Posts by seattleniceguy

to understand so that's why the wts published the new book being released at this year's district conventions.. the new book gets "straight to the point".

according to her "and many others", the knowledge book was too difficult for those just beginning a bible study.

i said, "you're kidding!

Jesus, their target audience must be getting really dumb. When I was in they had been pushing the Require brochure really hard, and I honestly felt embarassed to use it. How insulting is it to ask a grown adult to take turns with you reading third-grade level paragraphs? And then, after you read the five sentences in the paragraph, you turn around and ask them a question about what they just read? You might as well ask them if they are toilet trained yet.

SNG

20

damn, it happened again.

by nowisee in

jw
friends

i was working.

i travel around in my work.

today i was in a mall.. a lovely young woman approached me, looked me in the eye and said she wanted to leave me with something...as she handed me a tract.. i looked at it searching for evidence it was jw.

seattleniceguy

A crashing dose of reality drives them desperately back to their fantasy.

This is almost proverbial. It is very true.

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67

What do you feel when you see groups of Jehovah's Witnesses on the street?

by nicolaou in

regret, anger frustration?

how about sadness, sorrow, sympathy, understanding, even yearning!.

it can be quite confusing at times.

seattleniceguy

I feel two things. First, there is a feeling of entrapment that I sympathetically feel, as if I can look out from their eyes. And secondly, from my perspective, I feel a tremendous sense of waste. Days, weeks, months, years, lives wasted over something that is not even remotely true. The feeling of absolute vanity is crushing in its sadness.

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22

The Little Things Rub It In

by Euphemism in

jw
friends

do you ever find that you think you've gotten accustomed to the shunning, and then some small, stupid thing comes along to reopen the wound?

that's how i feel right now.

it's been a while since i've really thought about it; the limited contact has simply become routine to me.

seattleniceguy

Sorry, Euph. They are truly under some terrible conditioning.

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44

Consolidated Guerilla Apostasy Tactics for 2005 District Conventions

by seattleniceguy in

jw
friends

we've had several very interesting threads going on about how those of us who are still on the inside can work to open the eyes of the witnesses at the district conventions this summer.

since people have been making scattered suggestions on scattered threads, i thought we should start a consolidated thread here that lays all the options out on the table for those that want to be a part of it.

here are the ideas that have stood out in my mind so far (please add any that i have missed): .

seattleniceguy

BTT ahead of the weekend....

58

Question for agnostics and/or atheists

by sonnyboy in

jw
friends

i've just recently declared my agnosticism to myself and to one other person in my life.

i don't necessarily consider myself an atheist because i believe there very well may be some higher power or non carbon based entities in existence with 'godlike' abilities.

my question is, do you still find yourself secretly believing in god?

seattleniceguy

Thanks, Narkissos! It's weird that suddenly they were willing to make all these concessions. I guess they thought it would make them look reasonable. I wonder if it caused rational thinkers to want to pursue the logic further, thereby actually helping JWs out of the org...

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58

Question for agnostics and/or atheists

by sonnyboy in

jw
friends

i've just recently declared my agnosticism to myself and to one other person in my life.

i don't necessarily consider myself an atheist because i believe there very well may be some higher power or non carbon based entities in existence with 'godlike' abilities.

my question is, do you still find yourself secretly believing in god?

seattleniceguy

Narkissos,

What the...? I don't have the WT library so I can't read that in context, but why is the WT soundly rebutting itself? I assume they go on to say, "We're reasonable creationists who have resolved these problems"?

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58

Question for agnostics and/or atheists

by sonnyboy in

jw
friends

i've just recently declared my agnosticism to myself and to one other person in my life.

i don't necessarily consider myself an atheist because i believe there very well may be some higher power or non carbon based entities in existence with 'godlike' abilities.

my question is, do you still find yourself secretly believing in god?

seattleniceguy

Hey GBL,

Excellent post Funky. A conversation I had with a dub recently went somewhat along these lines. He actually stated that "Satan could have planted all of those bones there." What do you say to that? What do you SAY TO THAT?

Actually, it can be quite rewarding if you get a fundamentalist to come to this, because on reflection, it may spur them to see the backflips they are doing to maintain an untenable belief system.

I think my response would be something like this:

Sure, it's possible that Satan planted fossil evidence. It's also possible that Satan wrote the Bible as a part of a master plan to trick humans. The problem is that once we accept that invisible forces can alter reality as we know it, it becomes impossible to prove anything at all, because no matter what the evidence seems to indicate, and no matter how clearly it seems to do so, it's always possible to say that an invisible force maliciously manufactured the evidence. In such a world, it would be impossible to make any rational decisions or deductions at all. Therefore, I prefer to start by accepting that the natural world has not been tampered with by external forces, and that the state of the natural world reflects what has actually happened in it. If you cannot start from this basic assumption, then there is truly nowhere else our discussion can go.

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