https://canopyforum.org/2021/04/19/the-right-to-shun-ghents-misguided-jehovahs-witness-decision/.
in march, the criminal court of ghent, belgium fined the congregation of jehovah’s witnesses (jw) for “inciting discrimination and hatred or violence against former members.” the case centered on the jw practice of “disfellowshipping.” while the court’s sensitivity to the individual impact of shunning is laudable, its decision regrettably assaults the freedoms of religion and association.. first, some background on jw beliefs and disfellowshipping.
jw was founded in the united states over a century ago and is headquartered in new york state.
I do believe in freedom, so in the context of US or UK common law, this would obviously never fly. But note that the EU, Australia and Canada does not enjoin the US or UK in the right to freedom of speech.
They have put the right to not be offended above the right to religious freedom. This is a choice voters made.
“inciting discrimination and hatred or violence against former members" is protected speech in the US, not in the EU, WTBTS has to comply or lobby to have US-style freedom of speech.
i’m an atheist.. let’s assume i am wrong, i am willing to be.. let’s give people a god, let’s even make him the god of the bible…... does he deserve to be worshipped and obeyed?
if so, why does his abhorrent actions not morally make you question allegiance to him?.
does his authority alone allow him to murder and drown and order war, to throw people into a lake of fire?.
Every God invented has human qualities. If you believe human qualities are always resulting in bad things, then God is by definition evil. Basically whether you believe in God or not is a question on whether you believe in the good or evil of humanity. Both versions are valid in my opinion.
you have probably heard all kinds of excuses why god doesn’t communicates with his creation or why he doesn’t intervene.. some examples.. no one can see god because he is a spirit.. but we can hear god---yet he chooses not to talk to humanity.. god only communicates with certain people.
moses, samuel, abraham, etc.
but there are many people today who also claim that god spoke to them yet we ignore them but believe god spoke to people who lived thousands of years ago and we can’t really verify if that was so.
Given the stories in the Bible, do you really want a god like that intervening in human affairs. Let’s say it’s all true, then god is the one thing you don’t want.
highly illuminating video.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkhdyhmolmw.
i thought these bible cryptologists were all nuts.
this guy changed my mind..
So these aliens were here from approx. 1500BCE to 500CE, a period of about 2000 years without leaving any evidence except for a contradictory book that has nothing about space travel or advanced medical or scientific value and at many points says the earth is a flat plane. Then these guys just disappeared right before the period of reason begins.
so this liberal asshat actually wants rape victims to work with the rapists.
lmao.
you really have to be brain dead to be a liberal.
This is the logical result if you go along with the notion that your sexual preferences are inherent and not a choice.
Basically if it’s genetically baked in to be gay, transgender or a child molester, then the expression of that is a natural right, just like being male/female or your skin color. And we are just moving across that track to justify child molestation, because some people are inherently attracted to children, and limiting something that is inherent to nature is just you being a *-ist or *-phobe. The people at the root of the transgender movement and the modern critical theories were all child molesters.
Personally I am of the notion that if it doesn’t harm anyone and it’s amongst consenting adults, then go nuts, but don’t say you have no choice in these matters.
imagine the "faithful" jws who are now having to talk to this person by court order or face the consequences----legally.. exjws are spreading the news and now some exjws who have been disfellowshipped for years are starting to research to see if this is an option in their country.
here are the articles, you need to translate in google.
https://www.nrk.no/norge/gry-nygard-ble-ekskludert-fra-jehovas-vitner-_-vant-i-lagmannsretten-1.15570621.
@Corney: Not sure what you're going on about, the decision is pretty clear, the WT is able to set the rules within their congregation, however the rules aren't legal (which many EU courts have found) or weren't legally followed to comply with Norwegian law.
Note that the EU does not have such concepts like freedom of speech or freedom of religion in the way the US does, the government has significant involvement and restrictions on speech and religious affairs. Sure that may be a travesty, but that is an entirely different discussion.
Not only that, but apparently the court also found the elders lied to the courts about what happened in the judicial committee meetings, with the elders having significantly different stories about how they reached their decision, presumably to divert the attention from the organizational rules set forth in the elder manual (theocratic warfare). One elder for example said a judicial committee does not go into details in these cases, which is an outright lie, while the other described the judicial committee going into extreme detail about the types of intercourse and how much of her body was naked.
Every elder seemed to indicate that they believe she was indeed raped, but that this constitutes 'porneia' because she put herself in the situation, yet they didn't council her on the fact this was in fact rape and she had the option of going to the police. The judges didn't even interpret this, they just held that it was illegal to hold someone accountable for their own rape.
imagine the "faithful" jws who are now having to talk to this person by court order or face the consequences----legally.. exjws are spreading the news and now some exjws who have been disfellowshipped for years are starting to research to see if this is an option in their country.
here are the articles, you need to translate in google.
https://www.nrk.no/norge/gry-nygard-ble-ekskludert-fra-jehovas-vitner-_-vant-i-lagmannsretten-1.15570621.
@corney: do note that the bitterwinter.org writer is a JW if not a cult apologist, so take anything they say with a grain of salt.
But basically the JW organization got convicted based on a Norwegian law that nobody can force you to join or leave a religion. It’s the latter part that is important, the law does not force someone to associate with you, it just states they can’t force you out of your religion involuntarily.
Given the JW hold that you can’t be a JW without being part of and in good standing within their organization, they have violated that law. This has nothing to do with religious freedom, it does not require you to believe that they are still a JW, they just can’t force you not to be one.
The facts whether she was or was not raped (which bitterwinter writer claims she wasn’t because she didn’t claim it to be so in front of the JW committee, even though the description - sex with a passed out drunk person - is clearly rape) were not really relevant, the judges thought it was appalling but that wasn’t the reason.
is most of the promotion of creationism, not just that by the wt, charlatanism?.
https://www.fullmoon.nu/sources.bak/chapter%2010/part%202/gish%20exposed.html [which has an article called "creationism: bad science or immoral pseudoscience?
- (an expose of creationist dr. duane gish)"] says the following.. 'a look at the "scientific" creationist movement and a close examination of the tactics of a well-known and influential creationist will reveal that the creation "science" movement gains much of its strength through the use of distortion and scientifically unethical tactics.. .... with the facts explained and the lawsuits won, scientists declared victory and returned to their labs and offices.
@vidqun: it has been proven in practice that complex information systems can evolve without any further input. You can actually build a Turing-complete computer (a system that can compute ANY computable problem) with just 3 simple rules which boil down to: the fittest survive, sexual reproduction is a thing and overpopulation is bad.
Likewise, RNA and DNA has successfully been “created” from “nothing” in the lab. Across the Universe we are finding that these building blocks of life are naturally occurring all over the place and it seems just a matter of time and chance before you got enough. Of the ~50 building blocks of DNA life forms, we’ve been able to create all but ~10 in the lab simply by simulating an early earth environment.
i escaped the cult many years ago.
as a result, i have an eye for cultlike thinking, whether in terms of religion, politics, centrist thinking, etc.. last december my fiance and i had a baby.
she is black and i'm white.
This is the problem with modern racial philosophy, that it is another cult. Be clear and honest, point out the flaws and the parallels with whatever cult they are leaning towards before they become entrenched in their positions.
These cults have very similar styles, they all follow a leader, they have out vs in mentality, special ways of talking, invented words and very sly, but counterfactual talking points. The goal is always to maximize power for the leaders, nothing more, nothing less.
so picture this, you are suddenly withdrawing troops after 2 decades in a country and, well, its all gone to shit.. how do you ensure that your vulnerable citizens and allies can get out when the airport is surrounded and no one can get through?.
option 1: it's a trick question surely?
you don't get yourself into this mess in the first place - you withdraw the citizens first, not last, duh!.
Here is an interesting tidbit, that may explain why Biden did certain things. This is my conjecture based on various articles going all the way back to the Obama era when Ukraine, Russia and China started to plan the so-called "Biden Memorial Pipeline" from Ukraine to China using a company named Burisma.
- There were reports today that the Taliban and Turkmenistan started talks about building oil pipeline infrastructure through Afghanistan in February
- There is talk about the Biden admin involved in pushing expanding the scope of the TAPI pipeline (Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India) and apparently has been involved in pushing along the negotiations with Taliban and Turkmenistan, although the State Department has stated, the US did not "directly fund" the development, they did not deny being involved at some level.
- The companies involved with the supply of Turkmenistan oil and ostensibly going to be doing the build-out for Turkmenistan-Taliban pipeline are a chain of companies, the primary companies that happen to be involved with the supply in Turkmenistan will be subsidiaries of a certain Burisma Holdings...
Sure, the fact checkers will say that Biden has divested itself from Burisma a while ago, but the question remains, what influence did these developments have on the decisions made by a certain Joe Biden when his son walked away with bags of cash from these companies.
