Since becoming disfellowshipped (WTF?) back in July or whenever it was I've been fretting about not being an ordained minister. This was always important to me - to be an ordained minister is a valuable thing - thats why the JW's are proud to say they have 6.9M or so ordained ministers.
What to do, what to do???
Well as it transpires a most helpful organistion called Universal Life Church Monastery exists which is most obliging in letting you gain ordained minister status ONLINE without question!
So now after a brief registration process, I am now The Reverend Paul Morrison - you may kiss my ring :-)
http://www.themonastery.org/?destination=ordination
I recommend this to all DA/DF'd ones - faders need not apply.
In answer to the JW question - where else do we go? I now have the answer...themonastery.org - lovely....
Posts by besty
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10You can call me Reverend Besty
by besty insince becoming disfellowshipped (wtf?
) back in july or whenever it was i've been fretting about not being an ordained minister.
this was always important to me - to be an ordained minister is a valuable thing - thats why the jw's are proud to say they have 6.9m or so ordained ministers.
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besty
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WTS Higher Education Policy
by besty ina couple of topics recently have made me think about exactly how cynical are the wts when it comes to their higher education policy for the rank and file.. first one was mavie's about her forthcoming jc which prompted me to flick through richard dawkins the god delusion.
dawkins quotes from a study published in mensa magazine 2002; .
"of 43 studies carried out since 1927 on the relationship between religious belief and one's intelligence and/or educational level, all but four found an inverse connection.
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besty
Hi SMS
Interesting:
"My wife said that some speaker (CO) actually said that children should not be in pre-school unless they have a single parent."
I read on another thread that pre-school was being knocked - keeps the kids from being socialised, a lot of pre-school activities are focused around the worldly holidays and the mums and dads might actually meet non-JW parents that seem like normal reasonable people
"Two parent income appears to be discouraged."
My older brother (Elder PO hardline) said a while back he couldn't understand why there would ever be a need for both in a couple to work full time and be spiritual. Spiritual defined as lots of meetings, field service, personal study. Education is being discouraged from every angle.
"Stupid people follow better."
Wouldn't say stupid. I'd say undereducated people follow best.I expect there to be another Kool-Aid WT with more control information on how to raise children, perhaps advocating home schooling where possible.
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A gradual decline or sudden collapse for the WTS?
by DT inmany of us believe the days of the watchower society may be numbered.
they are receiving an unprecedented amount of well deserved negative publicity.
however, they are still experiencing modest growth.
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besty
Hi Robert7 - welcome to JWD
Yes zero churn would be a good thing in a normal business, or for that matter for the WTS.
However when you are promising the end of the world and paradise to follow over a period of many decades then zero churn is unrealistic - an interesting concept given the nature of the promise being made :-)
So an ever-changing membership is a viable compromise - a continuous stream of new (or recent, or longterm hardcore) members will serve the purpose almost as well as swelling the ranks with no attrition. -
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A gradual decline or sudden collapse for the WTS?
by DT inmany of us believe the days of the watchower society may be numbered.
they are receiving an unprecedented amount of well deserved negative publicity.
however, they are still experiencing modest growth.
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besty
the point is that the makeup of the membership is in constant flux
+300,000 -100,000 every year (give or take)
that means the rank and file are 'never' worn out with soon,soon,soon
because its a different rank and file every year - yes there is an ageing hardcore who will never say die (until perhaps their last breath, when they expect to wake up in Paradise with their next breath)
churn is the friend of the WTS as much as its the enemy of a normal business. -
32
WTS Higher Education Policy
by besty ina couple of topics recently have made me think about exactly how cynical are the wts when it comes to their higher education policy for the rank and file.. first one was mavie's about her forthcoming jc which prompted me to flick through richard dawkins the god delusion.
dawkins quotes from a study published in mensa magazine 2002; .
"of 43 studies carried out since 1927 on the relationship between religious belief and one's intelligence and/or educational level, all but four found an inverse connection.
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besty
llbh - my own situation was a wee bit more complex as Mum and Dad encouraged me to go to local technical college - university was out the question as they didn't want me to leave home to study.
I knew this up front as we had discussed it. This meant that I eased off educationally at the age of 15 or so because I wasn't going to Uni. I got excellent exam results - 7 A's 2 C's at 'O' Level - (like all my friends - now Chartered Accountant, Consultant Geriatrician and Software Engineer... you get the idea).
I completed a technical qualification at college but wasn't really inspired by it and have been living on my wits ever since, and have managed to do pretty good career wise, more luck than judgement though.
The problem I will avoid with my kids is that I had no other paradigm from my parents - pioneer or ...ok well get a fulltime job then...but you know inside yourself that you're not really doing the right thing.
Kids at the best of times don't know what to do with their lives, but my choices were really limiting...anyhow - moving on...
Bizarre thing is that my family who are shunning me (hardline types) brother is PO and mother was long time Reg Pioneer both have subsequently completed University Degrees - don't know how they can preach the current policy given they have both disobeyed..:-) -
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WTS Higher Education Policy
by besty ina couple of topics recently have made me think about exactly how cynical are the wts when it comes to their higher education policy for the rank and file.. first one was mavie's about her forthcoming jc which prompted me to flick through richard dawkins the god delusion.
dawkins quotes from a study published in mensa magazine 2002; .
"of 43 studies carried out since 1927 on the relationship between religious belief and one's intelligence and/or educational level, all but four found an inverse connection.
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besty
A couple of topics recently have made me think about exactly how cynical are the WTS when it comes to their higher education policy for the rank and file.
First one was Mavie's about her forthcoming JC which prompted me to flick through Richard Dawkins The God Delusion. Dawkins quotes from a study published in Mensa Magazine 2002;
"Of 43 studies carried out since 1927 on the relationship between religious belief and one's intelligence and/or educational level, all but four found an inverse connection. That is, the higher one's intelligence or education level, the less one is likely to be religious or hold "beliefs" of any kind."
Hmmm - could the WTS be aware of this link and deliberately formulate a policy which maximises their chances of retaining an under-educated membership?
The second post that caught my eye was Nvrgbk's here about Faith vs Reason. In part it mentions a Harvard study about the same link between education and religious belief - perhaps the Harvard study was one of the 43 captured by the Mensa author.
"This study found that, in general, increased education causes individuals to "sort into less fervent religions" and "decrease[s] belief in the returns to religious activity". The study found a strong negative correlation between higher education and beliefs that miracles occur, that heaven and hell exist, that the Devil is an actual being and that the Bible is literally true. More educated people were significantly less likely to believe all these things."
I checked out the actual Harvard study and the abstract of the paper is as follows:
In the United States, religious attendance rises sharply with education across individuals, but religious attendance declines sharply with education across denominations.
This puzzle is explained if education both increases the returns to social connection and reduces the extent of religious belief. The positive effect of education on sociability explains the positive education-religion relationship. The negative effect of education on religious belief causes more educated individuals to sort into less fervent religions, which explains the negative reelationship between education and religion across denominations.
Cross-country differences in the impact of education on religious belief can explain the large cross-country variation in the education-religion connection. These cross-country differences in the education-belief relationship can be explained by political factors (such as communism) which lead some countries to use state-controlled education to discredit religion.
The entire paper can be found here:
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/pub/hier/2001/HIER1913.pdf
It makes for very interesting reading for the enlightened WTS sceptic.
So the WTS has a belief system that fundamentally attracts undereducated people to join and a higher education policy to keep the young JW's undereducated and therefore in the system.
Or am I being too cynical?
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34
A gradual decline or sudden collapse for the WTS?
by DT inmany of us believe the days of the watchower society may be numbered.
they are receiving an unprecedented amount of well deserved negative publicity.
however, they are still experiencing modest growth.
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besty
Longterm strategy - survival of Borg
Short term tactic to achieve this - adjust business model to meet new reality of flat revenues, abuse settlements, property value escalations
Interesting thing about the current group mentality is that roughly 5 million have been baptised since 1991. Difficult to estimate of the current 6.5 million how many were baptised before 1991, and how many of those baptised since 1991 have subsequently left. Perhaps JWFacts can help out here - he's the expert!
My point is that a very significant number of todays JW's won't have registered the 1995 generation change. The mantra is 'soon, soon,soon...' and that seems to keep them happy.
It will be interesting to see how long that works for with a +300,000 -100,000 model.
Perhaps indefinitely? -
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My response to an Elder!
by mavie inelder 1,. .
i will be in town on xxxxxx, december xxx.
i'm sure you would agree that my everlasting life is an important enough reason to revisit some of the outstanding questions i posed last year to be addressed.
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besty
more ID and creationism debunking here: http://corior.blogspot.com/2006/02/notes-on-francis-hitching-and.html
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A gradual decline or sudden collapse for the WTS?
by DT inmany of us believe the days of the watchower society may be numbered.
they are receiving an unprecedented amount of well deserved negative publicity.
however, they are still experiencing modest growth.
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besty
I'm always conscious that just because I've left the Borg doesn't make its demise any more likely in the near term.
Its always tempting to believe that 'your' times are somehow more significant in the grand scheme than actually is the case.
Thinking about events in Brooklyn in the late '70's/early '80's it must have difficult not to speculate on the end of the WTS - 1975 just failed, apostasy in the GB etc etc and yet it has doubled in size from there...
I think there is a natural level for the WTS in each country and in the Western countries that level has been reached. We are seeing global population migrations and that is affecting growth figures in the West (2007 3% figure - most thriving congs seem to be Spanish in America or Eastern European in Western Europe) Overall there may be indefinite modest global growth, bus as JWFacts points out +200,000 JW's against +100,000,000 is insignificant. They are just_another_American_cult who are a lot less important that they think. Like a small horn speaking grandiose things...wait a minute...:-)
In business terms one source of revenue (JW's) has peaked and is levelling off and another has to be found to take its place. Sale of Brooklyn assets, property development and stocks investment can be just as or more profitable - hence IMHO JWs are a 'front' for the real business of the WTS. Possibly a loss-making or earnings-neutral front at that. RBC's are one example of sweating the assets in the field for long term gain, ultimately transferring assets to HQ and keeping cash assets and cashflow optimal.
In this scenario Jaracz and his goons can get increasingly hardline as perversely the most demanding religions are the most attractive/fast growing and the WTS is not dependent on the membership for revenue. Recent examples - don't do external research, don't do oral sex, don't do higher education etc etc - not new restrictions but trending more conservative - almost certainly some new bizarre ideas on the way in the WT Kool-Aid edition, probably the Internet and suitable recreation for starters?
The other possible outcome is a 'black swan' event.
In Nassim Nicholas Taleb's definition, a black swan is a large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations. Taleb regards many scientific discoveries as black swans—"undirected" and unpredicted. The September 11, 2001 attacks are often referred to as a Black Swan event. The term black swan comes from the ancient Western conception that all swans were white. In that context, a black swan was a metaphor for something that could not exist. Google was a black swan - everybody else was looking at content and Google focused on search against all received wisdom.
For the WTS a black swan may either destroy them, defang them or catapult their growth. Things I can think of are:
1 - Religion gets banned. End of story. Destroyed.
2 - Shunning made illegal and equal rights for all (gays, women etc)mandated. Blood using lesbian Elders take over.Defanged.
3 - Localised nuclear war in Middle East. Oil goes $300. Global recession. Environmental meltdown. WTS predict Armageddon in 2014. Membership rockets.
<marks post for review in 5 years> <grin>
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My response to an Elder!
by mavie inelder 1,. .
i will be in town on xxxxxx, december xxx.
i'm sure you would agree that my everlasting life is an important enough reason to revisit some of the outstanding questions i posed last year to be addressed.
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besty
Hi Mavie
My advice is to keep cool and calm and don't get personal with the elders. Stick to asking for clarification on the points you have raised. IMHO Point 1 is your best as it is a matter of recorded fact whereas the other two are somewhat subjective.
What is the alleged misdemeanor that has got you in front of a JC? That is going to be the only topic for discussion as far as the elders are concerned - whether they feel satisfied you have done it or will self-incriminate for the crime you are in there for. Everything else is will be swept aside. 'We're not here to discuss that' you could reply 'Are you refusing to help me with a genuine question - where else can I go?' <tongue firmly in cheek>
PS - In 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins he specifically addresses being misquoted by the WTS in the Creation book - might be worth getting hold of the book and having the relevant quote to hand.