She also did Sam Harris' podcast, which I found to be a very good listen. It was startling how much of what she said was so relatable - even the scriptures that got emphasized were the same.
OneEyedJoe
JoinedPosts by OneEyedJoe
-
8
Ted talk
by zeb ini like to watch ted talks.. a recent one i watched was "why i left the westboro baptist church" x megan phelps-roper.
i have never heard of this church ever before after all i am in australia.
the talk and all the young woman stated as beliefs and dogma sounded just like the jw minus the noisy demos..
-
-
-
41
Where do I go now?
by Libby inso i thought my purpose was to serve jehovah and get baptised.
where do i go now to get baptised?
is baptism even a requirement for serving god or was that just for the disciples and people of that time.
-
-
OneEyedJoe
My advice would be to focus on peeling back the layers of indoctrination for a while before you start looking to join another group/religion/belief-system. There's no rush - take your time. The JW indoctrination that time is short can linger even after you lose your fear that armageddon is imminent. Spend some time on introspection, and examine your beliefs and why you believe them. Follow each one to its ultimate source and if the foundation of some belief turns out to be that the cult is true or based on something the cult told you, set that belief aside for reevaluation later. Get to what you know is true and then start building your way back up from there.
While you're doing this, try things that you couldn't as a JW. Maybe instead of prayer, try meditation. Have a birthday party. Develop friendships with normal people. Watch bad movies and sleep in on saturday morning. Try things you've always wanted to, and things that make you uncomfortable at first.
Between introspection and experimentation you'll start to find things that give you meaning and what (if anything) you want to believe going forward.
-
15
This really does not end well for God.
by pleaseresearch into say this whole creation thing has been or will be a success at the end is absurd.
not only did one third of the angels jump ship to satans side.
but adam and eve screwed up so quickly.
-
-
OneEyedJoe
Why do adam and eve have to die at all? It's as if you had a kid and the very first mistake they made instead of lovingly correcting them and helping them to see their error, you just kill them and start trying for another kid. Some "loving father" god is!
Edit:
Obviously I'm familiar with the JW "perfect standards of justice" nonsense answer to this but it just doesn't stand up to scrutiny. In what world is killing someone just when their only crime is violating some arbitrary rule that doesn't matter to anyone?
-
15
This really does not end well for God.
by pleaseresearch into say this whole creation thing has been or will be a success at the end is absurd.
not only did one third of the angels jump ship to satans side.
but adam and eve screwed up so quickly.
-
-
OneEyedJoe
Plus, all this death and destruction is just so that any later challenges to his authority can just be met by instant execution! A sort of "nope, we've tried that and it didn't work so now you get to die!" Imagine that...everyone lives forever but periodically your buddies just vanish because they questioned god's authority. Now if we're really talking about forever one can assume that eventually everyone would, at some point, question god's authority and get pooffed out of existence so no one would really get to live forever and god would be tasked with killing an infinite number of people over the course of eternity. Doesn't seem like a very good system at all.
-
14
Vegetarians in the "new system?"
by Lynnie inso i was looking on instagram and one of my former jw friends was showing pictures of his bbq ribs and saying something about well we better eat all the pigs we can now since we won't be eating meat in the new system of things?
i don't seem to remember that teaching but does anyone else?
.
-
-
OneEyedJoe
I always figured we'd just be eating meat from animals that died of old age. If it dies of natural causes, why couldn't we eat it? You'd be perfect so you wouldn't get sick. It might be a little tougher being an older animal than we normally eat now, but it'd still be better than a veggie burger by miles.
My plan was to start breeding livestock with heart defects that would cause them to die in their prime. It's funny the nonsense you can think up when you're forced into a belief system of basic assumptions that can't be questioned.
-
38
Talk to my Dad about beards.
by LovingLifeNow inso i spoke to my elder dad the other day, and he asked if i still am sporting a beard.
i said yes, then i said, "i thought the society said its ok to have a neat trimmed beard now?
" he said "no, no, no..if you read the article , it says in countries where it is accepted" so my response was "ummm, its pretty accepted here in america"..which he says "it reflects your spirituality" "if another wittness saw you, they would know you are weak"...i was like, "ok, i don't get it, and i follow christ/god, not men..." then he said in his hall" if a brother came in with a beard , he would not have privelages" then i just gave up, and tried to change the subject..ugggggggggg if these people would just listen to themselves , they would see the sillyness of there teachings...
-
-
OneEyedJoe
Why on earth would someone wearing a Beard "stumble" someone ? Jeez, if something like that upsets them they ain't gonna' last long in the JW's anyway.
If someone wears a beard it can definitely stumble many int he congregation. Seeing someone defy the leadership would make them want to confront that defiance but in doing so they are very likely to realize that the cult's stance doesn't have a leg to stand on. That would be quite a "stumbling block" indeed.
I've seen a number of times people post with some implied shame that they woke up at least in part due to the beard issue and I don't think this shame is warranted. It's a perfect issue to wake up to - seemingly low stakes and yet it encapsulates one of the greatest examples of the cult's hypocrisy and willingness to manipulate information and scripture to suit their ends. It seems like a small thing to start so people are less afraid to approach it, but then upon discovering the fraud they can't help but see it everywhere else.
-
7
When Your Adolescent Questions Your Faith
by Funchback inhttps://www.jw.org/en/publications/magazines/wp20120201/adolescent-questions-faith/.
this article doesn't touch on the topic of what a parent shoud do if their teenager has made an educated decision to stop attending meetings.
but, hey...what else do you expect from the watchtower coporation?.
-
-
OneEyedJoe
Not only does this force the assumption that any doubts a kid might have are due to some other emotional problem not related to the cult (lack of self confidence, lack of friends, overwhelmed by the
Orwellian controlchristian standards) but they're also reinforcing that if the kids leave it's the parent's fault for not handling their kid's doubts correctly. Again, it couldn't possibly be the cult's fault for being a fraud. -
29
why does no one ask questions ?
by midnight ini always felt bad for asking questions , did anyone else ?
what question did you ask or want to ask but feel it was wrong ?
mine was regarding the circuit assembly and the amount defecit anounced .. also 1975 i got a stern reply too when i was studying in the 90,s.
-
-
OneEyedJoe
I never once felt bad for having questions, but I learned at a young age to keep them to myself. Asking my parents the sorts of questions that I had always resulted in 3 things: I'd get an unsatisfying answer accompanied by a stern/concerned look, my parents would force me to do more "bible study" of cult propaganda, and I'd get more scrutiny around how I was spending my time and who I was friends with at school, etc. I wanted the cult to be true, and all their deeply unsatisfying answers to what should have been simple questions that everyone had thought about only left me with stronger doubts and I didn't want that. Coupled with the punishment of more study and my parents ramping up on trying to isolate me from the world I quickly learned to just not ask questions. It was better to assume there was a satisfying answer to my questions than to hear the excuses they'd actually give me.
-
51
Did you ever have a discussion with an apostate that helped your journey out.
by jwfacts inthere seems to be a number of different ways that apostates try to get jehovah's witnesses realise they do not have the truth, ranging from subtle comments to aggressive attacks.
do you have any that looking back helped you finally leave.
some of the methods include:.
-
-
OneEyedJoe
The only apostate thing that I ever encountered prior to waking up was when I was probably 14 or 15 - my friend (similar age) and I were at a door together and the person at the door gave us a little pamphlet that gave lots of information about CTR - talking about how he sold his business and made the equivalent of about a million dollars and sunk it into publishing bible literature and then he started his own stuff. I think there was something in there about miracle wheat and some of the other cons of the time. It all sounded so outrageous to me - we actually read through it with my friend's family after we finished for the day and we all had a good laugh. It just solidified to me that apostates must be conspiracy theorists and are all crazy.
After I woke up I went to one more convention (2014 international convention) as I tried in vain to wake up my wife. That was my first time encountering protesters at a convention, and they were trying to hand out pamphlets and were reading from a bible some scripture about jesus and shouting at us about how it's only through jesus that we can have salvation. I tried (but failed) to catch back up with them on a subsequent day to explain to them that nothing they're doing is helping and give them some better tactics, because it seemed to me that either they couldn't be exJWs or they were so deluded by whatever evangelical group they landed in upon exiting that they thought they could reach people by just shouting bible "truths" at them.
jwleaks and jwfacts were by far the biggest influences on me waking up as far as the actions of apostates goes. Ironically my encounters with apostates had a smaller influence on me than all the rhetoric about apostates. I could accept it when I was told that apostates were bitter/angry/lazy/selfish/etc and that's why they'd left and even that some wanted their own followers, but what always bothered me was when we were told not to take their literature even if they promised to read ours if we read theirs. Obviously if one was the truth and one was lies, it would be clear which was which and we might have a chance to sway this pour lost soul, but no we were told to write them off and run away. That always struck me as hypocritical (which of course we were always cursing hypocrisy in others...) and never sat well. Also a few times I heard my elder father talking about how important it was that apostates not be able to get JW literature (this was about the time that the first watchtower library CD was released) and I just couldn't rationalize why that'd be a problem - shouldn't they be encouraged to have the "spiritual food" that we had? I just couldn't understand the fear that people had about these apostates that were armed only with lies.
-
27
I want to know what celebrations JWs don't consider pagan?
by Chook ini could only think of weddings and wedding anniversaries .
-
-
OneEyedJoe
I don't think they could regard Thanksgiving as pagan since it was inaugurated by Christians, but it's still against the rules. Really, the whole "it's pagan objection" is just an excuse to isolate JWs from non-JW family members.
Yeah, thanksgiving isn't considered pagan. But they cast it as a holiday designed to promote national pride and it is therefore banned under the "no part of this world" clause. If it ain't one thing it's the other.
The only real structured celebrations that I ever knew of as a JW were anniversaries and graduations. All the others were either pagan, nationalistic (memorial day, labor day, 4th of july, etc - I never knew of anyone who dared even have friends over to grill on those days) or put too much emphasis on a person and bordered on creature worship, or some combination thereof.
I refuse to list the memorial as a celebration. It wasn't and isn't.