Posts by scoobydont

47

Article: Reveal News-California court guts child abuse ruling against Jehovah's Witnesses

by AndersonsInfo in

http://www.revealnews.org/article/california-court-guts-child-abuse-ruling-against-jehovahs-witnesses/.

california court guts child abuse ruling against jehovahs witnesses.

topics: religion / religion and government .

scoobydont

As long as the wider society, including the courts, has it's head up its backside, the WTS will continue to get away with their despicable acts, in the full knowledge that nobody gives a rat's whisker what they do to their members and just how destructive they can be. This charade of hair-splitting between what's legal and moral, hosted and encouraged by the US legal system without due regards to the measurable damages that the WTS inflicts, is simply ludicrous and clearly highlights an area where the government has failed in its primary duty of protecting the citizenry. Please let no one take this as an attack on the US or its legal system as I am sure the US has uncountable things to boast and about, and rightly so. Unfortunately, this apparent lapse in the Conti case is not one that the US can boast about.

Is this the government's way of saying that anyone joining any religious group is basically out there on their own and does so at their own peril ?! Of course, that was a dumb a question since the government has zero interest in religion and cares even less what happens to anyone involved in religion especially those fringe ones such as the WTS.

The American law, as I understand it, allows the creepy WTS to snake its way under the bar on the grounds that spiritual matters are not justiciable in American courts...even when the effects of membership are evident and quantifiable ?! I am begging any law expert to help me out on this !

I live in the UK and would agree with anyone that it is far from being a perfect society, but this Conti case is one that could have left the WTS wondering what hit it if the case had been heard in a UK court !

11

Latest on Otuo v Jonathan David Morely & Watchtower Bible and Tract Society + Otuo v Watchtower Bible & Tract Society

by Adwoa Kromo in

forum
links

a month ago someone inquired about where the case against watchtower in otuo v watchtower was at currently.

firstly the claimant has brought two separate claims against the watchtower .

case 1 relates to a suit in slander premised on the words , "frank otuo is no longer a jehovah witness".

scoobydont

The Watchtower Organisation is hurting and bleeding but has, so far, restricted its "theocratic warfare" to court rooms and newspaper pages. However, I worry that, in the long term, as the hurt continues from litigations against the society, it might adopt a mafia-style hit which would see to it that litigants in complex and costly suits against the WTBS either disappear mysteriously or have a "nice" little accident to put them out of the way.

Yes, I know it sounds far-fetched, but would the WTBS stand by and watch its very own demise, occasioned by an inevitable rash of litigations from former members ?!

This organisation already has a track record for fighting dirty. It remains a religious organisation only in name. How much of a leap is it from their current moral (or immoral) position to where I fear they could be heading in the future ?

14

TYPES AND ANTITYPES: Transcript of discourse by David Splane at October 2014 Annual Meeting

by Gilgamesh in

while working on a comments for one of the articles in the march 15, 2015 watchtower (on types and antitypes) i decided to make a transcript of the talk that turned into that particular article.

as usual, the article that finally saw print had evolved quite a bit from the original.. anyway, here's the transcript that i also put up on the ad1914.com site.. the 2014 annual meeting program video can be found on tv.jw.org (currently found under programs and events).

the following speech can be found about the 2 hour and 8 minute mark in the video.

scoobydont

Keenly watching this space !

Thanks for the post.

11

Conversation with my mother-in-law this morning

by StarTrekAngel in

i am skipping the details on how we got to this point.

conversation was calmed and pleasant and while i know she is not the most educated person (she can hardly read), its hard to justify it by saying is a matter of ignorance.

it is definitely something inside her that triggers on that very moment.. me: i don't know where all the money is going.

scoobydont

@WHATHAPPENED "It sounds like she is ready to drink the Kool Aid..."

Don't be silly ! This lady is drowning in it !!!!!

30

JW.org does partial U-turn over Awake! magazine Rama Singh misquote

by Watchtower-Free in

posted on april 19, 2015http://jwsurvey.org/cedars-blog/jw-org-does-partial-u-turn-over-awake-magazine-rama-singh-misquote

jw.org has removed their misquote of rama singh from digital versions of awake!

magazine.

scoobydont

Mmmmm ! Delicious !!!

11

Question related to the digestive tract of carnivores

by geevee in

i was raised as a jw from about the age of 2, my parents were baptized when i was 5 years old.. i always liked the thought in the song about a young boy leading all of these once viscous animals, that are now tame.... in some of the reading i have done, the digestive tracts of carnivores..meat eaters has a highly acidic stomach, with a short small intestine and a short large intestine [bowel].

a lot of apes are frugivores [fruit eaters] less acid, long small intestine and longer bowel.

the question: did god recreate these animals [carnivores] and change their digestive tracts after the noachian flood so that they could eat meat [other creatures] as the jw's believe that these animals only ate straw [herbivores] before the flood and that he will restore their original herbivore digestive tract after armageddon?.

scoobydont

Hey, GEEVEE ! This is quite a scary road to tread, you know !!

I had exactly the same thoughts nagging away in my skull a few days ago. I mean, I have now stopped attending the Kingdom Hall and ditched everything to do with the WTS. However, I just don't want to peer too deeply into some of those rather dodgy biblical accounts on account of what I might find ! At 50+, I wouldn't know where to go with my life if my belief in God - the entire structure on which I have built and lived my life was to suddenly crumble !

While the highly complex nature of organisms (including man) may suggest that they are products of intelligent design (and this is now my singular basis for hanging on to a belief in God), however, the manner in which these organisms interact, dominate and ultimately destroy each other to promote their own survival, simply doesn't make sense to me ! And this is why I dread going down this tunnel of reasoning because it really does scare the shit out of me, knowing vaguely as everyone else here, that I am likely to come out at the other end completely stripped of my belief in God ! I think I will just do a bit more research and if starts to turn really scary, I'll just bury my head in some sand and sing la la la and hopefully spend the rest of my days in bliss, playing the ostrich.

My belief in a Creator is what keeps me going in this filthy, cut-throat world. It was my search for this Creator and a desire to establish a direct relationship with him which led me into the clutches of the WTS, in the first place ! That belief has taken a good knock but it remains my anchor in the unceasing turbulence of life. It is my comfort blanket and my main recourse when my very sanity is threatened by the world around me. If I ever lost that belief, I would most probably lose my sanity and, humanity would be the worse for it as there is no telling what monster would be unleashed when one becomes very inward looking, selfish, mean and quite vengeful since there will be no hereafter and, therefore, no further opportunity to redress any injustice suffered now ! You see, one could become just as hard-nosed as the rest of the shark, sorry, human population !

It seems like a losing battle trying to establish as facts, events that have been attributed to a God who, today appears quite aloof and disinterested in helping truth seekers to sort out myths and outright lies from the facts, if ever those events did occur.

Sorry, if that was a bit of a rant. Just needed to get a few things out of my head and, if you are reading this, dear God, this has been an open letter to you !

203

My Explanation of Why They Got it Wrong About Blood Using Only the NWT

by cofty in

10 " any israelite or any alien living among them who eats any bloodi will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from his people.

12 therefore i say to the israelites, "none of you may eat blood, nor may an alien living among you eat blood.

15 'anyone, whether native-born or alien, who eats anything found dead or torn by wild animals must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be ceremonially unclean till evening; then he will be clean.

scoobydont

Marked.

30

Shunning Disfellowshipped & Apostate family Members. Scriptural?

by objectivetruth in

anyone who is a witness or was previously a witness, is aware of the written & un-written rules concerning association with disfellowshipped family members.. there are a multitude of quotes through out the watchtower publications, but these 2 will suffice.. "are you proving yourself holy by not associating with family members or others who are disfellowshipped?

"the clear instruction in the bible is: avoid them.

that means that we have to stay away from them... the bible says that apostates are mentally diseased and that they use their teachings to make others think like them... what must we do to avoid false teachers?

scoobydont

The hypocrisy of the WatchTower Society is quite frightening, sometimes ! I will try and post a link to the AWAKE, January 8, 1947, in which the organisation attacked the Roman Catholic Church's practice of excommunication.

Go straight to page 27 of the publication and read for yourselves, the WTS's thoughts on excommunication. Pay special attention to their rejection of the practice of excommunication and the Bible verses upon which the Catholic had based their practice, and then compare those same verses with the Bible verses on which the WTS now bases its practice of disfellowshipping members who refuse to toe organisational line on some issues !

The very instrument of repression which they decried about the Catholic Church and which the Church has since discarded is what the WTS has unabashedly picked up and now wields as the new "god-inspired" rod of discipline ! The WTS justifies the practice of disfellowshipping non-conformist members, using some of the very Bible verses on which the Catholic Church had based its practice of excommunication !

I wonder if the WTS, in embracing the practice of disfellowshipping, now believes that the Catholic Church was right in excommunicating its erring members ! Talk about flip-flopping and the dog returning to its vomit !

If there is any active JW reading this thread, do you not find that a tad disingenuous and dishonest ?

http://www.a2z.org/wtarchive/docs/1947_Awake.pdf

29

1906 Training for Colporteurs - a real eye-opener

by Lady Lee in

in my wanderings around the net i have discovered some very interesting things.

this particular piece is based on a training session for colporteurs during the believers in the atonement sacrifice of christ convention held in ashbury park new jersey july 22-29, 1906. .

i will bold some of their comments that i found interesting and will add my comments in red.

scoobydont

Hello, Lady Lee. That is a lot of effort you have put into this thread ! Thank you. I just had to add my own two pence to the thread as one cannot read the speech and be unprovoked ! Here are just a couple of excerpts that got me really mad:

"...Be smiling, kind, etc. Be over polite, or more than etiquette would demand. If you get half a chance to thank a person for something, do it"

That just typifies the dominant trait of the "love" that many JWs have for each other and those they preach to. (By the way, did anyone get those plastic, overly friendly and bordering-on-the-insincere smiles at the Kingdom Hall and Conventions ?)

Like drones and robots, many JWs are devoid of real feelings for humaninty except for the "Mother", of course. This, to me, is why the average JW finds it easy to apply shunning right upon the say-so of "Mother" ! Their professed "love" is something they can switch on and off, just like that, to use the old expression ! Bloody sociopaths !!

"...If we do not put the book into people’s hands, we do not reap the wheat, so I believe in working and spending my time where the most can be accomplished in the same length of time...for I could spend my time where it would do more good and I feel justified in doing so."

So, why are JWs being made to beat the life out of the roads and pathways, in areas that are clearly unreceptive to the "troof" - going back again and again and again to the same people whom you damn well know are not even going to humour you by coming to their door ?!

I know of brothers and sisters who have worked the same territories for 30 - 40 years and have not had a single Bible study from there. Oh, yes, cue in the lessons on "blood guilt". We can't be the ones to decide who lives or dies at Armageddon, you know !

You know what ? As disgusting as I find those excerpts from the speech, I have to admit, reluctantly, that the speaker certainly used his head and knew how to work "smart", which is a lot more than can be said for the current crop of JWs. Really, though. these JWs are no better than those dodgy salesmen and cold callers you often warn your octogenarian mum about ! My life could have been a lot different if I had never been a JW - just looking back at missed opportunities !

Well, I wish everyone here a happy 2015 !

75

New forum 'parousia' is upon us! (software version)

by Simon in

the time has nearly come to switch over to the new forum software.

of course it's not completely finished yet (and never will be) but i think it's good enough to go live with and probably already better than the current one.

i'll give you a quick overview of what to expect and post more detail about the changeover process later.. cloud platform.

scoobydont

Just a simple but deep "thank you" from me, for the immense value that your work, and this site, represent for JWs who are at various stages on their journey to freedom. This site is not simply one for JW-bashing. It is also a support forum for recovering ex-JWs, like myself, who visit on a regular basis, just for the therapeutic value of it.

Thank you, too, to all original posters and contributors to the various threads on this site. Your efforts are what have turned this very site into a treasure trove. I am still relatively new to the site but I think we should all do what we can to support it. Whatever form of support that may be needed, it would never compare with the effort, time and money that, once upon a time, we happily gave to an organisation that was set up to use and abuse us. Who knows what the future holds for the site !

Have a good day, everyone !