Posts by robhic

30

JW CONFUSION

by logic in

this is real doublespeak: watchtower april 1, 2007 pg 21 par.

1 "you must not let people call you leaders-- you have only one leader.

matt 23:10 .

robhic

Is that a picture of his BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION? Or are all those folks waiters...?

8

Should the "Other sheep" attend the memorial ?

by JH in

john 10:16.

16and i have other sheep, which are not of this fold; those also i must bring, and they will listen to my voice, and they will become one flock, one shepherd.. although the "other sheep" don't partake and don't have jesus as mediator, should they still attend the memorial?

robhic

Do wordly, non-JW sheep count? I just had a visit from 2 JWs giving me an invitation to the memorial. In fact, I just posted the experience below.

3

Interesting Visit and Invitation

by robhic in

i got an invitation to the memorial today.

two male jws (one older one and a young one) came to my door and opened with a question about "did i know who the worlds greatest man was?

" as one handed me the printed invitation sheet.

robhic

I got an invitation to the Memorial today. Two male JWs (one older one and a young one) came to my door and opened with a question about "did I know who the world’s greatest man was?" as one handed me the printed invitation sheet. However, during this visit they did something seemingly very unusual (from what I’ve read in JWD).

I couldn’t come up with a good, pertinent name so I told him "Charleton Heston the actor." That should have been their clue that I was gonna be an annoyance for them. The old guy seemed amused.

All the while I conducted myself in a joking manner like they were being facetious with me. They were pleasant and the kid was mostly silent until he’d add something to counter something I said.

I told them that I was pretty much an atheist and found fault with ALL organized religions. I was an equal-opportunity religion-hater. I also asked why they spent so much time in the Old Testament.

So they then went to the New Testament and read a passage with the name jehovah in it. I told them about the name not being in the original manuscripts which got the kid’s attention.

In a rather condescending tone, he told me he could prove it had been removed. I replied "No you can’t. I have it from your own publications (I couldn’t remember all the specifics ‘cause they haven’t been around in a while and I was a little rusty...) that Fred Franz added it to the NWT."

He told me it wasn’t JW literature but probably apostate literature. I told him it wasn’t and I could give the exact magazine issue so he could go look it up himself. He didn’t seem enthused.

They tried some F&DS stories, some Adam & Eve stories, some Noah stories, some Job stories and on and on. I told them the bible was a good story book to fascinate and control primitive peoples thousands of years ago but held no real interest to a modern person. (This agitated the kid...)

I said I found the excessive violence unnecessary and despicable. Jehovah was a bad guy for things like killing 42 children for taunting a bald man and stuff like killing 70,000 for something as simple as a census.

We went back and forth joking and me even making the old guy laugh a bit (the kid just looked annoyed) with all my irreverent comments. I admitted to having done a LOT of reading about JW. I said I might have even spent more time reading and studying than the young boy years ago because of an involvement I had had with a woman who had joined.

I asked about the predicted "End" in 1975. The older guy said he was a JW then and remembered. I asked him if that wasn’t a false prophecy.

He side-stepped it with the "they just suggested some things might happen" line and I didn’t feel like getting too involved so let it go. The kid kept trying to convince me that anybody (your everyday apostate) could print something and put the WTS name on it. Neither the old guy nor I gave him any attention for this statement.

We went round and round about A&E and the snake. I said the J-man lied ‘cause he told them "they would surely die on that day" if they ate the fruit. The kid tried "a day is like a 1000 years to jehovah" so they DID die "on that day" because they only lived 900 or so more years.

I said that first, living 900 years was a crock. I said it spooked the primitives who also believed the earth was flat and the sun revolved around it. He actually started on 1914 and said they could prove it from the bible!

I said that all such "invisible" stuff was just craziness, that no one could prove anything involving invisibility. I also told him that using a list of their own publications (again) and some simple arithmetic (AlleyMom’s now-legendary post) that I could actually disprove 607. All without resorting to invisibility!

That’s when the unusual event happened. (Yes, I’m finally getting to it!) The old guy admitted that you had to be a JW to make it past the Big ‘A’. He tried but didn’t really do a lot to obscure the matter and finally gave me a simple yes or no. I told him I appreciated his honesty and that he was the first who called on me to say that.

Junior tried some comments about it couldn’t be JWs and were probably apostates. I tried to describe the folks who had been here previously because they were from the same congregation! The previous folks had even left the Creation book with me.

Old dude tried for a RV but I told him he would be wasting his time and that I would just probably make him mad. He said he didn’t get mad. (He doesn’t know what a hard-headed a-hole I am!)

They left in a reasonably good mood. I doubt I made much impact but I did manage to amuse myself with some mental gymnastics for 20 minutes or so. They were persistent.

I hope the old guy doesn’t get in any trouble for saying what he did. I think he seemed amused, too. All-in-all it was an interesting morning.

30

"Did not defile themselves with women"

by Legolas in

so the 144000, wouldn't you say then are all men?.

i can't remember what crap excuse they gave for that one to get out of it not only being men....but all the writer had to say was 'they were virgins' if it was both sexes.. what do you think?.

robhic

I agree with BrentR. The whole thing makes it sound bad and/or dirty. Like you would be defiled from having intimate contact with a woman; almost like implying uncleaness. Funny how being defiled never seemed to bother them when they were raping and pillaging and killing women and children. Makes me wanna spit...

15

AL-ANON and Me

by compound complex in

dear friends,.

i have begun reading one day at a time in al-anon, hoping it will help me deal with an alcoholic's destructive behavior, which has been visited upon me and friends for too long a time.

obviously we care about him, but his influence with or without alcohol has shaken us badly.

robhic

Anything you wish to share about your knowledge of AL-ANON would be appreciated and gratefully acknowledged:

Not just AL-ANON, but treatment as a whole.

My brother was a pretty serious drinker for quite some years. Vodka in his vehicle, never without a glass in his hand. His wife started to follow this also. Needless to say they BOTH needed to stop this and stop it fast. Liquor is a hard task-master...

Well, they enrolled at a detox center, paid for by company insurance. They were lucky. Now this was the result of many, many years of constant drinking. It was their "normal" personality -- cloaked with alchohol.

The (I think) month long treatment had the desired effect. After sobering up and leaving the facility they enrolled in AL-ANON. (I also believe that is a condition of the treatment.)

Three years of sobriety and counting. So far, so good. But .......... I (and others) secretly feel they have given up one addiction (alchohol) for another (AL-ANON).

Their house is now a shrine to all the books about the evils of drinking, etc. They love to talk about their new-found sobriety. Don't get me wrong, this is not, by itself, a bad thing. At least they aren't drinking anymore.

But it reminds me of the "born-agains" who don't know when to SHUT UP!!! I'm glad you aren't drinking, but since I was not and am not afflicted by drunkenness, I don't need to hear the preachy shit all the time. The slogans and all. Give it a rest.

My opinion is that treatment is hugely important, as is an attitude of wanting to do it. It won't work by itself. And afterwards, AL-ANON is a good way to ease back to reality. But don't embrace this new philosophy as your new addiction.

Do it for a while and then ease out of that, too. The first part is real and the last part is (mostly) my opinion. But it does work if you are serious.

Good luck in yout attempt to initiate any sort of intervention...

49

Professed Atheists who have helped society

by RWC in

there seem to be quite a number of atheists who comment here.

when they argue how bad religion has been for society they point to actions done in the name of religion that are indeed horrific, such as the inqusitions.

there are also examples of course of non believers who have done great damage to society.

robhic

MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.

(Above taken from article cited by Nathan Natas)

Regardless of opinions of his veracity, you just gotta love Hitchens' turn of phrase.

"Livestock version of compulsory reproduction." What imagery!

7

Witnesses play down transfusions for premature sextuplets

by freefly in

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=fcbed172-f4b3-4d3e-8dc0-1fa34a2c959c&k=1815.

(bc canada).

vancouver - the jehovah's witnesses national organization issued a statement wednesday in an attempt to quell widespread media speculation about the medical treatment of sextuplets born prematurely to a woman at b.c.

robhic

what is.......minimizing blood sampling......used in the article?

Perhaps someone more knowledgeable will post, but, to me, I am guessing that reducing blood samples taken from babies that are so young and small would be fairly important. Any samples would have an impact as blood-loss in ones so tiny.

50

If there is no life after death

by onacruse in

so where does that leave us?

leave me?.

the logical consequence would be that i should get absolutely every little piece of self-gratification i can get before i die.

robhic

Forget my friends, my wife, and any sense of pity for the little-old-lady-down-the-street who I just robbed of her life savings by cutting a hard business deal on her property...anything that lines my pockets with mountains of cold hard cash that gets me drugs and guns and a dozen beachfront properties where I can have sex with as many women and men as I want, any way I want, any time I want...and shot anyone that pisses me off, even on a whim, and just buy off the cops--who themselves are going to die.

I don't really have an answer why one would want to live like that, I suppose it's a personal choice. But, for the most part, you've described what it's like to live here in New Orleans!

People getting shot over a beer (!!!), 14 year olds stabbing a friend in an argument, people getting shot in broad daylight walking with their kids and other such insanity.

The politicians lining their pockets (did anyone miss our wonderful congressman William "Dollar Bill" Jefferson and his $90,000 stored in a freezer?) and the recovery efforts from hurricane Katrina hitting all sorts of roadblocks with the end result of the people not being able to fix their property because they have no money. (Who's got it...?)

When the poor cops do anything more serious than write a traffic ticket they get called on the carpet, people protest (for the life of me I think they just do it to do it, not because they have any idea why they're protesting...), the cops risk going to jail and if they DO manage to catch a bad guy, killer or whatever, some fool of a judge (probably on the take) lets the criminal go.

Why the cops even bother is beyond me. They can't do anything without risking offending someone (so what?), impeding someone's rights or causing some poor killer whose mother says he is such a good boy to become the victim. Why do these people act like this?

Maybe they don't know about the "golden rule." Perhaps some of our "ministers" can show them the way.

I guess people just do what they think they can get away with. Down here it's almost anything, but if you can live with yourself afterwards, well, I guess that's the $64,000 question...

22

Pat Robertson Prediction

by robhic in

i didn't see this anywhere here, so thought you might be amused by this story.. i was watching fox news this morning.

they had a quick story about ole pat robertson predicting a major terrorist strike in the us sometime after september of 2007. millions would be affected (he didn't specify killed or what, just affected...).

but the kicker was this:.

robhic

I didn't see this anywhere here, so thought you might be amused by this story.

I was watching Fox news this morning. They had a quick story about ole Pat Robertson predicting a major terrorist strike in the US sometime after September of 2007. Millions would be affected (he didn't specify killed or what, just affected...). But the kicker was this:

God told him so!!! Yep, one of the sky-daddies came and tipped Pat Robertson off to this upcoming attack.

What a dick.

7

Do "Christians" really believe the Apostle Peter was crucified upside down?

by booker-t in

i have heard this for many years but i just don't know if this is just a belief by a "few" christians are the majority?

robhic

As a good and impressionable catholic lad (man, was that a long time ago!!!) I was told more than a few times that Peter opted to be crucified upside down because he didn't feel worthy enough to even be crucified like Jesus had been. And whether it was a stake, tree or cross was never addressed so don't ask! ;)