Hello SharonUT:
Russell used the Protestant version ofthe Authorized Edition (King James Bible) becuase that's what the Second Adventists were using at the time; that's how the WTBTS wound up with the 66 book canon.
Skimmer
JoinedPosts by Skimmer
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10
Accepted 66 books of Canon
by SharonUT inconsidering an apostacy that was well into swing by 100ad, and worse yet by the time the nicene council was held in 325ad... how are jehovah's witnesses sure about the basically protestant canon they initially accepted which was canonized about 376ad at earlist and still even then, many christians didn't agree upon that and still don't today!
i could go into more detail if desired... but upon what basis to jw's accept this canon from an apostate generation?
how do they know that other books such as the book of enoch originally held to be scripture and quoted frequently in mark or the shepherd of hermes should not be included as inspired?
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22
When things started to "fall off"
by comment ini was thinking about this in several areas today.. 1) district conventions and house-to-house work.
if you were a witness for a long time, you probably remember a time when going to the conventions seemed perfectly "normal" to you: it was absolutely "the thing" to sit in a sports arena all day listening to bible talks and counsel from men in suits.. but at some point, did you ever start to feel like you were participating in a cultural relic, so to speak?.
as in, "here it is, the 1990's, and the society is still using fundamentally the same old format they've been using all century long.
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Skimmer
Hello betweenworlds:
Outside of the WTBTS, you won't find many people who believe that there is any scriptural support for house to house work. The NWT mistranslated verses that describe house to house really mean that worship was supported in private residences.
The WTBTS has relied mainly on the door knocking campaign because it is a relatively profitable exploitation of free labor. As ever fewer persons are willing to respond positively to the WTBTS when the JWs knock at the door, I expect that there will be expansion into proselytizing in public places like bus stations, shopping malls, and other locations that now see solicitations from Moonies, Larouche supporters, Hare Krishna, etc. Also, I expect more more acceptance of counting time by phone, mail, e-mail, and the like as long as literature goes out and the money comes in.
Years ago the WTBTS had its own radio station WBBR and at one time had a syndicated radio program and also a syndicated newspaper column. Alas, these cost money and so the WTBTS is more interested in what it can get for free.
The WTBTS must look with envy at the various televangelists and the money they rake in with every television show. I predict that they will soon succumb to temptation and start their own cable TV channel or at least their own syndicated TV program. But don't hold your breath waiting for a viewer call-in show; remember that the only questions the WTBTS allows are those it prints as study article footnotes.
One problem that the WTBTS has with the production of a television program series is the lack of material. Their literature presents the same stuff, over and over. Also, who would they have as hosts and speakers? The best they could do would be to re-present convention speakers, but who wants to listen to the typical convention talk? (E.g., "You must do more!", "Do not question the Organization!", "Obey us or die!", "Fight independent thinking!")
There is an important secondary reason for the house to house effort. Because of the time and literature reporting (this will never go away), the elders can keep track of the rank and file and use field service as an indicator of a person's "spirituality".
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28
Hi, I'm New!
by Ashley inmy name is ashley and i'm 17 years old.
i'm from abbotsford b.c., canada (an hour out of vancouver).
i have blond hair and blues eyes, thin, 5'5.
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Skimmer
Hello again Ashley:
I am reminded of a young woman I know, about two years older than you, who is also from Canada and who works in the United States during the summers. A couple of years ago she applied for financial aid for college and received enough to cover all of her tuition and campus housing expenses. I think part of it was from funds set aside by the government for helping Canadians with Inuit ancestry, but a lot of assistance is available for any prospective student who might ask for it.
Anyway, she is really nice and she is also quite proud to be a Canadian. Sometimes I've seen her with a colorful shirt that has a big logo on the front: "I Am Canada". She enjoys college and from her description of some of the parties, maybe she enjoys it a bit too much. Yet she is a serious student and doesn't let it interfere with her education.
As others and myself have said, please consider a college education. You seem like an active and intelligent person, and if you don't try for college, you will very likely regret that decision as time goes by. What you may not know is that the Society for many years strongly discouraged college attendance and did not change the teaching until around 1992. This is why there are some long timers on this discussion board who, like myself, push education so strongly as we fear that some younger JWs may not have a family history of college attendance.
It may be that some will discourage you from trying college and might even consider it an indicator of selfishness. But I disagree; I think it's okay to be a little selfish early in life if you are doing something that will enable you to help so many others later in life.
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Hi, I'm New!
by Ashley inmy name is ashley and i'm 17 years old.
i'm from abbotsford b.c., canada (an hour out of vancouver).
i have blond hair and blues eyes, thin, 5'5.
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Skimmer
Hello Ashley:
There are about a hundred regular posters to this board and no two of them have the same viewpoint. Some are JWs, some others have never been associated, and some were JWs for many years but are inactive or have left for various reasons. Also, there are a couple of kooks, but don't mind them.
I'm glad that there is a variety of opinion, just as I am glad that there is a variety of cultures in the world. I for one am grateful that I've had the opportunity to visit Canada many times (Ontario and Quebec, haven't yet been to B. C.) and I've enjoyed the friendly people I've met in our neighbor to the north. Also, I think that Canadian beer is far superior to anything from Europe, although I hope that you don't have too much experience with that particular topic.
You are a young person compared to most of us. Being seventeen can be wonderful as it is a time for exploration and so I hope that you are considering college; too many of us here have had that delayed or deferred. It can still be done when you're thirty or older, but it's better to do it when most of the students are the same age as you so that you can help teach each other. Having an open mind is a big help in this and other things.
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28
Hi, I'm New!
by Ashley inmy name is ashley and i'm 17 years old.
i'm from abbotsford b.c., canada (an hour out of vancouver).
i have blond hair and blues eyes, thin, 5'5.
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Skimmer
Hello Ashley and welcome to the discussion board.
You may find some who post here will have religious views that differ from the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. But, I hope that you still will spend some time here with an open mind, and also that you further contribute your views. There is room here for all thoughtful persons and we welcome new posters.
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272
McVeigh vs Death Penalty
by Amazing ini am a policitcal conservative, at least a fiscal conservative and sociel moderate.
i support the death penalty, but i agree that our judicial system needs to overhaul how wwe treat criminals to achieve better rehabilitation results.
and of course, withhold the death penalty in cases where there could be doubt.. in mcveigh's case, i believe that he deserves the death penalty.
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Skimmer
Hello Amazing:
Your comment about the founding fathers of the United States is interesting; I had heard similar ("let ninety nine go free lest one innocent hang") before but do not know the exact attribution. I note here that the Framers of the constitution on the whole had no problem with capital punishment as being cruel and unusual punishment and as I recall, specifically allowed for it for crimes of treason. Then again, at that time there was no infrastructure for long term imprisonment and so their motivation for expediency is understandable.
In the specific case of McVeigh, I cannot help but think that a lust for revenge was was at least part of the reason that some in the government wanted to see him put to death, and I have most serious doubt that revengefulness is a quality we want to encourage in any government. If we want to have revenge, would it not be better to have McVeigh and those like him locked up in cages? For then in McVeigh's case we could use him as a long term example to those who might want to imitate him: "Here he is, locked away forever, a murderer, and no patriot at all as he took both life and liberty from the innocent; Tim McVeigh, the parasite, the scum, and a LOSER like any who would follow him."
I have thoughts about the concept of a "just war" (the United States against Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany is one such; the United States against Vietnam was not), but I will save these for a later day. I will comment here that I think that conscription is clearly involuntary servitude and the acceptance of the military draft in too many countries makes unjust wars more likely.
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18
Pioneer Meeting
by Liberated ini apologize in advance if this has already been discussed here.. at my daughter's pioneer meeting they were told that leaving literature in phone booths and laundromats is "littering".. since when?
anybody else heard this?.
libby
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Skimmer
The combined annual press run of the WT and Awake magazines is roughly two thousand million copies. If about a third of this is kept by JWs, then we can divide the remainder by the number of baptisms to get an estimate of how many pieces of "Bible based literature" are needed for one new convert.
The answer is that it takes about TEN THOUSAND literature placements to produce one new baptism. With an estimate of about US$0.50 per piece, that's five thousand dollars in advertising; perhaps twice as much in revenue given the double donation arrangement in some countries.
If the WTBTS was paying this money out of its own pocket, they would have switched to more efficient broadcast and direct mail a long time ago. Ah, but then how would they have the cash for the Patterson "educational" complex, the Hawaii "educational" complex, or the "travelling" work for the Brooklyn elite?
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McVeigh vs Death Penalty
by Amazing ini am a policitcal conservative, at least a fiscal conservative and sociel moderate.
i support the death penalty, but i agree that our judicial system needs to overhaul how wwe treat criminals to achieve better rehabilitation results.
and of course, withhold the death penalty in cases where there could be doubt.. in mcveigh's case, i believe that he deserves the death penalty.
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Skimmer
Hello Amazing, and thank you for your well-considered reply to my posting.
I did not mention the McVeigh case in my posting as I wanted to retain a more general scope for objections to capital punishment. I agree that McVeigh is certainly not the first choice for an anti-death penalty poster child. Like you, I have no doubt that he is guilty. But I do have some doubt that he was free from serious mental illness. Is it not possible that he was a borderline psychotic and that the Waco incident pushed him over the edge? Is there room for a reasonable doubt about his mental stability? Did he not refuse psychiatric examination (an almost sure sign that he needed it)?
Extrapolating from this, have you considered the possibility that there might be some borderline nut case out there that is now being pushed over the edge by today's execution?
You repeatedly emphasize the need for justice. I agree. But there different interpretations of the nature of justice, and there are other needs as well. Some of the victims' survivors have stated that justice has today been served. But there are a few of them who have protested against the execution and had preferred a life imprisonment. Have they gotten justice today? Since not all could be satisfied, does that mean that some of them are just plain wrong in what they want? Or could it be that justice is impossible in this instance? Or maybe, does it mean that justice is too complex of a concept to be so easily defined in any specific case such as this?
You and others write that McViegh's crime was so despicable that nothing other than capital punishment could be justified. What if fewer had died? What if only one had died? What if only there were many serious injuries? The idea is that one could construct an entire spectrum of levels of offense. Different people would pick different points on the spectrum for the suitability of the death penalty. Are some right while others are wrong? Is there an objective point that most could agree upon? (Possibly, _lex talonis_, the "eye for an eye" standard; Gandhi was reported to say about this "an eye for an eye, and soon the whole world goes blind.")
As I wrote, I support life imprisonment as the treatment for murderers. Not a life of torture, but not a life of ease, either. In a way it still is capital punishment: death by incarceration.
Let me say here that when I was a younger man (my early twenties), I was a supporter of capital punishment and even voted for it in a referendum. Was I evil to do so? At the very least, I was ill-motivated as the main reason I had at the time was that for the most part the capital punishment opposers were composed largely of slimy, two-faced liberals. I still disagree with the slimly, two-faced liberals on just about everything except this. I am reminded of the adage that a younger man will demand justice while an older man will ask for mercy. I know that I am older; perhaps I am wiser, although I will remian silent on this and let others form their own opinion.
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McVeigh vs Death Penalty
by Amazing ini am a policitcal conservative, at least a fiscal conservative and sociel moderate.
i support the death penalty, but i agree that our judicial system needs to overhaul how wwe treat criminals to achieve better rehabilitation results.
and of course, withhold the death penalty in cases where there could be doubt.. in mcveigh's case, i believe that he deserves the death penalty.
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Skimmer
I do not support capital punishment.
1) The State which has so much power is ever greedy for more, and the more it gets, the more it wants. There is the very real danger that capital punishment will be extended to more and more offenses if it seen as a solution to what we now consider "capital" crimes.
2) There is no real need for it when life imprisonment is available. If the justice system were more truthful, then a life sentence would really mean no parole, no furloughs, no anything but a life inside a two by three meter cage.
3) The threat of capital punishment can be used to coerce an accused innocent to confess to lesser charges.
4) Capital punishment puts the United States in the company of countries like Communist China and Saudi Arabia that have no respect for human rights.
5) Some innocent may be executed; while I think this is relatively uncommon, it can still happen. As evidence, I point to the numerous persons on death row that have been exonerated by DNA evidence. How many others might have been set free if the technology had been available sooner? What if there is yet undiscovered technology that might save any innocents that are on death row today?
6) It is incredibly expensive. The costs to the taxpayer for all the trials and appeals is something like three to ten times higher than for a life imprisonment penalty. That money could go towards feeding hungry people or helping the homeless. Should the State allow an offender to further victimize others in this way?
7) It is a dubious deterrent at best. To all the guilty on death row, it was no deterrent at all. To the contrary, there has been evidence that capital punishment is a motivator for some killers as a means for public martyrdom.
8) There are very serious doubts about the quality of some of the public defenders used by accused in capital cases. There are few wealthy persons that are on death row.
9) It brings out the worst in some. Seeing video of capital punishment supporters at execution sites makes me think that some of the more fanatic persons would have fit it quite well as joyful and self-righteous spectators at witch burnings. Perhaps there were such spectators for the Crucifixion.
10) It desensitizes society and so moves some people further down on the slippery slope: abortion, euthanasia, infanticide, and involuntary sterilization/eugenics.
The above are secular reasons. For me, the most important reason is religious. The Catholic Church teaches the importance of "wearing the seamless garment" and this means having a consistent and non-hypocritical approach to moral issues. The catechism teaches respect for life and this means for the lives of all persons no matter how vile some of them may be. It is not an easy doctrine, but it is a necessary one. The catechism does acknowledge the responsibility of the State to protect its citizens from those who would do harm, but it also clearly states that capital punishment is a last resort and can only be used when there is absolutely no alternative available. Pope John Paul II is a strong opponent of capital punishment and has stated that it has no place in any civilized nation, and I agree.
A quote from J. R. R. Tolkien's _Lord of the Rings_:
"Does he deserve death? I daresay he does. Yet many who die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be so quick to condemn others, as even the Wise cannot foresee all ends."
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46
What Caused Your First Doubt ?
by Big Jim infor me it was when i was about twelve years old and my best friends dad was disfellowshipped from the congregation.. i could not understand how a god of love would treat someone so coldly.. i used to think what if that was the way my parents would treat me if i had done something wrong, that would be so hard and cruel.. as i got older another thing that bothered me was the beard issue.
it may sound pretty trivial however the society has always refused to make a good arguement as to why they would give you the old cold shoulder if you were to grow one.. two more items; first i could not understand why all the congregations and all the assemblys would give income reports.
and the society never did.
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Skimmer
As I've written before, the first crack came while browsing in the Kingdom Hall library when I stumbled across a copy of Russell's _Studies in the Scriptures_ complete with the pyramid chart fold-out. I then checked other older WTBTS literature and it became obvious that the WTBTS had a long history of crank output, and their later attempts at cover-ups further showed that they had no connection with God whatsoever.
Other things:
1) The WTBTS stated (and still states) that the entire world must first have a chance at WTBTS "truth" before the Big A comes. At the time (early 1973), mainland China had about 750 million people and there was no way that that China and some other countries could be covered within the 1975 time frame. I asked about this and got no answer except something like "communal responsibility" that justified the destruction of hundreds of millions of peasants. I was told that this was just a large scale version of "parental responsibility" where children of non-believing parents had only a few months to live unless they somehow came into the WTBTS on their own. I guess that this is still "current truth". How can people believe this?
2) The claim that the entire anointed remnant was providing "spiritual food in due season" where none of thousands of anointed except for a dozen or so in Brooklyn had any input into the WTBTS. Also "current light", I suppose.
3) The many ways, both subtle and overt, in which the WTBTS took upon itself the role of "God's True Channel" and expected all its pronouncements to be obeyed without question.
4) The hypocrisy, cliques, and the complete lack of humility among the elders and most of the ministerial servants; also, the general ass-kissing among those who wanted better position and status in the congregation.