isn`t there enough evidence to acknowledge the god of the bible has been a failure ?according to wt / jw teachings ?.
a god that has supposed to have created the visible universe and everything in it ?.
some points where i would challenge that from an earthlings point of view using the bible if only in paraphrase.. doesn`t god create everything perfect ?
@sea breeze: there is a fourth option - God could allow evil to happen (let’s say evil was a free will thing) but protects the innocent and punishes the evil ones.
If a god has perfect judgment, why do we on earth do so much better at judging even as flawed as it is.
God may judge sin, he doesn’t execute any judgements when it is relevant.
i wrote this up a few months ago:.
https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/5087628499091456/camp-israel-problem-pooping.
this other little nugget from deuteronomy caught my eye as well:.
The WT is quite right if they take a literal approach to the Bible.
Shortly after they left Egypt, in Numbers it says a census was taken that says there were ~600,000 men that could fight. If you account for the men that couldn’t fight, the women and children, 2 million is indeed a decent estimate.
Obviously the entire population on earth back then was 3-4M people, so not sure why they left Egypt, they could’ve just overrun it, they would’ve outnumbered just about any population from there purely through growth and we’d all be Jews today.
does anybody remember some super cheesy jw pop music from the 80s and/or 90s being sold on cassette by stoops?
i remember there was a family with the last name of arkenberg involved in production among others but i can't find a thing about it online..
Real Theocratic Heroes is the only JW “band” I ever heard and it was rather making fun of things. I have the MP3 somewhere still.
biden mandated widespread covid shots today.. "we've been patient," biden announced.
"but our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us.".
.
Let’s say this passes, what is the limit on OSHA to not regulate every aspect of your business. Because OSHA is an unelected bureaucracy that can act without any authority given by congress and self-regulate and self-adjudicate, given power to make these requirements, they can do literally anything.
This is all just to deflect from Joe Biden’s failed presidency. He failed on COVID and allowed the Delta variant to happen, he failed on the economy, he failed on Afghanistan, this is just deflection.
biden mandated widespread covid shots today.. "we've been patient," biden announced.
"but our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us.".
.
@disillusioned: Even though the US has the best healthcare in the world, the population is relatively old and a lot of the population is unhealthy. Hence we have a relatively high death rate compared to places like Africa or India.
There is little they can do if you get COVID. It’s been proven that intubation and assisted ventilation has been more damaging, right now they don’t (or shouldn’t) even put you on a ventilator .
The best thing to do is just let it run out while supporting the body with antivirals (these are commonly available) and cytokine inhibitors (such as Ivermectin and clones which are also commonly prescribed).
The amount of people dying are indeed a very small percentage. Currently more people die daily from Alzheimer’s than do from COVID. 10x as many people died from flu in 1918 than did from 2 years of COVID, no mandates were created back then, we just moved on.
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.
@JeffT: If you live in the EU - no
There are plenty of examples when it comes to Muslims, if you say following Sharia is evil for allowing a Muslim pedophile to be married to a young child, you can be convicted of hate speech (and yes, this happens) - https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/free-speech-sharia-european-court-of-human-rights-ruling/
You can say some things that are considered truisms (eg. Nazi's are evil and KKK is evil) but that is only because it fits in the current government narrative that only white people are bad. But if you speak out against Mecca, people from non-white origins, if you say bad things about communists, about gays or transgenders, or even simply do not agree with the demands they impose upon you to call them male/female or other pronoun, then that is considered hate speech.
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.
@Simon: The hate speech laws are the only way to enforce speech in a free society.
If you don't affirm the beliefs of the gay or transgender religion in Canada, Australia and the EU, you are subject to fines and jail time for example. This is no different, if in EU you say you are JW, nobody can say, no you're not (see the recent Norway case), just like if I say I'm a women, and you say, no you're not because you have man-bits is equally hate speech.
I'm not saying I agree with the notion that hate speech exists, you either have free speech or you don't. Coerced speech is for the left, communist and dictatorship countries. But these are currently the laws as they exist outside the US/Taiwan/Japan/South Korea (the only 4 countries remaining in this world with free speech).
I'm not sure how one would enforce a shunning policy without some form of name-calling. If you say "all these people have their rights and have done nothing wrong and we must affirm their belief that they are still JW, so you should shun them" that doesn't really carry weight.
biden mandated widespread covid shots today.. "we've been patient," biden announced.
"but our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us.".
.
@shadowclone: the other vaccines have been proven over time to be relatively safe. They also deal with much more deadly disease than an average flu. Polio and MMR killed 1/3 of children before the vaccines. COVID has killed less than 0.2% across ALL age groups and 80% of those were in 65+. When talking about children it’s something like 0.01%.
The side effects of these new untested vaccines are grave, the government hasn’t yet approved most of them and thus there is no liability or recourse if you develop side effects unlike the MMR and polio vaccine which have funding available for the costly side effects.
Children 12-18 according to new research are 3x as likely to develop fatal heart disease than they would get hospitalized with Covid and if you’re under 40, you’re equally likely to develop side effects than get Covid.
here's an excerpt from the recent lawsuit deborah hines v. watchtower bible and tract society of new york et al (paragraphs 158-180), one of 29 known cases brought against the org pursuant to the ny child victims act.
what should be kept in mind is that gerrit lösch apparently worked in europe (the austrian branch and eastern europe) at the time when the abuse was allegedly reported to him (not a gb member then).. plaintiff was raised a member of the jehovah’s witnesses.
she primarily attended meetings at various congregations in arizona.
First of all, memories are weird, especially at that age. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of it was true, the GB back then would frequently dine communally with other Bethelites.
I remember sitting with ~20 people at a table for dinner and the table was headed by a more senior Bethelite, occasionally someone from the writing department or zone overseer, especially if there were visitors at the table would be the “captain”.
They stopped allowing kids on these work-at-Bethel in the mid 90s and I’m not sure they even allow anyone at all at this point unless you are actually appointed, but back in the day entire groups from congregations would go only vetted by local elders.
I am sure that if she was at one of these, she’d occasionally run into a higher up. They would do “lowly things” like volunteer to do bathroom cleaning just to show they were humble, their whole persona is staged. I never talked to them, but the story seems believable, they at least pretend that your personal issues are something they truly care about.
You can see that in the letters from that era, if you had a question and sent a letter, they would at least pretend that the entire GB had a big meeting about it and then answered the question.
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.
@ScenicViewer: Europe has hate speech laws, this is exactly what they’ve been convicted of violating.
Nobody is making anyone associate with someone else against their will. You (currently) still have the right to shun, you just can’t say that other people are evil.
I don’t think hate speech laws are good, because they limit speech, and will be abused, but the EU has them because they don’t guarantee free speech or freedom of religion.
