despite centuries of analysis from religion and philosophy,.
life largely remains a mystery.
however, one truth stands out.
Metatron, I guess you have found these sick, debilitated, frustrated, miserable, suicidal people somewhere, but I have to say that I don't know any of them.
Now as for happy people that have good, professional jobs, drive the latest fine cars, and wear fabulous clothes, you can find many of them any Sunday as members of our local KH.
we are the decisions we make.
we are thrown into the world and left to make of it what we will.
non trias thinks there is some truth to these observations.. god has allowed us to see the light of life so that we might make of it what we will.
Way to go, non_trias_theos!
As usual, those who cannot refute your logic (or even understand it) are resorting to name-calling, ad-hominem attacks, and sheer nonsense. Maybe they are impressed by such juvenile antics. I am not. You are right in much of what you are saying. They cannot take their personal experiences and personal failings and extrapolate that to six million other persons. They can only speak for themselves.
Many people are Witnesses for no other reason than that they want to be, and enjoy it. That's their reality.
here's what i'm hearing:.
the dateline show is beating a dead horse brought up by malcontents.. it brings up a dead issue because the society is sending out.
letters in child abuse cases to go to the police - in individual.
Or the general feeling may be similar to what George Coyne, a Jesuit priest and the director of the Vatican Observatory, says about the Catholics' pedophilia problem:
The whole mentality of the Catholic Church has been secrecy and coverup, and that's where the problem is. The church has a tendency of not wanting to admit mistakes. It's the church I love, but it's a human church, too. I have no expertise in modern culture, but as one priest in the church, my evaluation is that secrecy never pays off in the long run. It will catch up with you.
There does not appear to be a big exodus from the Catholic Church over this issue, though it has produced revulsion and discontent, anger and in some instances, attempted murder and suicides. What has been produced is continuing reform.
what happens the morning after dateline?
how will most jws react?
these are my thoughts on the matter, which, of course, are open to debate:.
Rather than resorting to the lame name-calling and demonizing of those who disagree with you, why not just wait and see?
And why does anyone think that all JWs will react in the same way? I think many of you are starting to believe your own propaganda and are marching in lockstep with your own attempted thought control. In short, you are exhibiting the very same phenomena that you rail against.
What did Gamaliel say? "If this work is of men, it will fail. But if not...."
it seems that there is much anger on this place.
in my country we do not understand the manifestation of hostility manifested on a public board.
if some of these people do not calm down, they might be next terrorists in news.
In the last six months, 9 Jehovah's Witness children have met their deaths by murder. At the hands of their primary caregivers.
You got verification for that, or are we just supposed to believe it because you said it?
Hello, Mystikool. Greetings from one mystic (Master Adept) to another.
holy crap!!!
if i hear one more ...... "pedophilia exists everywhere" excuse from a d*** jw troll ... i am going to start shooting i swear!!.
the simple fact of the matter is that they claim to be gods earthly organization.
Well, if you don't want to hear the truth you might as well start shooting, because pedophilia does exist everywhere.
Not wanting to hear the truth enrages many people. Some stop up their ears. Some shoot the messenger. Some grit their teeth. Some fight and persecute. None of this changes the facts of the matter.
I don't know what the WT has or has not done about this issue. All I have is anecdotal evidence from opposers and the WT's own statements. At this point, I have no more reason to believe one over the other.
But what I do see here is a lot of generalization, unproven "statistics," shameless stereotyping, and the painting of an entire organization as evil because of the acts of a few that are in violation of the organizations teachings.
As for the expectation that "God's organization" should be perfect, when was it ever so? Every human entity that God has ever used has been as imperfect as the people in it, including the ancient nation of Israel and the early Christian assemblies. Read the epistles and the book of Revelation's message to the churches. They all had to deal with serious moral problems.
So, condemn those individuals whose deeds make them worthy of condemnation. But to condemn the innocent makes you no better than the people you complain against.
"Shooting" those who disagree with you -- isn't that the same thing you condemn in the Watchtower organization?
frequently, jws will argue that the unity of the congregation is inviolable.
that has been the case in the ongoing child molestation cases, where a number of those involved have been expelled based ont he allegation of "sowing discord".
my correspondences with jws on several levels have shown that this is the current, and most attractive explanation to justify the expulsion/disfellowshipping of those championing the child molestation cases.
Perhaps you need to explain it better, but I do not see where Uriah is relevant here. What David did was itself in violation of God's law.
And has anyone in the pedophile cases actually been disfellowshiped for causing "disunity"? In other words, are the issues before the judicial committes based solely or at all on their speaking out against pedophilia?
bill bowen's disfellowshipping is very likely to have the same effect as the attack, by british and conscripted indian forces, on gandhi's followers who attempted to close the daramsala salt works.
this event marked the end of the british raj in india - even though the brits stayed in nominal power a couple more years.
the unprincipled and immoral attack upon unarmed demonstrators showed the world the utter lack of ethics and morals of the the british lording it over someone else in their own home.. likewise, the jw attacks, disfellowshipping of people who attempt to protect the most defenseless, the most helpless, the most innocent members of our society, is a carbon-copy of the arrogance of the british raj in india - and at the salt works that fateful day.. these disfellowshippings will demonstrate to the world the complete moral degeneracy of the watchtower bible and tract society.
I do not see it as having that effect.
It is likely that the actual number of JW members involved in pedophilia, as opposed to the speculated and possibly inflated estimates bandied about rather freely here, are small. You could find the same numbers in any grouping of people, anywhere. Pedophilia is a worldwide societal problem that cuts across all lines. It cannot be used to tarnish one group any more than another.
Anyone you work with, live among, associate with, or be on the internet with, could be a pedophile. Or not.
once upon a time there was an evil antagonist of god named ha satan.
this evildoer thought of many ways to make worldlings oppose god's covenant people.
he finally got a bright idea.
That's the "Rear of the Year"? Give me a break! J-Lo wins, hands down, any day!
But Hilda has a point. From much of what I have read here, the JW-pedophile issue is agenda-driven and the agenda has little to do with the abused children.
In fact the agenda constitutes just another abuse of the children, by misusing their true suffering and pain to "get" the WTS.
i just today found this forum and read these discussion in here, some good stuff found, thanks.
reason why i'm here is, because one of my friend is jehovah witness, and we have discussed many things.
i myself don't know very much about bible.
TheOldHippie is correct that some modern research tends toward a 3-syllable pronunciation for YHWH. The article written by George Wesley Buchanan, Professor Emeritus, Wesley Theological Seminary, in Biblical Archaeology Review, April 1995, comes to mind.
Many scholarly works also admit, as does the prestigious Anchor Bible Dictionary, that the pronunciation "Yahweh" is just a supposition, not a fact.
It is not true, as some suggest, that the Hebrew letters YHWH can be pronounced just any old way. Ancient Hebrew, like Modern Israeli Hebrew, was written without vowels, but certain combinations of letters had a standard way of being pronounced and understood. And for those who would deny that Modern Israeli Hebrew is NOT written without vowels, I suggest that you pull up the website of the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz ( http://www.haaretz.co.il), which is printed in unvowelled Hebrew, which is easily read and understood by modern Jews.
The point is that when Hebrew was and is a living language, vowels are not needed to get at the correct pronunciation of words.
The medieval Hebrew scholar Maimonides in his Moreh Nevukim, or "Guide to the Perplexed," stated that anciently, the Divine Name was pronounced "as it was spelled." No vowels were necessary, since the letters H and W, as medial (not final) letters, would serve as "vowels" and would have to be pronounced in a certain way.
With that bit of wisdom, we come to a 3-syllable pronunciation for YHWH.
It is strange that those who would pronounce or interpret "Jesus" as coming from "Yehoshua" from the first part of the Divine Name, i.e., the YH-, have problems with Yehowah. If you accept "Yehoshua," then "Yehowah" is from the exact same pattern.
Also, the name "Jehovah" has nothing to do with "hovah" ("destruction"), since the two terms come from two completely different Hebrew roots. Those who make such a connection are arguing from an ignorance of the Hebrew language. The name "Jehovah" (Yehowah) is from "Hayah" (more anciently, "Hawah"), meaning "to be; to exist." The Hebrew Bible itself makes this connection at Exodus 3:14, 15.
It is further incorrect to say that the Name does not appear in New Testament, since Revelation 19 has Yah, the short form of YHWH, in the expression "Hallelu-Yah!"
