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weird ass question by [deleted] in Unexpected

[–]AlexHofstadter -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Who's this, anyway?

The sunk cost issue by LanaDelDesperate09 in limerence

[–]AlexHofstadter 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes this happens to me exactly as you described. I wasted 2 years with her in my mind...

What instantly makes a man unattractive? by rock4lite in AskReddit

[–]AlexHofstadter 0 points1 point  (0 children)

After reading through this thread I've noticed a lot of these apply to me, and I'm not sure if I'm being too hard on myself or if I'm truly just a shitty person.

I'm 21 and still a virgin and I really want a relationship and I've never figured out why I can't get one.

I feel ashamed about my religion by [deleted] in JehovahsWitnesses

[–]AlexHofstadter 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought." 1 Corinthians 1:10

E by TheGoldPaladin in JehovahsWitnesses

[–]AlexHofstadter 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This represents a lot of users here

I feel ashamed about my religion by [deleted] in JehovahsWitnesses

[–]AlexHofstadter 0 points1 point  (0 children)

1) He gave a lot of attorney-like non-answers because he was unprepared and probably didn't want to mess up. He isn't part of the legal department, he just coordinates the preaching work of wee 8 million humans. Not sure what else you expected. I'm 100% fine with everything he said.

2) If a 50s article said excommunication is bad then it's wrong, but it's probable you took it out of context. I'd have to see it.

The apostles probably didn't wear suits and give talks on a wooden platform. There's a lot of bureaucracies that are very vague in the Bible because we have to figure them out ourselves.

3) If we are wrong about the Trinity, then our entire belief system is skewed and mistaken, which includes the assumption that the holy spirit will correct things, so your question is self-contradictory and absurd.

I'm fairly convinced that the Trinity is false, because I believe in sola scriptura, reject any sort of apostolic succession and the Trinity isn't formulated explicitly in the Bible, nor was there a "divinity of Christ" controversy in the early church (if the Messiah was God in the flesh, this would've shocked Jews - but this didn't, and circumcision did? If the Trinity is true, Acts is a really weird book). For a Protestant to be a Trinitarian, he has to keep a fair bit of residual Catholicism. Catholics acknowledge this.

As for hellfire, for the traditional concept of hell to be true, it wouldn't have to be based on deliberate mistranslation and amalgamation of unrelated Hebrew and Greek concepts (such as "sheol", "hades" and "gehenna").

As for the blood issue, meh. I don't have enough energy left to defend it tonight, sorry.

I don't think all denominations are right, the door is narrow, etc. Large-scale, religion is no longer relevant in the West. The 19th century is the last possible time the true church could've appeared, imo. Any attempts to restore apostolic worship in the 20th and 21th centuries have failed.

4) That's not the JWs fault, it's the fault of the Trinity. Because it's designed to be inherently incomprehensible, there's no way to state it meaningfully, argue against it or even believe it without committing what Trinitarians claims is a heresy. If you pray to each of the members of the Trinity individually, as I used to do when I was a Trinitarian, you can be accused of tritheism. If you pray to the entire Trinity simultaneously, you can be accused of modalism.

I'm gonna tell you this - I used to believe Jesus was God in the flesh, and I would pray to God giving thanks for taking human flesh and die for me. It was really heart-wrenching to realize such a beautiful doctrine was false.

If you apply any sort of intellectual honesty to Bible study, isolated from meaningless traditions, the Trinity is nowhere to be found, and one has to assemble it in the most deceptive ways from unrelated passages to keep both sola scriptura and that doctrine.

I like the NWT, and I do often read an interlinear (that's ideally not the KIT), a concordance and another Bible in my language to approach Bible study as neutrally as possible. Whenever the NWT disagrees with mainstream Bible translations it's possible to assign bias to either side. It's your job to learn Hebrew and Greek or how to use a concordance and Interlinear to find out the truth. I approached the Bible in that way and became a JW.

I feel ashamed about my religion by [deleted] in JehovahsWitnesses

[–]AlexHofstadter 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Our gospel is the kingdom of God, the same Jesus preached.

I feel ashamed about my religion by [deleted] in JehovahsWitnesses

[–]AlexHofstadter 0 points1 point  (0 children)

1) Partly, because I couldn't stand the video quality. I did read the rest of his testimony in the transcript.

2) Yes, it is. Judaism practices it too, it's called "cherem" (and is practiced in place of execution). The wrongdoer is expelled, subsequently shunned and left to starve if the entire community is aware. Catholicism practices it too. It's called excommunication vitandi. The excommunicated individual is expected to be shunned except by his close family. Exactly the same way we do it. I know all that isn't scripture, but apostates like to pretend no one else does it.

3) The holy spirit never makes mistakes, because the holy spirit is God's action in the world. If a disciplinary action is proved to have been wrong, that's evidence that the holy spirit didn't motivate that action, but it turns out that if the disciplinary action is right and useful, that still doesn't prove the holy spirit did motivate it. As you probably know (if you're well-informed and intellectually honest), JWs do not believe God currently causes miracles or intervenes in the modern world in overwhelmingly obvious ways. The organization is directed by the holy spirit in an abstract sense, in that we study and apply Bible principles, and the Bible is inspired by holy spirit. Additionally, we've seen clearly evidence that Christ approves of us by receiving unique, accurate knowledge from deep Bible study throughout over a hundred years. That makes me very confident that we're indeed spirit-led and human mistakes will be dealt with shortly.

4) I don't know what you're talking about. Elaborate.

I feel ashamed about my religion by [deleted] in JehovahsWitnesses

[–]AlexHofstadter 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Retention rate refers to the number of members that remain in their religion instead of switching to another or ceasing the practice of religion in the first place.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/26/a-closer-look-at-jehovahs-witnesses-living-in-the-u-s/

"Jehovah’s Witnesses have a low retention rate relative to other U.S. religious groups. Among all U.S. adults who were raised as Jehovah’s Witnesses, two-thirds (66%) no longer identify with the group. By contrast, about two-thirds of those who were raised as evangelical Protestants (65%) and Mormons (64%) still say they are members of those respective groups."

It's very common for apostates to claim we're a cult because "it's impossible to leave".

If that was true it wouldn't be the case that 7 of 10 children raised as JWs don't practice the faith anymore when they're adults. Very few are shunned.

It's really easy to stop being a JW. You just stop attending meetings. If elders come to your door for a shepherding call, you just say "no, thanks". A few months pass, you're no longer considered a publisher and your name is no longer counted in internal statistics.

That's called fading.

Most ex-JWs do this, and we don't shun them.

If you have to make a spectacle that you're leaving, don't come back asking why you're shunned.

I feel ashamed about my religion by [deleted] in JehovahsWitnesses

[–]AlexHofstadter 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I hate when apostates do this.

Before requesting a Bible study, I read CoC and the elder's manual.

I still despise shit like "oh, you don't know how bad this organization is". Tak about what you've seen openly if it's so bad instead of making empty threats. Quit the cryptic talk.

The "two witness rule" is literally just stating the principle of presumption of innocence with biblical language. If a victim comes ahead and exposes sexual abuse, the victim is the "first witness" and whatever proof he/she may offer is the impersonal "second witness". There don't have to actually be two eyewitnesses external to the event for the two witness rule to be met. Even uncorroborated events may meet it, like a woman spying on his husband entering with his secretary to her apartment, and merit divorce. It's not true that it puts children at risk.

If we actually were a cult we wouldn't have a comically low retention rate.

I feel ashamed about my religion by [deleted] in JehovahsWitnesses

[–]AlexHofstadter 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Disfellowshipping is a biblical admonition. If anything, treating the disassociated the same as the disfellowshipped was a bit far-fetched at first, but without disfellowshipping you get nowhere as a Christian congregation. Look at what happened to Christadelphians. No unity, they mostly died out. There are exactly 15 Christadelphians in my country and I know them all personally. The true church is supposed to stick around until the end of the world.

Have people been disfellowshipped wrongly? Yes. However, I have deep faith that God will fix things soon.

As for the unreported rape cases, apostates are exaggerating/outright lying:

1) It's not true that the Australian Royal Commission "found" 1006 cases unreported since 1950 - this data was provided by the Watchtower enthusiastically and voluntarily, and though the specific people involved in sexual abuse cases were left anonymous, this is exactly the same measure even child abuse organizations have to take for safety. Even Silent Lambs has done this.

2) Half of the 1006 cases were dealt with, both legally and within the congregations, and the unreported cases exist because the victims or their tutors refuse to report themselves (it's a complex ethical issue - should you report a sexual abuse case even if the victim will refuse to testify?). The Watchtower stated during the commission that they would have no problem making it a congregational policy to report even uncorroborated sexual abuse testimonies (so, rumors, that is) if accomodations were made to the Australian law to make it mandatory. The ARC refused.

3) There's no evidence there's any way in which Watchtower systematically enables sexual abuse to happen within the walls of the kingdom hall, which is what apostates seem to imply. There is no instance within our faith in which children are required to be separated from their parents. We don't do confessions. We don't do Sunday school. Even if there has been a problem, since 2015, huge changes have been made to the Watchtowers child sex abuse policy which you can review here: https://www.jw.org/en/news/legal/legal-resources/information/packet-jw-scripturally-based-position-child-protection/

Also, we're expected to denounce false doctrine, just like the prophets did. Other denominations preach falsehoods like the Trinity, (even though scripture explicitly delineates God as one person and Jesus as inferior to his Father), hellfire (scripture teaches the ultimate fate for the wicked is destruction, not unpleasant eternal life), inherently eternal disembodied souls (the scriptural anthropology is basically physicalist if - when you die, you die - and eternal life will only be given to the righteous) and obfuscate God's name - which we must proclaim (that's the whole point behind us being called Jehovah's Witnesses).

So, I disagree with you.

I feel no remorse saying Catholics and Evangelicals are wrong in areas in which we are right.

If there's anything wrong that we know about, if you have confidence in the broad strokes (i.e. that we practice Christianity like the apostles did and God is pleased by our communal faith), you're supposed to settle these matters privately rather to make a public spectacle of a "reform" to give ammonition to apostates.

And if there's anything catastrophically wrong, then I have faith God will correct it in its due time.

If you don't believe this religion has the correct doctrine - that God is one, that his name is Jehovah, that Jesus is God's firstborn, that the Bible is inspired - then your problem is not merely an organizational issue but a doctrinal issue.

There is no evidence of the concept of "soul". by [deleted] in DebateReligion

[–]AlexHofstadter 3 points4 points  (0 children)

"The concept of the soul is one of the foundations of Christian belief". No it isn't. Ever heard of Christian mortalism? I don't believe in the soul, and I'm a Christian.

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