Posts by Disillusioned JW

43

Research paper on Effects of Shunning

by peacefulpete in

after being around this site for 21 years now, i've heard many recount their stories and feelings.

many times i can immediately relate but other times they seem to have had a very different experience with the church.

i'm sure that is because not only are all of us different in personality, but congregations and family dynamics vary as well.

Disillusioned JW

Regarding mind control by the WT please read https://jewsforjudaism.org/knowledge/articles/watchtower-society-and-mind-control since what it is says is very relevant.

170

Staying in physically for all the benefits

by Indoubtbigtime in

i wonder how many are like me staying pimo for the great association and gathering etc.

also find it very interesting having a front row seat watching the collapse of borg.. im not wasting any more time or money on anything i don’t want to do like preaching and mostly just go on zoom .

there is nothing i want to do that would be considered disfellowshiping sin, i’m married and want to live by bible principles but i have serious doubts that the gb were chosen by god and are his one and only spokesmen on earth.

Disillusioned JW

Indoubtbigtime, regarding your comment about a total eclipse of the sun by the moon on page 2 of this topic thread, scientists say the moon used to be much closer to the Earth - and they say it is continuing to move farther away from the Earth. The leading scientific theory says the material of the moon came from a collision of a Mars-sized planet impacting the Earth nearly 4.5 billion years ago. There are numerous scientific sources for this. Two such sources are https://www.space.com/19275-moon-formation.html and https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/earths-moon/in-depth/#:~:text=Formation-,Formation,miles%20(384%2C000%20kilometers)%20away. . The latter says in part the following.

"The Moon is slowly moving away from Earth, getting about an inch farther away each year. ...

Formation

The leading theory of the Moon's origin is that a Mars-sized body collided with Earth about 4.5 billion years ago. The resulting debris from both Earth and the impactor accumulated to form our natural satellite 239,000 miles (384,000 kilometers) away. The newly formed Moon was in a molten state, but within about 100 million years, most of the global "magma ocean" had crystallized, with less-dense rocks floating upward and eventually forming the lunar crust."

Please reconsider evolution (not just biological evolution, but also cosmological evolution and even chemical evolution). Please examine the evidence and arguments which evolutionist scientists present for it (them).

Regarding being PIMO please read https://jewsforjudaism.org/knowledge/articles/watchtower-society-and-mind-control since what it is says is very relevant.

43

Research paper on Effects of Shunning

by peacefulpete in

after being around this site for 21 years now, i've heard many recount their stories and feelings.

many times i can immediately relate but other times they seem to have had a very different experience with the church.

i'm sure that is because not only are all of us different in personality, but congregations and family dynamics vary as well.

Disillusioned JW

cofty, I agree completely what you said about the so-called faithful and discreet slave (the JW governing body). That was first very strongly impressed upon me when I watched a portion of a video at the JW website, in which a governing body member was reading and commenting upon a passage similar to the ones in your most recent post in this topic thread. I was stunned and shocked to see the governing body person having such gall to say such in the third person. I had thought that much of the WT's literature is written by the Writing Committee, instead of directly by the governing body, and thus I didn't view such articles as having as much hubris. But seeing and hearing a governing body member saying such about the governing body (even if he didn't write the article) was shocking to me.

The following sentences of the WT (and ones like them) really offend me. “We need to guard against developing a spirit of independence. By word or action, may we never challenge the channel of communication that Jehovah is using today."

43

Research paper on Effects of Shunning

by peacefulpete in

after being around this site for 21 years now, i've heard many recount their stories and feelings.

many times i can immediately relate but other times they seem to have had a very different experience with the church.

i'm sure that is because not only are all of us different in personality, but congregations and family dynamics vary as well.

Disillusioned JW

slimboyfat, it is true that the the WT and the JW's governing body can and do point to many examples in the Bible as the basis for their style of authority, but those very examples (at least some of them) in the Bible also disturb me. But, it was because they did point to such biblical passages that I put up with the WT's demands for much of my life, since during that time I still accepted the whole protestant Bible as Jehovah's God word (whether I liked and approved of everything in the Bible or not).

43

Research paper on Effects of Shunning

by peacefulpete in

after being around this site for 21 years now, i've heard many recount their stories and feelings.

many times i can immediately relate but other times they seem to have had a very different experience with the church.

i'm sure that is because not only are all of us different in personality, but congregations and family dynamics vary as well.

Disillusioned JW

slimboyfat, their literature frequently tells their readers not to question anything of the WT and its governing body's doctrines and instructions That is an attempt to control the minds of their readers, and is an attempt to prevent people from thinking critically in certain matters. That sort of behavior of the WT is what has disturbed me the most about the WT and its religion. It disturbed me from my early childhood onward, because I value the right to think for myself, to think critically, and to think logically. Being in the religion and reading the WT's literature crippled my ability to think critically about what the WT and others (such as writers of other books, some claims of the media, and some politicians) say.

43

Research paper on Effects of Shunning

by peacefulpete in

after being around this site for 21 years now, i've heard many recount their stories and feelings.

many times i can immediately relate but other times they seem to have had a very different experience with the church.

i'm sure that is because not only are all of us different in personality, but congregations and family dynamics vary as well.

Disillusioned JW

The WT is very effective at controlling the minds of others, but where did they learn how to do such? Did they learn it from books? Did they get ideas for it from the Bible? Did they learn it from cults? Did they study of the occult and learn it from such? How did they obtain so much power of influence over others? Did they figure it out on their own? Is some secret group/entity (or powerful force) actually controlling the WT and if so, how long has such been happening?

43

Research paper on Effects of Shunning

by peacefulpete in

after being around this site for 21 years now, i've heard many recount their stories and feelings.

many times i can immediately relate but other times they seem to have had a very different experience with the church.

i'm sure that is because not only are all of us different in personality, but congregations and family dynamics vary as well.

Disillusioned JW

The study says the following. "The current study also has several limitations. Participants were recruited from online social media forums for former JW members. The selection process was not random and relied on voluntary self-identification. Participants in such forums may be more reactive and polarized than the general population of former JW members (Farrell et al., 2008)."

43

Research paper on Effects of Shunning

by peacefulpete in

after being around this site for 21 years now, i've heard many recount their stories and feelings.

many times i can immediately relate but other times they seem to have had a very different experience with the church.

i'm sure that is because not only are all of us different in personality, but congregations and family dynamics vary as well.

Disillusioned JW

Interestingly the study says the following regarding how many JWs there are. "The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society—the legal entity of JW—reports over 8 million members worldwide in 240 countries (Watch Tower and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, 2021a). However, studies examining member counts have found that the number of people identifying as JW to be 17.5 million (Lawson & Xydias, 2020)." That makes since sense many people who consider themselves as an inactive one of Jehovah's Witnesses still consider themselves as one of Jehovah's Witnesses.

58

Did the ransom sacrifice even work?

by Sharpie in

shower thought entered my mind the other day... jesus christ.

as per doctrine.

is still alive in heaven right now correct?

Disillusioned JW

I notice that Sea Breeze said the following on page two of this topic thread. "The problem is that modern thinking is infected with Naturalistic Materialism." In actuality Naturalistic Materialism is NOT an infection. The belief in supernaturalism is an infection (an insidious one) of the mind of most humans and that infectious disease has existed throughout recorded history and probably started thousands of years prior. It has been spread from one human mind to another (it is a meme). Paul was heavily infected with the thinking when he spoke of having a battle with the forces of darkness. [Paul died for his false beliefs pertaining to Christ and his idea of the resurrection.] In contrast, I have a battle against teachings of supernaturalism.

Scientists (including David Sinclair, who I mentioned in the Naturalism topic I created) using the mindset of Materialism and Naturalism are now reversing biological ageing! Think of how much could have been accomplished 1000 years ago if humanity had abandoned belief in supernatutalism over 1000 years ago and fully embraced science, naturalism, and scientific materialism! over 1000 years ago! See https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/12/health/reversing-aging-scn-wellness/index.html and https://time.com/6246864/reverse-aging-scientists-discover-milestone/ . Much like one of the WT's Bible (Job 33:25) based teachings (but without the supernaturalism) of flesh returning to youthfulness scientists are now restoring flesh back to youthfulness - but without supernatural means! Lab animals that were made prematurely biologically old have been made biologically young again - by means of Naturalistic Materialism!

Sea Breeze, David Sinclair (a molecular biologist) uses the terminology of information theory in regards to the human genome and epigenome. That is something you can relate to for you also use that terminology. The CNN article article says in part the following.

'The combined experiments, published for the first time Thursday in the journal Cell, challenge the scientific belief aging is the result of genetic mutations that undermine our DNA, creating a junkyard of damaged cellular tissue that can lead to deterioration, disease and death.

“It’s not junk, it’s not damage that causes us to get old,” said Sinclair, who described the work last year at Life Itself, a health and wellness event presented in partnership with CNN.

“We believe it’s a loss of information — a loss in the cell’s ability to read its original DNA so it forgets how to function — in much the same way an old computer may develop corrupted software. I call it the information theory of aging.”

Jae-Hyun Yang, a genetics research fellow in the Sinclair Lab who coauthored the paper, said he expects the findings “will transform the way we view the process of aging and the way we approach the treatment of diseases associated with aging.”

... “The astonishing finding is that there’s a backup copy of the software in the body that you can reset,” Sinclair said. “We’re showing why that software gets corrupted and how we can reboot the system by tapping into a reset switch that restores the cell’s ability to read the genome correctly again, as if it was young.”

It doesn’t matter if the body is 50 or 75, healthy or wracked with disease, Sinclair said. Once that process has been triggered, “the body will then remember how to regenerate and will be young again, even if you’re already old and have an illness. Now, what that software is, we don’t know yet. At this point, we just know that we can flip the switch.” '

The Time magazine article says in part the following.

'In the Cell paper, Sinclair and his team report that not only can they age mice on an accelerated timeline, but they can also reverse the effects of that aging and restore some of the biological signs of youthfulness to the animals. That reversibility makes a strong case for the fact that the main drivers of aging aren’t mutations to the DNA, but miscues in the epigenetic instructions that somehow go awry. Sinclair has long proposed that aging is the result of losing critical instructions that cells need to continue functioning, in what he calls the Information Theory of Aging. “Underlying aging is information that is lost in cells, not just the accumulation of damage,” he says. “That’s a paradigm shift in how to think about aging. “

His latest results seem to support that theory. It’s similar to the way software programs operate off hardware, but sometimes become corrupt and need a reboot, says Sinclair. “If the cause of aging was because a cell became full of mutations, then age reversal would not be possible,” he says. “But by showing that we can reverse the aging process, that shows that the system is intact, that there is a backup copy and the software needs to be rebooted.”

In the mice, he and his team developed a way to reboot cells to restart the backup copy of epigenetic instructions, essentially erasing the corrupted signals that put the cells on the path toward aging. They mimicked the effects of aging on the epigenome by introducing breaks in the DNA of young mice. (Outside of the lab, epigenetic changes can be driven by a number of things, including smoking, exposure to pollution and chemicals.) Once “aged” in this way, within a matter of weeks Sinclair saw that the mice began to show signs of older age—including grey fur, lower body weight despite unaltered diet, reduced activity, and increased frailty.

The rebooting came in the form of a gene therapy involving three genes that instruct cells to reprogram themselves—in the case of the mice, the instructions guided the cells to restart the epigenetic changes that defined their identity as, for example, kidney and skin cells, two cell types that are prone to the effects of aging. These genes came from the suite of so-called Yamanaka stem cells factors—a set of four genes that Nobel scientist Shinya Yamanaka in 2006 discovered can turn back the clock on adult cells to their embryonic, stem cell state so they can start their development, or differentiation process, all over again. Sinclair didn’t want to completely erase the cells’ epigenetic history, just reboot it enough to reset the epigenetic instructions. Using three of the four factors turned back the clock about 57%, enough to make the mice youthful again.

“We’re not making stem cells, but turning back the clock so they can regain their identity,” says Sinclair. “I’ve been really surprised by how universally it works. We haven’t found a cell type yet that we can’t age forward and backward.”

Rejuvenating cells in mice is one thing, but will the process work in humans? That’s Sinclair’s next step, and his team is already testing the system in non-human primates. The researchers are attaching a biological switch that would allow them to turn the clock on and off by tying the activation of the reprogramming genes to an antibiotic, doxycycline. Giving the animals doxycycline would start reversing the clock, and stopping the drug would halt the process. Sinclair is currently lab-testing the system with human neurons, skin, and fibroblast cells, which contribute to connective tissue.'

I encourage people to read both articles in their entirety.

203

My Explanation of Why They Got it Wrong About Blood Using Only the NWT

by cofty in

10 " any israelite or any alien living among them who eats any bloodi will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from his people.

12 therefore i say to the israelites, "none of you may eat blood, nor may an alien living among you eat blood.

15 'anyone, whether native-born or alien, who eats anything found dead or torn by wild animals must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be ceremonially unclean till evening; then he will be clean.

Disillusioned JW

Fisherman, I said "... are strange, at least to you and I ..." I was telling you that like you I also consider a number of the rabbinical interpretations (such as the ones you mentioned to me) to be strange.I was acknowledging your point about Jewish rabbinical interpretations. I didn't think you knew of the Jewish reasons for considering blood transfusions to be acceptable, but after you mentioned a number of rabbinical interpretations to me it became obvious to me that you know a number of teachings of Rabbinical Judaism.