maybe some of you remember me, maybe not.
for general information i am now 19 years old, and living by myself.
for the past 1 year (more like 1.5 years) i have been quietly fading out of the hypocrisy of this organization, but since i still live in the town i grew up in it has been hard, and filled with different challenges.
I join the chorus of voices.
Congratulations on sticking up for your friends and not giving the elders any power over you.
And I would also say anything you want to teach them, prove to them, whatever, is falling on closed minds. Better to keep giving them no power by not showing up.
If you must go, you do it for yourself, not for them.
needing advise.
i was on here years ago fighting for custody of my daughters.
the court gave us a joint arrangement.
I don't know that you have any case or not. Try talking to the law group that tries to MAKE these into cases instead of one that may or may not be trying such:
http://zalkin.com/what-we-do/sexual-abuse-cases/jehovahs-witness-abuse/
my recent sidewalk discussion with a couple of jw's has gotten me in the mood to say more when appropriate.so the wife and i were riding in the car and cat stevens comes on.
i mentioned to her that cat stevens left music when he was still popular and converted to islam back in the 1970's- how he was told that his music would have to be morally acceptable and he found it easier to just abandon making new music for at least 20 years.
so i didn't really remember all the details and i figured the conversation would die.
Etude, I couldn't always speak this stuff with my wife, and I have to tread carefully much of the time still. But time and drops of water wear down all things.
..............if their child pursues higher education and lives on campus.
.
https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/7ob4wa/interesting_tidbit_from_elders_school/?st=jc214ok2&sh=cfa8af95.
w95 5/15 p. 19 part 1—flashes of light - great and small: “jehovah’s witnesses do not celebrate birthdays because these observances have pagan origins and tend to exalt the ones having a birthday.” (jw broadcasting doesn't exalt the gibbering body??????).
in order to be “faithful in what is least” and to “stop touching the unclean thing,” j.w.
's should abhor & shun all of the following traditions and practices due to their pagan/demonic origins - especially using the names of weekdays and several of the names of months.. “it was believed that sneezing was the way for the body to rid itself of the devil's evil influences.
Every friggin thing on the planet that has it's origin from a time before the Roman Catholic Church was established is pagan.
A pagan is "a person holding religious beliefs other than those of the main world religions."
IOW: "a person who is not religious or whose religion is not Christianity, Judaism, or Islam."
For objects or events, "Pagan" means that the thing is "of or related to Pagans."
You can't win once you go down that road.
Sure, we all understand Easter, Mardi Gras, Halloween, even the stuff done on birthdays. But common doors have the sign of the cross:
I am sure dancing has origins in mating rituals.
Chocolate comes from Aztecs who used a bitter chocolate drink in their religious ceremonies.
You can't win.
this was the first part in the "living as christians" section of the meeting tonight.
speaker had two pioneers on the stage to relate their outstanding experiences for 2017. we have 23 pioneers and over 160 publishers in the hall.
our territory is densely populated with single family houses, apartments and condominiums.
"I found a man in the door to door work. When I tried to find him at home later, he never answered. But I was determined to be persistent and not give up. Finally I found him at home again and started a doorstep Bible study."
"Of course he hasn't answered since.....but I counted a Bible study at least once, and if he answers ever again, I will count it again."
The problem with comparing these local experiences to Assembly experiences is that you don't get the C.O. to ask you to exaggerate because your experience will also represent a conglomerate of all the circuit experiences.
is it because we were in the cult watchtower compound that we talk about being ex-jw's when we stop being active?
i have never heard anyone say that i was an ex-catholic or an ex-lutheran or an ex-baptist.
they just stop going to their church and don't talk about it.. years after not stepping inside a kingdom hell, many of us still have to talk about being ex-jw's.
Even though there are ex-Catholics, ex-Protestants and the like, they are able to drift away from church. Most churches don't pile up rules for everyday life upon members and they certainly don't shun members who don't live up to a certain standard. But even though their former religion isn't quite like the cults of the Mormons or JW's, I have heard former Catholics and the like call themselves exes.
Jews don't typically stop calling themselves Jews because they are ethnic Jews when they stop being religious Jews. I have seen Jews saying they are "ethnic Jews only" when I saw them eating a ham sandwich.
i left the jw organization last year during summer.
maybe some of you can relate.
who of you are agnostic or an atheist?
Between learning what science has to say about the impossibility of a global flood, and then learning how the Bible came about, adding in generally learning how every religion was created by men, I was heavily leaning atheistic.
I was pushed over the edge by reason on compassion. 2004's Indian Ocean tsunami woke me up further than most things- randomly killing a hundred thousand children. The Haiti earthquake can be added to that. Regardless of how we got here, there is not a god worthy of our groveling in worship if that is what he allows.
Science seeks the answers. God is a cope-out answer.
living in new england means having lots of snow and cold.
elders were very reluctant to cancel or reschedule a meeting due to the weather.
i lived 3 towns away from the kingdom hall and if it was icy and treacherous my vote would always be to cancel the meeting....and forget about rescheduling!.
I was with a group of reasonable elders. They cancelled meetings due to weather rather easily.
so i have started down the path of trying to understand evolution, and to get the linear lies that the jws planted in my head out of it.
i bought an audiobook called "evolution: what the fossils say and why it matters" by donald prothero.
i heard it recommended on an atheist podcast that i listened to.
I will answer as the amateur I am, and hopefully provide simple answers to the complicated subject you choose to tackle.
First of all, monkeys did not evolve into humans. Not even a portion of the monkeys in some isolated area of Africa. Monkeys and humans have a common ancestor. It's a huge difference. Each branch of the evolutionary chain adapted to survive in its own way. Similarly, humans are on one branch and various monkey species are several different branches.
Asking "why are there still....." questions suggests that it is all linear. Perhaps the presentations of evolution cause many to believe that. There is no single family of a species in existence with one set of parents. Maybe an easy way to understand this is to say that "If Asians followed the bison across the dry land of the Bering Straits, why are there still Asians in Asia?" We can all clearly understand that they didn't all go that way. (...and forgive me if that theory is not the accepted one anymore.)
Such questions as "Why are there still monkeys?" or "Why don't we see new species arriving today?" are creationist zinger questions. Ones they ask to stump people. There are answers, but since the answers cannot be framed in a single statement as the question was, they quickly shout "Checkmate, atheists!" and don't do the work of understanding the answer.
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As far as seeing macro evolution today, it's not like you could watch an old black and white movie from the 1920's and then another from the 21st century and note that the humans are different. It takes a wee bit more than your lifetime for changes to occur.
And further, as far as man is concerned, modern interactions interfere with "speciation," the evolutionary process by which populations evolve to become distinct species. If the Aborigines or the Japanese or any group on the planet remained isolated for several generations (granted, an amatuer like me doesn't know how many generations) then it would be likely that they could no longer produce offspring with outsiders because they finally became genetically different.
To take that to the animals, it does happen. But we don't see it easily because of the "several generations" things. Most hybrids of animals produce sterile offspring and don't allow for the creation of entirely different branches of the tree- think of the horse and donkey producing a mule; mules are sterile. But sometimes, speciation occurs and we have seen the results. Read up on the Galopogos Finch and see that it has occured. Even though many will say they are all still finches, apparently there are some different ones that cannot interbreed. So each will adapt separately and follow its own evolution.
And keep in mind that just as humans interfere with their own evolution by not staying isolated, humans also interfere with the evolution of animals. We give less and less space to wildlife and keep the land for ourselves. There is less and less chance that portions of a species will be isolated.
But if you are interested in seeing speciation in life that is a bit less complicated than animals, there are flowers and other plants that have been documented to evolve a bit quicker into separate species.
Experts, feel free to tear apart my layman's understanding. Otherwise, I hope it helps.
