Sam Harris

Does anyone believe his family's religious beliefs may play some factor in why the family is disfuctional?

perhaps this will help to answer your query?
The site deals with the ‘world wide problems of child abuse’ - includes articles re: M. Jackson.

If the link doesn’t work - type in manually.

http://www.silentlambs.org/index.cfm
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JW’s need MJ’s $$$ which is way he’s held to a different standard.  But this is true in many religions.

If only that were true! For a group as small as they are (6 million or so) they are amazingly rich. Interestingly, there was one particular web site that held quotes from their publications showing how what they have taught over the years has changed. It offered no editorial comment, simply ran the quotes in context. Seeing it all was terribly damning and they knew it.

So what did they do? Of course, they sued. Now the site is dead. View its remains at http://quotes.watchtower.ca

Thankfully, some enterprising ex-JW’s restarted the site, so the information will live on. The new site is here: http://www.reexamine.org/quotes/

Hosted offshore, hopefully it will be out of reach of their volunteer army of lawyers!

Dave

Hello

I’ve just joined this forum.

I was ‘brought up’ a Jehovah’s Witness, sadly.

After about a decade (sigh) of mental torment - I was bravely trying to ignore reason - I finally managed to extricate my mind from the mire.

I had all the answers (bit like this champ chump)
I felt satisfied
I knew that I was going to live forever on a paradise earth
I was a major tit

I was a ‘regular pioneer’ for years (ie. a loser who works as an unpaid full time preacher) and a scandalously young ‘ministerial servant’ (ie. a loser who, whilst not reaching the pinnacle of elderhood, gets to look down at women jws, and the great unwashed jws, and the little kiddy jws)

i would like to offer thanks to fellows like sagan, paine, dawkins, harris etc

you have to do it by yourself

but those kind of chaps give you a good leg up

I’m been thru the same thing, except I was raised a fundie Baptist.  It interesting to find out that the JW evolved out of the Bapist faith.  It started out with William Miller, an uneducated Baptist minister who claimed Jesus would return in 1848.  After that didn’t happen (unless the invisible Jesus is out there) what remain of his followers broke into two groups, one group later became the Seventh Day Adventist and the other the JW.
Have your JW family and friends disowned you?  My Baptist family have not.
As for reading material, check you Robert Ingersoll.

Mr. Mody, billingham

Congrats on extricating yourself from the mindset.

It took me 7 years off and on to leave Mormonism… and only with much agonzing and torment.

It wasn’t until I visited the Jehovah’s Witnesses and saw the same mental manipulations going on to bind people to their organization, to get them to serve and be whatever the watchtower dictated… much like Mormonism, that I gained strength to actually make the push to leave Mormonism.

The kicker was meeting and talking to hundreds of JW’s trying to ditch their religion.  They had the same angst.  They were conflicted.  They were in agony.  Most important there was a parallel fear that they would be doomed if they left JW. 

I did not fear a Jehovah’s Witness doom in the next life.

They did not fear a Mormon doom in the next life.

It was all bullshit.  Only then did I realize that I had been conditioned to the extreme.  I had been manipulated with fear to be faithful to the Mormon ideal.  Just like these JW’s have been manipulated to be true to the JW ideal. 

It was based in fear.

I fear no more.  I am free.  It’s great.

Here is my comparitive analysis I am in process of doing with many cults/religions.  Kind of a hobby.  It’s in progress.  I have become so fascinated with how religions or cults control people that I now attend these cults to view their cultish tactics from a skeptic’s POV.  Here is some of my commentary/observations:

http://www.mrr1968.com/OtherChurches.html

Noggin

I just joined the forum, but I have a similar story to yours…
raised as an elder’s daughter, but I was always “too” everything…too loud, too trendy, too talented, and most damning of all, too intelligent. After tormenting myself for many, many years,( including a stint as a pioneer) the weight of the inconsistencies and the disrespect for me as a woman finally broke the stranglehold on my mind.
You may want to check out the De-conversion stories thread started by Mia in the Faith (General Issues) area. It’s a very interesting place.
Anyway….I salute the courage I know you had to have to leave, and the clarity with which you see your past. I know exactly how that feels, believe me!

Noggin, I have always felt that Mormons used a similar mindest with their members, but your comments have cemented my belief in that.
Mr Mody, I don’t know about BF’s family and friends, but mine did indeed cut me out of the herd, and I am still persona non grata even after seven years. This is by their choice; I would have no problem having a relationship with them if they could leave religion out of it. Unfortunately, that is not an option as far as they are concerned. It seems like there are very few other faiths in the Western world which take this position as a tenet of their organization.

Does anyone believe his family’s religious beliefs may play some factor in why the family is disfuctional?

There was a wonderful documentary on MTV or VH1 a year or two back that delved into the Psyche of M.J.  The two things that stood out as “creating” the M.J. we see today was his abusive father and the wacky cult he was raised in.  So yes!  His religious beliefs certainly were a big factor in how disfunctional his family was and how he turned out.  As a former Jehovah’s Witness myself I can only too well understand how a sect like that can play with your mind.