Just learned that my Bethel lifer aunt and uncle are going to be housed there. I'm at least kinda relieved they weren't booted to the curb like other Bethelites.
marmot
JoinedPosts by marmot
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24
Watchtower buys apt complex in Fishkill, NY
by lostinthought inhttp://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/news/local/2014/12/22/jehovahs-witnesses-buy-fishkill-rivercrest-apartments/20788311/.
jehovah's witnesses now owns a major apartment complex in the town of fishkill.. tenants say they've been told their leases will not be renewed.. the sale of the 250-unit rivercrest luxury apartments closed dec. 3, the deed on file at the dutchess county clerk's office shows.
while sale price is not stated, the transfer tax indicates a transaction for $57 million.. rivercrest is a modern development west of route 9d just north of beacon and was a project of avr realty, which also developed other housing and commercial spaces in that area as well as projects in eight states.. the sale deed is between rivercrest development llc, based in yonkers, and watchtower bible and tract society of new york, inc. as the buyer.
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Huge court victory against JW grandparents trying to indoctrinate their granddaughter!
by marmot inhttp://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/jehovah-s-witness-grandparents-ordered-to-keep-faith-to-themselves-1.3282193.
a pair of devout jehovah's witnesses have been ordered by a b.c.
provincial court judge not to talk about religion in front of their four-year-old granddaughter.. the couple lost their bid for unsupervised access to the girl because they insisted on taking her to worship at their faith's kingdom hall despite the repeated objections of the child's mother.. the girl is identified only as a.w.
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marmot
*edit, oops, I didn't see OrphanCrow's thread.
Looks like I was beaten to the punch as well. :P
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Huge court victory against JW grandparents trying to indoctrinate their granddaughter!
by marmot inhttp://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/jehovah-s-witness-grandparents-ordered-to-keep-faith-to-themselves-1.3282193.
a pair of devout jehovah's witnesses have been ordered by a b.c.
provincial court judge not to talk about religion in front of their four-year-old granddaughter.. the couple lost their bid for unsupervised access to the girl because they insisted on taking her to worship at their faith's kingdom hall despite the repeated objections of the child's mother.. the girl is identified only as a.w.
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marmot
A pair of devout Jehovah's Witnesses have been ordered by a B.C. provincial court judge not to talk about religion in front of their four-year-old granddaughter.
The couple lost their bid for unsupervised access to the girl because they insisted on taking her to worship at their faith's Kingdom Hall despite the repeated objections of the child's mother.
The girl is identified only as A.W. and the grandparents as A.R. and B.R. in Judge Edna Ritchie's 12-page decision. And for now, they're on a short leash.
"There are many people with strongly held religious views that do not discuss those views in front of others, and specifically not in front of children," Ritchie wrote.
Unless A.R. and B.R. can satisfy the court that they can comply with the mother's wishes, Ritchie said, "their time with A.W. must be supervised and limited."
Religious rights vs. parental responsibility
The case pits the Family Law Act against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The Family Law Act states that only a guardian has parental responsibilities, including decisions about religious upbringing, and the mother, M.W., is sole guardian.
But A.R. and B.R. argued that forbidding them from expressing their faith to their grandchild would violate a charter right to practise their religion.
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled a custodial parent can't limit another parent's ability to discuss religion unless the child's best interests are threatened
The grandparents want A.W. to experience their religion, while M.W. insists her daughter "can decide when she is older whether or not to participate in any religious practices."
The battle is the culmination of a saga that began when the child's biological dad, L.R., told his parents he had fathered a child three weeks after A.W. was born.
L.R. was "disfellowshipped" from the Jehovah's Witness faith, a type of religious excommunication. He testified that he has little contact with A.R. and B.R. He also pays no child support and has no parental responsibilities.
A.R. and B.R. were determined to have contact with their granddaughter, and the child's mother felt it important for them to be part of their lives. She previously allowed them unsupervised access.
Poppa and Momma vs. Grandpa and Grandma
But according to the decision, the relationship between the "well-meaning, determined grandmother" and M.W. has been strained from the outset.
M.W. also objected to the couple insisting the girl call them Poppa and Momma instead of Grandpa and Grandma. But by far the biggest disagreement arose over visits to the Kingdom Hall.
From the time A.W. was a baby, A.R. and B.R. took her to services; M.W. said she wasn't happy, but didn't object until December 2013.
She switched the timing of their visits, but then learned from her daughter the grandparents had taken A.W. to services the following spring; A.R. insisted the child "had begged to go to Kingdom Hall."
Visits were then limited to supervised access at M.W.'s home.
But even at that, M.W. was upset to find her daughter watching a Jehovah's Witness video on A.R.'s laptop. The grandmother insisted the child had pushed the play icon before she could stop her.
Mother knows best
The judge noted that when two or more parents with different religious views share parental responsibility the court will often support the child being exposed to each religion involved.
But because A.R. and B.R. are not guardians, the court was bound to respect the decision of the mother. For that same reason, Ritchie also found the charter argument didn't apply.
The couple cited another Supreme Court of Canada case involving a divorce in which a mother with custody had obtained an order forcing her Jehovah Witness ex-husband not to discuss religion with their children.
In that case, the top court ruled a custodial parent does not have a right to limit the other parent's ability to discuss religion unless the child's best interests were threatened.
In this case, Ritchie found it wasn't fair to place A.W. in a holy war between her mother and grandparents.
"I am concerned that the applicants' demonstrated inability to respect and comply with M.W's decisions on religion will continue to cause conflict," she wrote. "It is not in A.W.'s best interests to be exposed to that conflict."
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Canada may get a new government today
by Simon inthe us elections suck up all the attention (and it's not even at the candidate selection stage!
) but canada actually has a national election today.. first results are starting to come in and so far it's all liberal party.. i think it's time harper and the conservatives got the boot.
last premiere from the bush era.
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marmot
I voted for the first time last night, which is a huge deal for me. Not only did I have to overcome all the Witness stigma from my family, but also the fact that I'm Native and voting is seen as a betrayal of sorts among some groups.
I voted Green but I'm just as happy the Liberals won. I don't agree with their policy on firearms but hopefully the Conservatives will hold them in check as the official opposition.
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AUSTRALIA – Artemis Legal launches inquiry into group and class action lawsuits against Jehovah’s Witnesses
by jwleaks injehovah's witnesses - group action lawyers fighting for justice | artemis legal .
artemis legal | watchtower claims.
13 october 2015 .
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marmot
I don't trust a lawyer who doesn't know how to spell "perjure" (look at the "theocratic war" heading) -
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Where does the Society stand on Uniformitarianism?
by marmot inmy dad doesn't like the fact that i've come to accept the theory of evolution.
he always accuses me of unquestioningly "buying into" what scientists say and says i don't apply critical thinking to the problem.
so now i've decided to tackle his claim at the roots.
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marmot
My dad doesn't like the fact that I've come to accept the theory of evolution. He always accuses me of unquestioningly "buying into" what scientists say and says I don't apply critical thinking to the problem.
So now I've decided to tackle his claim at the roots.
Virtually all scientific theory can be boiled down to uniformitarianism, which, according to Wikipedia, is the principle or assumption that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe now have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe. It is a first principle of science. It is thanks to uniformitarianism that we know the age of the universe and the earth, which brings me to my next point.
For many years now, the Society has agreed that the earth is billions of years old. In fact, they pride themselves on this and try to distance themselves from young earth creationists.
On the other hand, they espouse teachings that fly in the face of uniformitarianism, such as a global flood that occurred roughly 4,000 years ago. Taking just a single line of reasoning, the flood can be disproved using ice core data that goes back over 400,000 years.
All the creationist counter-arguments to ice core data that I've encountered eventually culminate in an attack on the validity of uniformitarianism. They argue that natural laws didn't behave the same way before the flood, therefore all of science is based upon a false assumption.
So which is it, according to the Society? Is the earth billions of years old and therefore uniformitarianism is true, or did a global flood cover the earth a few thousand years ago and uniformitarianism is a lie?
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BWAAAHAHAHAHA! Luke 14:28
by marmot innew international version"suppose one of you wants to build a tower.
won't you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?".
the irony, oh the sweet sweet delicious irony..
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marmot
New International Version
"Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won't you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?"The irony, oh the sweet sweet delicious irony.
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Uh, wow. I think I might become vegan.
by marmot ini am a dyed in the wool carnivore.
i suffer from cheese addiction.
lobsters are mercilessly boiled alive.. but after watching this new documentary called cowspiracy on netflix, all that may change.
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marmot
I thought the same thing about grass-fed beef, but the truth is that it's even worse for the environment than factory-farmed meat. Perhaps better for the animal's well-being (until we kill them, that is) but a grass-fed cow takes 8 more months of feeding, watering, and methane and nitrous oxide emissions before slaughter compared to a factory-farmed cow.
Not to mention that the land required to meet the demand just doesn't exist.
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Uh, wow. I think I might become vegan.
by marmot ini am a dyed in the wool carnivore.
i suffer from cheese addiction.
lobsters are mercilessly boiled alive.. but after watching this new documentary called cowspiracy on netflix, all that may change.
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marmot
The population growth argument is shaky, it's more of a livestock population growth problem.
7 billion people
70 billion cattle
Who needs more food and water and uses more land?
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Uh, wow. I think I might become vegan.
by marmot ini am a dyed in the wool carnivore.
i suffer from cheese addiction.
lobsters are mercilessly boiled alive.. but after watching this new documentary called cowspiracy on netflix, all that may change.
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marmot
Oh I have no qualms about killing cute little critters for meat. I'm a hunter and fisherman and will continue to supplement my diet with wild game but the documentary is more about the environmental impact of eating animal products due to unsustainable farming practices.
Animal farming is THE leading threat to the environment due to water use, land (mis)use and greenhouse gas emissions, but what are we told to do by the so-called "environmentalists?" Buy electric cars, buy high-efficiency washers, buy compact fluorescent lightbulbs, buy solar panels.
Notice a trend? Spend, spend, spend. No one is talking about the huge impact you can have immediately by cutting animal products from your diet. Why? That would hurt the industry pocketbooks.
I was literally sick to my stomach when I found out about water use in the livestock industry. We're being told not to water our lawns and conserve water at every corner, there's real talk about water resource wars in the near future. Following every single conservation trick in the book you might save 50 gallons a month of domestic water use whereas a SINGLE quarter-pound hamburger takes 660 gallons of water to produce.
The data is out there for all to see, but none of the major environmental groups will touch the issue with a ten-foot pole.
Our biosphere is in crisis, the oceans are on the verge of collapse, but everyone's being misinformed about the major issue driving climate change, species extinction and habitat destruction.
