i grew up as a jehovah's witness.
my mother was uneducated and so we moved every 2-4 years as she tried to find stable enough work to support a child so ive attended many kingdom halls and have known many witnesses and many elders.
i've never gone back to the witness organization and never will.
Meh, holidays schmolidays. That doesn't matter at all. I'm just not particularly crazy of organizations that kill people with beliefs that have no foundation. Jonestown in slow motion, that's what Watchtower is. Worthy of my hate, when I have the time to give it any energy.
If reading the stories here make you upset enough to want to vomit, I think it's highly likely that you are experiencing symptoms of cognitive dissonance.
after the ambiguous response by the wts to the nbc broadcast, i would like to know how many of you had an "elder chester molester" in your own congregation?.
we had an elder that molested his daughter's best friend when she was 14 years old.
the elders in the congregation tried to keep the matter quiet and handled the matter privately.
Two, in two different congregations. And one more, ministerial servant.
i was reading the thread about the prospect of the wts releasing some new light shite about a prophecy to fulfil the fact that they are not growing and it brought back a really horrid memory, unintentional i know but horrid nonetheless.. the co visited the congregation were i was from and after the obligatory song and prayer, it was announced that the co needed to speak to us urgently on a local needs issue.
he came onto the platform his look was sombre and melancholy (nothing new there then).
he said he had an announcement from the governing body and that their had been a law passed that day which banned jw's in the uk that the usa and other world governments had notified the wts that they were to follow suit shortly.
Jim Jones (People's Temple, Jonestown,) used exactly the same tactics. He would tell the people that the CIA/FBI/various organizations (including the illuminati) were after them, scare the people, then reveal it was a "drill," to prepare them for what would eventually happen to them. Of course, we know what happened to them...
any particular event sparked this change of heart ?.
We were driving, about 2 hours into our 2-1/2 hour drive to Tacoma for the District Convention, and I was reading Crisis of Conscience for the first time. As we were passing through Olympia, I said, "That's it, I quit! I'm never going back."
apparently some food items offend persons on this site.
so, out of curiousity, what foods offend you?
what about them offends you?
Bananas, cucumbers, the now ubiquitous twinkie, kielbasas, hot dogs- especially those offensively inappropriate Kosher dogs... OH, bully sticks, passionfruit. I'm sure there are others. Many foods are offensive. There should be ratings.
please note that everything i write here is within the context of discussions between two witnesses.
conversations between a jw and non jw are different in a number of ways and so i will not be discussing them here.
the 'running ahead' fallacy.
How about the "those are just men" aka: "imperfect men make mistakes that will be corrected" fallacy? grr.
your thoughts?.
.
(thinking about it...).
sure. but only if asking does not equal pushing.
i received my copy of barbara andersons cd paedophilia in an american religion a month or two ago, and i have been reading through it since.. what follows, although i have called this a review, is in no sense a scholarly consideration of the legal merits of the cases described, a task for which i am wholly unqualified.
these are, rather, my subjective reflections on the material presented, the impressions i gathered while reading the legal filings, my untrained, common-man appraisal of the cases laid out in those documents.
ill also admit to being swayed by tone of voice adopted, and to using my own common-sense yardstick in determining the reasonableness of the statements made, the responses given and the arguments put forward.
Thank you Duncan. This was a very helpful summary, I appreciate it.
i don't know if this has been posted yet but my mom told me that there was a letter from crooklyn that publishers can now attend international conventions.
before only the pioneers, elders, etc could attend.
she said that there was a tremendous amount of excitement among the publishers that they now have the "privilege" of attending.
Yeah, the sight-seeing is limited because they spend their spare time shuttling them around to see the branch and/or local kingdumb halls. My parents went to the Chile/Argentina one, (and Poland and a couple others,) and came back with almost zero pictures of sites, but they sure had a lot of pictures of people nobody knew, and buildings with no windows in them...
i don't know if this has been posted yet but my mom told me that there was a letter from crooklyn that publishers can now attend international conventions.
before only the pioneers, elders, etc could attend.
she said that there was a tremendous amount of excitement among the publishers that they now have the "privilege" of attending.
See, I never got this at all. Aren't ALL the conventions "open to the public?" So what's to prevent anyone from traveling to some exotic convention site and attending? Even us? It always cracked me up that there was all this application bullcrappy, and "special privileges" to attend. Hahaha!
I'll bet they were excited.
