i am hoping a little balance is allowed here, or at least the coin's flip side.
this is my story so far, but i am fairly sure it is going to end up a bit differently than most i have read on your site.
the brothers couldn't help my husband, he didn't want help.
The only real problem is...
IT'S NOT REAL! THEY MADE IT UP! JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE!
That said, whatever makes you happy. Don't support the judging of the world. I hold you personally responsible for every bit of damage done by the WTBTS if you chose to go back.
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?
I am a soft atheist. I say there is probably not a creator, since all claims to such are unsound. The assumptions underneath that are basically that any discreet god which would exist (i.e. described by a religion or even the unspecified creator of ID) would be absurd based on the evidence in my existence. My assumption is that any *truth* will not be absurd. Now, I can't prove that is true. I am willing to be responsible for that assumption.
I would be pleasantly surprised with an afterlife (or more life ;) ). I think your feeling of holding on will pass. Be excited by possibility. I love zen philosophy. I am by no means Buddhist. However, I've found that taking the attitude that I do not have life but life has me is very valuable. It offers me peace of mind that I am one with the universe as a natural expression of possibility. If you are willing to detatch from the need for being right you will find that you can achieve commitment to presence without attatchment to delusion.
Don't think - go straight! Only don't know.
while reading the niv study bible recently, i came across some interesting notes on genesis 6:1-4, concerning the situation before the flood in which the "sons of god saw the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.".
from what i had always understood (mainly by reading wts literature) these "sons of god" were angels that sinned by taking the daughters of men as sex partners.
however, the niv study bible, and some other bible commentators, mention that there were other possibilities:.
Getting fuzzy on the interpretation allows fundamentalists to ignore the mythological roots. When related to various semitic myths, it makes a striking continuity of shared origins with the local "pagan" origins.
it is summer time.
the kids are out of school next week.
my wife is a newly dunked dub, who goes out in service on thursdays.
I was about 9 when my mother converted and started teaching me. I feel that my father's opposition created an atmosphere of religious conflict and aided my decision to get baptised. I would recommend that you not feed into the JW notion of "oppressed." Create an atmosphere of humor, acceptance, and toleration. Make sure your children make plenty of friends outside of the religion. That was another one that got me. My mother made sure I always had plenty of JW associates. Since my father was busy at work, he didn't have the time to do the same. We lived in a rural area, so that controlled my peer group.
If your children are raised in an atmosphere of open toleration and opportunity they will not chose to limit themselves. If you create an atmosphere of opposition then that brings the cultic pressure of fear/desire into their lives. Be mindful of your wife's possible effort to instill judgemental attitudes (you must LIVE that the world is a great place), fear (the future IS bright in your family) and desire for love (your acceptance must be complete, and never hinged on what they do. This is the only way to be superior to the distorted conditional cult love).
Be active. Please I beg you. I'm 23, and I still have time to start a new life. I regret how my youth was spent. Keep in mind, your children are NOT capable of the level of though it requires to refute JW teachings. The simplistic doctrinal issues and dizzying prophetic claims are highly persuasive. Your children can not be put into a choose A or choose B dilemma from a doctrinal issue. I believe it would be unfair to even put minors in such a situation.
.
fear is anticipation of pain.... no one really fears death is by death they mean complete non-existance... there is no pain possible for those who dont exist...what they fear is the unkown life that may come after death in whatever form they may find themselves...they fear the possible painful hell of religion or the judgement of others who may be waiting for them, etc.... being ignorant is often not seen as our normal position.... we never really know what is around the next bend, but often we go through each day without thinking that at all... we have a plan, a goal and a dont see any apparent road blocks, so we feel confident and forget that this is all delusions based on experiences of the past which are hardly consistant predicators of the future.
Ignorance is bliss...only if you don't know that you're ignorant and are not present to the cost of ignorance. To fear the unknown is folly. Like the great philosopher Epicurus said: Why fear death while alive? You can never be dead while you're alive. Death is the one thing I can be sure that I'll never experience!
Many see that life is essentially emty and meaningless. The problem is that they then attribute meaning to that! Life is empty and meaningless and it's empty and meaningless that it's empty and meaningless. That leaves me with nothing. Nothing is the perfect place to create anything.
So into the sea of unkown I sail full out!
i just couldn't resist after reading another thread.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/4576855.stm.
sims creator takes on evolution .
Sounds fun. It will probably further misconceptions about evolution, however. Oh well.
early christianity: what was it like?
did the early christians ask the public for donations to fund their ministry or other works?.
did the early christians encourage believers to distribute communications from the apostles and older men in jerusalem to the public as a primary part of their ministry?.
Eearly Christianity was much like modern Christianity...full of differing opinions, intollerance, and conflict. If you mean the early Christianity of the gospels, then that is an entirely different question.
according to the evolutionary teaching (of the descent of all life via universal common ancestry) diversity in the fossil record should precede disparity.
("disparity refers to the extent of morphological divergence among members of a group, while diversity refers to the number of taxa within a group.
" jim gibson geoscience research institute http://www.grisda.org/origins/23068.htm).
Likening fossils to "connecting the dots" reveals something worth noting. You will only ever have dots. One is personally responsible for how far they are willing to go in denying the consensus of authority of paleontology. If two fossils are similar, one can claim that they represent only different members in a constant population. If the fossils are dissimilar (from a layperson's standpoint. Experts have a much keener insight.) enough to be obvious, then cognitive dissonance allows for insisting that they were two seperate lineages from the start. If one expects a virtual flip book of evolution, one has set up a straw man.
We are in a unique situation with biological engineering approaching the level that chemistry did a century ago. We can now take the genome of organisms A and B, notice the effect of a point mutation in base X to X^1, and observe the result. This can further be tested by transplanting the mutation manually and observing the new species. This is the ultimate test of "microevolution." Since we know that traits are genetically expressed, the mechanism for macroevolution is established. One can demand a macroevolutionary step, but even if done in a lab the hardened opposer could still claim that it was only the work of humans. Finally, if one could be demonstrated in nature, the denyer could claim that the species had always been around.
I am a soft atheist. I am fully aware that it is possible a god exists since I can't disprove it. I am also fully aware of my standards for what I would need in order to believe in a particular god. I understand that nobody is responsible for those standards but me. Likewise, one can set up false standards for what to expect with anything.
on a few threads now we have had the discussion of how to take out a local kh.. http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/90925/1.ashx.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/90940/1.ashx.
the consensus seemed to be that it would require a two pronged approach.. 1. help the newly df, da through loving support and association so they don't go back.. 2. help the new bible studies and return visits with a good inocculation from the "jw are god's org" disease.. let's not talk about how to do that just yet.
Frankie's got it. That creates an atmosphere of "buzz" about secrets. And you have to create support for people leaving.
