Posts by neverendingjourney

23

"Theocratic Warfare" still alive and well within Watchtower in 2016!

by ILoveTTATT2 in

jw
friends

it seems like the watchtower is still encouraging "theocratic warfare".

in the no.1 watchtower of 2016, they (ironically) printed an article on honesty.here is something they said:"lyingwhat is it?

saying something false to someone who is entitledto know the truth.

neverendingjourney

If they conclude a court of law is not entitled to know the truth, will Jehovah protect them from perjury charges?

33

Creative day 7000 years, is this correct and how did the Org come up with this idea?

by Crazyguy in

any body know?

neverendingjourney

Later, they said creative days were "several thousands of years" long, so old JW'S would think "Yeah, 7 thousands" and young people with access to science at school would think "millions" and Watchtower would never admit they were previously wrong.

That's exactly what happened to me. The blue Creation book was instrumental in getting me to buy into the religion. I read it in the mid-90s and thought it was consistent with science, which taught the universe was billions of years old. I'd never heard of 1975 or the 7,000 year creative days it was premised on.

It wasn't until after I got dunked that a JW pointed out that the literature didn't say millions, it said thousands. He then specifically tied it to the former 1975 teaching. I was dumbfounded since being able to reconcile science and the bible had been the primary reason I'd bought into it. I was a naive and stupid teenaged at the time, but that's a separate story altogether.

This JW was an adult convert and really had no business being familiar with the 1975 debacle. He converted in the 90s and had no JW family. He must have been doing his own research on the side. A year or two later he moved away and faded. He was a smart guy. In hindsight it was probably inevitable.

63

Watchtower crackdown on anointed expansion - are they reaching for a solution to the expanding numbers problem?

by slimboyfat in

if this has been discussed i missed it.

i think the january study watchtower is a concerted attempt to reduce the numbers claiming to be anointed.

but i love the sneaky way they go about it this time.

neverendingjourney

If there was no sealing of anointed in 1935, what's the point in counting them? Their decline used to be one more way to show the end was getting nearer. Now it's a relic of a bygone era/old light.

I think it's a matter of time before they stop publishing the figure. It's embarrassing and no longer serves any purpose. Fifteen thousand or fifty thousand... makes no difference under current teaching, especially since the FDS is now only the GB.

22

Years ago son raised a few years as a JW. Now struggles with depression

by Check_Your_Premises in

background:.

i spent some time here awhile back as an unbelieving mate of a jw wife.

i learned a lot, and was able to be supportive and understanding when she decided to leave the jw.. unfortunately, my son seems to have internalized many of the jw teachings.

neverendingjourney

He seems to be unable to shake the idea that they have "the truth". He doesn't live as a JW though, so he seems trapped in an intolerable state between thinking the JW are the way to go, but unable (and having no desire) to live as one.

This is, unfortunately, an incredibly common problem. There was a guy at my hall who had been disfellowshipped for decades and later returned. He would often talk about the agony of being out and knowing he wasn't living in conformity with "the truth." I believe a lot of the destructive behavior common in DF'd youths is about them beating themselves up over not being strong enough to live up to the "the truth."

I was in this state for a short while, something like a year and a half. What changed? I found this website. I read enough here to lose the fear of reading "apostate literature" and after a few books any lingering doubts about whether the witnesses had the truth disappeared. Don't get me wrong. The programming runs deep and even today, ten years later, I still find myself responding to some situations according to the programming, but I don't agonize over whether I made the right decision.

Without knowing your son, it seems the only thing that can help him get over this hurdle is for him to come to realize on his own that there is no truth to the religion. My best friend when I was a witness stopped going to meetings around the same time I did and I swear he's in your son's position. He won't admit it to me because he knows I'm 100% out, but it's evident by his demeanor and some of the choices he's made. That no-man's land of being 99% out but having those lingering doubts isn't a healthy place to be.

I wish you all the best.

14

All of Human Knowledge Could be Stored in a Test Tube Forever

by cofty in

the dna code could be used to store unimaginable amounts of information.. researchers have shown that encasing the dna is glass it would remain stable and able to be recovered for more than a million years.

by adding redundancies into the code it would still be preserved even if it did become damaged.. why didn't god think about encoding a simple "hello"?.

neverendingjourney

Slightly on topic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortality_Drive

26

The Pain of Coming to a Decision

by daniel-p in

jw
friends

it's been at least a couple years since i've posted anything on here, and much longer than that since when i was active.

ten years ago i first came here all in turmoil over my disillusionment of my beliefs.

i've been through lots of ups and downs since then.

neverendingjourney

Hey, Daniel. I remember you. I don't come around here very often anymore, either. I'm sorry to hear of your marital troubles. Unfortunately, being a single guy, I don't have much to offer other than a sympathetic ear.

If I'm not mistaken you were considering going to college at one point. Did you ever see that through?

31

Yearbook 2016: Annual Report (15177 Partakers)

by Designer Stubble in

the 2016 yearbook is up on jw.orgbranches of jehovahs witnesses: 89 (was 90)number of lands reporting: 240 (was 239)total congregations: 118016 (was 115416)worldwide memorial attendance: 19,862,763 (was 19,950,019) decreasememorial partakers worldwide: 15,177 (was 14,121 in 2013:13,204) large increasepeak of publishers in kingdom service: 8,220,105 (was 8,201,205) minor increaseaverage publishers preaching each month: 7,987,279 (was 7,867,958)percentage of increase over 2014: 1.5 (was 2.2)total number baptized: 260,273 (was 275,581)average auxiliary pioneer publishers each month: 443,504 (was 635,298) huge decreaseaverage pioneer publishers each month: 1,135,210 (was 1,089,446)total hours spent in field: 1,933,473,727 (was 1,945,487,604) decreaseaverage home bible studies each month: 9,708,968 (was 9,499,933)

neverendingjourney

I think they've reached the top of their hill; they've peaked out.

If they continue selling the same product, then I agree with you. Right now all their marketing gimmicks have simply been efforts to put lipstick on a pig, selling the same burrito but putting it in a shinier tin-foil wrapping.

An ordinary company would recognize the need to make wholesale changes to the product, but there's a two-fold problem here. One, aversion to change runs deep in the religion's culture. They have the truth; why change it? Conformity is required throughout all of its ranks. Two, the men who lead the group spent their adult lives and made their way up through a system designed to select the most pliant and sycophantic among them. Anyone with even a minimal ability to re-imagine the religion's doctrine would have been culled from the ranks long before they ever became candidates for GB membership.

In my mind that leaves two possibilities: they continue a slow, gradual fade into further irrelevance or a younger charismatic person (or a group of persons) grabs control of the religion and takes it in a different direction. The second possibility becomes more realistic the more the religion stagnates.

32

Peer presure to use Ipad

by Gorbatchov in

jw
friends

earlier this season i advised my retired father to ignore the use of a tablet during his kingdom hall congregational visits.

his response was hopefull, but between the lines i could hear he had no choice.. yesterday he showed me his new 600 euro 64 gb ipad air 2. he had no clue what he has to do with it, he told me one of the elders will install the jw.org apps.. so, i feel he had to deal with presure to buy this ipad and i think he is not the only one.. do you recognize this?.

gorby.

neverendingjourney

Both of my parents have ipads. My father loves it as he's always been the type of person who wants to the have the latest, greatest toy, even if he doesn't need it or know how to use it.

My mother is completely lost. She was never able to learn how to operate a VCR and that's back when she was in her 30s. Now that she's in her mid-60s, she's not going to be able to learn how to navigate an ipad.

It's pretty stupid. I personally have no use for a tablet. I've purchased one before but didn't find any use for it. The WT is obviously weaning the flock off of printed materials as that's a money drain now.

25

Twelve Days of Evolution - A video a Day

by cofty in

from the guys and girls at "it's ok to be smart".. stay curious!.

....

neverendingjourney

They do good work. I'm subscribed to their YouTube channel.

I'd recommend Sixty Symbols as well if you haven't already run across them.

Their presentation isn't nearly as polished, basically just a guy with a camera running around the physics department in Nottingham, but they've been putting out great informational videos for years.

57

Is zeal beginning to vanish?

by Caupon in

jw
friends

it has to be starting to fade somehow.

the very last time i went out in field service, hardly any were out.

maybe just about nine people were out and man if you could just see their faces.

neverendingjourney

I got baptized in the mid-90s. At that point every elder was expected to be able to hold their own in field service. About half the ministerial servants could do the same, maybe 1/2 the regular pioneers, and the odd publisher or two who was really smart but never ascended up the ranks. I'd say 20-25% of publishers could hold their own. The rest were just there to drop off magazines, count time, and run away as fast they could. I can only speak for the men since I wasn't in the habit of going out in FS with women.

By the early 00s there were already a few elders who were complete dunces, the type of men who'd been professional MS's but had been pulled up the ranks due to attrition. FS had become more nakedly a time-counting operation. A lot of the intelligent publishers with no titles simply disappeared from the map, moved away or stopped attending meetings. I estimate the number of people who could hold their own dropped to 15% or so by 2005.

After I left, things seemingly got much worse. Contemporaries of mine who were not very bright and had spent their adolescence and early adulthood being two-faces and constantly finding ways to avoid JCs started becoming MS's and elders. Men who had once been considered pillars, intelligent men who could quote hundreds of bible verses, began to drop off from the elders' list and either stopped attending or became a lot less involved than they had been. Being inquisitive seemingly went from being a virtue, a sign of someone being a deep, spiritual person, to being seen as a sign of an independent spirit and possible apostate tendencies.