Posts by slimboyfat

You are right..Jehovah's Witnesses did not bring persecution on themselves.Rutherford as self appointed and only spokesman for God did it to them. The rank and file or ordinary were only willing sheep being lead to the slaughter by the rantings and ravings of a lunatic cult leader.

I am afraid that presentation is almost as bad. To accept that view one must also believe that the ordinary Witnesses were mindless automotons who could not possibly act otherwise than to spout and distribute whatever they were told to. I think they, and humans in general, deserve a bit more credit for detemining their own course of action than that. "Brainwashing" is a concept too readily appealed to when persons wish in retrospect to justifly or give extraordinary explanations for actions they later regret. That is not to say there are not extreme cases in which brainwashing does occur, and people really do lose the ability to make their own decisions (like under torture), but this must be clearly distinguished from the kind of social pressure that all individuals are subjected to in all societies from various associations.

Besides, against your presentation that it was soley down to the leadership that the Witnesses suffered is the inconvenient fact that many Witnesses acted as stubbornly against the Nazis individually and in isolation from other Witnesses and suffered accordingly - without being goaded on by anyone else.

43

Americans need to grow up

by slimboyfat in

what is all this carry on (controversy) about "brokeback mountain"?

my goodness, they are acting like 12-year-olds.

get a life - what is this the dark ages?.

slimboyfat

Yeah, thanks a lot "Little Toe" - am I allowed to sleep? Have you got something against me? I don't have anything against you.

I know Americans are a great mixture, and that as well as comprising a frighteningly illiberal and hawkish ruling class at the moment, there are also many of the most liberal and progessive groups as well as individual thinkers in the western world.

It is just that over the past few years of watching Fox News I have gone through stages of amusement to serious concern for our Atlantic friends.

43

Americans need to grow up

by slimboyfat in

what is all this carry on (controversy) about "brokeback mountain"?

my goodness, they are acting like 12-year-olds.

get a life - what is this the dark ages?.

slimboyfat

mrs jones

Yeah - that too! I forgot about that one.

18

Projected growth of the Watchtower Society

by Elsewhere in

jw
friends

i took the growth figures from 1945 through 2005 and use the past growth rates to predict the future rates and this is what i got.... by 2010 the growth rate will reach 0 and after that the average number of publishers will start to go down.

their average number of publishers should stop rising at about 6.6 million members and by 2025 they should be back to 5 million.

it took them 122 years to reach 5 million publishers and it will only take 10 years to go back to 5 million publishers after they peak out at 6.6 million in 2010. .

slimboyfat

Have you read Rodney Stark's projected growth figures for JWs which is much higher?

Mind you, he said the same thing about Mormon growth - and they have been declining ever since.

43

Americans need to grow up

by slimboyfat in

what is all this carry on (controversy) about "brokeback mountain"?

my goodness, they are acting like 12-year-olds.

get a life - what is this the dark ages?.

slimboyfat

But what if Brokeback mountain was shown in Arab Countries -do they need to grow up also

For sure! But the very fact that America can even slightly be compared with such backward societies is what worries me in the first place. America is the most prosperous liberal western democracy - there should be no comparison. Destitute, uneducated unfortunates in the middle east have an excuse for their superstitious nonsense and prejudices. Texans have no such excuse.

43

Americans need to grow up

by slimboyfat in

what is all this carry on (controversy) about "brokeback mountain"?

my goodness, they are acting like 12-year-olds.

get a life - what is this the dark ages?.

slimboyfat

What is all this carry on (controversy) about "Brokeback Mountain"? My goodness, they are acting like 12-year-olds. Get a life - what is this the dark ages?

And it's not just that. They can't mention the UN without attaching the word "scandal".

Question whether Guantanamo Bay is just and and you would think you had insulted their mother. They are bereft for their lack of European-style post-colonial reflexivity and self-doubt.

And why is everyone on Fox News determined to enter into a "culture war"? And why must every single news story be either bad for the "Dems" or good for the GOP?

Don't Americans long for news that is simply "news". If I lived in America and had no access to the BBC or the Guardian, I would be forced to reply on the Daily Show for the closest thing Americans get to objective information on the outside world...

Disclaimer: this does not apply to all Americans of course.

8

The end of faith

by poppers in

has anyone heard of sam harris and read his book, "the end of faith"?

http://samharris.org/ .

sam harris cranks out blunt, hard-hitting chapters to make his case for why faith itself is the most dangerous element of modern life.

slimboyfat

Sounds like Richard Dawkins, only more so.

I prefer to read books like Steve Bruce's "God is Dead: Secularization in the West" or Callum Brown's "Death of Christian Britian". Instead of promoting the end of religion such books merely document from a sociological perspective the extent and the path of decline of religion in the modern world.

14

Jehovah's Witnesses and the Third Reich-NEWS wire

by DannyHaszard in

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=utf-8&q=jehovah%27s+witnesses&btng=search+news

highest ranked news as i type

jehovah's witnesses and the third reich - sectarian politics under ...

slimboyfat

I am sorry, but I find it utterly deplorable when I read anyone insinuating that Jehovah's Witnesses "brought the persecution on themselves" or any such formulation.

The Witnesses' record may not have been as uniform and without complication as they claim in their literature, but the fact remains that they certianly had a better record of conduct during the Nazi period than any of the other churches.

This review is interesting, but the one I am really waiting to read is Richard Singelenberg's review of Penton's new book: has anyone read that review in the Journal of Chruch and State? If so, what can they tell us about it?