Posts by dgp

35

I'm new here

by Diamonds in

i stumbled across this website a few months back and have often read the topics posted but this is the first time that i've posted anything myself.. all my family are jws - i got baptized when i was 17 but started to fade when i was about 20 and finally left at 22 when i managed to escape to university and move away from home.

ten years on and i am still out of the org but never disfellowshipped (although i would have been if they'd have known what i've been up to!).

the relationship with my family is not great - i get on with some members better than others.

dgp

Though I'm not a JW, I feel I have found lots of interesting people here. I hope you will, too. Welcome!

42

How many here desire 'Reality' over the fantasy of eternal life?

by AK - Jeff in

jw
friends

me.. wasting time believing in such silliness is like hoping one day to turn into mickey mouse.

why not accept life now, while you have it, and understand that like all others before you, you are going to die too.

you won't wake from that.

dgp

My Catholic mother raised me under the principle that I shouldn't lie, or accept a lie as truth. And a good Catholic I was at that. That is why I prefer reality over fantasy. If reality is, as it seems to be, that we die and that's it, well, so be it. Fantasy would be useless.

Once upon a time, a woman I met was dying of cancer. She kept saying that she would do many things when she got better. She knew she wouldn't. She was just saying that because she wanted to keep going, be strong, and live her life the best way she could. She died a peaceful death, but she didn't pass away under a delusion. That fantasy I was very much in agreement to tolerate.

70

Atheist with crisis of conscience. Please help.

by parakeet in

jw
friends

i'm an atheist having a serious crisis of conscience.

please help.. i've read many, many posts that talk about atheism as a faith as distinct as any other faith.

there has also been much made of the atheist lifestyle.. my dilemma -- i don't know what the atheistic faith entails.

dgp

Parakeet, you're falling prey to the idea that only religion can give you morals. That's just not true. And it seems you miss the sense of a clear direction, of someone telling you what is right or wrong. Well, that's the fun part of being an atheist: you give yourself direction. Your mind and your heart tell you what is right and wrong. You are free to analyze things and decide what is correct in your opinion. You don't have a faith to impose on anyone, and you can live in peace with all. It's usually the religious who can't suffer the existence of someone who doesn't share their faith.

Do you need a religion to tell you that killing is bad? The answer is, no. All you need to do is to see yourself in all your brothers and sisters (and, they don't have to share your religion for you to see them that way).

You may be lost now. Hang on. Keep going.

I was deeply religious. I can't be religious anymore. And, sorry as I am for this because it means I won't have someone by my side, I can't be any other way. This is me.

70

Atheist with crisis of conscience. Please help.

by parakeet in

jw
friends

i'm an atheist having a serious crisis of conscience.

please help.. i've read many, many posts that talk about atheism as a faith as distinct as any other faith.

there has also been much made of the atheist lifestyle.. my dilemma -- i don't know what the atheistic faith entails.

dgp

I don't think Mr. Christopher Hitchens will object to my copying this here (source: god is not great).

"Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically; the disagreement between professor Stephen Jay Gould and professor Richard Dawkins, concerning "punctuated evolution" and the unfilled gaps in post-Darwinian theory is quite wide as well as quite deep, but we shall resolve it by evidence and reasoning and not by mutual excommunication... We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mistery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books. Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and -since there is no other metaphor- also the soul. We not believe in heaven or hell, yet no statistic will ever find that we commit more crimes of greed or violence than the faithful (In fact, if a proper statistical inquiry could ever be made, I am sure the evidence would be the other way). We are reconciled with living only once, except through our children, for whom we are perfectly happy to notice that we must make way, and room. We speculate that it is at least possible that, once people accepted the fact of their short and struggling lives, they might behave better toward each other and not worse. We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary also holds true - that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow".

"Most important of all, perhaps, we infidels do not need any machinery of reinforcement. We are those who Blaise Pascal took into account when he wrote to the one who says "I am so made that I cannot believe". In the village of Montaillou, during one of the great medieval persecutions, a woman was asked by the Inquisitors to tell them from whom she had acquired her heretical doubts about hell and resurrection. She must have known that she stood in terrible danger of a lingering death administered by the pious, but she responded that she took them from nobody and had evolved them all by herself. (Often, you hear the believers praise the simplicity of their flock, but not in the case of this unforced and conscientious sanity and lucidity, which has been stamped out and burned out in the cases of more humans than we shall ever be able to name)."

"There is no need for us to gather every day, or every seven days, or on any high and auspicious day, to proclaim our rectitude or to grovel and wallow on our unworthiness. We atheists do not require any priests, or hierarchy above them, to police our doctrine. Sacrifices and ceremonies are abhorrent to us, as are relics and the worship of any images or objects (even including objects in the form of one of man's most useful innovations: the bound book). To us no spot on earth is or could be "holier" than another: to the ostentatious absurdity of the pilgrimage, or the plain horror of killing civilians in the name of some sacred wall or cave or shrine or rock, we can counterpose a leisurely or urgent walk from one side of the library or the gallery to another, or to lunch with an agreeable friend, in pursuit of truth or beauty. Some of these excursions to the bookshelf or the lunch or the gallery will obviously, if they are serious, bring us into contact with belief and believers, from the great devotional painters and composers to the works of Augustine, Aquinas, Maimonides and Newman. These mighty scholars may have written many evil things or many foolish things, and been laughably ignorant of the germ theory of disease or the place of the terrestrial globe in the solar system, let alone the universe, and this is the plain reason why there are no more of them today, and why there will be no more of them tomorrow..."

53

Would you NOT hire a JW because they're a JW?

by Open mind in

would you let a jw's religion affect your decision to use their services?.

.

om.

dgp

Interesting. Marked for reference.

8

Is the pratice of disfellowshipping valid today?

by wannabe in

i don't want anyone to think i advocate or condone wickedness in any way; but that is not what is at issue here.

what took place in the first century, as far as removing the wicked from among the congregation in the first century i find no fault with.

my bone of contention is, should the governing body of the watchtower society, with their elder arrangement, take it upon themselves, to follow exactly, the lead of those first century christian's, and disfellowship the many that they have today?.

dgp

Fatfreek, I remember that many priests wouldn't even hear your sins. Many a priest will tell you "Knowledge of your sins is a matter between you and your God. All I care about is that you've come here seeking forgiveness".

I think care is warranted in trying to understand what you say about disfellowshipment and confession resembling each other. Disfellowshipping means you're pushed out of the church. Confession means you go to a priest and ask for forgiveness for all of your sins, which is usually granted. Never showing up to confess your sins does not result in your being pushed out of the church. Excommunication is more similar to disfelloshipment, with the "small" diference that it doesn't force your relatives to shun you. I'm sorry, but I think you're comparing apples and oranges.

8

Is the pratice of disfellowshipping valid today?

by wannabe in

i don't want anyone to think i advocate or condone wickedness in any way; but that is not what is at issue here.

what took place in the first century, as far as removing the wicked from among the congregation in the first century i find no fault with.

my bone of contention is, should the governing body of the watchtower society, with their elder arrangement, take it upon themselves, to follow exactly, the lead of those first century christian's, and disfellowship the many that they have today?.

dgp

I'm not a JW but here's my two cents. Let me wear my religious hat, that I just took off the corner where I tossed it so many years ago.

I used to believe that whether you did what your God wanted, or not, was your God's and your own business. I always failed to see how someone else could claim a right to cut you off from your God. I always thought that it was your God who would have the right to determine whether you had failed or not. So, I never ever agreed with the idea of disfellowshipping, or excommunication, or whatever. No one has that right.

In a more practical sense, I believe disfellowshipment serves the purpose of execution of the dissidents in Soviet Russia. If I don't like you, you're gone. That's it.

15

Do Witnesses serve Jehovah for a "Paradise" payday!!

by Witness 007 in

yes go to meetings and field service otherwise no "payday" for you!

witnesses spend many hours serving jehovah because they will live forever in paradise on earth.....yes, they won't die like the rest of mankind.....so is this really why people serve god...for a final payday in the future?.

dgp

To be fair, I feel that most revealed religions and most religious people do this: they expect a reward. In some religions the reward is simply like the fruit of hard work. I have the feeling that, for JW's, the reward is being spared when Jah the whimsical decides to destroy everyone.

Not everyone does the right thing for the sake of the right thing.

I have the feeling, however, that expecting a payday comes with conversion. Have you noticed that Jehovah's witnesses tell you that "you can live on paradise Earth"? From the very start, they tell you that something is in it for you. How can you not expect JW's to expect something in return, if that was what they were offered in the first place? And, of course, the same is also true of other religions and Christians.

17

CONJURING at the Watchtower (Old Dogs with their New Tricks)

by Terry in

i've known two professional magicians in my lifetime.. one was a friend and the other was a very close acquaintance.. both would discuss magic with me at different times.

each was devoted to protecting the secrecy necessary to maintain the brotherhood of illusion.. however, i am a curious person.

i am challenged by the unknown.

dgp

Marked.

9

One definitive article covering Lifton, Hassan, propaganda and cognitive dissonance

by besty in

http://www.freeminds.org/psychology/mind-control/a-study-of-the-persuasion-techniques-used-by-jehovahs-witnesses-and-the-watchtower.html.

grab yourself a coffee and sit down for 30 minutes of high quality research material covering all the bases.

you may even want to respond to jw apologist 'martin' who has left a comment on there.......

dgp

Marked for later.