Posts by fodeja

9

Yugoslavia bans import of JW's literature

by Gianluca in

jw
friends

here is some news on the jw's:.

belgrade: the yugoslav interior ministry has banned the import of jehovah's witnesses literature, claiming it would have a negative influence on the education of children.. source: bbc monitoring european - political .

publication date: 2001-05-22. text of report in english by belgrade-based radio b92 text web site on 22 may .

fodeja

The Yugoslav Interior Ministry has banned the import of Jehovah's Witnesses literature, claiming it would have a negative influence on the education of children.

Bad idea. Very bad idea. First of all, things like this have been tried so many times before, and backfired every time. It'll raise curiosity and public attention and give the Witnesses yet another opportunity to pose as the poor victims of cruel persecution. The reason why the JWs are losing members and failing to recruit new ones all over Europe is not some kind of persecution, it's simply that people aren't interested and don't hear anything from them. I'm pretty sure that many people don't even know that the JWs still exist.

And no matter what one's opinion about the Watchtower may be, this is simply not the right thing to do for any country claiming to be a democracy! Which books are next on the "watchlist"?

f.

46

Canada's Numbers Declining-Worries Bethel

by Had Enough in

jw
friends

man it's good to be home, relaxed and de-stressing right now!

how many times today, i just wanted to say aaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhh!!!!

at my circuit's one-day assembly.

fodeja

I wonder too, like Moxy said, if they might just stop publishing the figures in the WT of the annual report if the numbers keep declining. hmmmmmm?

For what it's worth, up until last year or so, the statistics page on the official WT website used to have growth/decline percentages and last year's figures for comparison, just like the printed annual reports. If you care to take a look at the current chart ( http://www.watchtower.org/statistics/worldwide_report.htm), you'll see that those data aren't listed any more. I also find it interesting that they do not list the "average publishers" figure there, just the "peak" figure.

Maybe they're afraid of running out of *'s :-)

f.

23

Who is running the Watchtower now?

by professor in

jw
friends

who is the head honcho and/or big kahuna?

watchtower presidents:.

charles t. russell (1879-1916).

fodeja

JT,

interesting list indeed. It seems to me that the vast majority of people in somewhat responsible positions at Watchtower HQ are Americans (or at least from other English speaking countries).

Which, of course, begs the question: does old Jehovah favour certain "races" or nations? Are people from, say, China, Finland, the Ukraine or maybe Ivory Coast not as qualified, not as spiritual as US citizens? So maybe it's really God's own country after all? ;-)

f., considering an application for the green card lottery :-)

23

JW Boyfriend is being brainwashed !

by Camay in

jw
friends

my boyfriend and i live together and have been for about 3 years.. he wants me to convert, after research i will not.

(i was raised bapstist) he hasnt went to the hall in two weeks, last nite he went because a "elder" called him, why did they have him in a meeting till.

11 at nite, he came home and told me he confessed and he is in trouble.

fodeja

I think they told him I was evil or something..Is this common practice

You needn't be "evil"! You're an unbeliever, which means you're "bad association"(TM) by definition. They don't even need to know you at all, the way you live or whatever you happen to believe in. You, as a person, do not matter at all. You're bad association simply because you're not on the JW member list. And of course, premarital sex is one of the all-time favourites of JW "judicial" committees.

Your boyfriend has broken the rules, and now he's torn between loyalty to his group and his relationship to you. Since you've done some research, you should understand by now that he's in acute danger of being excommunicated. Which, of course, is a very serious thing in JW circles - once you're out, you're considered a pretty much worthless person, headed for destruction.

I know all too well how bizarre this may seem in our oh-so-enlightened 21st century society, but that's the way it is.

f.

7

Religious freedom in peril?

by Kent in

jw
friends

religious freedom in peril?

european actions alarming, experts tell senate panel.

by lee davidson.

fodeja

Germany and Austria are campaigning against "new religions." Experts, including some from the State Department, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday those are signs of how, even in Western Europe, religious freedom is under attack. Worse, other countries are copying the examples and tactics.

Huh?! To claim that Germany and Austria are "campaigning against new religions" is just bullshit. There certainly is a tendency to favor the traditional churches, in Austria especially the Catholic Church. For instance, the WTS does not have official "church" status, which brings some autonomy and tax benefits. Some years ago, and largely unnoticed by the general public, an Austrian government department released a brochure which listed a couple of "new religions" and their particular beliefs. It contained some veiled and unspecific criticism of cult-like organizations in general, but otherwise it was a rather dull piece of paper, written in dry language. Nevertheless, some Witnesses got all hysterical about it. The publishers were actually told to brace for a wave of persecution. Of course, nothing happened, since pretty much nobody gives a damn about the Witnesses or any other religion these days. There is no such thing as a campaign against new religions, not even remotely!

I guess those so-called experts (who probably couldn't even find half the countries they're talking about on a world map) are simply parroting whatever the friendly lobbyists told them.

In my not-so-humble opinion, *no* religion should be granted *any* form of special legal status simply for being a religion. If that is considered persecution, so be it ;-)

f.

3

cross cultural

by zukochan in

jw
friends

hey all,.

i dunno if you can be much help, but i figured i'd register and explain my situation.

so, here goes.... i just found out a few days ago that a friend of mine from japan is a jw.

fodeja

The only thing that comes to my mind is http://www.jwic.com , which has a Japanese section. Maybe this could help you somehow.

f.

17

Evil: Live With It. It's a Game

by Farkel in

jw
friends

is good a part of god or is god a part of good?

which is the bigger thing which contains the other?

most people would say that god is the container of good and not the other way around.. if this is true, then good comes from god.

fodeja

: Gen 1:4 states that God pronounced light as being "good" after it was created. Even though these words were written thousands (billions, actually) of years after the event, they still contradict your "Version II Universe" assertion.

I stand corrected, Farkel, I have really neglected my bible studies. On the other hand, since god is omniscient and knows everything that will happen in the future, he could have known and used the concepts introduced later on and, uh...wait, doesn't that contradict free will? I mean, if there is such a thing as free will, how can he be sure if and how evil is introduced? And if god can transfer his knowledge from the future into the past, isn't he "tainting" the past by introducing that nasty two-sided notion of "good" from the, er, bad future? Damn.

f.

p.s.: http://www.dmatech.com/~swmud/help/miscell/time_travel.html :-)

17

Evil: Live With It. It's a Game

by Farkel in

jw
friends

is good a part of god or is god a part of good?

which is the bigger thing which contains the other?

most people would say that god is the container of good and not the other way around.. if this is true, then good comes from god.

fodeja

Farkel, although I fully agree with you that the entire good-evil thing as described in the bible doesn't make sense at all, I think there's a bit of a fallacy in your reasoning (well, not really a fallacy, more of an unwarranted assumption). Or maybe I didn't get your point...let's see.

Let's say that god created the world yesterday. Today, we look at that world of yesterday and describe it as 100 percent "good", meaning that it has all the properties we associate with our current notion of "good" and none corresponding to its opposite "not good" (alias evil). So, yesterday, as you point out, the adjective "good" had no meaning at all - there was only what we today call "good", so the concept of good did not, or at least _did not have to_, exist at that time.
Why do we have a concept of "good" today? Because we assume that last night, something happened to change the world. Something new was introduced while we were snoring peacefully, it differentiated things in a new way (meaning that some things have more of it, and some less), and we feel it therefore makes sense to find a description for those differences. We might say it's a new dimension (as in geometry) and label its extreme ends "good" and "evil".

The point I'm trying to get across is that, unlike Plato, I see no reason to postulate that concepts or ideas are "beings", existing in their own world. I also don't think the bible postulates that god created such a "concept of good" together with his first creation. God created a universe (release 1.0) some time ago, but the bible describes that universe later: from the viewpoint and within the extended explanatory framework of its successor, universe 2.0. The notion of good needn't have existed in universe 1.0, according to this model _and_ the bible (IIRC - I haven't wasted my time on bible reading for a long time).

f.

9

*" .amazing growth, prosperity ..&qu...

by MacHislopp in

jw
friends

i was wondering about the quote found in the.

february watchtower (15/2001 p. 27), there in 17 it is written:.

" in his book these also believe, professor charles s.braden.

fodeja

I don't have the details right here, but most of that growth is what I'd call "horizontal". The JWs are spreading throughout the world, but they only get a very small market share in each country. They're filling their niche, but they cannot get beyond that (this is where JWs will inevitably start talking about the narrow road to salvation etc. ad nauseam :-)).

In most of the so-called Western world, the Witnesses haven't really grown that much since the pre-1975 explosion. The publishers-to-population ratio is usually in the range of 0.2-0.5%, and stagnating or falling. And of course, baptism has dropped _drastically_, in many first world countries, over the past 10 years. Growth is almost exclusively seen in poor, politically instable countries - USA and especially Europe are eroding (I wonder if that's the reason why they don't list individual countries' growth rates on www.watchtower.org any more?).

See http://www.jwic.com/stat.htm for some nice diagrams, there are also a couple of other statistics sites with focus on certain countries (e.g. http://www.redrival.com/wis/statistics.html , http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/6023/).

f.

25

it just got more interesting.

by Texasbred in

jw
friends

the woman i am dating has a 4 year old child.

he's a cute kid, and we get along very well.. the father was once a jw and he went to the same kingdom hall as my girlfriend.

but now he's out and celebrates holidays, birthdays, etc.

fodeja

Texasbred,

I can agree with a lot that has been said so far (especially the "can you get the org out of her" part...). I'm not sure if posting this has any benefit for you at all, but now I've registered just for that purpose. Don't expect good advice, just a few words from someone who's been there and done that.

I've been in what seems almost exactly the same situation. "She" behaved pretty much the same as you describe it, and I was pretty much wondering in the same way as you. She was born and raised in a somewhat dysfunctional JW family (fanatic father, anxious mother, rebellious self-destructive brother), sometimes "straying from the truth" and always feeling terribly guilty and depressed for it. But she really seemed to be "the one"; I thought I had finally found the soul mate I'd been searching for so long, a woman who seemed almost too good to be true. She was worth fighting for, so that's what I did. It was a long and very, very painful struggle for both of us, I guess. I don't even know who the enemy was in that struggle: ourselves, an oppressive religion, her family, something else or a combination of it all.

We didn't make it. As far as I know, she's fully back in the borg, married to a loyal JW and about to go with him to "where the need is greater" (read: full-time recruiting). Even though it's been a while since, I'm still not completely over it. Actually it still hurts to write this, which is why I'm keeping it rather short.

Just be careful, and - as someone else here put it - remember that "this thing" is bigger than it may seem. It's not going to be easy, but that doesn't mean you can't make it. Best of luck to you, I really mean it.

f. (europe-bred :-))