Posts by Apognophos

39

why didnt God just do this?

by sowhatnow in

for one thing, i cant get past genesis, but no matter.. when god told adam and eve if you eat from the tree youll die.

so why did he not simple let them die and not allow the offspring to?.

you see, if i was a god, and i told two people that, id let them die , .

To be clear, though, the Genesis account does not speak of sinfulness or imperfection being inherited. That's a Christian concept introduced by Paul. The only things being inherited according to the story itself were the specific curses on man:

Man:

- Enmity with snake (will have his heel bitten, now that snake is low to the ground without his legs).

- Ground will not be as fruitful.

Woman:

- "Sorrowful" pregnancy and painful childbirth.

- Enslaved to man through sexual desire.

And snake:

- Legs removed, and will now (literally, or perhaps poetically) be eating dust.

- Will get its head stepped on by man when it attacks, since it is now low to the ground.

But I agree with your basic reasoning point, EdenOne, namely that from both the Jewish and the Christian standpoint, God chose to design us a certain way which allows imperfection or a curse to propagate to each one of us. He could simply have chosen to not design us that way.

8

Inactive for how long?

by Powermetal4ever in

jw
friends

as the title says: how long does it take to be inactive in fs before some elders comes knocking on the door?

or calling or whatever... any experiences?

how was it for you guys?

Apognophos

Yes, depending on their personalities, you might hear from them as soon as you become "irregular" (a zero-hour month within the last 6 months), or after a couple months of irregularity when it becomes clear that the first month wasn't a fluke.

11

Interview with an "Unbelieving Mate" (UBM): Gary Neal

by garyneal in

.

Apognophos

Thanks for your story, I found it interesting. You don't mention in detail what your current beliefs are, but you still identify as Christian. That surprises me because it sounds like you do not have faith in the Bible as God's word anymore, which would make you more of a deist, wouldn't it? I might have misunderstood your position.

@Simon: I tend to attribute the gender inequality to men just being less spiritual, generally. I don't know if garyneal would agree with that, as he was naturally a spiritual person his whole life, but I think most men are (perhaps pig-headedly) trying to be self-sufficient and do not want a big boss in the sky telling them what to do. Women are also "networkers" and are more likely to want to go to community functions (like church) in order to meet their neighbors and make friends. That's my slightly sexist take on the subject, anyway.

112

Scientists Should Not Dismiss Genesis So Quickly

by Chris Tann in

nasa discovery proves the bible scientifically accurate.

the debate.

for decades there has been a long standing debate between science and religion as to the validity of the biblical genesis account of creation.

Apognophos

Sorry that people are not always kind here, Chris Tann. The reason is that they have all been where you are now mentally, and have moved past those beliefs, so they have no respect for them now. The problem is that they forget what it's like to believe that way, and don't remember how they would have wanted to be talked to at that time.

An additional contributing factor is that we do have a couple disingenuous Christian posters here who do a copy-paste-and-run on the forum from time to time, with no interest in having a conversation, and your OP made you look like another one of them. I guess you didn't mean to paste all that, so it was a miscommunication.

Anyway, you asked for specific points to respond to, and I wanted to remind you that I gave two examples of problematic points in the Genesis account in the third post in this thread. Thanks.

37

Do Jehovah witnesses exploit the most vulnerable in society?

by Blind_Of_Lies in

jw
friends

during my final few years being active with the jws i noticed that the vast majority of people who were studying or joining the group in general where those that the rest of society would consider disabled and/or severely mentally ill. now by disabled i dont mean i lost my leg in nam kind of disabled... in some cases these people were mentally retarded, had the minds of children, were severely abused as children or even as adults and as a result had personality disorders that put them on the edge of society.... and then we had the full on crazies... about 15 years ago one of the brothers who worked at the local welfare office somehow started a study with a person who was a paranoid schizophrenic.

he met her because she was a client of the welfare office.

she got handed off to a sister who studied with her, then started driving her to her doctors appointments, and to get grocerys, and took her to congregation events.

Apognophos

I agree, although I would hesitate to call love-bombing a "tool" because it's not something that JWs employ intentionally. There's no training or articles that encourage them to do more than simply welcome people to the meetings; it's mostly a natural response from people desperate to have new fellow believers, which cools off once the person is no longer a new face.

Although there are other avenues to help needy ones, I'm not aware of any support groups or governments that send people door to door looking to help people. So it's not surprising that JWs are effective at claiming these people. Many people won't even answer the door if they don't know who's at it, because they have no need for a stranger at their door to offer them anything. Whereas there are people who are praying to God for help, for a sign, for answers, and then, bam, one day the JWs call after they were praying, and this one (not such a) coincidence motivates them to join the religion.

So it's hard to see how we can undercut the Society in their ability to reach these people unless there were qualified clinical workers proactively going door-to-door offering help to people. Or, at the very least, if ex-Witnesses went out in their own kind of ministry to give an anti-witness (though negative messages are not anywhere near as effective as positive ones). It seems that Witnesses are the only people who are sufficiently motivated to spend time going to people's doors, however.

6

Can you imagine what that would be like?

by cookiemaster in

hey guys, here's something to think about.

in my country there's a small town of a few thousands people were most people are jws.

can you image what's like living there?

Apognophos

Wow, that could be a recipe for losing one's mind. A real life Watchtowistan!

32

Jehovah's organization growing like never before: but bible studies are way down. Huh?

by kneehighmiah in

jw
friends

so the governing body likes to keep claiming incredible growth.

at the same time they claim bible studies are way down.

are the finally admitting what we've known all along, that they can no longer recruit outsiders?

Apognophos

Others have made this observation before me, but now that they mentioned it, I'm hearing it at my meetings too. When the friends are asked to relate encouraging experiences from field service, they're often of the form:

"The householder objected with X, but I responded with Y, and we had a good conversation. They didn't take anything, but it was a good conversation."

"The householder was an atheist so I asked him the question Q, which I prepared for any atheists I encountered. He still isn't interested, but maybe it got him thinking."

"We didn't talk to anyone today, but we had a good upbuilding conversation in the car group."

"...Well, at least people know that we're out doing the work that Jesus commanded us to do."

-------------

It's my theory of the moment that the Society sees the writing on the wall w.r.t. field service, and in order to continue to be able to boast about growth, they are moving towards other figures that they can reliably brag about, such as translation and web site statistics.

41

What really woke me up: I started noticing most JWS are weirdos..

by kneehighmiah in

jw
friends

thankfully my parents are converts so they aren't wierd.

seemed pretty popular by all accounts.

they are "popular" jws even now.

Apognophos

Considering that the original disciples were (generally) "unlettered and ordinary", I didn't give any thought to the fact that JWs often were uneducated or outright strange. As a born-in, I also had nothing to compare it with since I did not associate much with non-believers.

What did start to wake me up, though, on a similar note, was when I observed Witnesses passing dubious urban legends onto each other. It was a red flag for me that JWs were so credulous towards information that came from fellow believers. Their lack of skepticism got me to wondering what other things they were accepting uncritically.

112

Scientists Should Not Dismiss Genesis So Quickly

by Chris Tann in

nasa discovery proves the bible scientifically accurate.

the debate.

for decades there has been a long standing debate between science and religion as to the validity of the biblical genesis account of creation.

Apognophos

The summary of this, interestingly, has already been given in a number of the Society's writings. For instance the explanation of the seemingly too-late creation of the sun and moon with the response that 'from the point of view of someone on the Earth, the sun and moon did not exist until they were actually visible from the ground' has been stated in the WT literature as well.

There is really just one broadly valid point here, which is that both the Genesis account and the scientific account agree that things started off chaotic (unformed) and became more organized. Any further specific correlation with science has to be forced rather than naturally read in Genesis.

This voluminous apologetic does not address other thorny issues with Genesis, such as chapter 1's creation of plants before the sun was shining, or chapter 2's creation of animals before plants. An honest reading of Genesis, with a respectful attitude towards the culture that actually told the story, shows a very different, primitive view of the world that does not jive with science at all, nor with the Christian concepts of the nature of God.

37

Do Jehovah witnesses exploit the most vulnerable in society?

by Blind_Of_Lies in

jw
friends

during my final few years being active with the jws i noticed that the vast majority of people who were studying or joining the group in general where those that the rest of society would consider disabled and/or severely mentally ill. now by disabled i dont mean i lost my leg in nam kind of disabled... in some cases these people were mentally retarded, had the minds of children, were severely abused as children or even as adults and as a result had personality disorders that put them on the edge of society.... and then we had the full on crazies... about 15 years ago one of the brothers who worked at the local welfare office somehow started a study with a person who was a paranoid schizophrenic.

he met her because she was a client of the welfare office.

she got handed off to a sister who studied with her, then started driving her to her doctors appointments, and to get grocerys, and took her to congregation events.

Apognophos

I observed this too -- that most converts were mentally ill or social misfits. But I viewed it as evidence of the love in the religion that JWs would work so hard to bring these people in and help them go out in the ministry. I still think it's to the credit of any JWs who have the patience to deal with these people, but counter-balancing that, I also am aware now that the JW is motivated to make converts in order to affirm his own beliefs, and I'm also concerned over the pros/cons of being in the religion.

People who are adrift in society or who have substance abuse problems may in fact be better off in the religion than they were before, but what about the pressures that the religion places on them? And even within the religion they'll always be a second-class citizen if they are not capable of "reaching out" for "privileges".