Does Belgium Have it Right About JWs?
The real question should be: are JWs socially useful for Belgium as some other mainstream religions?
Does Belgium Have it Right About JWs?
by ezekiel3 106 Replies latest watchtower scandals
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czarofmischief
However I'm not sure if you realize what kind of government support officially recognized religions get in some (terribly socialist-democratic by US standards) European countries. In Poland for instance "priests" in of officially recognized religions have their medical insurance and 80% of their pensions paid by the government for their entire lives. Considerable tax exemption (property, cars, etc.) is another great benefit they enjoy
My jaw just hit the floor. Yes, there is a complete and total confusion between our cultures on this thread right now. No, the USA doesn't support religion or pay priests' pensions or anything like that. Hell, it doesn't even pay MY pension - SS taint nuthin.
We are in the middle of a HUGE debate over whether giving government money to religiously based charities is unconstitutional or not. And the "pro-religion" side is probably going to lose.
churches are always completely tax-exempt, except for certain circumstances. Private donations to any religion are tax deductible (although some forms need filled out.) Okay, then I can see why you would want to control who you are paying and what for... yikes... my apologies if I offended you in any way.
Wow. Your PRIESTS are STATE FUNDED? (I mean, not their salaries, but... wow)
I have to go sit down somewhere and drink about this. I mean, think about this... no, I like it the first way better.
A religion that runs no charities, creates maladapted members, and denies military service is no big deal in OUR country, being more or less a Masonic Government of the Light Bringer... I would probably not be too happy in a country like yours, if I hadn't grown up there. BUT - if the social contract is that well-defined and "intrusive" for lack of a better word, then yes, the government has a duty to represent the interests of the taxpaying public.
I guess this just proves my point about socialism - it starts with health insurance and winds up controlling your freedom to choose how to live. And it's RIGHT to do so, is the thing. I'd rather skip the whole process, thank you very much.
CZAR
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outbutnotdown
Czar,
You make good points about certain things, but you also leave out the facts that innocent children and even people who have been abused, who are now adults, tend to not have the ability to CHOOSE to escape that religion, because of not having the self-confidence to do so. Quite often these people, who lack this self-confidence, are lacking specifically because they have known nothing other than this mind-control.
When people are in an abusive relationship, they usually don't even know it. For this reason, there are safety nets for them to escape to, no questions asked. And despite the fact that some people can actually abuse this system, and my ex-wife is one of those people..... (she has gone around accusing me of sexually assaulting my children and of abusing her in every way possible..... all of them lies), but I would be the first to still say that these "safety nets" need to be there, despite that others and myself suffer.
I have also, like Corvin, through our court system, had a Judge rule that my children are not to be raised as Jehovah's Witnesses. It is through these BIG victories, that the truth eventually comes out, but prevention is still better than this cure that Corvin and I have accomplished.
B.
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Pole
:: I guess this just proves my point about socialism - it starts with health insurance and winds up controlling your freedom to choose how to live. And it's RIGHT to do so, is the thing. I'd rather skip the whole process, thank you very much.
You see czar, I think you're mostly right about socialism, although things are not as easy as they look like from America. We are recovering from the damage done by almost 50 years of communist socialism. Politically speaking Poland is 100% democratic and we have liberal parties which could get elected any moment and change this arrangement, but the crippled communist mentality of the majority of our society is another story. Ultimately it all goes back to the sacrifice made by the West at Yalta which was beyond our control.
Another thing is that Polish Catholicism and the Polish Pope were the source of spiritual strength for the dissenters in busting communism which started here in the late 1970s (and not in Berlin in the early 1990s :)). So a lot of people here are still pretty sentimental about Catholicism. As a result they have a socialist-catholic outlook which is now fading especially amongyoung Poles. As it is, the Catholic Church is still the main beneficiary of the arrangements I've mentioned. This situation may continue for a few more years, before it's completely invalidated by the generation change.
Exotic, but so is our history.
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DaCheech
I have not read all the posts.... But I have a question? Was not Charles Manson leader of a religion?
Did the goverment interfere with his beliefs?
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heathen
charles manson was a sick twisted man back in the sixties who thought he could bring on racial warfare between the blacks and whites by killing white people and making it look as if the blacks did it . Helter Skelter was a beatle song not in the bible . He thought Paul Mcartney was some kind of prophet . True his followers thought he was jesus but you would have to be a very strung out druggie to believe that .
I still think belgium has it wrong .
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Xena
ezekiel,
I have been thinking a lot about this topic, gives me something to do in the car while I am driving.
I'm finding it hard to express my feelings on this for some reason so if it comes out disjointed, bare with me, k? For me it's an extremely complex issue, balancing personal freedom of choice against discouragement of mind controling methods used by various individuals and groups.
As you brought out "mind control" is everwhere...from religion to the advertisements we see on TV. The differences as you see it being between the method and practice, yes? You brought you that the Catholic church as lost some of it's danger to society because it has deluted it's "practice" in other words although they teach a belief you are no longer held to it by threads of death or deletion. Of course as with most religions you are held to it with thoughts of eternal damnation. Just as an example of how destructive that thought process can be....my mother was raised Catholic. Her mother commited suicide. From the time she was 25 until she joined the JW's when she was in her late 30's my mother thought her mother was in Hell. This along with a few other stress factors caused my mother to have a mental break down at one point in her life and the main reason she joined the JW's was due to their hellfire docterine. So my personal experience with the Catholic church tells me that some of it's doctrine is dangerous still.
My point is, there are lots of dangerous thought processes out there and my personal belief is that you can't ban them all, nor should you. You should do you best to educate people to make good choices with their lives and then let them live. Take each case on an individual basis instead of throwing a blanket over the entire religion.