https://www.change.org/p/tammy-baldwin-charles-schumer-kirsten-gillibrand-andrew-cuomo-investigate-jehovah-s-witnesses-for-sexual-abuses
I signed the petition. I would suggest you change the title to make it clear that the Watchtower as an organization is not sexually abusing children, but that they are guilty of hiding people who sexually abuse children.
For example: Investigate Jehovah's Witnesses for hiding sex abuse and protecting abusers.
i'm revisiting an old topic here, but this was a subject of much confusion for me when i was still a witness.
i went to a spanish congregation in the u.s. and it seemed to be taken for granted by most that you needed to cook beef thoroughly to "get rid" of the blood.
i was surprised when i learned that folks in the english speaking hall would order a steak medium-rare and think nothing of it.. it wasn't until after i left the witnesses that it started to occur to me that if the red fluid that was present when you'd cut the beef was blood, cooking it thoroughly wouldn't get rid of it, it'd just cook it and transform it into another color.
Really, bloody meat is OK, it's just "fractions".
Just joking, but I was always told that that was not blood, but just fluid from the meat that was red from trace amounts of blood. There is no way to remove every bit of blood from meat and that was never the goal. In Jewish tradition, as long as the animal has been bled properly, it is ok to eat. It's the process of bleeding that makes it acceptable, not the presence or not of blood.
In any case, If there is still blood in the meat, cooking wouldn't get rid of it anyway, it would only be water that cooks off, leaving any solid parts parts the blood.
firstly, thank you to anyone who is in support of this rc.
no one has shown anything but great interest and empathy for those who were abused.. i don't know who this simonsays character is though and i find him to be very rude and ignorant.
it takes all kinds to make the world go round i suppose.. today i was contacted by a staff member of the royal commission.
Good for you. People like you will bring down the Watchtower, because they didn't think people like you counted. They didn't give a second thought to your pain and suffering because it wasn't as important as their stupid, silly rules. They don't care about the bible, only about maintaining their hierarchy and keeping everyone in line. Their arrogance and lies have caught up to them.
hi i am delighted to be apart of the community.. having left the witnesses one of my first challenges was my believe in god.
naturally.. i have concluded that i am alive and conscious.
now my intuition tells me god exists, but my analytical thinking tells me god does not exist.
My JW experience left me doubting God's existence, because what is the point of God if you pray to him earnestly to show you the right path and you end up a Jehovah's Witness? Since then I have lost any doubt, I am an atheist.
I have learned not to trust intuition in matter of logic, science and reason. For example when it comes to evolution, it doesn't seem intuitive to most people that we evolved from lower life forms, but science proves that we did. In that case your intuition is dead wrong. Intuition is no substitute for facts.
hi, i am possum and have been posting for a short time just thought i would introduce myself with much trepidation.
i am a third generation ex witness.
grandparents originally lured into cult in 1920 after the death of a precious child.
my wife and i planned on fading but the elders now want a shepherding call and we are just done.
i know that many play the game to try to stay in, but i'm not a game player and neither is my wife.
our families already shun us because we reached out to a disfellowshipped family member.
on saturday the elder and his wife turned up.
i have my reasons for not turning them away at the moment, at least, not until the completion of the rc.. i asked him about his thoughts on the rc.
he said that he thought it was easy and nothing to worry about.
People can rationalize just about anything.
A thousand perverts is no big deal unless you are one of the victims. I wonder if he would feel the same if it had been his child?
i have been mulling over the options that the wt has to take in regard to child abuse.
in my mind there are the following ones:.
1. overhaul their entire system, and apologize to all abuse victims.
That is a very good idea Orphan Crow, but I don't know if anyone in the ex JW community has the expertise or ability to do that. Perhaps we in the ex JW community could work with organizations already in place to help them connect with victims.
i know that in english there are better pages exposing the organization, but here i updated the page (in spanish) with an article untitled "la organizacion jehovista oculta el abuso sexual" (the jehovist organization hides sexual abuse) based on the last news on "child abuse" in australia, and quoting watchtower's articles in which you can note how in this organization, the penitent pedophiles are in better position than the "apostates" who denounce the organization's absurdities .. http://jehovismo.com/.
for instance, i quoted the watchtower 1997 jan 1 p.29, where it is said that it is permitted for the penitent pedophile to preach door to door:.
if he seems to be repentant, he will be encouraged to make spiritual progress, share in the field service, even have parts in the theocratic ministry school (the watchtower, january 1, 1997).
I have suspected for years that being a male, especially an elder or a relative of an elder, means you are much less likely to be disfellowshipped for sexual immorality than if you are a woman, especially if you are not related to an elder. For example, a young girl is disfellowshipped for "heavy petting, her boyfriend, an elders son, is reproved.
It doesn't seem to make a difference if the immorality involves children, unless it becomes known to the congregation. This is very disturbing and tells you a lot about how women are viewed in the organization compared to men. Female sexuality seems to be feared and detested, men, especially elders are given leniency, and are questioned far less.
They had something eons ago from the "questions from the reader" that stated if an elder had confessed to a serious sin many years prior nothing needed to be done, as his continuing service as an elder proved that God had forgiven him. There seemed to be no consequences for basically lying by omission, hiding their sin and deceiving the congregation by being a hypocrite. Certainly no "out" like that was available to women.
The Jehovah's Witnesses certainly is a man's world.
richard dawkins has said frequently if we don't agree with religious or spiritual people we need to "insult them!
" tell their their out of their "fucking gourds!
" and make sure you really show them how stupid they are for believing in something they can't prove!".
According to evolution birds are the defendants of reptiles. Driven by the need to escape predators on the ground the adapted to the air by developing wings. How does a lizard decide it's time to grow wings? Did one fall off a cliff one day and magically sprout wings? Science would clearly say no. So how many lizards tried to fly off cliffs before their subsequent generations began to show signs of wings? Surely every lizard that tried to fly failed or died trying? How did they pass on the adaptive gene process? And the ones that didnt die, how many times in their life span did they jump off "flyable" heights that genetic memory was passed on to the following generations who followed suit with the same dead end results?
That is not how evolution works at all. No lizard decided he needed wings and then grew them, that would indeed be silly. No evolutionary change happened because of a perceived need on the part of the organism, it's all just minute changes to DNA, over millions of years and generations, that eventually let to the variety of species we see today
Evolution happens entirely by chance because of mutations in the DNA. Any mutation in the DNA of an organism that give that organism a better chance of survival will be more likely to be passed down to successive generations. Most mutation are very small, incremental changes
Your lizard did not sprout wings, however a lizard could have had a mutation that gave him some change that made him better suited to his particular environment at that time. That change was not a fully developed wing, but something that later developed into a wing, after many more mutations and many more generations. There were probably gliding animals before actual winged animals.
How exactly wings evolved is a matter of debate among scientists, but there is enough evidence linking winged creatures to their non winged ancestors to know for a fact that wings did in fact evolve.
For more information see http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vertebrates/flight/evolve.html
The most difficult question about the origin of flight is "Why?". "Why" questions are the most difficult ones to ask when they concern evolution; evolution does not ask "why?" Evolution has no sense of future; the here and now is the only place where evolution occurs. It is imperative to keep this in mind when considering the origin of flight. Lineages of organisms are not designed for some future purpose; they are changed by opportunities to which they can respond and by the selective processes that their environment imposes on them. Evolution is limited by developmental and genetic constraints. If an adaptation is useful to a lineage, chances are that it will be preserved. If an adaptation is co-opted from a previous use to a new use, it is called an exaptation. The only scientific way to approach why flight evolved in a group is to first figure out how it evolved; what the temporal sequence of exaptations and adaptations was.
Wikipedia is avery good resource for answers to questions on evolution. I found the information above by typing "how did wings evolve".
