In my prior post where I said "without any detrimental effects" I wish I had said "without any detrimental effects and without feeling sleepy". Where I said "... Jehovah.Those WT teaches ..." I meant to say "... Jehovah. Those WT teachings ...". Where I said "... suggests such does not exist" I should have said "... suggests such do not exist". Where I said "... which lead me to atheism" I should have said "... which led me to atheism".
Disillusioned JW
JoinedPosts by Disillusioned JW
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16
Non Believers, how do you respond ?
by Phizzy ini recently had this in a message from a jw, a lovely person, but mind controlled, he wrote " a life without hope is no life for me".. how should i respond to that ?
i am an atheist, but want to respond in as kindly a way as possible.. i was thinking along the lies of saying i got no comfort from what i knew to be false hope, but need to say it in a kindly way.. ideas please ?.
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Disillusioned JW
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16
Non Believers, how do you respond ?
by Phizzy ini recently had this in a message from a jw, a lovely person, but mind controlled, he wrote " a life without hope is no life for me".. how should i respond to that ?
i am an atheist, but want to respond in as kindly a way as possible.. i was thinking along the lies of saying i got no comfort from what i knew to be false hope, but need to say it in a kindly way.. ideas please ?.
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Disillusioned JW
Correction: I should not have included "(especially ones who made huge sacrifices because of such hope)" within quote marks of my earlier post, but the idea fits the subject matter.
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Sea Breeze, you seem to be equating the meaning of the word "hope" with the meaning of the word "believe" but the words do not have the same meaning. Perhaps you are saying that which atheists (including ex-JWs) hope for is also what they believe. But I for one do not hope to die, even though I know and believe I will die. Furthermore Jesus, according to the Bible, did not teach that "after you die that you will be conscious and unable to shut your consciousness off, no matter how hard you try." According to the New Testament Bible Jesus taught that instead of staying dead for forever, people can return to life if they believe in him prior to their death. According to parts of the NT Bible Jesus also taught that if people believe in him they will never die at all. Those teachings are very different than saying everyone, including non-believers in Jesus, will continue to live forever and will experience unending consciousness after the death of their physical body. It is true there are some NT passages about Jesus, according to the Bible, saying some people will be tormented forever in an Gehenna, but there is more than one interpretation of what those passages mean and some of those meanings conflict with other passages that purport to be teachings of Jesus.
I, for one, do NOT hope to die. I hope to live for 120+ years in excellent health, and if I thought it was possible to live for much longer than that in excellent health then I would hope for that. [If my body later becomes severely damaged while still alive or if some humans torment me tremendously in future, I might then hope to die soon in order to escape such misery, but I do not currently want (or hope) to die.] I do believe that when I my body dies then so does my consciousness and my mind, and that belief is firmly based upon well known scientific facts. Those facts include what happens to people's consciousness when they are in a deep dreamless sleep, when they are under anesthesia, and when they receive brain injuries.
Regarding NDEs it should be kept in mind that those who claimed to have had such were not brain dead and thus their brain probably hallucinated (or dreamed) such experiences, and other cases people were probably lying about such experiences.
Though while I was a very young child the WT (and my parents under the influence of the WT) and the OT Bible gave me my belief that the mind ceases upon death of the brain, after I learned what scientific knowledge says about mind (probably partly during my late preteen years, and I learned more in later years), my belief became based on that scientific knowledge instead of upon the Bible. After I learned the scientific knowledge regarding what happens to the mind, what the Bible (and the WT) said abut death ending consciousness merely collaborated that scientific knowledge.
You keep implying that the WT teaches/promotes atheism, yet you ignore that the WT teaches that Satan the Devil, demons and evil demonic activity, angels, and a heavenly Christ are real, as well as Jehovah.Those WT teaches conflict greatly with atheism and scientific naturalism! Yet at least since my late preteen years (despite considering myself an unbaptized JW and despite later becoming baptized as a JW in my early teens) I had very major doubts about the existence of demons and evil demonic activity. That is because I saw no convincing existence of demons and of evil demonic activity and because scientific knowledge very strongly suggests such does not exist. It is knowledge of science (combined with my personal experiences of the universe), and not the WT, which lead me to atheism.
Regarding what scientific knowledge says about the ideas of a devil, demons, an afterlife, alien visitations to humans, witchcraft, ghosts, superstitions, prayer, magic, UFOs, etc., I invite people to read the book by Carl Sagan called The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.
If I had been raised in a way that was neutral about religion, I would never ever had become a believer in the supernatural (except maybe briefly as a very young child) and I would never had joined a religion! Being raised as a JW (under the influence of the WT) delayed me in becoming an atheist (except for the fact that all human babies are born without any belief in any god whatsoever).
Regarding the idea of "several old men in Brooklyn were God's sole channel of communication on earth" I never fully accepted that WT teaching. That WT teaching, for as long as was aware of it, was one which was very hard for me to accept. As a JW, when participating in meetings which discussed it, I sometimes paid lip service to it (such as when answering questions in the WT literature, since such was expected of JWs), but I was never thoroughly convinced of it. Furthermore as a teenage JW and as an adult JW I resented the WT teaching that "several old men in Brooklyn were God's sole channel of communication on earth" - especially since I knew that they admitted that many of their (and/or the WT's) former teachings were false!
When I am at work I long for getting off work so that I can fully indulge my conscious mind in thinking about subjects of interest to me. When I am awake and starting to feel sleepy I try to fight off the sleepiness and to stay awake, until it becomes futile to resist the onset of sleep. I wish my body didn't require sleep because to me sleep is kind of like death in that it deprives me, though only for awhile, of conscious thought. Sea Breeze, I do NOT want my consciousness to be turned off each day - I wish I keep it on all the time (without any detrimental effects) that I am alive (but I realize I can't keep it on all the time)! See Breeze, you are VERY WRONG in saying regarding all ex-JW atheists that "The greatest hope of the ex-jw atheist is to die and experience nothing thereafter." I live to think; I live to have conscious thoughts, as well as to have various conscious experiences.
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The Covid-19 Vaccines do NOT Alter Human Genes, despite the myths to the contrary
by Disillusioned JW in["covid-19 vaccines can’t alter your dna, here’s why"]
can covid-19 vaccines alter my dna?
no, covid-19 vaccines do not alter your dna.
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Disillusioned JW
Yes the vaccine won't give people super powers, but I made the message post to help people realize that the vaccine will not damage their DNA. Many people falsely think the vaccine is very unsafe, even falsely thinking that it will change their genes in a way that will harm people.
Last Friday I scheduled to receive my first dose of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine tomorrow (Monday).
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Non Believers, how do you respond ?
by Phizzy ini recently had this in a message from a jw, a lovely person, but mind controlled, he wrote " a life without hope is no life for me".. how should i respond to that ?
i am an atheist, but want to respond in as kindly a way as possible.. i was thinking along the lies of saying i got no comfort from what i knew to be false hope, but need to say it in a kindly way.. ideas please ?.
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Disillusioned JW
At the moment I don't have an answer to the question about hope, but this message board topic reminds me of what I read about 15 minutes ago in paragraph 30 of pages 28 - 29 of the WT book called Man's Salvation Out Of World Distress At Hand! (copyright 1975) regarding Acts 24:15 and 1 Corinthians 15:18, 19. The idea is that if ".... Messiah Jesus were not raised from the dead to heavenly life, there would be no future ..." resurrection of humans and that as a result the generation (or generations) of people living since 1914 who "... have hoped in Christ (especially ones who made huge sacrifices because of such hope) ...", and considering all they "... have gone through since 1914 ...", would be '... of all generations, the "most to be pitied." '
From my point of view of being an ex-JW who is now an atheist, such people along with many other Christians are indeed to be pitied, and I have pity even upon my own experience as a former JW Christian (a former Christian witness of [the idea of] Jehovah).
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The Covid-19 Vaccines do NOT Alter Human Genes, despite the myths to the contrary
by Disillusioned JW in["covid-19 vaccines can’t alter your dna, here’s why"]
can covid-19 vaccines alter my dna?
no, covid-19 vaccines do not alter your dna.
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Disillusioned JW
Please read the articles at the links below and notice the sites which published the articles. I consider all of these sites to be trustworthy.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/facts.html#:~:text=No.%20COVID%2D19,DNA%20in%20any%20way.
["Myths and Facts about COVID-19 Vaccines"]
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https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-mrna-megamix/fact-check-mrna-vaccines-do-not-turn-humans-into-hybrids-or-alter-recipients-dna-idUSL1N2M61HW
["Fact Check-mRNA vaccines do not turn humans into ‘hybrids’ or alter recipients’ DNA"]
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriaforster/2021/01/11/covid-19-vaccines-cant-alter-your-dna-heres-why/
["Covid-19 Vaccines Can’t Alter Your DNA, Here’s Why"]
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https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/05/further-evidence-offered-claim-genes-pandemic-coronavirus-can-integrate-human-dna
["Further evidence supports controversial claim that SARS-CoV-2 genes can integrate with human DNA"
Notice this article is primarily about the virus itself, not the vaccines made from it can integrate with human DNA, but that many scientists don't even think the virus itself can integrate with human DNA. Regarding the vaccines note that the article says:
'The researchers emphasized that viral integration did not mean people who recovered from COVID-19 remain infectious. But critics charged them with stoking unfounded fears that COVID-19 vaccines based on messenger RNA (mRNA) might somehow alter human DNA. (Janesich and Young stress that their results, both original and new, in no way imply that those vaccines integrate their sequences into our DNA.)
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The controversy has grown decidedly more civil since December. Both Young and Jaenisch say they received more intense criticism for their preprint than any studies in their careers, in part because some researchers worried it played into the hands of vaccine skeptics spreading false claims about the newly authorized mRNA vaccines. “If there ever was a preprint that should be deleted, it is this one! It was irresponsible to even put it up as a preprint, considering the complete lack of relevant evidence. This is now being used by some to spread doubts about the new vaccines,” Marie-Louise Hammarskjöld, a microbiologist at the University of Virginia, posted in a comment on bioRxiv at the time.
And what of the original journal submission? “They rejected it,” Jaenisch says.']
https://www.bbc.com/news/54893437
["Vaccine rumours debunked: Microchips, 'altered DNA' and more']
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https://www.health.gov.au/initiatives-and-programs/covid-19-vaccines/is-it-true/is-it-true-can-covid-19-vaccines-alter-my-dna#content
[" Is it true? Can COVID-19 vaccines alter my DNA?
No, COVID-19 vaccines do not alter your DNA. Find out more below. "] -
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If not the WT/JW relgion where else are 'we' to go? Why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism?
by Disillusioned JW insometimes jws wonder if the wt/jw is not the truth, 'then where else are we to go?
' i say 'why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism and why not a secular philosophy which teaches a way of life?
' what do you folks say?.
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Disillusioned JW
Have any of you ever wondered if some people might have some paranormal ability, such as telepathy? I sometimes wonder about that (but from a non-supernaturalistic perspective). I wonder if some very young children have such powers but later loose them if their parents tell them they are merely imagining things, or if they tell them to stop what they are doing - saying the demons are interacting with them. Science has shown that people loose certain brain abilities at a young age if they don't use those abilities/functions at young age. For example people born blind won't be able to consciously see as an adult (though they might experience what is called "blind sight"), after the problem which caused the blindness is corrected after a certain age. That is because the brain broke the initial neural connections that had been made for processing imagines from the eyes, if the brain's optical center hadn't received input. Likewise, experiments with new born cats raised in environments with no vertical objects/lines later don't see them which such objects are placed into their environment. For dc see the following:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150925-blindsight-the-strangest-form-of-consciousness
Cats and Vision: is vision acquired or innate?
I am reminded of the fictional TV episode of "Twilight Zone" called "Mute". It left a strong impact on my imagination. If you haven't seen it I encourage you to do so, then go the web page at https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/telepathic-five-year-old-studied-6781860 and read its article and watch its video.
The WT in a video at https://www.jw.org/en/library/books/good-news-from-god/draw-close-to-god/video-does-god-listen-hear-prayer/ implies (in the images shown in the video in conjunction with the spoken words of the video) that Jehovah can hear silent prayers because, according to the WT, he can see our neural circuitry and because he designed and made our brains. I don't believe Jehovah exists, but hypothetically if he exists then the argument given has some logic to it. It is like how a human designer of a computer circuit and of computer software can monitor the activity within the computer and determine what instructions it is processing at a given moment.
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If not the WT/JW relgion where else are 'we' to go? Why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism?
by Disillusioned JW insometimes jws wonder if the wt/jw is not the truth, 'then where else are we to go?
' i say 'why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism and why not a secular philosophy which teaches a way of life?
' what do you folks say?.
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Disillusioned JW
carla, the WT/JW religion teaches that if one studies the Bible by herself/himself she/he will not gain an accurate understanding of it. The WT/JW religion teaches that people need them to understand the words of Jesus recorded in the Bible and they teach that the other Christian denominations and sects are all false, as well as all other religions. Furthermore most of the people who become JWs are people who wanted to be in the one true religion (and specifically in the one true denomination/church of Christianity) and to be taught by it, and they concluded that all of the others are false. They also concluded that there must be a god who created and designed the universe and who has a purpose for humans. As a result, if those people later conclude that the WT/JW religion is false then they have no idea of which other Christian denomination/church is true, if any, and they feel they can't understand the Bible well on their own (even if they pray to Jehovah and/or Jesus for understanding). Some of them then wonder if all religions are false and if there is no god at all. Some of them also wonder how they should live their lives if no religion is true. Some of them also wonder what is the best way to be happy and they wonder how they can be happy if there is no loving caring creator god.
I am trying to help people to conclude that there is no god at all and that the supernatural does not exist at all, but that there is a way to (partially) know the universe and to (partially) understand it (through the study of science) and that there are beneficial secular philosophies that contain a number of true teachings. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined/2021/05/the-atheist-worldview-is-life-without-god-bleak-2/ and https://bigthink.com/personal-growth/epicureanism-greek-philosophy-atheists-happiness are some good web pages to read in those regards. -
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144000 and the great multitude
by cmaymann inhellow.
i am studying some material about jehovah’s witness – and i wonder why they think, that the 144.000 from rev 7 should be in heaven, and the great multitude should be on earth.
can anyone give me some argument for this opinion?.
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Disillusioned JW
One WT book that states the reasons why the WT believes the 144,000 and great crowd are two different groups, with the latter having an earthly hope, is the book called "Then Is Finished The Mystery Of God". It is copyright 1969. It does not likely completely agree with the current WT teaching on the matter, but at least it will tell inquiring people what the WT taught on the matter from 1969 to around 1980. It encourages readers to read some specific WT books and articles from before the year 1935 and maybe that is part of the reason the book is not included in the WT Library CD-ROM, nor the WT's online library. A transcription of the book (apparently by a faithful JW) can be read online at http://www.strictlygenteel.co.uk/mystery/mysterytitles.html . I noticed there are some minor typographical errors in the transcription of the book, but that source is still very reliable. That source for the book includes the illustrations of the book.
During all of the years I was a JW I had very little to no interest in the book. It bored me immensely (and I think I had a very hard time understanding it when I was under the age of 10 and even as a teenager), but during the past 7 days I have been reading the book with interest. During the past seven days I have become increasingly fascinated by the book. Now I understand the WT's perspective and reasoning upon the chapters of Revelation that the book discusses, and as a result now I can see how many JWs could believe the WT's teachings on the subject. I am now impressed by how skillful the author of that book was stating his line of reasoning for the WT's doctrines pertain to the prophecy of the book of Revelation. However, despite that I disagree with a large number of the WT book's teachings. I am convinced that according to the book of Revelation, the great crowd during the 1,000 years are in heaven and serve in the temple building. That realization is one idea which caused me to stop believing that the JW religion is the one true Christian denomination of Christianity.
I once or twice owned a hard copy of the book and of the Babylon the Great book, but I later sold them because at the time I was unimpressed with them and I wanted to downsize my personal library of WT books. But, now I regret selling those two books. My interest in the books is not so such for what bits of truth they contain (and there are some truths in them, including some historical elements and including some correct interpretations of what various biblical passages are intended to mean), but for the insight they give me of the WT's reasoning in support of their doctrines which existed during the time from my preteen years of life through my years as a college student. Now I even find reading the "Then Is Finished The Mystery Of God" as entertaining, like reading a fiction novel.
The following is something which puzzles me. If Revelation teaches that the great crowd who comes out of the great tribulation will be in heaven, and even more so if it says they are the same group as the 144,000, then according to Revelation who will Christ and his co-rulers be ruling over? I don't think Revelation says they will be ruling over themselves (like in a pure democracy) for Revelation says they will rule over/upon the Earth. But, according to Revelation who will be on Earth (to be ruled over) during that time if the great crowd and the 144,000 are up in heaven? One chapter in Revelation says Satan will be in the abyss for 1,000 years so he can't mislead the nations any more, but an earlier chapter says that all the people who receive the mark of the beast will be slaughtered by the god's execution forces and it says that the beast will slaughter those who refuse to receive its mark. If someone knows (or thinks s/he knows) the answers to these questions, please provide those answers.
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If not the WT/JW relgion where else are 'we' to go? Why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism?
by Disillusioned JW insometimes jws wonder if the wt/jw is not the truth, 'then where else are we to go?
' i say 'why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism and why not a secular philosophy which teaches a way of life?
' what do you folks say?.
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Disillusioned JW
Here is a website to learn more about atheism: https://www.atheists.org/ . They publish many books which make a strong case for atheism/naturalism; see their store at https://www.atheists.org/shop/ . https://www.atheists.org/about/history/ mentions the history of the American Atheists organization.
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Report Card : How’s President Biden Doing?
by minimus ini give him an f for falling down on the job..
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Disillusioned JW
"American Atheists’ Statement on Meeting with Biden Administration":