It is nice we are having this exchange of thoughts.
I just want to underline what the issue is, to see if we can have a larger consensus.
What, I believe, we do not argue about is the following:
- the right of any religious movement to establish admittance and exit policies
- the right of any individual to completely exclude someone from his social relationships
N.B. The above has nothing to do with Human Rights infringement
What, I believe, we do condemn is the following:
- teaching hate, shunning and discrimination of a given group of persons, in particular, in this case, those who decide to use of their Human Right to change religion, or simply to abandon their current religious movement or church
- punishing members of their religious community for not abiding by their teachings of shunning and discriminating those who made their decision to quit because of their right to a different opinion than the one taught by the religious community leadership
N.B. The above is a violation of the Declaration of Human Right, articles 18 and 19
One point which denotes how coward and hypocrite the WT is on this subject.
In the Awake article quoted by Blondie of April 8 th 2000, the WT, to condemn the past protestant and catholic religious intolerance by using the Declaration of Human Rights as the base, refers to article 18 which “ recognizes ‘the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion,’ including the freedom to change one’s religion and to teach and practice it” but omits what the next article says about the same subject.
It is obviously profitable for the WT to underline the “right to change religion”, because of the potential to see many move from the “intolerant” protestant and catholic churches they condemn, to the “only pure Organization”, theirs in this case.
Here is what article 19 of the Declaration of Human Rights says:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinionswithout interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers
If the WT would respect this article, instead of just insisting that others have the right to respect article 18 and transfer from their current religion to the JW, then all current JW who have reached the conclusion that the JW Organization is not God’s organization, would be free to leave the JW Organization without fearing to be shunned and, thus, could continue to retain their current social and family relationships, even if their changing religion would imply a formal form of announcement that the person has “exercised its Human Right to change religion, as per article 18 of the Human Rights, but that we, Jehovah Witnesses will not interfere with his decision by shunning him, according to article 19 of the same Declaration of Human Rights”.
If this would even happen, which I sincerely doubt, the WT will finally be free to talk about the religious intolerance of the past protestant and catholic churches!
If not, they better shut up and be exposed in the same way they have exposed their competition.
