Posts by Gentledawn

30

New DVD review

by Laika in

i managed to catch the new dvd on youtube last night before the inevitable takedown.

as a film i felt it wasn't anywhere near as good as the prodigal movie, the story wasn't as dramatic, the characters much less interesting and developed and the direction weaker.

i found the prodigal relatively entertaining (all things considered) this one was just dull.. here are some of my random thoughts anyway [spoiler alert - ha!].

"decency is the boundary for tolerance.", says dad 28min
Haha, yeah. Because keeping (and protecting!) and promoting pedos in the congregation via internal memos and secret elder handbook rules doesn't contradict the article, "Let us Abhor what is wicked" from 1997. Right?
Good lord, how many times did I defend this godforsaken Watchtower corporation by quoting that lying-ass article?
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/bible/183245/1/Let-Us-Abhor-What-Is-Wicked

What guy is gonna tell a girl who he's currently on a date with, referring to her as person "x", and that he also has girl(s) "y" and "z" he's seeing over the next couple of days? 32min

"it's sinking in that what the kids need most isn't money or things. They need us fully involved in their lives." 37min
Yup. Every teenager's dream is More Parental Involvement. Never independence and finding their own individuality.

how long is Noah's ark? 300 cubits. 39min
18 inches = one cubit
300 x 18 = 5400inches
5400" ÷ 12 = 450 feet
450' ÷ 3 = 150 yards
Noah's ark was 150 yards long
List of world's longest ships:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world's_longest_ships "Seawise Giant" was 500 yards long.

'decisions you make effects everyone around you, not just yourself' 49min
Yeah. Getting involved with a CULT cuts you off from unbelieving family. Involvement isolates you from people who genuinely care and are concerned about your spiraling inside of a cult. Better nip that in the bud, too. Don't make any friends unless they direct you to the doors of the KH. That way shunning works. Sssshhh. We don't practice shunning. *turns back on you*

"it can be a compass if you let it" 52min
how can the bible be a "compass" when it wasn't written as a whole book, but rather individual texts, letters and notations? Also christianity was illegal for centuries until the "Edict of Milan". February 313AD. Some "compass"!
Mark 12:30 - you must love [Jehovah] your god... 52min
Left out the "love your neighbor as yourself" part. But that script negates shunning, sooo... out it goes.

Ugh. 53 minutes is as much as I can take of this puke-fest.

15

How Did "Shepherding Calls" Go For You?

by minimus in

jw
friends

did you loath them?

did you feel it was a "privilege" to have the elders care deeply about your spiritual well being?

if you were an elder or ministerial servant, did you enjoy going to the homes of the sheep?.

Gentledawn

Minimus:

(I think you have two exact same threads, by the way!)

the other one:

http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/280897/1/How-Did-Shepherding-Calls-Go-For-You

23

How Did "Shepherding Calls" Go For You?

by minimus in

jw
friends

did you loath them?

did you feel it was a "privilege" to have the elders care deeply about your spiritual well being?

if you were an elder or ministerial servant, did you enjoy going to the homes of the sheep?.

Gentledawn

Always hated sheep-herding calls. Never could quite put my finger on why, but partly because of the phrase "your comments are missed at the meetings" always popped up during the call. Every. Goddamned. Time.

Total disinterest for lengthy stretches of time, then a sudden interest in someone's well-being? Yeah, that's genuine.

Real friends talk to one another more than once every year/2 years. Coming around out of the blue and feigning interest in some poor "sheep's" (a dehumanizing term, btw & probably by design, as far as the cult goes) life isn't convincing at all. It's not like the person lives a million miles away, whilst residng, shopping, etc. within their territory boundaries.

Returning to the kingdom hall would mean the same shitty cascade taking place:

• attend meeting

• get "love bombed" by well-wishers who apparently thought you were dead prior to that meeting

• immediately get asked to go out in field service

The reasons that vistited/shepherded "sheep" wasn't coming to meetings does NOT matter. Nothing matters except forwarding the Watchtower's own agenda. That means filling a seat and for them to drop money into their (WT) donation plate/box. That means going out and getting more bodies to fill in seats, which translates into more money into the collection plate/box.

Money, money, money. Having bodies in the seats at the KH/assemblies means money.

--------------

Another thing I never knew until after I left the Borg is that they appoint so-called "elders" who are still in their 20s for age. Even the US doesn't allow anyone under the age of 35 to run for president! Because maturity. A 20yo "older man". Yeah, that makes perfect sense (/sarcasm)

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110513202104AAcGdYE

And food for thought:

If disciplining an elder/ministerial servant means he must step down from "privileges" as a punishment (especially in cases of serious wrongdoing, such as child molestation/rape), does that mean all women are in a perpetual state of punishment?

If women are to "keep silent" in regard to meetings and go home afterwards and ask their husbands questions, what about widows, orphans and single women?

And that coming from a guy (Paul) who admonished people to stay single and not to marry. I guess that was directed only at the men-folk... oh, wait.

Phew! Good thing there are no contradictions in the bible.

8

This is how I feel sometimes... who do you identify with? The doctor? or the UN investigator (Brad Pitt)?

by ILoveTTATT in

jw
friends

.

Gentledawn

What movie is this taken from?

8

This is how I feel sometimes... who do you identify with? The doctor? or the UN investigator (Brad Pitt)?

by ILoveTTATT in

jw
friends

.

Gentledawn

42

What did Jesus really mean, when he said he had made his Father's name known?

by Faithful Witness in

i am preparing for my meeting this friday with miss k. we are reviewing the bible teach book, and she is looking forward to "showing me some things about the divine name.

" i don't know what she might pull out of her hat this time... but that section of the teach book is so completely assanine, i don't even know what to say.

) what did jesus mean when he said that to his father?.

Gentledawn

Thank goodness. (((hugs)))

You are doing the best thing both for yourself and for your immediate family.

To give you my own story as an example: I was contacted 25yrs ago. It was a few years later when I was baptized. When 1995 rolled around with the "AWAKE!" masthead change (http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/generation.php#1995), my former bible study conductor changed. She was distraught, angry, sullen to everyone around herself, except toward me. She even came to my house out of the blue and gave me a vague, non-specific apology. She was in so much pain but couldn't communicate it. By 2000-2001 she had disassociated herself.

Her family had been one of those "pillars of the congregation" types. She was a full-time pioneer, her son had gone to Bethel and was on the RBC (regional building committee), her children auxiliaried (pioneer) and her husband was a MS or elder. Everyone in their family left at the same time except her husband. She got a divorce a year or so later.

So, it can happen. Something could come down the watchtower pike that is impossible for a person to swallow and they will wake up for real.

Again, you are doing the right thing by cutting off the indoctrination channel.

24

WT admitted "Jehovah" is not God's name...

by Watkins in

if i remember right(unlikely, lol) it was a one-page article about the tetragrammaton which concluded by saying that even though "jehovah" was 'probably' not an accurate pronunciation, it is a widely-recognized and accepted english transliteration of the divine name.

i was thinking it was on the last page or maybe the back cover of a wt pub - maybe a watchtower.. can someone please direct me to the publication it was in?

i read it when i was still 'in' and it made me stop and think about how much emphasis the wt puts on that name, all while knowing it's not the name.

Gentledawn

The Divine Name Brochure p.10, by the Watchtower Society states:

"Even though the modern pronunciation Jehovah might not be exactly the way it was pronounced originally, this in no way detracts from the importance of the name. While many translators favor the pronunciation Yahweh, the New World Translation and also a number of other translations continue the use of the form Jehovah because of people's familiarity with it for centuries."

copied from : http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/jehovah-yahweh.php

42

What did Jesus really mean, when he said he had made his Father's name known?

by Faithful Witness in

i am preparing for my meeting this friday with miss k. we are reviewing the bible teach book, and she is looking forward to "showing me some things about the divine name.

" i don't know what she might pull out of her hat this time... but that section of the teach book is so completely assanine, i don't even know what to say.

) what did jesus mean when he said that to his father?.

Gentledawn

Stop. Stop. Stop.

For the love of your own immediate family and for your own well being: stop.

Stop studying in their material. Notice how you are simply not allowed to socialize, or even bring up your own materials to discuss and/or set aside their malarkey machines? You are playing their game, on their grounds, with their rules and their game pieces. Yeah. You keep going like you are and you'll be knocking on all of our doors soon enough, with a sappy grin on your face and a somewhat trapped, vacant and confused look in your eyes. You will lose everything, including yourself.

Unless you really, really want to become one of Jehovah's Witnesses, you need to stop associating with anyone via their direct indoctrination program. It is designed to bring people in, even when they are resistant to it. The books are made that way. The talks all have outlines that way.

Seriously.

Does Miss K have anything to do with you outside of her counting time studying/witlessing to you?

It's indoctrination.

And you are going about it from the big end of the funnel (how they trap everyone) instead of staying the hell outside the whirlpool (studying, going to meetings, etc), which is exactly how they trapped every single person here.

Start looking into "persuasive coercion" techniques. Learn how cults get a person to do something that they ordinarily would never do in their life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aw_5cmCwoc

Armageddon is the same as hell fire (scare tactic in order to keep your mind trapped through fear), and about as real as God making a wonderfully mild summer for bible printing. Meanwhile, people are starved in another part of the globe. Rapings, and other various forms of torture and imprisonment are the norm. Diseases run rampant (cancer is a real killer in my family. My mom, older sis and brother all died from different types). Earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, wild fires, droughts, floods... but God only saw fit to give the Watchtower printery a fine summer for printing. Not save any lives or making sure people didn't end up homeless because of financial destitution, what-not, or save them from any of the above.

Wanting to have hope is not a crime. Being exploited because of your hope is something entirely different.

Like I told my husband the other day: The watchtower, like many other cults, use the bible exactly how others use a Ouija board: They can make it say anything they want, just to fulfill any immediate agenda.

Spend your time learning about indoctrination techniques. Learn about "loaded language" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_language). Study how other cults indoctrinate and see the outcome of their victims (yes, victims).

To start off, here is Steve Hassan: "How Big Is the Phenomenon of "Undue Influence" ?"

http://vimeo.com/58541337

That is just the tip of the iceberg.

I made it partway thru "Escape" by Carolyn Jessop, which describes her upbringing in a fundamentalist Mormon cult (polygamy being the main deviant feature). What struck me while reading it was the chapter where as a child, they played the "armageddon game". God was going to bring destruction to the earth, so they better hide and get ready for the deaths of all non-believers! Sound familiar? Same goddamned teaching as JWs and for the same godforsaken reasons, too: instill fear fear fear and "do as we say" mentality out of their adherents.

"Listen, obey and be blessed bamboozled".

There's so much info out there. In my opinion, the best solution is to simply do as Jesus said: love god and treat others well. But don't get roped into the jackassery by becoming one of watchtower's mind-slaves. It does damage and hurts in more ways than you can count.

If Miss K isn't a true friend now (accepting you as who you are currently), she will never be, no matter what path you take. She is simply trying to recruit you, which is the gateway to getting your whole family in, too.

Social psychology can be a real bitch at times.

144

Escaping Indoctrination - Faith Isn't a Virtue.

by cofty in

the unknown writer of the gospel of john put the following words in jesus' mouth, "blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.".

persuading countless generations that it is a virtue to believe incredible things on insufficient evidence, is one of religion's cleverest tricks.. the more incredible the claim; the more flimsy the evidence; the stronger the belief; the greater the virtue.. this is the exact opposite of how we operate in every other aspect of our lives.. rational people must demand objective evidence for everything they are asked to believe.

"extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence".. leaving the dogmatic claims of the watchtower is only a first step.

Gentledawn

DJS: Until the 20th Century the average lifespan for humans was about 34

This oft repeated factiod is misleading because it includes infant mortality rates which, until fairly recently, were very high:

Human Lifespans Nearly Constant for 2,000 Years

"The inclusion of infant mortality rates in calculating life expectancy creates the mistaken impression that earlier generations died at a young age; Americans were not dying en masse at the age of 46 in 1907. The fact is that the maximum human lifespan — a concept often confused with "life expectancy" — has remained more or less the same for thousands of years. The idea that our ancestors routinely died young (say, at age 40) has no basis in scientific fact."

----

Yup, yup. Infant/early childhood vaccinations/inoculations changed everything, as did cleanliness and sterilization (including fastidious hand washing) in the medical profession/hospitals.

The baby boom generation (babies born between 1945 - 1964. 1965 was first year of generation "x", if mem serves) wasn't just because of returning soldiers getting all happy about being back from WWII. It came right on the heels of mandatory childhood vaccinations, too.

22

Happy 21st!!!!

by KateWild in

jw
friends

21 years ago today, was the one of the most special days of my life.

i gave birth to my precious daughter.

who knew it would pass so quickly!

Gentledawn

Happy birthday!