He would have a much stronger case if he had been DF'd for apostasy, smoking or celebrating Christmas. Too bad the question of whether shunning is sue-worthy or not rests on an incident like this. I have heard of and personally witnessed far worse cases of DFing than this, but the victim just wasn't willing to take it to court.
Rainbow_Troll
JoinedPosts by Rainbow_Troll
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48
Disfellowshipping decision to go before Canadian Supreme Court
by Simon inhigh court will examine whether judicial review applies to membership decisions made by religious groups.
the supreme court of canada has agreed to hear an appeal involving a calgary man who was kicked out of his jehovah's witness church.. randy wall, a real estate agent was "disfellowshipped" from the highwood congregation for being drunk on two occasions and allegedly verbally abusing his wife.. as a result, he says his clients refused to do further business with him, so he argued his property and civil rights were affected.. after losing three internal church appeals of his expulsion, wall made an application with the court of queen's bench in calgary which ordered a hearing to first determine if there was jurisdiction for the court to hear the application.. decisions and appeals.
a judge decided the superior court did have jurisdiction to hear the application.. the church then appealed wall's decision to the alberta court of appeal, which upheld the court of queen's bench, affirming the court has jurisdiction to hear the matter.. one of the three appeal court judges dissented — arguing that congregations are private organizations akin to bridge clubs, whose decisions "are not enforceable promises and have limited, if any, impact outside its small circle.".
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24
When can I let my guard down?
by hybridous inquick background:.
born-in, but never baptized.
remainder of family still (by all appearances) loyal dubs.
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Rainbow_Troll
I don't think age is really relevant, but critical thinking skills and knowledge are. I wouldn't deny my children religious knowledge. I think the more educated someone is concerning the world's religions, the less likely they are to be taken in my any one of them. The more you know, the less you believe.
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26
Disfellowshipped people are dead people?
by snugglebunny inskimming though my iphone earlier today i came across a fb post - which i now can't find!.
basically it was a claim that a gb member had stated that associating with a disfellowshipped person was akin to sleeping next to a corpse.. so obviously i'm curious as to whether anyone else has come across this..
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Rainbow_Troll
Snugglebunny: Basically it was a claim that a GB member had stated that associating with a disfellowshipped person was akin to sleeping next to a corpse.
We're really more undead than just plain dead, so I'd say it's more like sleeping next to a vampire; which is way sexier!
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20
Does God really care about mankind?
by Sour Grapes ini am dying of cancer.
yesterday i asked my full blown jw wife if she could snap her fingers and make me well would she do so?.
she replied, "yes.
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Rainbow_Troll
My dad died of cancer. He wanted so much to live and was willing to do anything. But the chemo and radiation just made him sicker and ensured what time he had left would be wasted in agony. If I were you, I would try Gerson's therapy.
Orthodox quacks claim it's hoax, but it sounds a lot funner than chemo.
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5
Does Anyone Wish Satan Were Real?
by Rainbow_Troll ini left the memorial tonight with a renewed antagonism towards all that is good and holy.
i doubt the existence of satan, but i had to recite two "our father who wert in heaven..." prayers just to feel cleansed of the miasma of sanctity i had just endured for over an hour!.
it's times like these when i wish that there really were a devil that i could sell my soul to in exchange for his support in corrupting as many christians away from their faith as i possibly can.
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Rainbow_Troll
I left the Memorial tonight with a renewed antagonism towards all that is good and holy. I doubt the existence of Satan, but I had to recite two "Our Father who wert in heaven..." prayers just to feel cleansed of the miasma of sanctity I had just endured for over an hour!
It's times like these when I wish that there really were a devil that I could sell my soul to in exchange for his support in corrupting as many Christians away from their faith as I possibly can. Also, the idea of going to Hell after I die, where there is not a single moralist or Christian and everyone is evil, would be so reassuring.
Does anyone else here wish Satan were a real being? If he were, would you worship him or at least ally yourself with him in exchange for power, sex or simply out of pure hatred for Jehovah? If you don't believe in Satan, do you still like to pretend that he's real by praying to him or conducting Satanic rituals for fun as a sort of emotional catharsis?
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37
Was it just me or was something different about the memorial last night?
by kpop inthis was the first memorial that i declined to do any work for the memorial.
i was assigned as a parking attendant after getting downgraded from doing the sound and had no intention of doing either task but i had to attend for my family and continuation of my fade.
i sat there last night listening to the talk and couldn't help but shake my head as my brain attempted to process the bs.
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Rainbow_Troll
I hate the memorial. It's the closest thing to a ritual that JWs have and yet they conduct it in a way that has no emotional power or beauty. Even the puritans had more flair than the JWs!
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147
Scientism - Nothing But a Childish Insult?
by cofty init is not uncommon for theists to accuse rational people on this forum of "scientism".. in my opinion it is nothing but a cheap shot from those who know they lack evidence for their beliefs.
if something like "scientism" actually does exist then i have never encountered it.. here is part of an exchange from another thread - i have brought it here as it was off-topic.... scientism = claim of scientific method being universal and the only valid method of knowledge.
followers of scientism always demand scientific evidence to anything.
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Rainbow_Troll
What a lot of people label metaphysics is nonsense; but I blame the new agers for co-opting the term to talk about their crystals and channeled entities. In the popular sense of the word, metaphysics in a synonym for pseudo-science and even superstition. When I use the word metaphysics, I mean the branch of philosophy that deals with issues like ontology, causality, identity, teleology and the question of free will. Wikipedia has an informative article on it if you need clarification.
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147
Scientism - Nothing But a Childish Insult?
by cofty init is not uncommon for theists to accuse rational people on this forum of "scientism".. in my opinion it is nothing but a cheap shot from those who know they lack evidence for their beliefs.
if something like "scientism" actually does exist then i have never encountered it.. here is part of an exchange from another thread - i have brought it here as it was off-topic.... scientism = claim of scientific method being universal and the only valid method of knowledge.
followers of scientism always demand scientific evidence to anything.
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Rainbow_Troll
I have read a lot of writers who are scientists, but I can't think of even one who's views could properly be considered 'scienticism'. Richard Dawkins comes as close as anyone, but even he admits that science can't answer every question. He has an enlightened disdain for Freud's psychological theories (which are empirically unprovable), but he doesn't reject the field of psychology or think it should be replaced with neurology.
I do know one person who's views might rightly be described as 'scientism'. But he isn't a scientist and in fact knows very little about science (though he is good at math). I think his 'scientism', though, boils down to a hatred for religion. He hates religion so much that I can't make an allusion from the Bible or quote a saying of the Buddha's without hearing his objection to such nonsense. He roundly rejects the existence of anything that cannot be seen, touched and measured precisely because this is the last refuge of religion now that science has so thoroughly refuted all of its claims about the origin of humans and cosmology.
Some lay people who don't understand science and have a chip on their shoulders when it comes to religion may very well be guilty of scientism, but I don't think they represent the mainstream in science. The late David Bohm wrote an extremely fascinating philosophical book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order. Roger Penrose and Douglass Hofstadter are at least two living scientists and writers who seem to be very comfortable with metaphysics. I'm certain there are plenty of others.
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147
Scientism - Nothing But a Childish Insult?
by cofty init is not uncommon for theists to accuse rational people on this forum of "scientism".. in my opinion it is nothing but a cheap shot from those who know they lack evidence for their beliefs.
if something like "scientism" actually does exist then i have never encountered it.. here is part of an exchange from another thread - i have brought it here as it was off-topic.... scientism = claim of scientific method being universal and the only valid method of knowledge.
followers of scientism always demand scientific evidence to anything.
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Rainbow_Troll
cofty
So basically just maths then?Math is the subject least prone to error, but logic, as a subset of math, can also help us with other questions that I don't think would be easily amenable to scientific experiments. Just off the top of my head:
What is matter? What would its properties be if it could exist in a higher spacial dimension? Or what if we removed a dimension? Is matter infinitely reducible to smaller and smaller components or are their fundamental particles that cannot be reduced any further? And how does matter relate to consciousness? Is consciousness an epiphenomena of matter arranged in a particular configuration or is it essentially independent of matter? Can consciousness survive the destruction of the body? Is there a God? If there is, what would such a being be like?
These questions are much harder to answer than any math problem. Most of them are actually interdependent on one another and so could not be answered in isolation; in fact, even a single wrong answer could through off the entire equation! But these questions are nonetheless amenable to a sustained exercise of logical deduction. I will not try to answer any of them here (that would require an entire book at least!) but I encourage anyone who is interested to read Aristotle's Logic, Plato's Dialogues, Plotinus' Enneads, René Descartes' Meditations on the First Philosophy, Baruch Spinoza's Ethica and Wilhelm Leibniz's Metaphysics and Monadology. I strongly recommend George MacDonald Ross' excellent survey of Leibniz's thought. His book, Leibniz, is long out of print, but can still be obtained via the interlibrary loan system. There is also a decent ebook on Leibniz available from Amazon by Mike Hockney: The Last Man Who Knew Everything. Hockney is a good enough writer and very brilliant, but in my opinion he wastes a lot of space criticizing anyone who disagrees with his views.
There is a logical progression in the works of these thinkers and those who are patient and willing to think through the questions they raise, using their own powers of deduction, will find the answers to these questions and many more besides. None of these philisophers got everything right. They all made mistakes. But philosophy is not dogmatic like religion. Properly, there should be no Platonists, Aristotelians or Nietzschians. Don't read them looking for answers. Read them so you'll know which questions to ask so you can arrive at your own answers!
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147
Scientism - Nothing But a Childish Insult?
by cofty init is not uncommon for theists to accuse rational people on this forum of "scientism".. in my opinion it is nothing but a cheap shot from those who know they lack evidence for their beliefs.
if something like "scientism" actually does exist then i have never encountered it.. here is part of an exchange from another thread - i have brought it here as it was off-topic.... scientism = claim of scientific method being universal and the only valid method of knowledge.
followers of scientism always demand scientific evidence to anything.
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Rainbow_Troll
cofty
Rainbow Troll - Thank you for your answer. I get the impression that the only example of things that cannot be known through empirical scientific evidence is pure mathematics. Is that correct?I used math because it is really the simplest example, but essentially I believe logic can address any question of metaphysics (which is mostly math, but also touches on things like theology and ethics) Logic can give us intuitions about physics as well (Einstein's thought experiments being a good example), but these intuitions should always be tested empirically when possible, since it is very easy to make logical errors when the subject is as complicated as what happens at light speed or how subatomic particles behave.