aid to the ultra-wealthy who pretend to the world that they have earned what they have acquired.

The ultra-wealthy have leveraged political will to create a Flood Up Economy that automatically becomes a Feudal system of Corporate Serfdom with perceptible alacrity, they have misnamed that economic model a "Trickle Down Economy," they have deliberately conflated the terms "earning" and "income" in common usage in our language, and they now argue that everyone should be able to "keep what they earn," by which they mean, everyone should be able to keep their income whether or not they have earned it.

There is no single human on the face of planet earth that earns $1,000,000 in a single year from their work product. That person does not exist.

There are many humans who have annual incomes far in excess of $1,000,000.

Ayn focuses on the character of Galt, a working stiff, who succeeds through access to a quality education, personal innovation, personal ingenuity, a desire to better humanity, and thousands of working stiffs, much like his father, hired as laborers to manufacture his inventions, without whom, his innovations and ingenuity would be just shy of worthless, if not never sold.

I found Atlas Shrugged to be offensive to the idea of rational ethics in its myopic perspectives on personal worth.

It advances the false, ethically reprehensible idea that it does not matter how or why someone has achieved success, only whether they have done so. Galt does not care what would happen to other humans as a result of his professed "Objectivism" which is actually only a piss-poor mask for selfish vanity. He lacks the perspective required for valid Objectivism, as does every human.

It's an exceptional and indelicate conceit Rand offered, pretty to look at only until it becomes reality.

Paul Ryan is a huge fan. Really. He considers Rand's work to be a very significant influence in his life. I don't consider that a positive endorsement, but do consider that support for my perspective that Ayn has offered base conceit and vanity and gave it a lofty sounding name.

7

Growth?

by loneranger in

jw
friends

regional convention in greenville sc june 28-30...avg about 5800...33 baptized.peak attendance for the rc was sunday am 6250 for public talk.do the math!

!.

Afterburn

It is important to remember the bizarre effects of looming war talk on former JWs who are still mentally in. They probably think Daniel 8 is all about Trump and the END IS NIGH! (... again ... maybe ... but for sure sometime ... eventually ... unless JWs are wrong, in which case, they don't wanna be right!)

Little do they suspect that the end is Nye!

14

No longer Hidden

by HiddenPimo in

i wrote a letter some time ago and to my surprise and despite the elders manual saying that a letter is sufficient for establishing 'wrongdoing' they would not announce me as no longer a jw until i met with 2 elders to verbally acknowledge that the letter was written by me.. .

well yesterday i met with them and the meeting lasted 2 minutes.

"did you write the letter?

Afterburn

Congratulations on free breathing, Jared!

10

Questions Re October 2019 Watchtower

by DNCall in

in the october 2019 watchtower, in the article "1919--one hundred years ago" it states:.

"but the brothers at headquarters could not just resume the work that they had been doing for years.

because during their imprisonment, all the printing plates that were used to print literature had been destroyed.

Afterburn

The very same WT articles & Studies in the Scriptures books that proclaimed 1914 as the "end of the Gentile Times" also proclaimed 1914 as the year when Armageddon would start and the faithful would go to heaven.

sir82, that is the post 1914 spin J.F. Rutherford put on what they had been teaching for 40 years prior to 1914, in his infamous False Hope campaign entitled "The World Has Ended—Millions Now Living Will Never Die!" that ran from 1918 through 1922 and tripled the number of adherents to the fledgling movement.

Prior to 1914, as late as 1889, they were still ardently predicting that 1914 was the time for the end of the great trouble (the great tribulation), and specified, very clearly, this was not the date for the beginning of that time of great trouble. They predicted that all institutional human powers on earth would be reduced to nothing and the world would be in total anarchy, to make ready for the Millennial Reign which was due to commence before 1915.

That's why they were known as Millennial Dawnists.

Their penchant for revising their own historical record started very early. "Pastor" Russell frequently spoke as though his teachings had been correct even after changing his doctrines to mutually exclusive ones. This habit is one of the most reliably consistent features of the cult down to this very day.

25

This site needs a little more humor in it

by HiddenPimo in

.

Afterburn

25

This site needs a little more humor in it

by HiddenPimo in

.

Afterburn

For "a little more humor," may I recommend Brad Williams?

https://www.bradwilliamscomedy.com/

33

Baptism Question #2 Verified and Changed.

by truthlover123 in

pimo verified this at the latest assembly attended.

check on this forum.

he was giving us attendance and baptism info and this was a side note... it is noted by another that when the question was asked after assembly was over, non seemed to hear the change.

Afterburn

I was baptized in 1985, in the first series of assemblies that used the old "new" baptism questions. I had studied the prior ones carefully to make sure I could, in good conscience, answer "Yes!" to both. I was surprised by the changed ones. I answered yes out of blind trust that I would not be asked to agree to something directly offending the Bible's direction.

I was wrong. Now, I am shunned. Fortunately, I no longer care about the Bible's direction. I only wish that my family would treat me as they treat a person of the nations, rather than treating me worse than Jesus treated Satan.

98

One simple photo to sum up the heartless and hypocritical attitudes of many Jehovah's Witnesses

by nicolaou in

jw
friends

.

this was taken in london yesterday by a twitter user still managing his fade so i can't be more specific than that.

disgusting.

Afterburn

Drearyweather, I understand your point. The following is offered in the spirit of a sincere caution, not just for you, but for anyone tempted to corral people's visceral reactions to what they see happening.

I am quite certain what is happening in that photo. Five JWs are faithfully following the directions of the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses rather than the explicit instructions of Jesus, while pretending to themselves and to the world that they are adhering closely to what the Bible teaches.

Essentially, your emotional appeal is to only feel empathy for the rank and file JWs while condemning the source of the instructions they are following, and while condemning elders who wield presumptuous authority over others like a weapon.

Humans are not required to only feel one emotion at a time. I don't like the way you attempted to constrain emotional reactions to only one segment along a specific spectrum when it is perfectly okay to feel empathy for these people while acknowledging, and emotionally responding to, their cult-dictated calloused and insensitive cruelty toward a fellow human. I'm going to credit that you may not have been fully aware you were doing that.

Has the cult numbed them and desensitized them to the plight of the least of these? Most certainly. Is that entirely their fault? No. Do they deserve indignance along with empathy? You bet.

We are no longer in a cult. We get to feel mixed emotions, and we have no place shaming others into our perspective on which emotions are the "correct" ones to have. Perhaps when you were in the cult you had a position to "call people out" for how they said they felt about things they saw. And you are right when you note that any of them could be family members of mine. Family members who shun one they say they love at the behest of a self-aggrandized publishing company.

I am ashamed of my family's choices. I am indignant that they follow men's commands, derived from conjectured opinions about the Bible, while they reject the direct commandments found in the very book they claim to hold sacred. I am wistful that they will choose better. I miss them terribly. I am regretful of the wasted productivity and energy that I see them spending on nothing at all more than wishful thinking. I am empathetic with their self-destructive cycles of thought that trap them in a cult. I am furious with them for siding with a cult against their own flesh and blood. I am appalled at how callous they are toward the current dismal plight of the least among us, while acknowledging that their convictions in the truth of false promises of divinely granted future delights is the source of all of their calloused responses.

I feel all of those things. At the same time. Which of these are the wrong ways to feel, in your opinion?

I suspect you have also felt all of these ways, simultaneously. I believe you have overstepped because a narrow spectrum of emotion surged to the surface in you, for a moment, and you rationalized a basis for that to be regarded as the "right way" to feel. When someone else has different emotions surge to the surface, that doesn't make their resulting perspectives wrong, or deserving of any correction at all.

Jehovah's Witnesses are doctrinally guided to become "insensitive louts."

Do you disagree with that statement of fact? If so, I can share reams of information from their own doctrinal literature with you that can educate you otherwise. Just let me know.

The vast majority of Jehovah's Witnesses comply with that doctrinal guidance because of fear of social ostracism; an evil punishment with many varieties. A few of them are formal and official, most of them are informal and are "felt" rather than stated.