we have seen that the society falls back on the line "it is the victims right to approach the authorities" during all the abuse claims.. they use this excuse to try and defend the passive lack of action in failing to report suspected cases of abuse.. a comparison came to mind:.
if we came across a person lying in the street who says they were hit by a car, would we say "it is your absolute right to call the paramedics and police"?.
or would we take the initiative and call those authorities ourselves to help the person?.
It is the victims right do go to the authorities as much as it is your right to choose to stay in the organization or not. They can not deny you that right. However, the key issue here is that the phrase is incomplete...
"it is the victims right to go to the authorities.... it is our right to df them if they do so". Last part usually omitted.
my mom texted me to come back and said, "they will close religion!
" here is my response:.
no, they're not closing religion.
You may never be able to regulate the content of religion but you should be able to regulate the context of it. The issue of taxation is very valid and I am all for the removal of such allowance. However, it is only a means of diminishing their power, not eliminating their ability to inflict influence that harms people.
The constitution broadly states that no law should be made against a particular religious belief or that limits religious freedom but it defines religious freedom to include a lack of belief. If no law should be made against religion, what can be said about laws that limit your lack of belief?
For example, when we make laws against abortion, we are favoring a particular belief. If someone was to establish a religion that granted the individual's choice to terminate a pregnancy under religious belief, would this be in conflict? Would the law be favoring one belief over another? Lets take this in theory, because we all know that preservation of life, is at the center of this particular example.
With that in mind, I see that we can not create law that regulates religious beliefs but we can create laws that create a context where the individual's right to choose is limited to certain principle. Just like we understand that abortion is/could be considered a crime and in the process favor a particular belief (the favoritism towards that beliefs is taking a secondary role in my analogy), then therefore we can allow, for example, JWs to exercise their freedom of religion but such should not extend to the point where exercising such freedom entails terminating someone's life, including your own. (like in the case of blood)
i may have missed this, but can anyone tell me what was the pretext the gb concocted to justify their abandonment of a perfectly suitable, high-profile, high-visibility complex in what is arguably the world's greatest metropolis for the bucolic isolation of upstate new york.
any how does the move square with their purported belief in the imminence of armageddon?
.
Most of what we hear around our congregation is simply that the old facilities no longer fit the new way of spreading the good news. That since more and more information is distributed electronically there is no more pressing needs for printing facilities with access to distribution chains.
A couple of years back, a Cuban brother that moved to our Congo for some time, related the story of a building (a believe it was a Home Depot) in Florida. He said that he volunteered during the time that the building was bought, transformed into an assembly hall and then the adjacent land that was part of the development sold off at a profit. Everyone at the social gathering where this conversation took place was amazed on how the "slave" so wisely manages Jehovah´s belongings to further kingdom interests.
No much effort is needed to justify your actions when your have indoctrinated the crowd.
as i was sitting in the meeting last night i thought about this question.. sometimes it feels really lonely because i don't connect with most others in the congregation and i have to be so careful with the ones with whom i do associate.. quick rundown on my life...got baptized at 17...married at 20...became inactive at 28 wife still active though...came back to meetings with her 20 years later just to keep her quiet and see if they had changed (for a while i actually thought they had)...now i am still inactive and haven't gone out in service or anything.
i just go to meetings with my wife who is happy as a lark to have me there with her...just go to meetings and think...and think...and think.... anyway, i just wondered if there are any out there like me who are going to meetings and nothing else?.
I too go to the meetings but my attendance frequency is shifting from going to most meetings to skipping most meetings. I go when there is a subject that could affect my child´s reasoning into submission or when there is a controversial subject that I know will come up in conversation with my wife.
i give to my wife. She would rather go to every meeting but she does see the faults in the doctrines. Although this faults do not present a problem in her view, she could go as far as taking detailed notes of the meetings if I ask her for such favors and I can trust that she is not leaving out anything bad.
sherri papini is that woman kidnapped in california and released on thanksgiving day making the news right now.. during one of the reports this morning on the today show there was a quick scene of an investigation going on at a kingdom hall.
there was crime tape up and everything.
credit goes to my wife for catching it.. i just wondered why the kingdom hall was a crime scene when she was abducted and released somewhere else?anybody else catch this?.
A while back there was a break in to a house next door to our KH. The police came with 5 min to the start of the midweek meeting to see if the cameras from the hall may have caught a glimpse of the perpetrators. The elders dropped everything and began retrieving videos with this exaggerated sense of duty in their faces.
Is funny how they are so ready to help find faults on others by whatever means necessary. A single sided sense of justice.
australian child abuse royal commission rejects dr monica applewhite's evidence and testimony.. [quote] dr applewhite acknowledged that her report did not identify the basis on which she had formed her opinions.657 she accepted that her report failed to identify the ‘current standards’ of other religious organisations658 or which ‘religious organisations’ she referred to in writing her report.659 dr applewhite told the royal commission that her understanding of material provided to parents and families about sexual development in children by other faith-based organisations was ‘anecdotal’.660.
dr applewhite accepted that it would be difficult for the royal commission to accept the opinions expressed in paragraphs 36, 45, and 46 of her report because her report did not identify the basis on which those opinions were formed.661.
we do not consider that dr applewhite’s report and the opinions expressed therein assist the royal commission in its inquiry for the following reasons:.
I wonder which retard inside the WT thought it was a good idea to bring her in
weblink:.
http://www.elperiodico.com/es/noticias/sociedad/cinco-denuncias-testigos-jehova-5632503 .
guillem sànchez / barcelona.
i'd just like to share a comment that someone left on my youtube account (which i hesitate to call a channel because i don't upload anything).
theism is an addiction; try talking someone out of a gambling (thought), or drug (chemical) addiction (both involve dopamine).
you will find the same pattern of cognitive biases, and circular logic that of a theist.
And if we try to elaborate, the author makes a case for the many behavioral tendencies that we cement during teenage hood and how adolescence is a crucial time for establishing patterns that may last a lifetime. The WT and other cults may be unintentionally attempting to harness the brain at the best time to create life long members.
i'd just like to share a comment that someone left on my youtube account (which i hesitate to call a channel because i don't upload anything).
theism is an addiction; try talking someone out of a gambling (thought), or drug (chemical) addiction (both involve dopamine).
you will find the same pattern of cognitive biases, and circular logic that of a theist.
Makes absolute sense. I am currently reading a book called "Brainstorm", which goes over the adolescent brain. The very same logic is put forth regarding a new understanding of the reason why teenagers engage in potentially dangerous and unreasonable behavior.
i have been thinking about how the wtb&t society bullies all of its members into submission with the threats they use (by practice), i.e.
“if you do this we will df you and you will be shunned”.
“if you da yourself, we will make an announcement and your friends, relatives and family will abandon you”, etc.
It is true to a degree that we all know better. There is never a 100% free will decision from the part of JW to shun. The WT influence is all over. The question is not wether it is true or not. Valid or invalid. The question is how to prove it in a court. The odds is what is against you, not the truth. This would kind of like the civil rights movement. It took decades of arguing and multiple deaths to finally wake up to the obvious. Society is totally immune to these things because most people think they are 100% in control of their lives. They have a hard time waking up to their own realities, much less are they ready to accept and sympathize with yours or ours. Even the therapist that i have seen, being a university professor with more than 30 years of experience in the therapy field, had a hard time understanding that JW are a cult. Even when he began to see it he still excused them saying that they are not Jim Jones. I even talked to my sister in law and tried to show her how they are abusing her mother. How she tried to give them everything she has left (financially) but still was not enough for her to start paying more attention. Think about ISIS. Only and barely now we are beginning (as a society) to understand that it is a battle of ideas. Government still wants to nuke them.
Before any legal bodies or government institutions even begin to consider the possibilities of establishing protections against the destructive influence of cults, we would have to awaken the society as a whole. Even those who are not in cults. Given the current political divide, we are far, far from reaching that point. We are just unable to put ourselves in other people's shoes.
