OnTheWayOut

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Posts by OnTheWayOut

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  11

  Jehovah's Witness woman killed on the way to convention

  by StoneWall in

  1. social
  2. current

  just saw this news story that was shared by one of my family on facebook.sad that she lost her life to an attempted car jacking.https://abc7chicago.com/3773297/.

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  OnTheWayOut

  I would normally be up on such stories, but I was on vacation at Tahoe Apostafest last Sunday and shootings are so common in Chicago.
  
  I wouldn't normally make light of such stories and hope that nobody is offended by my attitude toward Watchtower and the way it's members would react to such a story. If you are offended stop reading NOW!
  
  It's funny that if she escaped the car-jacking and made it to the convention, they would say that Jehovah did that, but no such mention of Jehovah's protection when the results are tragic. I am sure it's just more "We sure need Satan's system to end soon." Maybe they can spin it into "Use the approved hotel list instead of driving in every day."
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  10

  Why can't Scarlett Johansson play a transgender character?

  by LoveUniHateExams in

  1. social
  2. entertainment

  scarlett johansson was cast to play a transgender role in rub & tug.. recently she pulled out.

  i don't know whether she jumped or was pushed but trans activists, despite claiming to represent only 0.3% of the population, have quite a powerful voice.. do they want a trans actor to play the trans role, is that it?.

  if scarlett johansson shouldn't play a trans role, does that mean a trans actor shouldn't play a cis role?.

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  OnTheWayOut

  It has been asked for decades why Brits would play Egyptians in movies.
  They are MOVIES, for heaven's sake. People should protest with their ticket dollars.
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  22

  I Think There Should Be Laws Against Political Discrimination

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i think it’s terrible and simply wrong not to serve a person in a restaurant simply because you disagree with their political views.

  i think that when a uber driver dumps a car load of people simply because they speak amongst themselves about politics that the driver doesn’t agree with—-it’s discrimination!

  this type of discrimination will cost people their lives someday!.

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  OnTheWayOut

  While I believe that a gay couple who want two grooms on top of their cake should be served, the administration has determined that it is okay to decide not to serve them.
  
  So really, isn't not serving someone based on their politics the same thing? The morals of the servers are against the morals of the patrons.
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  22

  If the Borg is a Death Star, what is it's weakest spot?

  by Darth FayDehr in

  1. social
  2. humour

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  OnTheWayOut

  If the Star Wars analogy of destroying the Death Star were viable, then one person using the force would "let go."

  That was Ray Franz.

  The problem is that the Empire continued to exist after the Death Star exploded. Unlike Luke, Ray did not last to destroy the Governing Body.

  But "there is another."
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  13

  A concise list for my therapist...any suggestions?

  by Straw Man in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  been a lurker here for a long time.

  i am just now starting to deal with the issues from my witness upbringing.

  it's been about 10 years since i was df'd.. just recently i started to see a therapist and i am trying to get across the depth of the effects of growing up a witness.

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  OnTheWayOut

  Try researching Steven Hassan's BITE method to identify dangerous mind-control cults.

  Here's a start:

  https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/91207/cults-steven-hassans-bite-model
  
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  14

  Strange conundrum

  by doubtfull1799 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i just had a thought inspired by @newboy's recent post:.

  why is it that despite the watchtower corporation being arguably the biggest publishing house in history, having produced billions of tracts, brochures, magazines, books for o very 100 years, and having the largest army of volunteer publicity agents on the planet, that 99% of the population is still clueless as to what their message is all about?.

  if you ask random people what jw's beleive you will rarely get the so-called "good news": gods kingdom is going to soon usher in a paradise earth and fix all the worlds problems under the 1000 year reign of christ.. you will instead get: "they're the people who... 1. don't celebrate christmas or birthdays, 2. don't take blood, 3. go around with the watchtower, 4. have big assemblies... etc etc".

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  OnTheWayOut

  The biggest publisher of stuff almost nobody would read. You can't learn about them unless you read it. And in orfer to commit to learning about them, they offer free home studies. Who the hell wants that?

  The average person in America can name Kim Kardasian's baby but cannot tell you who is the prime minister of Canada or President of Mexico.

  To be fair, most know nothing of competing religions, unless they watched some documentary video.
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  27

  Moving Back to Chicago - Don't care

  by LevelThePlayingField in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  my wife was diagnosed with ms about two years ago.

  we have been living in ohio for the last 5 years but were recently assigned to a new congregation because of the dissolving and sale of our congregation/kh.

  my wife's symptoms spiked after being relocated to our new hall back in january.

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  OnTheWayOut

  If it is possible, I have to highly agree with ALL OR NOTHING above.
  If not, still consider fading quickly, quietly.
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  91

  Proof of God

  by MrDantastic in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  i'm an atheist as i do not see any evidence for the existance of a god.

  i encourage critical thinking in everyone and am ready to debate anyone on whether or not there is a god and what that god might be like.

  hmu..

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  OnTheWayOut

  SBF: For many people the idea of God explains why there is something rather than nothing, because he is understood to be a being outside of material reality who is the ultimate cause of everything that exists. For many people this makes more sense than simply asserting that reality exists and no further explanation is required or even possible.
  
  Who said "no further explanation is required or even possible." People are searching for answers and Krauss's "something from nothing" is still far from accepted, but it's progress. We will get it one day. We will laugh at primitive understandings of dark matter/energy and the like.
  
  So man created the gods to explain rain, lightning, sunshine, etc. Even as man developed, gods were a great explanation for anything and everything. Then science developed enough to start making gods less needed in explanations. We then had the god of the gaps- gaps in our understanding of how things happened.
  
  Slim, we grew up as a species to the point where we realize that the god explanation is flawed. It just pushes back one level at the question of how we came to be. We would still have to explain how "God" came to be or accept that something was eternal or came from nothing.
  
  I struggled with "If that eternal something had to be a god, is it because of needed care and guidance?" Well, between sincerely turning to God for guidance and winding up in a dangerous mind control cult, and looking at all the thousands of children torn away from their parents to die in a tsunami, and seeing senseless pain and suffering among people, I concluded that a caring and guiding god doesn't exist.
  
  Man is still just living with the ideas of that same god who made the rain and lightning. But a group of control freak priests in the middle east twisted at the idea of god enough to add that "He" was nothing but good. Before all that, even "Jehovah" was a warrior god. And then it got worse- politicians in Rome trying to salvage their empire added Jesus to the mix and "How dare you attack Jesus?"
  
  When a person tells me their prayers are answered, and that's proof-enough, I just fall back on tsunami victims and suffering humans and my own cult time. Yeah, that's proof enough to me that praying for small enough "miracles" leads to coincidences. And we are grown-up enough to stop believing in a tooth-fairy-type of god.

  
  
  
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  56

  Spiritual "Protection" - a Menace on Psychological Development

  by Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  not quite a week ago, @lost in the fog created a thread entitled: do you have this illness?.

  https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/5187824140681216/do-you-have-this-illness.

  in my year of being on this forum, i have browsed many a disillusioned thread of ex-jehovah’s witnesses expressing similar symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder when detailing their awakening - my own story included.

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  OnTheWayOut

  "Watchtower’s suppressive approach to the flock freezes their development to that of a helpless child, unaware that critical thinking even exists. It strips members of opportunities to solve their own problems under the guise of protecting them and dressing it up as “convenience”."
  
  So true. Instead of the equivalent of a college education, many JW's are homeschooled to protect them from "worldly" teens wanting sex, and they barely qualify to pass the high school equivalency test. They wind up introverted, but don't even know that because they can stand at a door and do a presentation in front of a stranger. (The animated Disney movie TWISTED can help ones see what that is like.) Even the ones who go to public schools are discouraged from anything beyond basic involvement and they avoid after-school athletics, music, dance, anything that makes them a more rounded person, and then are told that college is bad.
  
  JW's don't really have opinions. They are used to looking to their Watchtower library to see what they are supposed to think about issues.
  
  Many who leave Watchtower by way of inactivity suffer incredibly "in the world" because of their inability to think for themselves and a skewed sense of morality.
  
  
  
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  14

  Do you still want to be identified as a Christian?

  by eyeuse2badub in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  most americans want some form of religious identity - even atheists are creating churches.

  by j. warner wallace | fox news.

  the number of self-proclaimed christians is shrinking in america.. i’ve been collecting data on this trend for over 10 years, and the surveys reveal an important truth: fewer people claim a christian affiliation than ever before, and those who claim no religious affiliation are the fastest growing group in america.. but while fewer people may belong to christian churches or communities, americans will likely retain some form of religious identity – especially if what’s happening in europe is an indicator of things to come.. a new pew forum survey conducted in western europe reveals that christianity is waning there even faster than it is in the united states.

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  OnTheWayOut

  I think the data in the initial post is skewed a bit.
  In my humble opinion, Americans desirous of a religious identity are not increasing in numbers.
  American Football is the Sunday religion here.
  
  Polls suggesting high numbers of "believers" are about those who will say it, but don't really live it. Heck, a higher power could be the aliens who helped build the pyramids.