Posts by TonusOH

32

Can you list the positive points of being a JW as against the negative points of being a JW in your experience ?

by smiddy3 in

i was a twenty y/old when i converted to the jw religion and was a problem drinker and i was a chain smoker .when i was baptized at a circuit assembly a year later , my conversion and change in lifestyle was given as an example of the effectiveness of incidental witnessing to the audience.. so i can point to the 2 positives becoming a jw .. 1.i gave up smoking.

2.i gave up drinking for a while ,but because i still had association with my wife`s and my family who were not jw`s ,i learnt to control my social drinking when i started again.. and i have been a responsible drinker ever since ,even though i left the religion 29 years ago.. the negative points of being a jw in my 32 years of being one ?

are far too great to list here .. love to hear your thoughts..

TonusOH

I think that the JWs feel that any participation in the political process implies that they trust it to solve humanity's problems, which would imply that they lack faith in God. I think that view is nonsense. But it lets them erect an additional wall between themselves and "the world." Cults thrive when they can find ways to keep outsiders at bay, and this is an effective way to do that.

117

14 kids dead and one teacher at Texas school shooting.

by jojorabbit in

another shooting, this time 14 kids dead more wounded and a teacher dead.

i am all for the second amendment and this does not change my mind.

but i do hate this kind of thing, makes my stomach turn.

TonusOH

I haven't lived or spent much time outside of the US. I lived for many years in a densely-populated east-coast city with very strict gun control laws and very little legal ownership, and now I live in a relatively sparsely-populated city in the midwest which allows gun ownership and concealed carry. I feel far safer in the latter. And the only time I was ever threatened with a gun was in the former.

Don't get me wrong, I'd be perfectly fine if we did not have guns. I have never fired one (aside from a BB pistol) and would not own any, as I would worry about accidental discharges harming or killing someone. But I am also aware that it won't happen. I believe that the bigger issue here is that we do not punish illegal ownership as harshly as we should, while also not realizing how legal ownership can -counterintuitive as it may seem- make a community safer.

117

14 kids dead and one teacher at Texas school shooting.

by jojorabbit in

another shooting, this time 14 kids dead more wounded and a teacher dead.

i am all for the second amendment and this does not change my mind.

but i do hate this kind of thing, makes my stomach turn.

TonusOH

We aren't going to get rid of guns. The 2nd Amendment isn't going anywhere and gun ownership is very high here. We have regulated legal firearms every way we can. I doubt that we will ever really even attempt to get rid of gun ownership in the US. We should increase the penalties for illegal gun ownership dramatically as one step.

Then we can ask ourselves why so many shootings occur in schools. I think a major reason is that there are no armed guards or police allowed at the schools. Go to a school with a loaded gun, and you're the only armed person there. You are able to shoot at teachers and children until either an unarmed person risks their life to stop you, or someone with a gun arrives to stop you. The latter happened in this case, after 21 people were shot, 19 fatally.

As for societal acceptance of the dangers of gun ownership- many of us drive cars, even though we know that hundreds of thousands of people die every year in auto accidents, with millions more injured, some seriously. We drive anyway. We also keep working to make cars safer and drivers smarter and more responsible. We could eliminate auto deaths by getting rid of cars, but we have come to accept a death toll far higher than that from guns because we cannot see our way to doing that.

There are no perfect solutions. If you can get rid of guns, get rid of them and enjoy a safer society. If you can't, keep working to make society safer in other ways. Trying to score political points every time someone massacres a bunch of innocent people doesn't make anyone safer.

31

How is the 'Cost of Living Crisis' affecting you?

by nicolaou in

here in the uk we've recently had the price cap on household energy bills raised by around £800 and there'll be another similar raise this autumn.. food prices are up, petrol is around £1.82 per litre - that's $10.37 per gallon for our american friends - and inflation is currently running at 9%.

business are being hit as ordinary folk prioritise their spending.

young folks are effectively priced out of the housing market and wage rises are not keeping pace.. mrs nic' and i are fortunate in that we're both in secure employment and with the kids moved out and mortgage paid off our outgoings are thankfully low.

TonusOH

The result is a shortage. If the price is held low enough, it might force producers to operate at a loss, which basically means they will stop producing.

Exactly. Many (most?) shortages are caused by a shortage of materials. In other words, you just can't point at manufacturers and demand that they produce more. And if you force them to keep prices artificially low, they may not be able to afford the materials they need when those become available. That is how a situation of scarcity can last longer than it should-- when people with political intentions step in and try to solve problems that they do not understand, they usually make things worse.

The US has the capability to produce more oil than we need; possibly more than any other nation on the planet. We are deliberately limiting ourselves because some politicians and activists think that, if you put a nation under enough adverse pressure, it will invent a magical form of energy that solves all of our energy and climate issues. If you cannot distinguish between real life and a comic book, you probably should not be running a nation.

41

The Bizarre Free Will

by John_Mann in

two years before i left jw world i came to a strange conclusion about the jw cosmology and the free will doctrine.. basically i came to conclusion that satan is right about the universal sovereign issue.

and i came with that just only using jws premises, no outside apostasy.

i just told to my sister what she thought about it, and she said to me: dont tell anyone about this!.

TonusOH

And two out three perfect human beings chose evil (Adam, Eve and Jesus between 6000 BCE and 33 CE)

That means that, in actuality, two out of two perfect human beings chose evil. After all, the third "human" was God. A 100% failure rate, in other words.

Those apples must have been downright amazing!

31

How is the 'Cost of Living Crisis' affecting you?

by nicolaou in

here in the uk we've recently had the price cap on household energy bills raised by around £800 and there'll be another similar raise this autumn.. food prices are up, petrol is around £1.82 per litre - that's $10.37 per gallon for our american friends - and inflation is currently running at 9%.

business are being hit as ordinary folk prioritise their spending.

young folks are effectively priced out of the housing market and wage rises are not keeping pace.. mrs nic' and i are fortunate in that we're both in secure employment and with the kids moved out and mortgage paid off our outgoings are thankfully low.

TonusOH

We're doing well, two full-time and one part-time income are plenty, though we are feeling the pinch in high costs for gasoline, food, and HVAC (the winter heating bills were particularly rough).

Regarding price caps, the downside to them is that they do not solve the issue of supply. Keeping prices down guarantees that the supply will be gone earlier, and shortages will begin sooner and be felt longer. One way to deal with that is rationing, which is another kind of shortage. Runaway prices are not good either, but in a time of scarcity and inflation there aren't any good solutions at the local level. The administration seems intent on making things worse in the hopes that it encourages development of alternative energy, but it feels a lot like the 70s, when Carter was telling us that the good times were over and Reagan came along promising that they were just beginning.

In other words, if you're trying to avoid Trump 2.0, this is the worst possible way to do it.

13

Unpopular opinion

by Judgerussellford in

so i've asked this question to witnesses in the past (super no no question to ask by the way but hilarious responses) to bosses and coworkers, and random people of different faiths and i'm curious to know how mixed of a response this community will give.

bible believers or not your oppinion is very welcome.

technically according to scripture we are gods sons.

TonusOH

That being said, does the Devil himself have to die after Armageddon?

That depends on how you perceive the nature of god. Is god unable to act against his nature, so that he must take certain actions in order to remain true to himself? Or is he free to go off-script if he so wishes? The Biblical god has no equal in power and he cannot be brought to account, so the only person who could stay his hand is himself.

We know that god was not a stickler to the letter of the law, allowing humans to break the rules sometimes and not face punishment. So it seems as if he understands that rigid adherence to rules is not always the right way to act. If this is the case, then the Devil would not have to die at Armageddon. God can forgive him and let him live, without violating his own nature. I suppose he would need a very good reason for doing that, but it can happen.

As a non-believer, I can look at the issue from that angle. When I was a JW, I would have said that there was no way that Jehovah would allow the Devil to live, because Satan had directly challenged God's rule and caused so much suffering. And to be honest, just because God is willing to bend the rules for the sake of justice doesn't mean he would find any reason to spare the Devil. And if the Devil was unrepentant, it would make no sense to forgive him, instead of putting him out of everyone's misery.

That being said, we are left to wonder why God didn't just do that from the very start and save us the thousands of years of suffering and grief.

540

Simple Question Re 1914

by Slidin Fast in

wt claims that satan was thrown out of heaven in october 1914 precipitating ww!

and the end times.

a small problem with that is ww1 started on july 28th 1914 whilst satan was still in heaven picking his nose.. how did we not see this and waste years of precious life?

TonusOH

You just need to use your imagination. The war in heaven starts on July 28, after Satan interferes in Earth matters one time too many (sorry, Archduke Ferdinand!) and Yahweh has gotten a bit soft and lazy, so he lets the battle go on way too long. Finally, in early October god decides enough is enough- he snaps his fingers and WHOOSH! Satan and his demons fall to Earth. Then god presses his Easy button and gets back to watching movies.

I mean, I'm no Joseph Smith, but that's not such a bad interpretation, is it?

70

2034 - A Future History of Jehovah's Witnesses

by slimboyfat in

i don't know what i am talking about... read this post at your peril.

back in the 1960s there was, seemingly, a brief period of relaxation in authoritarianism among jehovah's witnesses.

those who have read raymond franz's 'crisis of conscience' will have heard the story about dan sydlik's remark about the need to 'open some windows to let some air in here'.

TonusOH

If you are an organization pinning its hopes on "there must be at least one person still alive who was around in 1914" then the word 'desperate' just isn't enough. I guess that in 2035, the argument will be "advances in medicine have added ten... no! Twenty years to the average lifespan... that 120-year-old might make it to 140! Yes, 2054 is the real end date! And, fortuitously, I'll either be dead or senile by then, and someone else will need to make that annoying year work..."

29

The Genesis 3:15 woman.

by Fisherman in

genesis 3:15 says that the woman’s seed would be in enmity with the serpent’s seed.

although the bible reveals that the woman’s seed is jesus and christians that go to heaven with christ, it does not identify the woman directly.

we at jw believe that the woman is symbolic.

TonusOH

I don't remember for sure, but she represented god's spiritual organization in its entirety? Which is how her seed could be Jesus.