I bet they would if the society told them to.
MuadDib
JoinedPosts by MuadDib
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27
A Muslim thinks JW's are a Menace to them
by ICBehindtheCurtain inhey guys, i found the following to be quite interesting, they have some great links to jw literature, maybe this will help the lurkers to see that the house to house preaching waste of time, is pretty redundant as many religious people are now wise to the fallacy of the borg.
what to you guys think?.
ic.
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A hypothetical "ride" in Satan's Spaceship.
by Franz inis satan in possession of an alien spaceship?
will the devil use this advanced technology to deceive the nations?
welcome to the mystery of genesis:6:4. .
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MuadDib
No, the really interesting thing about UFO "history" is how it's so ridiculously far-fetched that only wingnuts take it halfway seriously.
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25
A hypothetical "ride" in Satan's Spaceship.
by Franz inis satan in possession of an alien spaceship?
will the devil use this advanced technology to deceive the nations?
welcome to the mystery of genesis:6:4. .
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MuadDib
Wow, are you ever batshit fucking crazy.
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39
The Watchtower's Great Game of "Jenga" and Exposure
by metatron injenga is a simple game in which wooden blocks are neatly piled up - and then removed, one by one, until one person ( the person who loses.
the game) makes the pile collapse.. it is tempting to see the organization in the same way - making small but significant "removals" over time.
they pull out food service.
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MuadDib
Some good points here. I think what is most bemusing is the total lack of any sort of creative or self-analytical approach to solving these problems. Instead of creating dynamic new programs to reach out to, say, young people or educated people, the organization is just retreating onto the same core philosophies with which we are all too, too familiar - go to meetings, go out in service, personal study, the end is near. The ordinary Witness is essentially being blamed for all these problems and is now patronized to by an obviously panicky set of leaders with no contingency plan and no ability to reverse the trends.
A pretty spineless, wishy-washy group they must be to have set up such a monumental house of cards with no thought of what to do when the wind starts blowing.
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Inventing new rituals
by Narkissos inone tragic mistake (i think) in the modern western world is to reduce the notion of religion to beliefs or doctrines.
and perhaps morals.
ritual is actually more central to religion, in a wider historical and geographical perspective, than any of the above.
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MuadDib
I tend to think of rituals more from the anthropological perspective - as dominant or group symbolism, participation in which secures an individual's status as a legitimate member of a given social group. Baptism is an important ritual in Christianity, as you mentioned, since it affirms one's status not only before God (which might be worth nothing) but before the other believers (which is worth everything). But there are many, many more. As JWs or ex-JWs we're all familiar with the song and prayer combo as a ritual to legitimize religious proceedings: performing the ritual once signifies the commencement of formal religious activity during which our behaviour must conform to certain standards, while performing it again in reverse order signifies that this activity has ended and a different mode of social behaviour now governs our interaction. Service is another ritual activity signifying legitimate participation in the social circle: people who don't go in service regularly are "weak in the truth" (ie undesirable members of the group) while those who regularly participate are held up as models of socially acceptable behaviour. And the JWs regulate sexual behaviour through ritualization by deeming it a sin unless the participants' union is formally acknowledged by God - and, again more importantly, by other members of the congregation, the primary social group.
The social dynamics involved in group interaction essentially force participants to behave in a manner conformist to the standard demanded by the dominant symbolism simply through fear of rejection and alienation by others. To participate is to be safe and secure; to behave differently is to be alone. For our purposes the corollary to all of this, of course, is the WBTS' clever method of forbidding Witnesses from participating in secular or "worldly" rituals that would affirm their legitimate membership in the rest of human society. Witnesses don't participate in birthday rituals, holiday rituals, political rituals, or even "safety valve" type rituals like office parties. This encourages Witnesses to see the congregation as the only social group to which they legitimately belong - hopefully ensuring their continued loyalty to the organization - while simultaneously encouraging them to view other normal human social activity as delegitimized.
So I would actually say that the mirror ritual and the greeting ritual aren't really rituals at all, unless widely adopted by other people as an essential set of behaviours that define legitimate social interaction. I don't know that it's actually possible to create any truly new rituals as they will all take the same essential form: they will confirm some kind of higher governing authority over one's behaviour or perception (irrespective of that authority's true nature) and dictate what is socially proper to do, think, say, etc. I say the hell with ritual: let's all do our own thing.
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Messy people vs. neat people
by kristyann inmy boyfriend is so messy!
i just arrived here at his apartment and seriously, the place is gross.
he has improved quite a bit since he met me... but i surprised him and he wasn't expecting me so the place is nasty.
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MuadDib
I'm pretty neat, mostly because I don't own enough possessions to actually create a substantial mess. But my roommate is a complete slob. He used to leave dishes piled up by the sink for days until I snapped on him last week and told him to be like me and just wash every single dish he uses the instant he finishes using it (since I eat out most of the time this is very easy for me). Our living room is awash in envelopes, CD cases, clothes, papers, fallen posters, books, and other assorted crap - ALL of it his. His room is a total write-off. He'll leave laundry in the washer or dryer for days on end. And don't get me started on his bathroom habits.
One of these days I'm really going to snap and give him two days to clean his shit up or I'll just find somewhere else to live. Swear to God.
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Everything I knew was wrong
by Franz inlooking through the internet i learned that everything i have ever know to be true is a lie
at the beginning of time aliens created the earth and the heavens.
they are the greater force and also the fallen angels that are prophesized in the bible.
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MuadDib
"If nothing happened out of the ordinary with evolution then why are there still monkeys?"
Sounds like it's you who needs to familiarize yourself with the facts, man. They taught me that in like ninth grade science.
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Which massacres did Jehovah sanction?
by Spectrum inthe ones i'm familiar with are from the repercussion of the rape and murder of the levites concubine.
judges 19-21 .
about 100,000 died in battle then all the towns of benjamin were put to the sword as were the people that didn't join in against the benjamites.
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MuadDib
That's a pretty lengthy post, but for all the verbiage nowhere in there could I find a single compelling reason for a society to create a law that forces women to carry children to term. This talk of bringing pregnant women in front of panels of legal and ethical experts is nothing but bullshit. Who cares what experts in which fields have to say about anything? A woman ought to be permitted to do as she pleases with her own body whatever some expert philosopher on some politically charged board has to say about the matter. Who cares if fetuses have legal and ethical rights? The legal and ethical rights of the woman trump whatever rights the fetus allegedly has.
Bottom line: what a woman does with her own body is her business and nobody else's.
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Which massacres did Jehovah sanction?
by Spectrum inthe ones i'm familiar with are from the repercussion of the rape and murder of the levites concubine.
judges 19-21 .
about 100,000 died in battle then all the towns of benjamin were put to the sword as were the people that didn't join in against the benjamites.
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MuadDib
"Why should the state be obligated to offer free abortion?"
I would argue that it's a medical procedure or service like any other, so if the state is providing medical care to its citizenry then there's no reason for abortion not to be included. I would further argue that the provision of abortion to women is not done on the understanding that abortion is "ethically unproblematic" but rather on the understanding that some women are going to have abortions, for whatever reason, and they should be provided with a safe and secure means of doing so rather than being forced to resort to less healthy methods of dealing with the situation.
But you might have a point here: why can't private clinics or medical institutions take care of the demand for abortion? Perhaps the state really should be removed from the process altogether, and the issue left entirely in private hands - between women and their own medical consultants.
I'm glad we were able to find a compromise.
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Which massacres did Jehovah sanction?
by Spectrum inthe ones i'm familiar with are from the repercussion of the rape and murder of the levites concubine.
judges 19-21 .
about 100,000 died in battle then all the towns of benjamin were put to the sword as were the people that didn't join in against the benjamites.
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MuadDib
@Spectrum: No superior knowledge here! Just a nerd's love of history books. :) I would think that to sustain 185 000 fighting men in a region that, according to most archaeologists, likely only sustained that number as a total civilian population during peacetime, the Assyrians would have to have some quite sophisticated logistics indeed. The relative distance of the march would be offset by the protracted nature of the siege (which, as I recall, also involved other sieges and battles as part of the general Assyrian campaign). And as an Empire, the Assyrians may indeed have been able to muster a force much more sizeable than most of their competitors - certainly one much larger than the city-states and fractured polities of the Levant. But I would doubt that they would be able to do so without significant disruption to their normal economic activities, having drawn off such a huge proportion of their working adult male population into this army. And to then lose them all would have damaged their civilization beyond recovery.
@Pro-lifers: I commend you for your respect for the sanctity of human life, but your connection of this stance with state power is frightening. Again, I ask the reverse question: if the state can force a woman to bear a fetus to term, can it force her to abort one? And if one, why not the other? If you're going to allow the state a free hand in biological determinism it strikes me as inconsistent to say that it can force a woman to do one thing but cannot force her to do something else.
Bottom line: government has no business whatsoever in the affairs of a woman's own body. If you don't like abortion then educate against it, make sure people are making informed choices based on open and accessible information. Creating a Draconian society where old rich men tell women how to live their lives is not a progressive solution.