it's no secret that the wtbts has a cash flow problem.
over the past three years they have closed 20 of their 116 branches.
they have sold off most of their properties in and around ny (including some kingdom halls), drastically reduced the # of printed pages for the watchtower and awake magazines, reduced the printing of books and other materials, increased the number of single page tract campagnes, installed cc machines at their assembly halls, and are now seizing of controll of property assets from local kingdom halls using renovation projects.
Thanks for the correction on the number of peak publishers. Didn't realize I was looking at 2008 numbers.
You think that there are more baptized witnesses in a congregation than publishers? I remember a lot of teens and young adults being publishers.
breaking news :charity commission takes watchtower to charity tribunal in britain.
two weeks ago we run an article about the abuse case in moston manchester congregation .it would seem that the coverage from the main local newspaper manchester evening news and two national newspapers has alarmed the charity commission the official regulator for charities in england and wales and now for the first time !
they opened an official investigation on both charities ,the local one ,moston congragation and the central one jehovah's witnesses of britain indicating that in their eyes these two are connected and liable for any misconduct .this is the time for a concentrated campaign from all of us to inform the charity commission why the watchtower should not be a called a charity .the article above has a link for the charity commission complaint page .follow it!.
Don't you mean the misinterpretation of a 2,000 year old "un-holy" book?
it's no secret that the wtbts has a cash flow problem.
over the past three years they have closed 20 of their 116 branches.
they have sold off most of their properties in and around ny (including some kingdom halls), drastically reduced the # of printed pages for the watchtower and awake magazines, reduced the printing of books and other materials, increased the number of single page tract campagnes, installed cc machines at their assembly halls, and are now seizing of controll of property assets from local kingdom halls using renovation projects.
The 7.5 million number is peak publishers which includes baptized JWs. As far as I know, they don't put out how many are baptized vs. just publishers. I would assume its pretty close to 50/50 though. 3.75 and 3.75.
well my wife and i have been through a roller coaster of life since i convinced her the dibs werent the truth.
the hardest tests have been lived but we are closer than ever now.
now recently shes read "the shack" nd watched some movies about god and just cant seem to inderstand why god would allow all of this suffering just to prove to satan that hes "the man" (or woman).
With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion.
-Steven Weinberg
I would start by pointing out to her that morality exists independant of any God. Realizing there is no good reason to believe in a deity should no more affect her sense of morality than learning that unicorns aren't real. Morality deals with the results that our actions have on other sentient beings - namely humans. Causing harm is bad. Causing well being is good. Barring a serrious brian disorder like psychopathy, everyone understands and can relate to how other people feel and how our actions might influence them (look up Theory of Mind for more infromation on this).
The Golden Rule, treat people how you want to be treated, is most commenly associated with Jesus. Though he certainly wasn't the first person to say it. Isocrates had said it three-hundred years earlier. And Confucius a further two-hundred years before that. It's been part of every major civilization in history up to the present day. And its a concept we all intuitively understand.
But, more importantly, I would pose the following question to her: Which is more moral - doing something so that you can get a reward? - or doing something because you care about others?
Once a person considers the ramifications of this question it's very easy to see that religion gives people bad reasons to do good things - and often bad reasons to do bad things.
On the other hand, basic empathy gives people good reasons to do good things: Do good things for your family - because you love your family. Do good things for your friends - because you love your friends. Help those in need - because they are in need. Be good for goodness sake and help others for the positive effects it has on yourself and the people around you.
There is no need to choose between living well and doing well to others. For they are the same thing.
been out of commission due to some issues that i hope will get resolved and get my name out of the watchtower's registry.
oh how i am starting to believe this religion is demonic, i watched some videos and the watchtower's orgin has nothing to do with christianity but it trace's its source to demon worship and that's why they act so hateful against all members who speak out against their lie!
the twooth is what they believe!.
Islam, at best, is a religion that doesn't play well with others. I don't see why it's such a big deal to acknowledge this simple fact.
is it relative, or do all human societies and cultures hold at least some things to be good?.
i don't think right and true is "universal" other than what is right and true for people.
a dolphin or a praying mantis may have alien perceptions of what is "good".
Thanks Jgnat for the link it was a great read. I hadn't realized there was so much hype going on around mirror neurons. Peer reviewed scientific articles are a good way to sort out opion from facts.
There's a great one on the link between mirror neurons and Theory of Mind by Zarinah K. Agnew called The human mirror system: A motor resonance theory
is it relative, or do all human societies and cultures hold at least some things to be good?.
i don't think right and true is "universal" other than what is right and true for people.
a dolphin or a praying mantis may have alien perceptions of what is "good".
Morals aren't that complicated once you define the metric that is used to seperate moral actions from immoral actions.
As Simmon already brought up, we are a social species. Societies that work together - survive. Societies that don't work together - don't survive. Things like Altruism, Cognitive Empathy, and Theory of Mind are not unique to humans. We also see these in other social speices like dolphins, elephants, chimpanzees, and dogs.
So what is the metric universal metric? Well, things that promote human and animal well being - are good. Things that cause human suffering and harm - are bad. This is the basic metric used to determine the morality of actions (without having to appeal to outside sources like law, holy books, parents, etc.). Of course, all of this begs the question, what is human well being? Well, we can start with some very basic prinicples like; life is generally preferable to death. Pleasure is generally preferable to pain. Fairness is generally preferable to bias. Etc.
One could always argue that there is some outside source that informs ethics but the differnce is the things I just listed are universal and innate (assuming you have the neccissary mirror neurons and a developed pre-frontal cortex).
let me clarify, when i say aliens, i don't mean shiny helmeted spaceship dwelling anal probers.
(although i could be proved wrong).
if any alien lifeform was found on mars or another planet or even a comet, be it tiny bacteria or even some form of non carbon based life form, would that not destroy religions grip on mankind?
Microbial life forms probably wouldn't shake anybody's faith.
-jws
Its funny you should say this because when I was a JW this was the one thing that I had ever thought about and that I knew would destroy my belief in the Bible. Intelligent life wasn't a big deal for me because "God could have just created them." However, if microbial life was ever found on mars I remember thinking that would show that evolution was true - and thus Adam and Eve were false. No Adam and Eve means no original sin. No original sin means no need for Jesus sacrafice.
Looking back I now know there are much better ways to disprove the claims in the Bible - but back then it was the one thing I knew would really shake my beliefs. I think for most JWs, finding microbial life in our solar system would make them serriously question their fath. The implications are too hard to ignore. And I'm sure the WTBTS would spend considerable resources trying to dispute such findings with their usual nonsense, "The microbes could have hitched a ride on the rover from earth, the microbes aren't really microbes they're an equiptment glitch, scientest can't be trusted, etc."
i guess there are many, but what would be the strangest teaching, or "wackiest" ?.
.
.
The wackiest teaching they have is "God hates violence"
I have to laugh everytime I hear that. Besides God killing people non-stop - and telling people to kill other people all the time - he is referecned as a "man of war" (Exodous 15:3).
Accepts a child sacrafice form Jeptha for helping him defeat the sons of Ammon (Judges 11:30-35)
God has 3,000 of his own chosen people murdered for the Golden Calf incident (Exodous 32:27)
Slaughters one million Ethiopians (2 Chronicles 14:12,13)
Orders the Israelites to commit genocide against the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites with orders to kill everysingle man, woman, child and even their live stock (Deuteronomy 20:16-18) . . . trees are okay though.
Yeah, it sure sounds like God hates violence!
it seems that this portion was published in the watchtower in the year 1977 (as i have in the spanish version):.
the radiocarbon dating method has been widely accepted by many scientists as showing that humans lived back to at least 50,000 b.c.e.
that conflicts with what the bible says.. but physicist r. brown of andrews university claims that this radiocarbon dating method is highly inaccurate.
Radiocarbon dating is a tool used for dating plants, plant eating animals, and preditors that eat plant eating animals. Everytime I read that "radiocarbon dating has been proven wrong" its always something completely rediculous - like some creationist saying a diamond was dated as being only 60 thousand years old. Obviously you can't carbon date a diamond as they don't absorb C14 from the atmosphere. It would be like saying hammers have been "proven wrong" because you can't boil water with them. Obviously hammers are a tool used for driving nails not for boiling water. Likewise, radiocarbon dating is for dating plants and animals not for dating rocks.
But to come to the point of your OP, the simple fact is dendrochronology (using tree rings to date trees) has verfied the accuracy of radiocarbon dating up to 40,000 years. And scientest often use multiple dating methods to veryify the age of things. When they need to date something older (or something inorganic - like a fossil or rock), they have other tools they can use. There are several other dating methods including:
Obsidian Hydration
Paleomagnetic / Archaeomagnetic
Amino Acid Racemization
Fission Track
Oxdisable Carbon Ratio
Electron Spin Resonance
Cosmic Ray Exposure
Varves
Cation Ratios
Stratigraphy
And the other kinds of Radiometric dating:
Potassium to Argon
Rhenium to Osmium
Lutetium to Hafnium
Samarium to Neodymium
Rubidium to Strontium
