Posts by OneEyedJoe

33

Study with an Elder - propose a question.

by CitizenofEarth in

hello there.. as some of you might remember i am keeping my facade up by "studying" with an elder.

this study however is more of a session where i put hard questions about the org, doctrine and so on, on the table.

the time has come for the next session in a couple of days, and i have quite frankly lost the will to keep digging up things that just shouldn't be happening.

OneEyedJoe

My plan for the next time I get JWs at my door is to ask a few questions and follow up with a scripture. Now, this is more for a short conversation and won't occupy you for hours but it's perhaps worth bringing up due to its simplicity.

My plan is to first ask what they believe regarding Jesus' return - they'll have to admit that they believe he has returned. Then I'll ask if they believe that armageddon is comming soon, they'll have to admit that they do. Then I'll ask them to read what Jesus himself said at Luke 21:8 - from the cult bible:

He said: “Look out that you are not misled, for many will come on the basis of my name, saying, ‘I am he,’ and, ‘The due time is near.’ Do not go after them.

Then I'll ask them why anyone should disobey Jesus' very specific commands not to follow after people that come in his name, claim to be him (or that he has returned and they represent him) and are saying that the end is near. I'll suggest that the combination of their doctrine and this scripture completely undermines their entire ministry and that for anyone to become a JW they first have to go directly against one of Jesus' commands.

15

I remember my Grandfather who was a CO saying;

by dogon in

i was thinking of my co grandfather who passed on a few years ago.

his wife my grandmother passed on in 99. i can remember him saying "i know after armageddon i can not be married to her but maybe we can live next to each other.

not sure where the cult stands on this issue today.

OneEyedJoe

I had an assembly very shortly after the article that punkofnice linked to came out. The CO had lost his wife a few years prior and he talked about how painful it was knowing that he could never be married to her again and how happy he was when the article came out saying, basically, "oh the previous GB made that up, but they were full of shit" because now he had the prospect of being married to her in paradise.

I had been awake for a few months when this happened, and in the car ride home I thought I'd made some progress with my wife as I brought this flip-flop up. She said how nice it was for him that they had adjusted their understanding on it and what a wonderful thing it was, blah blah blah typical JW post assembly nonsense. I just said something to the effect of, "Yeah, I just think it would've saved him and the tens of thousands like him a lot of heartache if they had just admitted from the beginning that they didn't know what Jesus meant instead of making something up and stating it with certainty." That was one of the few times I got the "Hmm I never thought about it like that" reaction from her that made me think I might be able to wake her up. That was about as far as I ever got.

47

Are JWs "mind trained" to be habitual liars?

by nonjwspouse in

i don't mean overly obvious, or otherwise meaning to cause harm, but taught to lie for the purpose of avoidance.

this type of lying can be pervasive in areas of life that are not just to avoid discussions with people who have questions about the jw, etc.

my husband will lie/be deceitful about the silliest, simple things.

OneEyedJoe

In short, yes. I'll agree that JWs either are not consciously aware that they're lying or do mental gymnastics to excuse it. When I was a JW I once questioned a few other JWs about saying "we're not here to convert anyone" when someone answered the door stating that they had their own religion. I couldn't understand how they could say that when we were constantly told the goal of the ministry was to start bible studies and to bring people "into the truth." The answers I got were all cop-outs. I heard "no one can convert anyone, they have to convert themselves." I heard "Oh, I know we're told to help bring people into the truth, but I really do just enjoy talking to people about the bible, so that's why I'm out in service." They lie, then they'll find some excuse for why it's not a lie.

Another thing that will cause them to lie is when they just can't conceive of the truth being true. They'll refuse to acknowledge the truth of something if they realize that the implications of that truth chips away at the foundation of their cult beliefs. It's hard to say that they're lying in this case - they believe they're telling the truth because it simply has to be the truth. But that said, they have the means to realize it's not true, so it definitely feels like a lie to an outside observer.

17

"But it gives my life meaning"

by Coded Logic in

it's not enough that we simply raise empirical challenges to these iron age beliefs saying, "jesus didn't really rise from the dead" or "muhammad didn't really fly to heaven on a horse.

" we must also give no quarter to this falsehood that religion can give peoples lives real meaning.

the truths about our identity, experience, and the future impacts that our decision will have on the world around us are much deeper and more profound than any culture or religion.

OneEyedJoe

There's plenty enough bad about religion to focus on without trying to trash all of it at once which simply won't work. Focus on the abusive behavior and child mutilation

It takes all kinds. Some people can be persuaded away from their harmful beliefs and practices by being shown that they aren't necessary to give their lives meaning, and some people can be persuaded that their lives can be endowed with meaning another way once they realize that the current source of meaning stems from fundamentally harmful beliefs and practices. Saying that one shouldn't make a point that favors a lack of belief in a deity because it's somehow the wrong way to talk people out of their belief is, in my opinion, a completely indefensible position to take.

I agree that we should let people have their privately held superstitions as long as they don't impose them on others, but I fail to see how pointing out just how unnecessary those superstitions are will somehow weaken the case against belief without evidence.

37

Watchtower teaches that Jesus dying on the stake is no longer certain

by Listener in

the watchtower has held for many years that jesus died on a stake and held strongly to this teaching.

w 1951 3/15 the above agrees with the new world translation of the christian greek scriptures in its appendix, page 769, in saying that the instrument upon which jesus was nailed was a stake without a crossbeam, and not the religiously represented “cross”; and that the greek word used for that instrument in ancient time meant a “stake” and not the conventional religious cross.

they are no longer certain on this point.

OneEyedJoe

Their website also says that they don't shun those that leave, they're not a cult because they don't follow men, they don't believe in creationism , they haven't changed their Bible to fit their beliefs, etc. Until this is in a WT, I'm just going to assume that they're just lying to the public to make their cult more palatable as is their MO.

11

Evolution is a Fact #40 - What Use is Half an Eye?

by cofty in

creationists often refer to the words of darwin when he pondered the evolution of the complex eye.

he said that to suppose that the complex eye evolve by natural selection seems "absurd in the highest possible degree".

what they always ignore is that darwin went right on in the very next sentence to propose how the eye could have evolved and that numerous gradations must exist between the simplest light detecting organs and the complex vertebrate eye.. in the 150 years since darwin published his book not only have those gradations been discovered in the natural world but the very genes that build the eye have been discovered by science.

OneEyedJoe

Another common argument that's along the same lines and, I think, is a more compelling example is "What good is half a heart?" I once saw Richard Dawkins answer this very question, though: small animals (insects, etc.) don't need a heart because just their body movement circulates fluids sufficiently. Then as they got bigger, they developed what is basically an artery with some muscles around it that just add a little bit of a pumping motion to push fluids around. Then as they get bigger, that adaptation continues to gain complexity and centralizes until you have a heart.

I think there's two flaws that people have in thinking about this argument that makes it persuasive. First, "half a heart" is sufficiently close to the concept of "half way along the path to a modern heart" that it seems compatible with their idea of what the theory of evolution posits, but it generates an obviously flawed mental picture (a heart cut in half) that would be absurd to think an animal could survive with. Second, people tend to think about the evolution of individual features in isolation from one another. It's easy to forget that the heart evolved at the same time that body size and metabolic rates were also changing.

11

Evolution is a Fact #40 - What Use is Half an Eye?

by cofty in

creationists often refer to the words of darwin when he pondered the evolution of the complex eye.

he said that to suppose that the complex eye evolve by natural selection seems "absurd in the highest possible degree".

what they always ignore is that darwin went right on in the very next sentence to propose how the eye could have evolved and that numerous gradations must exist between the simplest light detecting organs and the complex vertebrate eye.. in the 150 years since darwin published his book not only have those gradations been discovered in the natural world but the very genes that build the eye have been discovered by science.

OneEyedJoe

Creationists often refer to the words of Darwin when he pondered the evolution of the complex eye. He said that to suppose that the complex eye evolve by natural selection seems "absurd in the highest possible degree". What they always ignore is that Darwin went right on in the very next sentence to propose how the eye could have evolved and that numerous gradations must exist between the simplest light detecting organs and the complex vertebrate eye.

This very misquote in the creation book is what flipped the switch for me from "it still could be the truth" to "it's definitely a cult." Everything I'd seen in my research (much of it on jwfacts.com) up to that point (607, child abuse, various fairly obvious doctrinal flaws, etc) I had a way to rationalize. Obviously it was all building my already substantial doubts, but seeing this misquote, followed by the statement that scientists still hadn't resolved the problem (when Darwin himself did in the very next sentence) I couldn't rationalize away as anything other than an outright lie, staring at me in black and white.

The cult (and indeed all religions) would do well to invest their time in rationalizing how their religious tradition is still significant in the light of the fact of evolution and other scientific facts than spreading outright lies that are so easily exposed as this one.

21

The spinning blade of a Sword and the 2 Angels guarding the gate....

by stuckinarut2 in

for some reason i found myself shaking my head once again in disbelief at the story in genesis.. amongst all things, the very concept of a "flaming sword" spinning around and blocking the "entrance to the garden of eden" is so stupid!.

do people really believe that as a fact?.

seriously, swords were not even invented at that time!

OneEyedJoe

I never thought about the fact that this would mean that god invented weaponry. I think in general people just take for granted that swords have always existed, at least I did. Just another plot hole in what has to be one of the most poorly thought out books ever written, I guess.

17

Good luck with that

by Lost his mind in

what is the big deal when you say "good luck with that" or he just had bad luck?

i have never been a jw, but what is the problem with saying these things?

my husband was so mad, he went to bed and would not talk to me.

OneEyedJoe

Sounds like the phobia indoctrination (which is probably one of the most persistent parts of the cult mind control) still has a hold on him. It'd probably be worthwhile to try to expose him to information about how cult brainwashing works - once you lay bare the mechanism of the indoctrination, it loses most of its power. The books by Steve Hassan (www.freedomofmind.com) are really good for this purpose.

I hope he's able to get completely free.

17

Good luck with that

by Lost his mind in

what is the big deal when you say "good luck with that" or he just had bad luck?

i have never been a jw, but what is the problem with saying these things?

my husband was so mad, he went to bed and would not talk to me.

OneEyedJoe

Just wait until he sneezes and you say "bless you."

It's a cult. They're conditioned to strongly reject very common things. Phrases like good luck and bless you. Objects like crosses and steeples. Personal choices like beards, long hair on men, piercings, etc. These are all things that they've been conditioned to recognize as "worldly" which, in turn, is recognized as being evil, lying in the hand of satan, and a part of satan's wicked system of things. This is designed such that outsiders can't help but give themselves away as being an outsider in a way that any JW will be all too aware of. This builds walls between the JW and the non-JW to prevent them from developing relationships outside the cult that might undermine the cult's control and leave them with a system of support should they ever consider leaving.