binadub: you may want to switch to firefox, or ie (compatible mode?) as your posts as blank
The only thing new that I've learned from COC was the way GB deals, I've done all my research prior to DA and only read Ray's book afterwards. For those who haven't done any prior research, COC is a highly recommended. Well written and easy to read for any JW.
i don't think there are more pedophiles in the religion than there are in others.. i understand that one is too many.
but i think some believe that it's an epidemic within the organization.
i believe their 2 witness rule can help pedophiles secretly abuse kids.. but i don't think that this particular crime dominates those in the religion.. .
While the 23000 number is alleged, there is a good chance it's true. It seems many of us heard of a pedophile in our congregations and most of these were in and not out. As I suspect the ratio of them within wts are greater than that of general public mainly due to how wts covers things up, how they "trust" their own and what kind of people are swayed to be recruited.
We need more victims to contact the authorities and hope to have another class action lawsuit that will push for all the documents to be made public.
to be fair, translating the bible is a huge undertaking, and in doing so, there are bound to be mistakes, or even limits to a committee's knowledge.
obviously, we cannot read the hearts of the four translators of the new world translation committee to know when they consciously or subconsciously altered renderings in to support doctrinal bias.
but more and more, i do come across things that feel askew to me.
I guess anything is possible especially when the committee is anonymous. Maybe they were amateurs or maybe there was just one amateur - Freddy. At this point I trust them enough to do anything underhanded to benefit their own beliefs so whoever and however they've produced NWT is up in the air or open for discussion.
i have family members who are still jws, many of you do as well.
assuming your folks are similar to mine, they are, for the most part, rational.
they are jws because they believe and they have a tremendous amount of scriptural knowledge, albeit of wts origins and with the expected bias.. if i chose to demonstrate, to my father particularly, the inconsistencies in wts ideology... he might just decide to leave.
CC: with regard to mind control, search "BITE model" and see if you can apply it to wts
i don't think there are more pedophiles in the religion than there are in others.. i understand that one is too many.
but i think some believe that it's an epidemic within the organization.
i believe their 2 witness rule can help pedophiles secretly abuse kids.. but i don't think that this particular crime dominates those in the religion.. .
Outlaw, if you're referring to this:
I don't know how that would stand in court of law. I would call this an allegation and not a fact. While I'm not saying it's not possible as the number may be bigger or smaller just that receiving information from a third unknown source(may be known to Bill but unknown to rest of us) makes this information an allegation IMO and not a fact. I couldn't honestly use that document as a factual reference. If there is another document you've got, let me know.
i don't think there are more pedophiles in the religion than there are in others.. i understand that one is too many.
but i think some believe that it's an epidemic within the organization.
i believe their 2 witness rule can help pedophiles secretly abuse kids.. but i don't think that this particular crime dominates those in the religion.. .
The WBT$ admits to 23,000+ pedophiles in the WBT$ data base.
Can I have a reference to the above statement. It wouldn't surprise me that was factual but as far as I know the above number is only allegation.
to be fair, translating the bible is a huge undertaking, and in doing so, there are bound to be mistakes, or even limits to a committee's knowledge.
obviously, we cannot read the hearts of the four translators of the new world translation committee to know when they consciously or subconsciously altered renderings in to support doctrinal bias.
but more and more, i do come across things that feel askew to me.
Did they have anyone educated enough to actually translate the bible or did they re-write an interlinear translation and used lexicons to make few sections more colorful while not having a problem "adjusting" some words to fit their teachings? I have Interlinear word for word Hebrew scriptures and they read similarly to NWT. This is my general observation as I haven't done deep investigation on the topic nor have I compared the several questionable phrases found in NWT. Without knowing the committee members anything is a possibility.
i don't think there are more pedophiles in the religion than there are in others.. i understand that one is too many.
but i think some believe that it's an epidemic within the organization.
i believe their 2 witness rule can help pedophiles secretly abuse kids.. but i don't think that this particular crime dominates those in the religion.. .
Would the ratio of witnesses pedophiles be greater or smaller to that of other groups? Since there probably is 5-6million adult witnesses the number of cases heard signifies there may be a larger problem within their ranks than one is to believe when compared to others.
Huge problem may not be the case here but the ratio may signal a problem. This can be applied to suicides and other forms of abuse to see there are some major problems within organizations like wts.
i have family members who are still jws, many of you do as well.
assuming your folks are similar to mine, they are, for the most part, rational.
they are jws because they believe and they have a tremendous amount of scriptural knowledge, albeit of wts origins and with the expected bias.. if i chose to demonstrate, to my father particularly, the inconsistencies in wts ideology... he might just decide to leave.
It seems to me, fairly obvious what you're getting yourself into
Not quite. I was young and ignorant at 17 when I got sucked in, what the fuck did I know about religions and cults. They used the bible, offered a "bible" based story and I fell for it - besides it was my "close friend" which I never knew he was a dub prior to. Interesting fellow to say the least. Others get recruited in their time of weakness, when people die, someone is sick, poverty and better life appeals to them. Once you're in, you don't see the problem until something happens so you wake up and realize where you are.
As far as your father is concerned. if he's not too old, I don't see a problem with trying to free him. When there is an opportunity slip something he may want to discuss, then you can introduce some facts for him to ponder about. He may talk further or he may shut down as cult personality will kick in and there will be no more talk of religion for that day. Before you do that, you will need to actually learn some facts and not just hearsay. Anything you bring up, you have to back it up by either watchtower articles, court documents or something where he can't deny it as being apostate propaganda. You know your father best and how he reacts to discussing wts. If you do end up having a conversation try to stay on the topic you're prepared to discuss otherwise tell him you will look it up and get back to him. It is difficult to get a cult member to wake up and at times it may not be worth it depending on their circumstances. What helped my wife was, when I left the borg, she went in service more than she did in years prior, so I asked her how can she honestly tell strangers about 1914 when it's a proven lie. I had two books, Crisis Of Conscience and Gentiles Times Reconsidered which she read on her own in her due time. I was pushy with her on the wts teachings which never got far but at least she did hear and managed to read the books. After GTR, she was done with the cult. She never DA and was never DF. If she sees people in public she hasn't been shunned but we have no JW visitors from the KH here. Her immediate family still talks to us knowing our positions. So there is always hope for your father if the circumstances are right.
Different approaches work for different people, and it's probably similar to when JWs recruit but in reverse. If you come off like a know it all you may not get very far with your father.
i posted on manki's crisis of conscience thread the following, and decided it deserves a thread of it's own (giving it was completely ignored, lol).
i'll give you a head start, manky.. http://tearsofoberon.blogspot.com/2009/10/mexico-military-and-jwsthe-truth.html.
under the subheading 6.0 lies and exaggerations, he goes on to say this:.
I would like to add that WTS in Mexico wasn't a religious organization, even though under the 1917 constitutions they had the right to be registered but they chose not to. Until, the 1990s(?) they were known as a Cultural Society and the KHs were Cultural Centers. Since government didn't allow religions to own property, wts had no problem owning land and buildings, this law applied to even cults since the 1917 Mexican constitutions allowed for existence of such. Whether this had any relevance in wts decision in the 1960s I don't know.
Just because bribes are "natural" arrangement in a country, that doesn't make them a legal way of doing business but only acceptable by the society where this is practiced. What the apologists are trying to do, is downplay the fact that bribe is an illegal act because everyone is doing it. And that maybe a small number of witnesses would have done so because of born in witness population, which is irrelevant as we're talking about wts allowing the bribes to take place and we're not focusing on individual jws.
Feb4, 1960 is the letter from Mexican branch asking about Cartilla, and this is the wts reply from COC.
To me, it looks like GB took the path of least resistance. Since bribing was an acceptable practice in Mexico and other countries they allowed Mexican to do so if their conscience didn't bother them. GB didn't think too deeply on the matter and the consequences. From looks of it, Malawi witnesses thought it was wrong to buy a "political" card, so GB simply agreed with their stand and made an example of faithful witnesses in Malawi for their view of purchasing a "political" card.
First point is irrelevant as stated earlier because the apologist is trying to downplay the fact we're talking about wts and not individual actions. It makes no difference if there was only 1 jw drafted who paid a bribe after wts gave him their blessing or if there were 1000s. It's wts' decision we are talking about.
If WTS made a mistake in dates regarding letters, so what? The point is they allowed the practice, not that they pointed to wrong letter.
http://i43.tinypic.com/21ka5ci.jpg
Whoever the ThirdWitness is, he is in same mental state as Rolf Furuli.
