The Jehovah's Witnesses, Some More
Hmmm. By titling my post of a few days ago simply "The Jehovah's Witnesses," I must have made it unusually noticeable to search engines. I knew this could happen, but as being noticed is not high up on my list of concerns, I never take that into account when naming my posts. So far that message has attracted no less than five comments, counting one of my own -- almost beneath contempt for other webloggers but heavy traffic for me.
The first three comments were positive toward the Witnesses, but the latest is staunchly negative, which wasn't a shock. Yet it wasn't scurrilous, and so I can keep it, though not in the interest of balance. I see no big virtue in being balanced, except when it comes to pursuits like human locomotion. He called the Witnesses a "dangerous and destructive cult," one that considers all other religions to be evil and that is hard on anyone who tries to leave.
Through all these years I have never heard of any damage that this group has wrought on the social and moral fabric of anything. Instead, they had just seemed to be a quiet curiosity more than anything else, and doing nothing more than to knock on doors at various intervals, so as to deliver a reading and a talk lasting just a few minutes, before going on about their business. And to tell the truth, I guess I like them because in so doing they accidentally keep closer tabs on me and what I'm doing than most of my neighbors, whom, if I want to see anything of them, I have to do most of the visiting myself.
I like to read one of the two tracts that they like to hand out, the one called "Awake," and never the other one, the "Watchtower," because it contains only theology and therefore nothing that would be interesting and good to know. And just from reading "Awake" I can believe that their tolerance of other religions is low, though they seem to devote almost all their attacks to just one, Catholicism, which I always thought was on the strange side, when there are so many other candidates that are equally deserving of the same treatment.
That fourth commenter claimed to be speaking from 50 years of having been a Witness. But I have to wonder why it took him that long to come to those conclusions. It took me only four years, and while being a unconscious teenager at that, to see that the Baptists, even those of the M.L. King brand, weren't all that they cracked themselves up to be.
While we're on the subject of the negative, in my first post I said that I have only one count against the Witnesses. Actually I have a second reservation, though it's not actually a count against them. But I do consider it a weakness, and it ultimately leaves them on very shaky ground. At the risk of being struck by lightning five minutes from now -- and maybe I already have but I just don't know it -- can I say it? That shortcoming is their total reliance on one single extremely outdated textbook, even if it does contain such large amounts of poetry and style.
I like to ask this question. If we can agree that such items as computers, electrical power grids, the numerous medical machines, flying machines, and mechanized skate trucks searching for icecubes on the surface of Mars are good things to have, then we have to ask how such marvels could have been developed if, while at college, all the prospective scientists and engineers had been restricted to a single textbook written over 2,000 years ago?
Other religions have practitioners who similarly keep themselves nailed to ancient, outdated texts, but the Witnesses are interesting in that, as fundamentalists, they are ALL of such persons in their group, yet they are saved from the virulence of other fundamentalists first by avoiding politics and second by the pictorial representations of which, if their tracts are any indication, they are most fond, showing humans of many persuasions plus all kinds of other animals and plants living peacefully together.
Still, if they really wanted to be into something, they could do something about their manual. It could use some heavy cutting, followed by the addition of some new chapters, beginning with one of the main lessons that those past several thousands of years have taught: the speciousness of prophecy.
The first three comments were positive toward the Witnesses, but the latest is staunchly negative, which wasn't a shock. Yet it wasn't scurrilous, and so I can keep it, though not in the interest of balance. I see no big virtue in being balanced, except when it comes to pursuits like human locomotion. He called the Witnesses a "dangerous and destructive cult," one that considers all other religions to be evil and that is hard on anyone who tries to leave.
Through all these years I have never heard of any damage that this group has wrought on the social and moral fabric of anything. Instead, they had just seemed to be a quiet curiosity more than anything else, and doing nothing more than to knock on doors at various intervals, so as to deliver a reading and a talk lasting just a few minutes, before going on about their business. And to tell the truth, I guess I like them because in so doing they accidentally keep closer tabs on me and what I'm doing than most of my neighbors, whom, if I want to see anything of them, I have to do most of the visiting myself.
I like to read one of the two tracts that they like to hand out, the one called "Awake," and never the other one, the "Watchtower," because it contains only theology and therefore nothing that would be interesting and good to know. And just from reading "Awake" I can believe that their tolerance of other religions is low, though they seem to devote almost all their attacks to just one, Catholicism, which I always thought was on the strange side, when there are so many other candidates that are equally deserving of the same treatment.
That fourth commenter claimed to be speaking from 50 years of having been a Witness. But I have to wonder why it took him that long to come to those conclusions. It took me only four years, and while being a unconscious teenager at that, to see that the Baptists, even those of the M.L. King brand, weren't all that they cracked themselves up to be.
While we're on the subject of the negative, in my first post I said that I have only one count against the Witnesses. Actually I have a second reservation, though it's not actually a count against them. But I do consider it a weakness, and it ultimately leaves them on very shaky ground. At the risk of being struck by lightning five minutes from now -- and maybe I already have but I just don't know it -- can I say it? That shortcoming is their total reliance on one single extremely outdated textbook, even if it does contain such large amounts of poetry and style.
I like to ask this question. If we can agree that such items as computers, electrical power grids, the numerous medical machines, flying machines, and mechanized skate trucks searching for icecubes on the surface of Mars are good things to have, then we have to ask how such marvels could have been developed if, while at college, all the prospective scientists and engineers had been restricted to a single textbook written over 2,000 years ago?
Other religions have practitioners who similarly keep themselves nailed to ancient, outdated texts, but the Witnesses are interesting in that, as fundamentalists, they are ALL of such persons in their group, yet they are saved from the virulence of other fundamentalists first by avoiding politics and second by the pictorial representations of which, if their tracts are any indication, they are most fond, showing humans of many persuasions plus all kinds of other animals and plants living peacefully together.
Still, if they really wanted to be into something, they could do something about their manual. It could use some heavy cutting, followed by the addition of some new chapters, beginning with one of the main lessons that those past several thousands of years have taught: the speciousness of prophecy.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 2:07 AM
3 Comments:
Cut the Bible? Oh my, you are looking for a lightning strike, aren't you?
I had a discussion with a co-worker, probably about 10 years ago now, about the fact that women were 2nd class citizens in most religions. How I felt that it was BS, that there was absolutely no reason that women could not lead churches, be ordained ministers, etc. "That's the way it is in the Bible and the Bible is the Word of God."
"No, it was man's interpretation," says I (this was before I had done any research on it and realized how screwy the whole thing really is).
"If I can't take the Bible on faith, then I shouldn't be a Christian. It IS the word of God."
End of discussion, because you can't reason with insanity.
My point (and,yes, I have one) is that most of the so called Christians would have you burned at the stake for suggesting the Bible is too old to make sense. For suggesting some modern text book on their religion.
Me? I think religion should be outlawed, it just causes hate.
"...most of the so called Christians would have you burned at the stake for suggesting the Bible is too old to make sense."
I'm really glad you said "so called Christians"...because a true disciple of Jesus Christ would never have anyone burned at the stake for any reason. Of course I realize that it is the so-called Christians that give a bad name to Christianity with their bigotry, hatred, self-righteousness, and judgmental attitudes, not to mention their tolerance and participation in actions that would be deplored by Jesus Christ. Just don't get those counterfeit Christians confused with the real deal.
BTW, if you would actually bother to study the ancient textbook, the Bible, you would find that it is remarkably relevant for our day.
Thanks, Lady, and Anonymous, for your comments. Things in your remarks opened even wider the floodgates that had already been unlatched in my mind by bringing up the subject of the Bible, and now I have to fight to keep from taking valuable time out to write the numerous other posts that I could make, mainly on the Good Book but also with an aside or two not only about the Witnesses but also about the inexplicable but widespread practice of cloaking one's self inside the name "Anonymous," as if fear rules the whole world.
But for now I will just say that Anon falls into the same trap that the Witnesses do, by assuming that people who are unknown to them have not "studied" the Bible. The things in that tome permeate the culture, at least in this country, so deeply that it's difficult for any citizen with any openings in their brains at all not to know at least the gist of what's in that constantly invoked book. And that assumption is especially in question when you're talking about someone whose mind has been on permanent active duty in that world for quite a few decades now.
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