I chose freedom in the form of not believing the dubious truth claims of those who lack any corroborative evidence.
OneEyedJoe
JoinedPosts by OneEyedJoe
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Choose Freedom, Choose Happiness (my book)
by Faith after Deception inchoose freedom, choose happiness.
after finally leaving, it can be tempting to “hibernate”.
we attempt to turn the page, “move on” and create a new life for ourselves.
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What is behind your choice of forum user name?
by stuckinarut2 injust curious how we all think.. what prompted or influenced your choice of username for this forum?.
there are some really amazing names, and it would be great to hear the stories behind them.... mine was nothing fancy.
i just felt "stuck in a rut too" along with so many others.
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OneEyedJoe
Mine was chosen essentially randomly and has no relevance to me whatsoever. When I signed up I was pretty paranoid about being found out and subjected to the kangaroo court.
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Why "... when it does touch on scientific matters [the Bible] is accurate" is bogus BS.
by Island Man injws and other christians would often point to the handful of the bible verses that seem to be scientifically accurate as evidence of its divine inspiration.
but not surprisingly, they ignore the ones that are scientifically inaccurate, or when they address those verses they put a spin on it like saying the account is not a reflection of what the bible is teaching but what men at the time erroneously believed and which god allowed them to record in the bible.
would you believe a jw actually told me that!
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OneEyedJoe
If the bible records an account of someone doing something that we know to be an effective method at achieving some result and they get said desired result then it is evidence of the bible's scientific validity.
If the bible records an account of someone doing something known to be ineffective at achieving some result and they get it anyway (i.e. Jesus rubbing spit in the eyes of a blind person) then it's a miracle and is evidence of the existence of god and that the bible is the word of god.
If the bible makes a statement of fact that we know to be scientifically accurate (or, through some mental gymnastics, like the "circle of the earth" bit, can be made to seem scientifically accurate) then it is evidence of the bible's scientific validity and divine inspiration.
If the bible makes a statement of fact that we now know to be false then it was merely figurative language, metaphor or use of popular ideas of the day to make a point and is in no way evidence of the bible being scientifically invalid.
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Jehovah's Witnesses denial of what they are supposed to believe from Watchtower
by jambon1 inone of the most frustrating things.
when you confront jw's about what they believe they will often deny it.
such as "if your child is disfellowshipped then you can't have contact with them ever again".
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OneEyedJoe
It depends a little on the circumstances, but all cults will do this to some extent - there's a separation between outsider and insider doctrine, justified by only giving spiritual babes milk and saving solid food for when they've grown. So if confronted by someone at the door about something about something uncomfortable they'll say it's not true. They'll usually rationalize this by telling themselves about some loophole (i.e. the necessary family business stuff or how family members can talk to minor disfellowshipped children that still live with them) and because the uncomfortable truth they're facing down isn't completely absolute, they'll deny it's truth.
In other cases, they've come up with their own rationalization for the doctrine that allows them to see themselves as a decent person while still believing the doctrine. They then use that rationalization similar to the above.
Lastly they're often ignorant of the doctrine. Meetings and literature are boring so many will educate themselves to have a basic framework and then they fill in the gaps using some flavor of logic and a few axioms (i.e. love, justice, etc). That can obviously lead to places where their beliefs will differ significantly from official doctrine, and the places where those differences occur are likely to be the areas they're going to get challenged on.
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"We dont mourn the dead"
by HereIgo ini remember a brother making the above statement in regards to an elderly sister who had passed.
he stated we don't mourn or even visit grave sites because we have a hope that jah will resurrect the dead.
it seemed really creepy at the time, hell, even jesus wept when lazarus died.
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OneEyedJoe
Mourning the dead is one of the topics where JWs fall into the "protest too much" camp, IMO. I recall frequent talks and WT studies that went out of their way to say that we shouldn't feel guilty for mourning/crying about a dead loved one regardless of our faith in the resurrection. Why would anyone feel guilty about mourning? It's an absurd thought. Even with the resurrection you have to be without a loved one for what's likely to be many years and that can be difficult even if they're still alive, so of course you're going to be sad when someone dies. Then add in having to go through their effects and dredge up old memories....it's just insane to think that you ought to feel guilty about mourning or feeling some sadness. So why do they spend so much time on it? I think they want to put the thought into you.
Those articles always say it's ok to grieve, but then go on to give examples of how people were able to be comforted by the resurrection hope. I think they present the idea of feeling guilty about grieving and then they basically say that you should be happy anyway (and indeed happier than worldly people because you'll see your loved ones "soon" instead of waiting to die and go to heaven) and when people aren't happy they inevitably feel guilty.
They'll also say things about not judging others who mourn a loss for too long or something - again this is such a strange thought to come from a vacuum - it's not a common thing for people to judge others for mourning a loss...it's one of the most relatable human experiences. Again I think they're trying to put the thought in the head of the R/F JW. So many times when they say don't judge they follow up with instructions to judge others - they'll say don't judge others for their choice about higher education and then later in the article they'll say to be on guard for bad association even within the cult - how can you determine if someone is bad association without making some judgement?
So much of the doctrine and advice around mourning the death of a loved one follows classic cult strategy - create a problem that wouldn't otherwise exist and then present the cult as the solution. JWs are prevented from properly mourning by being told that they'll see their loved ones "soon" and by being told to imagine seeing them in paradise which will come the day after tomorrow - they're forced to keep the loss in mind in a way that would almost make them feel guilty for moving on because if they move on and then paradise comes tomorrow just think of how bad they'd feel when they see their lost ones. They're left feeling guilty if they grieve, guilty if they move on and then given constant reminders of the loss. Then when they have a hard time with it all, they're told to do more study and more recruiting.
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My New Fascination - Evolution!
by pale.emperor insince leaving watchtower i kind of hit the "reset" button in my mind and reevaluated what i thought i knew, what i believe and i require proof for every idea put before me before i commit to it.
lately i've been fascinated with evolution.
as a jw i never even looked at the subject, dismissing it as "just a theory".
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OneEyedJoe
Hi pale.emperor. I will take a look but to be honest he is one of the most ignorant creationists ever. Responding to his scatter-gun approach is like inviting somebody to smash up your house for 10 minutes and then accepting the challenge of fixing it all in the next 10 minutes.
This is such a great analogy. It's often frustrating the over-simplified arguments that creationist use because their arguments often betray such an extreme lack of understanding that to get them to understand why their one sentence is flawed could take several paragraphs.
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My New Fascination - Evolution!
by pale.emperor insince leaving watchtower i kind of hit the "reset" button in my mind and reevaluated what i thought i knew, what i believe and i require proof for every idea put before me before i commit to it.
lately i've been fascinated with evolution.
as a jw i never even looked at the subject, dismissing it as "just a theory".
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OneEyedJoe
Cofty, would you give me your take on these creationist arguments as put forward by bible nut Jack Chick in one of his tracts:
I read through some of it until a pretty clear pattern emerged. Pretty much everything in there relied upon mischaracterization of the claims of evolution and the evidence for it. I think if you read through Cofty's threads you'll start to see a lot of the flaws of creationist's arguments.
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My New Fascination - Evolution!
by pale.emperor insince leaving watchtower i kind of hit the "reset" button in my mind and reevaluated what i thought i knew, what i believe and i require proof for every idea put before me before i commit to it.
lately i've been fascinated with evolution.
as a jw i never even looked at the subject, dismissing it as "just a theory".
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OneEyedJoe
Cofty's threads on the topic have been very interesting and put together very well so that anyone should be able to understand. Here's a link to the latest one, which also has links to the previous topics.
https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/5653141557084160/evolution-fact-39-homologous-structures
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JUNE 2017 Watchtower - Lost a loved one? Go out in service!
by pale.emperor inapparently going to the kingdom hall and getting out in the door to door ministry is the best way to get over the loss of a loved one.
who'dve thunk it?.
stash: /intesoft-inc.appspot.com/post/80e3cef960fd4eee9fd5cd757c438581.html
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OneEyedJoe
If you have a problem the solution is always more cult involvement. If that doesn't fix the problem then you're either still not doing enough or you don't have the right attitude/heart-condition. So don't complain that it didn't solve your problem because that's just evidence that you're worthless/evil.
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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..
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OneEyedJoe
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.