what is the most valuable thing your mother taught you?.
as an aside was she a witness or not at the time?.
uun .
My mother died when I was 7. She taught me the meaning of death and the value of life.
I learned more from her dying than I could have possibly learned from her living.
She was a JW. I had her old publisher record card. I found it in the KH attic. She was getting in 25-30 hours a month back in the early 1950's It said "faithful until death".
I finally threw it away about 20 years ago.
the gb brooks no questions or dissention.
their brand of truth seems quite delicate and incapable of standing up to scrutiny.
"the truth is incontrovertible.
Truth is what can be successfully defended. Religion relies on dogma to defend its conclusions.
i am noticing that as time goes times on, the jw's become more stranger.
they seem a whole more distant at least to me.they also more depressed at least the older ones i see.. what do you think..
The word "appreciate" has now become a buzz word with all the irritation that goes along with "buzzzzzz".
The worse things get the more I hear "appreciate this" and "appreciate that".
I no longer appreciate the "truth", brothers, spiritual paradise, near, around the corner, service, meetings, assemblies, CO visits, the Bible, Bible aids, counsel etc. etc.
writing and speaking is all about communication.. if we are casually engaged the level of precision vanishes.
simple ideas=simplified language.. but, as we attempt to convey accuracy, specificity and numerical precision--what then?
without a clear standard is proper communication headed for extinction?.
Damn. Now I'm afraid to write. By the way is there a spell checker on this forum? I copy and paste my posts into my word processor to catch errors.
But someitmes I'm rushed.
regarding the governing bodys new light relative to matthew 24:45-47, anointedjw.org recently said the following:.
this new light certainly poses a problem for the governing body.
perhaps this is another reason why they have not yet published a sober and scriptural xplanation of this new light.
There are hundreds of problems with JW interpretations. The only ones they change are those that are at the top of their list.
The fact that they chose to address this particular problem is very interesting. They are essentially saying that the most important thing they have to make clear is that "THEY ARE THE BOSS". This means that they feel their authority is weakening.
Selling properties. Reducing magazine size. Closing and consolidating branch offices are all signs of an organization in decline. We're talking "plant closings" and "layoffs".
All the special schools are aimed at hardening their core followers by making them feel special and indispensable.
The increasing number of partakers at the memorial is also an ominous sign for them. It suggests that this is more than the usual abused housewife who wants to be a Bride of Christ. A lot of the new partakers believe they have a calling or prophetic mission. They represent a challenge to the New governing body. The old governing body didn't claim their anointed status by means of a tortured conflict of choosing life in heaven or life on earth. They weren't presented with that choice. The new governing body members all became "anointed" in connection with a sense of self importance. The new governing body had to go against the stream to claim their anointing. Their motivation was undoubtedly a desire for prominence bolstered by their belief they had some divine role to play in the future of the organization. Of course these motivations are repressed. Instead of facing up to their old thought processes they choose to de-legitimize all the upstarts that might challenge them.
In effect this new interpretation is meant to kill off their rivals for authority.
i once heard of a circuit overseer blaming a loyal ministerial servant, that served as the accounts servant, of steeling from the contribution boxes, simply because he deposited the congregation funds bi-weekly instead of twice a week.
due to the accusation, the ms was immediately removed without hearing his side of the story.
isn't this rather counter-intuitive and innefficient?
I have no problem with people in authority acting like assholes. Once you get over the fact that there is no holy spirit hovering over these people you shouldn't expect their behavior to be unique. Authoritarian bullys are everywhere.
i'm curious about human intelligence and beliefs as a natural phenomenon.. i've long suspected that even the most "normal" and well-educated person harbors "fringe" beliefs.. the purpose of this thread is not to mock beliefs of any kind.
rather it is for all of us to toss in to a pile our own unprovables so .
we can, as a group, evaluate how natural and non-neurotic such thinking might well be.. .
Defianttruth,
I'm not talking about a warp. I'm talking about something that we don't understand.
IF (big if ) you believe intelligent entities with unknown technology are visiting the earth you have to also believe that they accomplish this by means of some unknown technology that untilize unknown principles. Remember it was a little more than 200 years ago that Faraday and Maxwell discovered the idea of electro/magnetic fields. Look what that led to. It's not hard to imagine extraordinary things that could be accomplished by a civilization that is a thousand times older than our own.
There is no use worrying about it though. No need to build landing pads with large letters saying "Aliens Wellcome"
another wt article which causes jw's to doubt their own perceptions of reality.
) in this particular article titled " for those loving jehovah, " there is no stumbling block " - the wt society stoops to new, or rather re-hashed lows to insinuate that most if not all jw's really misunderstand causes of stumbling as it's just their minds that are imperfect, messed up, or gone entirely anyway.
the first abhorrent bit of information here describes a witness man who " fought " with feelings of being homosexual and of course the elders thought they had the perfect antidote to keep him from his alleged " abnormal " desires.
If someone is upset with the Watchtower they DO need to correct their thinking. But not in the way the Watchtower would have you do it.
Being upset is natural when someone has misled you. Continuing to upset yourself over these things is irrational.
A little rational emotive therapy might help.
Example:
"How dare those terrible witnesses predict the end coming in 1975 and then saying it was my misunderstanding."
Quite simply they did "dare" to go out on a limb. Their failure to predict accurately means that they can't be relied on to make accurate predictions.
There is no law against religious organizations making wrong estimates about the future. Don't rely on their predictions anymore.
Cut your losses. Move on.
Above all avoid doing anything they suggest will help you.
Being upset is natural when someone has misled you.
i'm curious about human intelligence and beliefs as a natural phenomenon.. i've long suspected that even the most "normal" and well-educated person harbors "fringe" beliefs.. the purpose of this thread is not to mock beliefs of any kind.
rather it is for all of us to toss in to a pile our own unprovables so .
we can, as a group, evaluate how natural and non-neurotic such thinking might well be.. .
Duplicate Post Ignore
i'm curious about human intelligence and beliefs as a natural phenomenon.. i've long suspected that even the most "normal" and well-educated person harbors "fringe" beliefs.. the purpose of this thread is not to mock beliefs of any kind.
rather it is for all of us to toss in to a pile our own unprovables so .
we can, as a group, evaluate how natural and non-neurotic such thinking might well be.. .
UFO's: I have always been a science nerd. Einstein is the closest thing to a hero for me. I understand the importance of witnesses to events as a means of establishing validity to claims. I paid close attention to events that involved multiple witnesses. But, because I couldn't duplicate anomalous experiences the so called personal reports never got to the level of belief for me. UNTIL... my family and neighbors actually witnessed a UFO. I combed the neighborhood for other witnesses because I didn't want to just trust my own and other family members judgement. Altogether I found 3 neighbors that witnessed the same thing. Also a friend who lived 3 miles away witnessed the same event on the same night. As it turned out that night was one of the busiest nights for UFO sightings all over the world up to that point in time (NUFOR report).
So, I have become a believer in UFO's. I don't believe in all UFO reports. I only believe the ones that are similar to what I experienced. I don't believe in the anal probing abductions reports that are retrieved through hypnosis. I also don't believe in reports that are witnessed by only one person.
Do I believe these are visitors from planets in our physical universe. It depends on what you consider our physical universe. No I don't believe it is likely that they have traveled millions of light years. Instead, I believe it is possible to jump dimensionally. The behavior of the craft we witnessed suggested some sort of coordinate linking up with a kind of beam to energize the jump.
Do I believe anyone should believe my story? No. But, judging from the total picture of half-way credible reports I believe there will one day be some kind of ongoing contact.
Conspiracy theories are conjured up by the same mentality that believes in God. People want to believe that someone is in control. God. Secret Societies. Satan. Even the concept of "free-will" is an illusion that emerges from the idea that there are agents who control. We have no soul or little man inside that's pushing the buttons. And there is no big man outside the universe who is in control.
