Posts by neverendingjourney

46

Some apostates are coming across as crazed psychopaths

by jambon1 in

jw
friends

i'm not sure whether or not my view on this is correct so please leave your input.

in recent months i've been viewing youtube videos.

again, it might just be my view but there has been an increased amount of random people grabbing a camera and doing vlogs.

neverendingjourney

I agree the behavior is counterproductive. It's unsettling and unlikely to sway public opinion against the Watchtower.

However, I'm a lot more sympathetic than I used to be. No one would be taken seriously if they said "Boy, a lot of those victims of Bernie Madoff's pyramid scheme come across as crazed psychopaths."

A great many ex-JWs are dealing with significant psychological damage from the effects of feeling like they've devoted their lives to a religious cult. No two people are the same. Some people are able to walk away relatively unharmed. Others have significant trauma and are never able to fully recover.

Looking back, I was borderline suicidal for many months after I wised up to the "the truth." Twelve years later I still have lingering issues I'm dealing with, but I woke up in my mid 20s and have been able to more or less remake my life.

Having a fair number of "crazies" lash out is to be expected from a group of people who used to belong to a religious cult.

10

All Memorial Attendance Data from 1896 to 2016

by ILoveTTATT2 in

jw
friends

i have made a spreadsheet of the reported number in attendance to the memorial since the first report of 13 people appeared in an 1896 watchtower.. since it can be very hard to find the numbers for the early years (anything previous to 1938), i will slowly make a note of where i found the data.some of the years i had to manually add hundreds of entries, since the wt did not provide the full number.i am building on the statistics of 1988-2013 that appeared here a while ago.soon i will be starting this but for other sets of data: # of publishers, hours, etc...here is the link: link.

neverendingjourney

It's interesting to see the progress from astronomical growth to a sort of equilibrium being reached.

If my math is correct, memorial attendance increased the following percentages over the past 75 years:

1940-1964: 1,000%

1965-1989: 415%

1990-2015: 99%

33

Leaving the jws is a "lifestyle choice" according to a counsellor

by purrpurr in

jw
friends

so i had my first appointment with a counsellor, of course i explained about being a born in jw, mentally leaving, the penalty of doing so and therefore the mental strain of pretending to be someone i'm not.

her response was that she couldn't help me with that because leaving a cult was a "lifestyle choice".

i tried to say to her that its a cult not a religion and how it brain washed me but no.

neverendingjourney

The vast majority of people are incapable of fully understanding the trauma associated with leaving the Jehovah's Witness religion. Psychologists and therapists are no exception.

I saw a psychiatrist a few years ago. I had four or five sessions with her. She tried her best but just couldn't really relate to what I was struggling with. She said my symptoms were almost PTSD-like and kept trying to help me find the root cause of my trauma even though all I wanted to talk about was JW-related.

I found the following book to be the most helpful:

http://journeyfree.org/leaving-the-fold/

The author was not a Witness but grew up in a fundamentalist environment. I got a lot more value out of the book than I did from the various sessions with the psychologist.

58

Mexico branch......Now closing!!!

by krismalone in

a circuit overseer friend of mine serving in latin america called me today to say hi.

i asked him what's new and he dropped the news that they have received notification that the branch in mexico will be closing!!

this branch also called the central american branch (although located in mexico) oversees all of mexico's 800,000+ publishers plus all 7 countries of central america of over 100,000 publishers.

neverendingjourney

I haven't read through all the responses, but there's been speculation in the past that COs would be dropped in favor of super-elders who get to fill CO responsibilities without actually being financially dependent on the WT. Maybe you have a superelder appointed to oversee four or five congregations. The WT could pick men who are retired, own their own businesses or otherwise have more time on their hands than the average elder.

With the GB's increasing embrace of modern technology, many of the former CO duties could be filled via direct videos with instructions from the GB. It would also help create separation (legal liability) between the various Watchtower corporations and the local congregations. Dropping COs in favor of scripted information direct from the GB would be in line with the general direction of the religion over the past decade or two.

As others have undoubtedly mentioned, COs couldn't be expected to work in addition to their current responsibilities. If anything, this conversation might reflect this particular CO's fear that his role is being phased out and that he'll soon be expected to care for himself in line with the way hundreds of lifelong Bethelites have been treated.

50

No updated Watctower's articles on Evolution

by opusdei1972 in

as far as i know, the "creation" book is out of print ?, am i right?.

well, i was searching for new watchtower articles trying to debunk, for instance, human evolution.

so, i did my homework, for the first time, so as to read past and updated papers and books on human evolution.

neverendingjourney

Evolution happens. What is everyone so afraid of?

The Watchtower admits as much. If all the variety of life arose from an ark full of animals only 4,000 years ago, how else could you possibly explain the millions of species on our planet without it? There had to have been some sort of super-evolutionary process that almost instantly resulted in the tremendous variety we see today. However, this process wasn't really evolution because it only occurred within certain undefined "kinds" that trace back to the ark. What the ever-loving f*ck?

I read the God Delusion but it's been 7 or 8 years. I seem to remember an online breakdown that I ran across by accident back when I was a Witness around the year 2000. I'd been warned not to search for anything JW related online and curiosity got the better of me. I thought I would discover a wealth of academic sources praising the book but the actual truth shocked me. I didn't stare at it for long. I quickly exited the website. I think it might have resided on a predecessor forum to this one, but I could be misremembering.

50

No updated Watctower's articles on Evolution

by opusdei1972 in

as far as i know, the "creation" book is out of print ?, am i right?.

well, i was searching for new watchtower articles trying to debunk, for instance, human evolution.

so, i did my homework, for the first time, so as to read past and updated papers and books on human evolution.

neverendingjourney

@schnell I've forgotten exactly their analogy but I think it was something along the lines of a house not building itself. You could have all the construction materials on site but no matter how much time passes, you'll never find a fully assembled house. Setting aside quantum mechanics and the passage of eons, that's a true statement. But of course that's not how natural selection works. It's a strawman built by creationists.

I remember running across a page-by-page takedown of the book years ago that addressed both the logical fallacies and misquotes. I've had no success rediscovering it, though.

50

No updated Watctower's articles on Evolution

by opusdei1972 in

as far as i know, the "creation" book is out of print ?, am i right?.

well, i was searching for new watchtower articles trying to debunk, for instance, human evolution.

so, i did my homework, for the first time, so as to read past and updated papers and books on human evolution.

neverendingjourney

So, I suspect that the Society would have a hard task in writing a new "Creation" book, regarding the overwhelming updated evidences.

My high school chemistry teacher was a bit of a lunatic and a also a creationist. He and I would have long, rambling discussions about the Bible and how evolution was false. Sadly, this was a public school in the United States and it's not uncommon.

However, at one point I parroted the line in the Creation book about the lack of fossil evidence for so-called missing-links. That was a step too far for even him. He corrected me and said there were hundreds of specimens and that he'd seen them with his own eyes. It was out-of-date information by the time it made it into print and the Watchtower conveniently never bothered to correct the record.

The passage of time has not made Creation-book-style rebuttals any easier. But I don't think that's the reason for not having any updated literature along these lines. It simply doesn't fit with the new paradigm. The WT today is focused on dumbing down the literature as much as possible while stressing obedience at every opportunity.

Pseudo-intellectualism is a relic of the past that then new batch of GB members have no interest in continuing. For all intents and purposes, literature in that style ceased to be published shortly after Fred Franz was laid to rest.

50

No updated Watctower's articles on Evolution

by opusdei1972 in

as far as i know, the "creation" book is out of print ?, am i right?.

well, i was searching for new watchtower articles trying to debunk, for instance, human evolution.

so, i did my homework, for the first time, so as to read past and updated papers and books on human evolution.

neverendingjourney

Reading the Creation book in the mid 90s is what turned me from a completely disinterested, born-in teenager with "spiritually weak," inactive parents to a zealous 17 year old regular pioneer.

I was young, the internet wasn't widely available, but even still I had a hard time buying into the JW religion if belief in a literal Genesis was part of the deal. The Creation book changed that for me. It's an incredibly persuasive read for those who don't have the mental tools necessary to see through the deception. At 15 years of age and without the benefit of the internet, I was thoroughly duped.

I didn't fully realize the scope of the dishonesty until I was fully out of the religion. My exit occurred roughly ten years after first reading the book. What hurt me the most wasn't so much the blatant deception but the fact that the content was repackaged Creation Science nonsense. There really weren't many original thoughts in the book, if any.

All those years I had looked up to the men whom I thought were intelligent enough to create definitive arguments in defense of the Biblical creation narrative when in reality it was simply a work plagiarized from the body of pseudo-science that eventually gave rise to Intelligent Design.

18

help me think like an elder

by Homer notsimpson in

jw
friends

ok guys, i have been tasked to ask for your opinions regarding this case.. and be honest.

my brother sexted a girl a little over a year ago, they never dated, and she got mad at him.... she got engaged and the engagement ended in august.. she attempted suicide, then talked to the elders an told him she was gonna tell on him too, now that was in august, the sister told my brother that since she didn't know his hall they couldn't do anything.. we found that doesn't seem right, so hes been freaking out, but ita now two days away from 2017 and the elders haven't speaked to him yet.. why could that be?

could they give him all this time to confess?

neverendingjourney

Please tell me they were both adults when the sexting occurred.

If not, deny, deny, deny and hope she doesn't have the pictures anymore.

30

New member

by NinaCee in

jw
friends

i did not see a newbs thread to introduce myself, so my apologies if i'm in the wrong place.

i was a 3rd generation born in witness for 30 years until i was disfellowshipped back in 2007 for making a mistake.

my entire life up until that point was based on and circled around the society, and even though at first i really enjoyed my freedom (i still do), the fact is that i'm still struggling with cognitive dissonance, resentment, and loneliness.. i miss my family all the time.

neverendingjourney

The guy who believes the Garden of Eden was in Missouri thinks I'm delusional. That's rich.