I support the suggestion that the organization produces sociopathic behavior in certain areas of life. It's not just the corporate-like environment which can cause this; when Witnesses are made to feel detached from worldly people, it enhances the "not my problem" effect when they see something like a person in distress and in need of help.
Apognophos
JoinedPosts by Apognophos
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22
Are Jehovah's Witnesses Psycopaths?
by stuckinarut2 ini have been thinking that jws display an organizationally officially promoted form of thinking that makes them psycopaths!.
what i mean is, any person who enjoyed reading and leaning about past gruesome deaths, or who justified such things as being normal or acceptable would be deemed to be dangerous to society...a psychopath.
(by this i am refferring to the content of the bible of course).
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45
Why isn't the story of SAMPSON quickly and clearly regarded a myth?
by Terry injudges chapter 15:.
14 when he came to lehi, the philistines shouted triumphantly at meeting him.
then jehovahs spirit empowered him,+ and the ropes on his arms became like linen threads that were scorched with fire, and his fetters melted off his hands.+ 15 he now found a fresh jawbone of a male donkey; he reached out and grabbed it and struck down 1,000 men with it.+ 16 then samson said: with the jawbone of a donkeyone heap, two heaps!
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Apognophos
I'll have to go back and read the account. From memory, Samson did not consciously agree, choose, decide to have his hair cut.
Yes, but the "moral" was the fact that he had told Delilah about the secret of his strength in the first place. His downfall was allowing himself to be seduced. Obviously the guy was pretty dumb since Delilah had already betrayed him, what, twice?
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Samuel Herd misogyny ... Does anyone know the background of this video?
by Letts Party inhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqzc2m8_mba.
samuel herd saying things i never thought possible from a gb member.. does anyone know the background?
who was this talk directed to?
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Apognophos
All I know about the talk is that it's supposedly from the '70s, long before he was on the GB. I wonder if he was married yet at the time.
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Why isn't the story of SAMPSON quickly and clearly regarded a myth?
by Terry injudges chapter 15:.
14 when he came to lehi, the philistines shouted triumphantly at meeting him.
then jehovahs spirit empowered him,+ and the ropes on his arms became like linen threads that were scorched with fire, and his fetters melted off his hands.+ 15 he now found a fresh jawbone of a male donkey; he reached out and grabbed it and struck down 1,000 men with it.+ 16 then samson said: with the jawbone of a donkeyone heap, two heaps!
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Apognophos
It's hard for me to understand most of the objections in this thread. Obviously the Witness teaching is that his strength came from God, on the condition that he didn't cut his hair. That was the one thing he had to do to show his loyalty, and he screwed it up.
I did always feel that the account stuck out from the rest of the Bible, but supposedly the larger purpose of the Samson account was to represent "power", as one of God's cardinal attributes, so it made more sense that only one of God's servants would be given super-strength in the whole Bible.
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Is God an atheist ?
by coalize inyes, god says all the time in the bible that it's no god upon him.. technically, doesn't that mean he's an atheist?.
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Apognophos
Have you seen this video? In it, God is in fact an atheist... until...
(strong language warning)
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Did you expect all non-Witnesses to die at Armageddon?
by Apognophos inapologies if this has been asked before, but i couldn't find a thread where the focus was specifically this yes-or-no question.
reach back in your memories to when you were at the peak of your faith in the religion, and tell me honestly:.
"did you, personally, believe that non-witnesses would die at armageddon, even if they hadn't gotten to hear the message at all?".
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Apognophos
I wanted to wait before giving my own answer, just to keep my OP more neutral, but I was in the same boat as you, Phizzy. I didn't believe that the God I worshipped was one who would destroy all those reasonably good people. The adult JWs I grew up around would sometimes say about a teaching, "Well, maybe there'll be some new light on that some day" as code for "We agree this doesn't make sense so let's assume that God will fix it in due time and just focus on the beliefs that we do agree with". So I figured this was one of those teachings that would probably be subject to "new light" eventually and didn't think much about it.
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New theory on GB or the mysterious people who profit from all the money going to the WT
by EndofMysteries inwith all the money grabs and shady things going on, you wonder how can they actually believe they are representing god and even believe in god and still be doing these things.. then i thought, what if a trend started awhile back, people who gave up everything and got high in the org, but also since they got high up, they were privy and learned things that convinced them it was a lie.
now if they remained believers, they may end up like ray franz, a true believer wouldn't want to deceive people seeking god, they would be afraid of god's wrath.. since as is shown on this board many also become athiests, some could have become so while still in and in high ranks.
at this point they think of their options, a. leave, screwed, welfare, older they are the harder to adjust and everybody turns on them or b. kind of shady but the org and everyone put them in this position and they will turn on them in a heartbeat with no remorse so he is going to beat them to it and insure the rest of his/their lives are well taken care of and going to get rich off it.. so those higher ups who turn athiest opt for option b since they don't believe in any god and since the whole org will turn on them for disagreeing and not believing and leave them with nothing, they will instead keep working their way up, start companies for the things wt already buys, turn it into a big cash cow for themselves.
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Apognophos
I also think your core idea is plausible but I think you led into it with a couple non sequiturs, so you almost lost me.
First you talked about money grabs. Well, the Society needs money to run. We simply have no way to know what their expenses are for printing and other "Kingdom activities" so we don't have any basis for saying that arrangements like the new "eternal mortgage" indicate a lack of sincerity. Why can't the leadership be sincere while also looking for new ways to fund their work? Remember that expansion is taking place mostly in poorer countries now, so the average donation per publisher may be dropping significantly even as printing costs have skyrocketed.
Secondly, it isn't necessary for someone to be a secret non-believer in order to be interested in getting rich from doing business with the Society. I think there probably are some brothers who own companies that are used heavily by the Society. But this doesn't require them to be "secret atheists" or even sincere but hypocritical. Hey, if the Society wants to use their company, then who's to say this is unscrupulous?
I realize that you're suggesting a more thorough comprehensive bilking of the Society by some higher-ups, and I don't rule out that possibility, but I wanted to separate the most likely part of your idea from the more fantastical part. Personally I don't think that climbing the ladder tends to show someone that the emperor has no clothes. I suppose that has been the case for some idealistic brothers, but when you have a "company man" mindset, you don't get fazed by things that happen as you gradually get promoted through MS, elder, PO, CO, DO....
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Did you expect all non-Witnesses to die at Armageddon?
by Apognophos inapologies if this has been asked before, but i couldn't find a thread where the focus was specifically this yes-or-no question.
reach back in your memories to when you were at the peak of your faith in the religion, and tell me honestly:.
"did you, personally, believe that non-witnesses would die at armageddon, even if they hadn't gotten to hear the message at all?".
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Apognophos
Apologies if this has been asked before, but I couldn't find a thread where the focus was specifically this yes-or-no question. Reach back in your memories to when you were at the peak of your faith in the religion, and tell me honestly:
"Did you, personally, believe that non-Witnesses would die at Armageddon, even if they hadn't gotten to hear the message at all?"
Since people constantly bring this up as a big problem with Witness beliefs, I wanted to get a sense of the ratio of this teaching's believers/non-believers. Though I don't know if this group's former beliefs can be representative of the beliefs of the average JW who has chosen to stay in the religion
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Is God in creation and not the bible?
by thedepressedsoul ini have been struggling the last year to find my belief.
what the witnesses have to me is not the answer the more and more i dig.
on the other hand, i cant seem to accept evolution no matter how hard i try, the existence of everything from nothing doesnt not work with my type of thinking.
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Apognophos
prologos, I was saying that evolution does not say that everything came from nothing. I think you misread my post. As you indicate, before evolution could happen, abiogenesis had to happen, and before that planetary evolution, and before that stellar evolution, and before that....
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Is God in creation and not the bible?
by thedepressedsoul ini have been struggling the last year to find my belief.
what the witnesses have to me is not the answer the more and more i dig.
on the other hand, i cant seem to accept evolution no matter how hard i try, the existence of everything from nothing doesnt not work with my type of thinking.
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Apognophos
I do encourage you to ask questions about evolution if you are having trouble accepting it. It could be that you just have not encountered a decent explanation of it yet. It doesn't teach, for instance, that everything came from nothing.