Posts by NutFlush

15

A Paradox for JWs and other religious people

by NutFlush in

i was raised a jw and left nearly 15 years ago before/when i went away to college.

since then, i have had nothing to do with organized religion (or non-organized religion, for that matter).

in my experiences, fervent religious belief has not correlated well with things such as critical reasoning ability or secular success as measured by profession, level of education, income, etc.. i was browsing the blog of a semi-well-known guy who has worked in some of the same fields as me and came upon the following passage:.

NutFlush

A couple of thoughts:

I wonder if part of the idea behind joining or staying in a religion is simply keeping up appearances. Aside from the JW "faders" who do this sort of thing every day in order not to lose family or friends, there are probably other communities where feigning belief is a prerequisite to various secular benefits. For example, I doubt we'll see a day in the US where an openly athiest person becomes president, simply because doing so would make him/her a relative outcast among certain groups of people. Still, this only answers the question of why someone would profess to believe something that seems irrational, not why they would actually believe it.

Regarding the idea that our world is so complex that it must have been created -- if I decide to play the lottery today, I'd have a very remote chance of winning (perhaps 10,000,000 to 1). But if 10,000,000 of us play the lottery, one of us should win. Similarly, if each of us played the lottery 10,000,000 times, we'd figure to hit it big one time. Now this doesn't mean much to each one of us, since we'd probably die long before we'd have a chance to get anywhere near that number. But if we had an infinite amount of time, we'd win that lottery many many times over. Given that billions of years may have transpired before the first creature appeared on earth, why is it so unreasonable to believe that it could have happened by chance?

15

A Paradox for JWs and other religious people

by NutFlush in

i was raised a jw and left nearly 15 years ago before/when i went away to college.

since then, i have had nothing to do with organized religion (or non-organized religion, for that matter).

in my experiences, fervent religious belief has not correlated well with things such as critical reasoning ability or secular success as measured by profession, level of education, income, etc.. i was browsing the blog of a semi-well-known guy who has worked in some of the same fields as me and came upon the following passage:.

NutFlush

I was raised a JW and left nearly 15 years ago before/when I went away to college. Since then, I have had nothing to do with organized religion (or non-organized religion, for that matter). In my experiences, fervent religious belief has not correlated well with things such as critical reasoning ability or secular success as measured by profession, level of education, income, etc.

I was browsing the blog of a semi-well-known guy who has worked in some of the same fields as me and came upon the following passage:

"If you swore to someone that you just moments ago had witnessed several impossible things, culminating in oh say someone being slain and then rising from the dead, almost anyone would deem you to be crazy - the exceptions mostly to be found in institutions.

And yet if your beliefs are identical, held with the same certainty as if you had just witnessed them (in fact higher certainty than if you had witnessed them, as presumably even if you are religious you have been conditioned by reality to doubt the impossible in your actual day-to-day life) but instead of being a witness, you read about them in a book or someone told you about them - then, your beliefs are unremarkable.

I'm sure it sounds like I'm ragging on religious people here (and things being as they are it's hard not to sound like that at all times, even if I'm just reading a shopping list) but I say this to ask a specific question about the epistemology of the rapturous: what is the calculus by which the second version is LESS crazy than the first? Shouldn't believing something impossible happened because you were there and saw it be LESS crazy than believing it happened and NOT having personally witnessed it?"

I have often wondered the same thing. For folks who consider themselves religious, what's your take on this? Given that you obviously grew to doubt some of the "crazy" WT doctrine yourselves, what has led you to join another faith or live your life with strong spiritual beliefs?

40

Free signs for Memorial night protesters!

by koolaid-man in

jw
friends

isn't it time to speak up?

take the giant step!

on tuesday, march 30,2010, after sundown, is the biggest event in the jehovah's witness world.

NutFlush

KoolAidMan, I'm a former JW who, years later, has seen many of the x-JW vids on YouTube. When I viewed some of yours, I remember being impressed by your zeal and it was quite obvious just how much exposing the Witnesses means to you. On the other hand, the signs and the superlengthy URL struck me as tacky. Hearing the elderly lady go on in one of the videos about how sad she was that those Witnesses inside weren't drinking Christ's blood (or something to that effect; it's been a few months since I watched it) further took away from the protest's credibility in my mind. Like the others have said, it's a free country, do your thing. But I believe that in terms of making Witnesses think critically about their beliefs and leave the WTBS, your actions will either have a neutral or negative effect.

25

Faded 10 years ago, now considering DA'ing!

by NutFlush in

jw
friends

long-time occasional lurker, first-time poster.

cliffs notes version: i'm thinking of da'ing in order to shake my family up a bit, even though i haven't been involved with jws in more than 10 years.

longer version: i was raised as a jw but never got baptized.

NutFlush

Although I do believe there's a part of me that's acting out of revenge, I don't think that's the primary factor at play. I've only really started thinking about all this in earnest since my daughter was born and I had to consider what, if any, relationship she would have with her paternal grandparents.

Shunning my parents is cruel. But, as the WTBS has proven, it can be a very effective and powerful Machiavellian tool to accomplish a desired purpose. In the past couple of years, I haven't been the one seeking out their attention, but the other way around. They would be the ones getting hurt, much as WT shunning is most effective when the DF'ed person still desires friendships with those who are still in.

I am not mad at other Witnesses who I knew growing up, whether they were congregation leaders or regular brothers and sisters. I won't be picketing conventions or making videos. One reason for this is that I'm lazy. The other is that I have nothing to prove to anyone still in the organization. I moved across the country with no money and only one friend in a new city. I weathered layoffs, a recession, and many, many bad dates, most of which were unsuccessful due to my then-awkwardness with actually being on a date with (gasp!) a worldly girl. I ended up marrying a wonderful and understanding woman who is also my best friend. I own a house in the Hollywood Hills. I was a cash money millionaire by the time I was 30. I had just about everything in the world stacked against me, and I overcame. I won. For those who were and are severely handicapped by the effects of the time they spent in the organization, speaking out against the WTBS is like standing up to the schoolyard bully. For someone like me, it's like beating up a quadraplegic.

I disagree with the notion, which seems to be prevalent around here, that it was really the WTBS that was responsible for what my family has gone through. Sure, if my parents hadn't been taught how to behave by the WTBS, I wouldn't have had the painful experiences that I did. However, as my dad often told me, we are all ultimately responsible for the choices we make. My parents had many opportunities along the way to consider if what they were doing was really beneficial, really something that "God" would want from them. My dad stepped down from being an elder when I became a teenager and my folks encouraged me to do well in school. This tells me that, if anything, they were more capable than most sheep of realizing that they were heading down the wrong path. That makes it their failure to act all the more disappointing and that much less forgiveable.

25

Faded 10 years ago, now considering DA'ing!

by NutFlush in

jw
friends

long-time occasional lurker, first-time poster.

cliffs notes version: i'm thinking of da'ing in order to shake my family up a bit, even though i haven't been involved with jws in more than 10 years.

longer version: i was raised as a jw but never got baptized.

NutFlush

Thanks for the comments, all -- lots of good points, some of which I hadn't considered before. A few thoughts:

It sounds like DA'ing isn't even an option since I wasn't baptized. I get that no one at the Hall cares about me, but that's obviously not the point. I'd only have done a DA'ing in order to have it affect my relationship with my JW family, nothing more.

Although I'd like to see my parents and little sister escape from the clutches of a cult, I'm not sure I care enough about them to exert the considerable effort that it sounds like it would take to even attempt to do so. I haven't called my parents since two years ago, when my wife and I kept reaching out to them to encourage them to attend our wedding. Not pay for it or help plan it, just show up and have a good time. After much teeth-pulling, they did arrive, but in retrospect it would have been better if they hadn't. They were withdrawn and hostile around my wife's family, and my mom kept rolling her eyes whenever we'd walk by. Our wedding director had to practically order them to step into the reception area for our first dance as a couple. Other guests kept approaching us to ask what was up. It was embarrassing.

I am grateful that my parents weren't completely opposed to education. However, at the time, their position was in tune with the Society's -- post-HS schooling was okay, as long as it was done with kingdom goals in mind. They paid for a small part of it. (FWIW, my middle sister was a zealous, self-righteous JW throughout college, so my folks happily picked up the whole tab. Three months or so after graduation, she told my folks she didn't want to be a JW anymore, although technically she hasn't DA'ed. I'm still a little annoyed with her about this, since I feel that she essentially got to have it both ways, so to speak.) In that way, my experience is probably envied by some exJW's. That's nice to hear, but it doesn't make me resent my upbringing any less and I'm not sure how it should affect my behavior towards them moving forward. Just because you're not living out on the street doesn't mean you shouldn't aspire to getting out of living in your car.

I'm extremely nervous about having my parents in my life as long as they're still in. I do not want them to have any chance to be able to teach my daughter any of the things that I had to deal with growing up. I may just let things be as they are and not make any effort to have them in our lives, or I may give them the ultimatum that they won't be fellowshipping with me until/unless they make some hard choices.

25

Faded 10 years ago, now considering DA'ing!

by NutFlush in

jw
friends

long-time occasional lurker, first-time poster.

cliffs notes version: i'm thinking of da'ing in order to shake my family up a bit, even though i haven't been involved with jws in more than 10 years.

longer version: i was raised as a jw but never got baptized.

NutFlush

Greetings, all. Long-time occasional lurker, first-time poster. Cliffs Notes version: I'm thinking of DA'ing in order to shake my family up a bit, even though I haven't been involved with JWs in more than 10 years. Longer version: I was raised as a JW but never got baptized. My dad was an elder for most of my childhood. My mom was a pioneer before she had kids. I'm the oldest (32) of three kids. My middle sister was baptized, but ended up abruptly "fading away" six years ago and is married to a guy she met in college. My youngest sister (22) is baptized and lives at home. I was what you might call "bright" as a kid, and my parents definitely were nurturing of me early on. My mom taught me to read by the time I was 2, and I was giving talks by the age of 4. My folks allowed/encouraged me to enroll in the gifted and talented program in school, and I think they knew by the time I reached middle school that it would be best for me to have something beyond a HS education. However, this was encouraged of me so that I would be able to support myself and my family as we engaged in theocratic pursuits, and it was expected that I would commute to college, not go live away amidst all the scary worldly kids. Other than that, I would have to say that my folks were the typical domineering JW parents -- my mom had been born in and my dad started studying when he was in college, and they didn't have me until they had been together for more than 10 years. They took (and still take) it very seriously. I'm sure you have an idea what I mean, so I won't go into detail here. Suffice it to say that I'm still learning how to interact with "normal" people, having led a very sheltered life growing up. I began having doubts in high school, and by the time I was ready to go to college, I knew that I had to live away from home. Even though it was only 2 hours away and was an inexpensive, top-quality education, my parents weren't happy about this. They reached out to the local congregations and made sure that they knew I was around and needed to get to meetings. I'd go every couple of weeks or so, then gradually made excuses (exams, papers, illness, whatever) and maybe went once a semester by my senior year. By the time I moved to another state to take a position with a software company, I wasn't going at all. I'm now all the way across the country and haven't been inside a KH in more than 10 years. I've reached a point where I'm considering officially DA'ing myself, probably with a letter to my parents' congregation. Part of me wants to just live and let live, to not make waves and not do anything that might hurt my relationships with my parents and the youngest sister. But part of me will always have a JW mindset -- by that, I mean that I feel the need to speak out about the truth, which, in this case, is that I have no desire to do anything that might in any way condone or support the existence of a cultish, future-destroying "religion". I feel that by not "speaking up" and DA'ing myself, I'm a small part of a bigger problem. There's also the hope that my actions would provoke some serious introspection by my parents and cause them to question their own faith, although I realize that's not the likeliest outcome. A few relevant points -- I'm married and we have a 5 month-old daughter. We live on the west coast; they live on the east coast. We haven't seen them in 8 months and they haven't asked about coming to see us. We talk maybe once per month. My wife and I own a home and are well-off, so DA'ing wouldn't have any economic reprecussions. I have no other JW acquaintances, just a couple of other extended family members back east, so DA'ing wouldn't affect any of my other relationships. On the other hand, my folks have no non-JW friends and nothing to do with my middle sister. In a sense, my DA'ing would flip the whole concept of shunning on its head -- it'd be the remaining JWs, rather than the one leaving, who would suffer the consequences. Thoughts?