by cedars 87 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
You can blame it all on them for recognizing Hawaii as a sovereign state.
"You realize that this will probably be used in some way by the Obama "birthers", right?...." James_Woods
Crap!!
James Woods, you made me laugh so hard that I had a coughing fit!!
Zid
Cedars,
If you haven't read it before, you will love, "The Truth vs. the truth." It is a very well-written essay by a non-witness professor who speculates about the impact of the internet on the WTBTS.
The article appears on page 49 of this issue:
http://www.libertyunbound.com/sites/files/printarchive/Liberty_Magazine_September-October_2003.pdf
"...But as its has been pointed out is not evidence the internet is hurting the WT. Is evidence that SOME of the countries that have more internet had less growth...." CyberJesus
I noticed that too, CyberJesus...
I think it might be more accurate to state that the internet is a factor that is negatively affecting Watchtower recruitment efforts....
I suspect that the countries with high internet "penetration" that are still showing an "increase", are ones which are heavily religious - Christian, of course.
If the mental/cultural climate of a nation is strongly "Christian", then that might over-ride the sensible idea that one needs to research a religious group before joining it - would be too much like 'questioning "god" ', in many peoples' minds.
Zid
BizzyBee - thanks for the link. I've just skimmed through the article and it appears to be very well written. I will get properly stuck into that at a later stage.
Ziddina - thanks for your kind words. But seriously, am I missing something? I thought the statistics were quite clearly showing that MOST (and not "some") countries with high internet penetration had low rates of publisher growth? Are we looking at the same statistics?
Cedars
Lemme go back and look again...
If I recall correctly, what I noticed as anomalies, were nations with little internet penetration AND with little to no increase...
brb...
Okay, in the first 5 nations: Iceland, Greenland, Falkland Islands, Sweden and Norway, it was the Faulkland Islands that threw off the concept...
Made me really grumpy... But, joking aside, why on earth would the Falklands show such an increase?
One factor might be poverty or limited financial and career options - the Faulklands don't have the size, range, or internal systems that the much larger, other countries have...
brb on the next set of countries...
Yes, but the "100%" falklands growth increase was down to 5 people getting baptized on a remote island chain in the South Atlantic (or moving there from another country). It is in those stats because they have high internet penetration, but the average figure you see in bold at the bottom is averaged out using the publisher figures themselves (i.e. for all those countries combined) and NOT the growth stats. Do you understand?
I certainly appreciate you going over this in so much detail!
Cedars
All right, in the NEXT set, the evidence holds true to your concept...
And though I'm not familiar with "Saint Lucia" or "Niue" [], if their size and location makes them more viable with regards to job force and careers than the Faulklands, then that again would hold true to your concept.
Moving on down to the next set of countries - the group that includes the U.S.A. - there are a couple of 4% increases - Bermuda and Antigua - and a 7% increase in Taiwan...
I'm surprised at that huge leap in Taiwan, but gratified to see that the U.S.A. growth is pretty flat - barely at the rate of population growth for the country, if I recall correctly.
And I'm going to be condensing my comments, now...
In the 60% - 69% internet penetration group, Liechtenstein had a 31% increase??? Then there's Gibraltar at 8% increase... But other than that, it fits your trend - as do the vast majority of the countries below that part of the chart...
Well, the overall trend does fit your concept.
What intrigues me, however, are the anomalies...
Zid
I wouldn't bother even counting any of the countries with less than 100k pubs. Any increase/decrease is statistically unreliable at those numbers.
That being said, the Internet most certainly IS having an impact on WTS, perhaps not just "apostate "sites but the freeflow of information, along with education and other social and economic factors.
Thanks Ziddina, I'm glad it's not just me hallucinating! Well, again - Liechtenstein is a tiny tiny country in Europe, similar to Luxembourg in that it barely deserves to be called a country - but it is (no offence to any Liechtenstein or Luxembourg natives on this forum). Gibraltar is essentially a tiny corner of spain that, like the Falkland islands, continues to be a British colony. So we are talking about tiny tiny countries where all it takes is for a family to move into the single congregation - and boom! You have a 100% increase. The worldwide report is full of that stuff.
Interestingly, it was the Falkland Islands that forced me to go down the route of copying down the publisher figures for each country. If I tried running purely off the growth percentages, my figures were all skewed. The 100% of the Falklands really messed things up. However, when the Society add everything all up at the end of the report and issue the overall growth percentage, they do so based on recalculating the total av. publisher figures, and comparing these with the year before. This is because the individual country growth percentages are rounded up or rounded down, so you can't get an accurate figure off these. I decided to follow their lead, and it gave me more accurate figures.
I hope all of the above makes sense!
Cedars
