Posts by Disillusioned JW

33

Should Biden Have Mandated Vaccinations Today?

by Sea Breeze in

biden mandated widespread covid shots today.. "we've been patient," biden announced.

"but our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us.".

.

Disillusioned JW

Minor correction: Instead of saying "... and more than for more" I should have said "... and for more than ...".

Regarding "... about two-thirds of all U.S. employees, those who work for businesses with more than 100 workers" notice that the article says Biden is "... pushing large employers to have their workers inoculated or tested weekly." Biden is thus giving, at least for the time being, the option of having workers tested weekly in place of requiring them to get vaccinated, though Biden in the future might say they have to get vaccinated, even if they are being tested weekly.

33

Should Biden Have Mandated Vaccinations Today?

by Sea Breeze in

biden mandated widespread covid shots today.. "we've been patient," biden announced.

"but our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us.".

.

Disillusioned JW

I notice that the article at https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-deliver-six-step-plan-covid-19-pandemic-2021-09-09/ (with the title of "Attacking anti-vaccine movement, Biden mandates widespread COVID shots, tests"), which Sea Breeze linked to, does not say Biden is making the shots mandatory for anyone other than most USA federal employees and more than for more than 17 million healthcare workers. It is evidence though of Biden removing the option of USA federal workers getting tested frequently in place of getting vaccinated. Also, the article does say that Biden is pushing large employers to have their workers inoculated or tested weekly. It is disturbing that the vaccines are being made mandatory (by Biden and by many employers) for some people, especially for so many people.

[Update: I see the article does say the following.

"The U.S. Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) plans to take enforcement actions against private companies that do not comply with the vaccine mandate, with substantial fines of nearly $14,000 per violation.

The administration is also calling on entertainment venues to require tests or shots and for states to adopt mandates for school employees. It is also multiplying the fines charged to people who fail to wear masks on airplanes, trains and buses."]

My mother and my sister received the same vaccine brand I did and when I asked them if they had problems from the vaccine (other than temporary pain at the injection site) they said no.

I don't see (or hear) any evidence of the vaccine causing any significant side effects in my workplace, nor of anyone I know anywhere face to face. None of my co-workers have told me of the vaccine causing any problems for them, other an initial brief rash (in the case of one co-worker) at the injection site and other than pain at the injection site (in the case of some people). My workplace has about 500 workers (including temporaries) and the employer reports that about 84% to 90% us are fully vaccinated (the percentage varies from day to day due to temps leaving and new ones being hired).

In contrast, one young woman (probably under age 30) co-worker of mine told me she had been hospitalized due to contracting Covid-19. She also said that while she was hospitalized due to contracting Covid-19 (or maybe it was after she was released from the hospital) that she was eventually told she qualified to receive the vaccine. She said she wishes she had been told she qualified to receive the vaccine in time to avoid being hospitalized. She told me (and others) she was in the ICU for 3 weeks, due to having severe respiratory problems! She even told me she thinks she was in coma during much of her hospitalization, since she has little memory of what happened while she was in the ICU. She also said that Covid-19 caused her to loose much of her hair.

Regarding the claim that Covid-19 has only killed a tiny percentage of the population (USA population?) people should keep in mind that the percentage would be drastically higher if it wasn't for excellent modern medical care (using highly advanced technology) available in the USA - compared to what existed 100 years ago.

12

It takes a while, but eventually a person finds his way out.

by pistolpete in

it hard to believe------you don't have the truth.. sometimes, for many----it takes half of your life -- or more---to figure it out.

it was like swimming upstream with lead boots pulling you back in.

and the closer you got to the "real" truth----the further away you strayed from your intimate group.

Disillusioned JW

Hi Jes9087654. I can relate to what you are experiencing. Here are some ideas that might help you.

- You do what is called fading. It involves gradually reducing your involvement with the religion. Examples are gradually reducing time in: field service, meeting attendance, and commenting at meetings. You can also resign from the Theocratic Ministry (or what ever it is now called), without telling anyone why you resigned.

- You can re-establish (or strengthen) social contact with your non-JW family members and with wholesome non-JW friends you once had.

- Take care of your health. Do what you reasonably can to prolong your health span and your lifespan. Study reliable sources of information about what can be done to prevent health problems and to cure health problems.

- You can do a number of things which Vanderhoven7 recommends.

17

Letter from Mother: "...go right ahead on death's road and take your kids with you."

by silentbuddha in

so my jw father is sick.

my mother uses the opportunity to try and preach to my 16 year old daughter.

i simply told my mother to: "please refrain from trying to lure *my daughter* in with jehovah's witness questioning.

Disillusioned JW

silentbuddha, I am sorry that your mother is trying to get your daughter to go to the Kingdom Hall, despite you telling her not to do. I am sympathetic of your situation.

17

Letter from Mother: "...go right ahead on death's road and take your kids with you."

by silentbuddha in

so my jw father is sick.

my mother uses the opportunity to try and preach to my 16 year old daughter.

i simply told my mother to: "please refrain from trying to lure *my daughter* in with jehovah's witness questioning.

Disillusioned JW

silentbuddha, in reading what your mom wrote to your daughter, I don't think she was trying to preach to her. I think your mother believed that your daughter believes in Jehovah (and maybe even believed that you believe in Jehovah, even if you have told her multiple times that you no longer believe in Jehovah), and that part of the reason why she believes such is due to her hoping that you and your daughter will become saved and enter the paradise New Order.

In my own situation it was (and still is) difficult for my mom to accept that I am now an atheist. For years there were times when she taught I must still have some belief in Jehovah or that seeing certain things happening in the world must have caused me to believe in Jehovah again. She tells me she still hopes I will change my thinking and return to the organization and to worship of Jehovah, before it is too late (from her perspective). She really, really believes the great tribulation is extremely near. Most of the times when I tell her "I am an atheist" (in order to make a point with her that I will never become a believing JW again nor attend the Kingdom Hall again) I see great emotional pain in her face and I hear it in her voice. She doesn't want to be confronted with the idea that I am a convinced atheist - even though it was 10 years ago (and thus long ago) when I became an outright atheist. She loves her son (me) and remembers when I was a ministerial servant for years and that I even gave some Sunday sermon public talks, and was a regular pioneer. She also tells me I am a good son. My mother remembers those things about my past like your mother remembers your daughter's past love for Jehovah and your daughter's former worship of him.

Your mother wants your father to become healthy and she believes in the power of prayer to Jehovah God. She also apparently believed that if your daughter prayed to Jehovah for grandpa (your father) that it might help grandpa. As a result, she wrote the letter to you daughter - mostly for the benefit of your father (not to preach to your daughter and not to lure your daughter to becoming a JW). That is what I think she was thinking, but I might be wrong. Notice in her reply to you she says she thought your daughter still believed in Jehovah and possibly prayed to him. At the time your mother also said she was still hoping you would return to Jehovah. I think she meant all of that.

17

Letter from Mother: "...go right ahead on death's road and take your kids with you."

by silentbuddha in

so my jw father is sick.

my mother uses the opportunity to try and preach to my 16 year old daughter.

i simply told my mother to: "please refrain from trying to lure *my daughter* in with jehovah's witness questioning.

Disillusioned JW

redvip2000, you made good points but I think there is one problem with your line of reasoning. The WT/JWs say that when the governments of the world unitedly turn against Babylon the Great, that is the start of the Great Tribulation. The WT/JW's also say that when the Great Tribulation starts, because it is actually Jehovah executing adverse judgement ( through the governments) on false religion, it would be very likely too late to gain a favorable relationship with Jehovah God. Do you agree that such is what the WT teaches?

Furthermore in the case of the USA, the Constitution wouldn't actually have to changed, since the USA could sign and ratify a UN Treaty which bans religion. That is because the USA Constitution says all USA Treaties become part of the highest law of the USA - in practical effect an extension of the Constitution and perhaps even of higher authority than any parts of the Constitution which are in conflict with the Treaty. Another way would be if the USA government were to trample the Constitution by use of military force. However, I don't think any of these things could happen in the USA within the next 20 years.

51

PIMO elder

by Reservations in

jw
friends

i’m reservations, pimo elder.

i’m in no position to leave the organisation, maybe some people will see that as weak or whatever, but we have to all go down our own path in life.. i would like to be able to wake people up in my congregation, how do you think best to do this?

any ideas?.

Disillusioned JW

Reservations, here is my more complete reply.

There are many good ideas and recommendations expressed in a number of the posts in this topic thread. In this post I make some comments about the following quotes from this thread.

- "people wake up when they are ready to, often for personal reasons rather than anything doctrinal or organizational"

- " I think the best you can do , is to observe , and maybe if you know some jw who was questioning about jw / WT problem to show where to find more information"

- "They are happy believing what they do, otherwise they would have left a long time ago. You only have one life to live---why waste it on trying to help people who are not asking for your help. Let them live their own life and you live your own life. If they want to wake up they will."

- "As far as getting other Jobos to wake up, it's a vain wish. I have to be realistic not
idealistic here."

- "I now conclude that it is harder to convince a believing JW of the falsehood of their way than it is to convince a worldly person to accept JW beliefs. ow I respect their right to believe it if they want , they can see all that I can see."

- "... encourage people to do research, drop the names of a few non Witness sources, you can usually get away with it if it's historical stuff, try Edersheim."

- "... trying to wake up those in the congregation is a futile thing to do. ...So please don`t waste your life trying to wake people up , they wont do so until they themselves are ready to be woken up."

Some very active JWs (though they might be a very small percentage) though not appearing to be unhappy with the religion, are actually very unhappy with some aspects of religion. People (at least some them) in that category are active because the WT (and along with the Bible) convinced them it is their duty to Jehovah God to be active in the JW religion, even if they strongly dislike being active. But, they are active anyway because they believe it is the right thing to do, no matter how boring or unpleasant it is. I know that because I was one of them and I never expressed my unhappiness about such within the congregation, except for very few times with my mother (a JW). I kept my unhappiness about WT drudgery to myself. I was a regular pioneer for virtually three full years, and that was because of a sense of duty/obligation to Jehovah God, but it was a drudgery for me. I stopped pioneering because I couldn't take the drudgery any more and because I had obtained a Bachelor of Science college degree in Business Administration and I wanted to more fully pursue a career (instead of only working part-time).

I wish someone (whether inside the religion or outside of it) had offered to present reliable information and ideas that would have helped me to see problems with the JW religion (including with the Bible itself). I wish such had been presented to me during my teens or 20s. By the time I was was 31 years old I started having serious doubts (and started getting onto the internet and using a web browser soon after web browsers began being distributed) and had dropped down to about 1 hour to 3 hours of field service per month while still a ministerial servant). At about age 35-37 years old I basically stopped attending Kingdom Hall meetings, but I wish I had become inactive (or nearly inactive) in my early 20s, or especially in my teens. Though in my younger years I didn't have many doubts (though I had some), I was still open minded enough that I would have listened to good evidence (such as statements in old WT literature that show the weird false teachings the WT taught back then) and good arguments (even if initially only I only listened with the intent to disprove them).

However, I was afraid to read certain things (primarily books promoting atheism) for fear I might become an atheist and thus loose my prospect of salvation (if Jehovah God really does exist). I didn't want to become deceived into believing there is no god, if there really is a god. For periods of time I had an interest in reading science books about evolution (and I did read some science magazine articles about them), but in my teens I was afraid to read them due to fearing I might would be deceived.

Though I loved the idea of living forever in a peaceful paradise Earth, I very strongly disliked going out in field service, spending so many hours attending JW meetings, and being expected to study so such for the meetings. When considering giving comments/answers to questions in WT publications, I didn't like being expected to only make statements repeating the ideas in those publications. I wanted the freedom to think critically about what the WT literature says and to express ideas I might have that disagree with what the literature says is the correct answer. As a result, answering questions in the JW meetings was too routine and thus boring and a drag.

It would have been helpful if someone had personally encouraged me to read sources of quotes, with me being told that doing so would help me to get a clearer and deeper understanding of what the sources were saying. Furthermore, it would have been helpful if I had been told that doing such could potentially deepen my confidence in the Bible by seeing more fully what the historical and scientific sources said. You might be able to get away with saying such to select JWs, since the phrasing is stated in a reassuring way. At the same time, if people did check sources, in response to such encouragement, they would likely discover ideas that would cause them to see some problems with the WT's teaching.

31

Is the FACT that no God/god ever communicates with humans evidence that no God/god exists?

by Disillusioned JW in

is the fact that no god/god ever communicates with us evidence that no god/god exists?

i think it is very strong evidence that no personal god/god exits, especially a benevolent god who wants humans to know him him/her/it, to obey him/her/it, and/or to love him/her/it.

since no god/god communicates to us (including those who sincerely want communication with the/a god/god), wouldn't it be sensible for those who pray to what they believe is the/a god/god to cease all efforts to communicate to a god/god?

Disillusioned JW

In chapter one of Victor Stenger's book called GOD: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist, the very first argument he uses is under the heading of "Lack of Evidence". In that section he says the following.

"... as we saw in the preface, the overwhelming majority of prominent American scientists has concluded that God does not exist. If God exists, where is he? Philosopher Theodore Drange has termed this the lack-of-evidence-argument, .... Stenger later says that "... the very existence existence of nonbelievers in the world who have not resisted such belief [in God] is evidence against his existence. The problem of divine hiddenness is one that has taxed the abilities of theologians over the years--almost as much as the problem of evil ...."

Chapter 9 of the book is called "Possible and Impossible Gods" and one section of it has the heading of "The Hiddeness Problem". In that section Stenger refers to the hiddenness problem in the form of the argument stated in handouts by Schellenberg. At the end of the section Stenger says the following.

"The hiddenness problem relates most directly to the scientific arguments I have presented. If the theist attempts to refute my conclusions by claiming that God intentionally hides himself from us, then that God cannot be the personal, perfect loving God of liberal Christianity. However, there is another brand of Christian God." The very next statement in the chapter is the heading called "The Hideous Hidden God of Evangelical Christianity". In that section he paraphrases the statement of an evangelical (named Jeff Cook) as saying "...God does not wish to spend eternity with all human souls, but only the chosen few who, by blind faith in absence of all evidence, accept a Jewish carpenter who may or may not have lived two thousand years ago as their personal savior." The last paragraph of that section (and also of the chapter) says the following.

"The existence of the Catholic, evangelical, extreme Muslim, extreme Judaic God who hides himself from all but a selected elite cannot be totally ruled out. All I can say is that we have not one iota of evidence that he exists and, if he does exist, I personally want nothing to do with him. This is a possible god, but a hideous one."

To me, Stenger's GOD: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist book makes a vastly stronger case against believing in God than Dawkins' The God Delusion book.

31

Is the FACT that no God/god ever communicates with humans evidence that no God/god exists?

by Disillusioned JW in

is the fact that no god/god ever communicates with us evidence that no god/god exists?

i think it is very strong evidence that no personal god/god exits, especially a benevolent god who wants humans to know him him/her/it, to obey him/her/it, and/or to love him/her/it.

since no god/god communicates to us (including those who sincerely want communication with the/a god/god), wouldn't it be sensible for those who pray to what they believe is the/a god/god to cease all efforts to communicate to a god/god?

Disillusioned JW

PaddyTheBaddy (and others), I use the philosophical arguments in disproof of the existence of a god in forums in which there are those who believe in the existence of a god partly due to philosophical arguments.There are many Christians who are convinced that God does answer prayers (not just their own prayers, but anyone's prayers). Telling them the argument of divine hiddenness might help some of them to realize that a personal god does not exist.

My motivations are likely similar to those of Thomas Paine in regards to why he wrote the Age of Reason (except he believed in a deistic god and hoped for an afterlife, though he did not belief everyone receives an afterlife) and why Victor J. Stenger wrote his books which promote atheism. I also appreciate that Richard Dawkins wrote his The God Delusion book. Interestingly Dawkins' book has become extremely popular in Arabic speaking countries, so much so that Dawkins decided to give away free downloads of his book in Arabic, Urdu, Farsi and Indonesian.

See https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/mar/20/richard-dawkins-to-give-away-copies-of-the-god-delusion-in-islamic-countries . It says the following.

'Richard Dawkins is responding to what he called the “stirring towards atheism” in some Islamic countries with a programme to make free downloads of his books available in Arabic, Urdu, Farsi and Indonesian.

The scientist and atheist said he was “greatly encouraged” to learn that the unofficial Arabic pdf of the book had been downloaded 13m times. Dawkins writes in The God Delusion about his wish that the “open-minded people” who read it will “break free of the vice of religion altogether”. It has sold 3.3m copies worldwide since it was published in 2006 – far fewer than the number of Arabic copies that Dawkins believes to have been downloaded illegally.'

In addition to the above quote please see https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2019/03/13/translators-aim-bring-richard-dawkinss-books-atheism-evolution-muslim-audience/ . It says the following.

'... a group of translators wants to get Dawkins’s books in front of a new group of religious readers: Muslim readers, in Muslim-majority countries where atheism is rare.

“If you get enough people to talk about these ideas, if you convince people it’s okay to think about religion, to criticize religion — if you get a critical mass of people, you can probably change something, change the situation in these countries. … It’s a bit ambitious, but maybe not impossible,” said Jana Lenzova, director of the translation project. “I don’t mind what other people are, but I think they should have access to all the information so they can make up their own minds.”

... The translation project was Dawkins’s idea, inspired, he said, by two conversations he had — with a man who had translated “The God Delusion” into Arabic and claimed his illicit work was downloaded even more times than the number of copies the English bestseller sold and with a woman in Saudi Arabia who left her faith, her family and her country after reading the book.'

31

Is the FACT that no God/god ever communicates with humans evidence that no God/god exists?

by Disillusioned JW in

is the fact that no god/god ever communicates with us evidence that no god/god exists?

i think it is very strong evidence that no personal god/god exits, especially a benevolent god who wants humans to know him him/her/it, to obey him/her/it, and/or to love him/her/it.

since no god/god communicates to us (including those who sincerely want communication with the/a god/god), wouldn't it be sensible for those who pray to what they believe is the/a god/god to cease all efforts to communicate to a god/god?

Disillusioned JW

redvip2000, I say we should not care about a god that either doesn't exist, or doesn't ever intervene in human lives (and who doesn't provide an afterlife or intervene in an afterlife). But I do care if other people believe a personal god (or other spirit) exists, for such beliefs hinder the progress of human society.