by Terry 39 Replies latest watchtower bible
Pot, kettle, BLACK!
BOTR: "if you no longer believe in the legitimacy of the WT, what they think matters very little."
Thank you, very well articulated! And yet here we are ...
Reminds me of Rhett Butler's famous retort, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!"
The watchtower teaches that all other religions and governments are controlled by Satan, as are those who are not JWs, and that they will all be destroyed. I claim an equal right to teach the opposite.
W
The watchtower teaches that all other religions and governments are controlled by Satan, as are those who are not JWs, and that they will all be destroyed. I claim an equal right to teach the opposite.
I don't know how they get away with that because they also teach that Christ is the head of every man...
Let's face it, when WE were active JW's we thought it was a badge of honor to be persecuted for our faith. Did we not?
We saw ourselves as semi-martyrs. All those illustrations by the Watchtower artists depicting a Satan-controlled world in league with
diabolical plans to exterminate little old us!
In other words, VICTIMS. But, noble victims on the right side of the battle.
The language we Apostates use can---to an outsider--seem awfully loaded with bile and acrimony.
The fact that a context just might exist which understandly engenders such powerful feelings of retaliation simply isn't a foundational argument to them.
Christians are "turn the other cheek" and avoid the fight innocent lambs.
An outsider cannot see through the Watchtower drumbeat of vilification against darned near everybody ELSE on earth but themselves.
Why? Because reading the books and literature takes years of learning to penetrate the dense and coded writing style.
I find it nearly impossible to read an article in the Watchtower any longer. Why? It is Byzantine and implanted with jargon. I cringe.
Bottom line?
Violating the rights of religious people is an idea that is DIFFICULT TO FRAME by ex-members in a convincing way because we are always on the offense.
JW's have a long history of couching their attacks within carefully constructed paradigms which acts the way a silencer does on the muzzle of a weapon.
The opposite of this guy's argument is true. Say I held an interview for a position in my company and a person who I knew was a Jehovah's Witness applied. I would simply ask during the interview, "Would you work directly under a known defector of your religion?" If the answer was no then I would dismiss them for being discriminatory against me and my company. If they said yes then I would know that they are a Witness who doesn't follow the rules and would have a place in my company based on the skills they brought to the table.
The word cult is not thrown around by Ex Witnesses. Actually, it's the other way around as most ex Witnesses don't even like the term cult until they thoroughly investigate the term. This man seems paid by the Watchtower to defend them without a leg to stand on.
-Sab
Let's pretend for the sake of argument that we are talking about racism instead of religion.
If a person who uses racial slurs against others accuses somebody else of being racist the FACTS aren't changed by they hypocrisy of the complainer.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
A racially insensitive person may be very aware when HE himself is the object of discrimination while utterly blind to his own tendencies.
So, with that in mind--let's switch back to the subject of religion and JW's.
They do discriminate against other religions and especially former members. HOWEVER--that doesn't necessarily mean it is impossible to discriminate against them.
For example: A JW may view their own discrimination as morally compelled by God against deserving third parties. But, an Ex-JW may simply list a string of derogatory epithets out of hurt feelings and spite in a deliberate effort to place the JW in a defamed context.
So, the JW's descrimination is a righteous one (to them) and the other is mere calumny.
This is the sort of delineation I'm after in this discussion.
The Watchtower, 15 November 1963, page 688:
It is not a form of religious persecution for anyone to say and to show that another religion is false. It is not religious persecution for an informed person to expose publicly a certain religion as being false, thus allowing persons to see the difference between false religion and true religion.
It is not a form of religious persecution for anyone to say and to show that another religion is false. It is not religious persecution for an informed person to expose publicly a certain religion as being false, thus allowing persons to see the difference between false religion and true religion.
They say that because they regard THEMSELVES as the ONLY TRUE religion :O)
It's definitely violating the rights of witnesses to kidnap and "deprogram" them, but there is nothing wrong with telling people they're stupid. It's part of freedom of speech and religion as well.
On another similar note, the recruitment methods of cults deprive members of their freedom of religion by purposefully misleading them about what type of group they are joining up with. I'm not sure, however, if the JWs are bad enough about that that that statement is true of them. [That that that? ]
