Posts by Vidiot

watchtower representatives (jehovahs christian witnesses) are once again attending the osce, organization for security and co-operation in europe,meeting in warsaw on september 24 - oct. 5, 2012. http://www.osce.org/hdim_2012to see jehovahs witnesses listed as a non-governmental organization, click on http://www.osce.org/hdim_2012?view=conference_documents&display=page_2&arg=92455.

please scroll down under non-governmental organization and click on administrative centre of jehovahs witnesses in russia as well as european association of jehovah's christian witnesses.

once you click on them, you will be brought to a page with a list of all of their presentations at the osce.

Vidiot

Aaron Eldridge: "Does anyone know if the requirements for gaining NGO status has changed from the time the Org first got involved?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngo

An NGO doesn't actually need to be associated with the United Nations to be an NGO.

DT's right; there's not much ado here other than the WT interacting with the larger World to advance their agenda; nothing really new.

If they were listed as an NGO specifically registered (and thereby afilliated with and thusly required to follow and/or advocate the policies of) the UN, it might be a different story, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

Still good to know, though.

39

JWs are attending the OSCE meeting in Warsaw as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) & giving presentations

by AndersonsInfo in

watchtower representatives (jehovahs christian witnesses) are once again attending the osce, organization for security and co-operation in europe,meeting in warsaw on september 24 - oct. 5, 2012. http://www.osce.org/hdim_2012to see jehovahs witnesses listed as a non-governmental organization, click on http://www.osce.org/hdim_2012?view=conference_documents&display=page_2&arg=92455.

please scroll down under non-governmental organization and click on administrative centre of jehovahs witnesses in russia as well as european association of jehovah's christian witnesses.

once you click on them, you will be brought to a page with a list of all of their presentations at the osce.

Vidiot

krejames: "...strangely they don't seem so vitriolic about the UN these days..."

Kinda hard to be vitriolic about a secondary bad guy from a half-century-old End Times script when said bad guy can't even enforce resolutions defending religious freedom, let alone wage a militant global campaign to repress it.

36

How does one go about dating after leaving the WT?

by Left in the Cold in

Vidiot

Clumsily?

57

Did You Know A Lot Of Elders That Simply Weren't Too Bright?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i did.. most of the elders were decent men but i'd say a third weren't the brightest bulbs in the sky..

Vidiot

Oh, God.

I remember one (really nice guy, but not too sharp) who, at an after-Book-Study coffee at his house (remember those?), started in when the topic of dinosaurs somehow happened to come up. He subscribed to the idea that dinos went extinct at the Flood and thusly lived side-by-side with human beings.

I rolled my eyes, and asked "if dinos and humans were contemporaries, why are there no cave paintings of them?" and "why are there no human remains in the same layers of rock as Dino fossils?" (even the WT grudgingly acknowledged that one back in the 90s; to their credit, they haven't promoted young-Earth creationist "Flood Geology" in a long time, probably seeing as how it's been pretty thoroughly discredited).

He blinked, clearly stumped, as if he'd never ever considered that. He probably hadn't, but he was decent enough to concede to the group that they were valid questions.

He unfortunately followed that up with the assertion that raptors and t-rexes were vegetarian, but I couldn't let that one slide either.

I asked "if that were the case, why have they found allosaur toothmarks on apatosaur bone? Why have they found tyrannosaur teeth imbedded in triceratops bone?" He laughed nervously, and said to the effect of "I dunno, mating attempts, maybe?" Everybody tittered at that (at him, not me), and I said, "look buddy, I asked a serious question, the least you could do is attempt a serious answer".

I never got that answer, but I knew I'd won the day because everyone else there nodded approvingly at me and I never got into any trouble for it.

No one in my congo ever suggested humans and dinos were contemporaries again, either (at least when I was around).

23

I'm An Adult... Who's Always Wanted to Do Halloween.

by DarioKehl in

i really wanna play catch-up!

i have a great group of "heathen worldlings," faded and exjws and i'm gonna try and arrange something for this year.

there are tons of clubs in my city that throw fantastic parties.

Vidiot

When my kids were in Grade 1 we used sharpie markers (they were too little for knives) and drew Autobot and Decepticon symbols on each of ther pumpkins, respectively.

It went over well at school.

16

UFO's what do the JW believe

by zeb in

i ask that because i saw a flight of ufo's saturday morning.

at apx 1100h.. im not going to go into lengthy descriptions at all i know what i saw.

but what does the gb say about ufo's.. i ask as they think they are the most important thing in the universe thats all..

Vidiot

jwfacts: ”I remember having the argument whilst a JW that there was no reason there could not to be aliens, or even other universes. The answer was always that the Bible would have told us if there were…”

Oh, for the love of…

By that logic, dinosaurs, Native Americans, and fragging germs couldn’t have existed. This Medieval Church reasoning made honest paleontology and a whole host of other scientific fields damn near impossible for centuries. We’d have been to the nearest stars and back by now, otherwise.

jwfacts: “…and that it would nullify the importance of Jesus ransom. I could never particularly understand that line of reasoning.”

My JW Dad thought along similar lines when I was younger.

He reasoned that since the rebellion of Satan and thusly, the Fall in Eden only occurred on Earth, any intelligent ETs that God may or may not have created would (unlike human beings) therefore be “perfect”, having not “fallen into Sin”, which would make their existence virtually impossible, since the whole “sovereignty issue” thing put the goal of “perfection” (among other things) on standby until the matter was settled once and for all.

Later he theorized that, even in the unlikely (to JWs) event that intelligent ETs existed, there’s no way we’d be allowed to make First Contact because our “imperfection” made us, I dunno, unworthy of leaving Earth. Or something…

He got less clear and more weirdly speculative the further down that line of thought he went, probably because, on the other hand, he liked scifi (especially Star Trek) and wanted to believe that humans would explore and colonize the galaxy after the Millennial Reign… to his credit, he had no problem with the possibility of extrasolar planets populated with nonsentient alien animals, i.e. animals. Whatever the case, I miss him. He'd been one of the good, decent JWs.

Additionally, I personally came to the conclusion (a long time ago) that the existence of intelligent ETs would support evolution for more than it would creationism, and evolution completely undermines the basis of the Ransom Sacrifice/Substitutionary Atonement concept.

jwfacts: “The Watchtower does not believe in aliens (except for the demonic kind as quoted in Leo's comment).”

Yeah, pretty much.

I remember the Awake! article from the 90s about UFOs. Like the article asking “Ape Men – What Were They?”, the UFO piece didn’t actually directly answer the question of whether ETs could be real (which annoyed me in both cases; why present a question if you weren’t going to at least attempt a genuine answer?).

Instead, (like the Ape Men article), it cast spurious doubt on the sources of any alleged evidence; in the case of UFOS, by heavily implying that close encounters were likely of demonic origin, particularly since said encounters often involved the promotion of non-Biblical “gospels” and science, etc., and that accounts of demons in the Bible included the creation of convincing illusions (such as UFOs).

Even back then I had a funny little wish that smoking-gun proof of intelligent ETs (or evolution, for that matter) would be found and/or made public, just to make the old hidebound JWs uncomfy, and free me up to be more accepting of things (at the time, it never occurred to me that for lifelong devout JWs, that sort of thing would completely shatter their world).

That being said, this attitude isn’t unique to the WTS.

The conservative evangelical worldview (JW or otherwise) leaves virtually no room whatsoever for the possibility of ETs for pretty much all the reasons listed above. It’s why I suspect whatever alleged evidence the US government may or may not have probably won’t be made public any time soon; the Religious Right is too entrenched in DC, and the conservative evangelical voting bloc would have a nation-wide shit fit if any current or near-future administration even so much as hinted at genuine Disclosure.

For-real First Contact would bugger up the socio-political landscape of the US (and to varying degrees, the rest of the planet) for decades.