I seem to recall an item in the Witnesses’ Yearbook, from India. A local Protestant minister told his congregation that the Witnesses were drunkards and loafers. One woman stood up and said, “That is false. When my brother attended services here he was a heavy drinker, but since he has been studying with Jehovah’s witnesses he has a Bible in his hand instead of a bottle.”
Now, how does your logic fit in with that?
Thanks lavenderviolet. I’ve found that I can pretty much catch a review of all of my friend’s current deep opinions or views as stated in February, or stated today, by reading January’s magazine’s, or watching December’s videos, or if I was so inclined by attending last week’s meeting. I guess I gotta give her credit for her consistency with the organization. I mean, she’s brainwashed.
She’s a nurse, and I only saw her hesitate once. I caught a split second of cognitive dissonance. She was telling me about how she has the option to take a job hanging blood products because that is up to her conscience, but that she will likely not do it just to be safe. I said, well, you could take the job, because you never know, the organization might change its blood product rulings/reasonings. It has in the past. It could suddenly be ok. She paused, a brief look of oh crossed her face, and then she said no…I don’t think that will happen…
Anyway.
There were several weird statements during Tony Morris’s speech in the link you provided, but one of the weirdest had to be:
<paraphrased>
We are not going to need physicians or engineers after Armageddon. We will need people skilled in construction, plumbing, etc.
<>
I guess he brought that up because, well, I can’t be the only one wondering how witnesses feel about their physicians’ immoral and useless education…
Then I realized today on top of the ridiculousness of speculating about the post-Armageddon professional outlook: Aren’t the witnesses going to need physicians, especially witness physicians during Armageddon? I thought it was supposed to get all bloody and violent for a while.
He also said what I thought of as rather sneaky: “Better to be on the safe side with regard to higher education.” That covers a lot for witnesses, being on the “safe side.”
You seem like a nice guy dougie_monty, and I’m trying to be open-minded, but what are you talking about?
At best, it sounds like one guy in India kicked his alcoholic habit after becoming a witness. Also, a minister in India doesn’t like the witnesses.
Is that it?
If you’re on the “know them by their fruits” bit, I’m not sure that’s the best route to take. All religions could point to such anecdotes. Anti-religious people also use that kind of argument, but against religion.
Butterfiles, by your argument you have taken the Witnesses out of the ‘weird cult’ genre and classified them with the more ordinary–other religions and even with anti -religion. This is contrary to the vein that most of those opposing me on this board, on this subject, have taken.
On another subject, I will not deny that the world is rife with 'ministers who don’t like the Witnesses. ’
In that same yearbook was a squib from Indonesia, about a Protestant minister who went to the local police chief–a Muslim. He said he wanted the Witnesses stopped. The chief asked, “Do they believe the same as you?” "No, " said the minister. “They believe in one Almighty God, while we have a three-in-one God.” The police chief said, “I have never read in your Christian Bible of such a God. Now if you want Jehovah’s Witnesses stopped you should have the Muslims stopped too because we also believe in one Almighty God.” The police chief pointed out that all religions have equal status under Indonesian law.
Well, I read about that incident too, in a Protestant magazine; but what the woman actually said was “since he’s been studying with Jehovah’s Witnesses he’s started freebasing cocaine, shooting smack into his eyelids, and wearing his underwear on his head.”
See how that type of argument works? Or, rather, doesn’t work? lavenderviolet is arguing that the Jehovah’s Witnesses discourage their adherents from pursuing an education. You respond that well, you went to school, and then you proffer an argument that is
A: hearsay ("I seem to recall…);
B: anecdotal (just because one swallow stayed put over the winter doesn’t mean that swallows don’t migrate);
C: from a non-objective source (“an item in a Witnesses’ yearbook”; hardly an unbiased reporter)
D: unverifiable (an unnamed woman in an unidentified Protestant church on an unknown date, somewhere in a country half the globe away); and
E: completely irrelevant. The argument is whether the JWs discourage education; even if your story were true, the sobriety of this man has got bupkis to do with JW attitudes to education.
For what it’s worth, I’ve worked with many JWs over the years, and never found them particularly offensive or even annoying - had great work friendships with a couple - and I find the Witnesses no more whackadoodle than Pentecostals, fundamentalists, Haredi Jews, Salafi Muslims, or any other group that lacks the ability to think that oh-so-important thought “Y’know, I just might be wrong about all this…” But citing this story really doesn’t bolster your argument at all. It’s just one step away from “Well, this guy I met in a bar told me…” and about as worthless. dougie_monty, you’ve been around the Dope long enough to know that dawg don’t hunt.
I struck out the first part of your post because 1) I consider it unquestionably nonsensical and 2) people didn’t speak like that in 1970.
As for the part I kept, it’s clear that you consider your side of the issue–which I see as atheism, evolution, libertarianism (or should I say libertinism?) and humanism–to be the self-evidently correct course of action, and anyone who refuses to accept it, for whatever reason, possesses an ulterior motive or a severe mental aberration. This is the part that so many Dopers say I’ve been talking around, evasively, for so long on the SDMB.
I was asked to be a Jehovah’s Witness once, but I couldn’t, because I didn’t see the accident. [rimshot]
dougie_monty, your last several posts don’t make sense. I don’t understand the relevance of the random anecdotes set overseas, or what the relevance of how people talked in the 1970s is supposed to be.
Well? Isn’t that true?
I know a guy who stopped drinking alcohol and doing drugs because he’s locked up in prison. Does that mean that going to prison is a good thing? It seems like it must, by your reasoning.
They are in fact a cult by the standards of normal society. If you really want to get into it, this website has ample information on why:
Of course, I know enough about JWs that I know that if you are a JW in good standing you are not supposed to look at that link. You know as well as I do that your leaders tell you that it is dangerous to look at information that contradicts the organization’s version of events.
However, I would like to think that the fact that you are on this website means that you want to fight ignorance, and hiding from information because your leader tells you to is certainly not fighting ignorance.
No, it means that the man in India didn’t NEED prison to reform himself. He had a better impetus. 
Oh, I have no doubt that it’s true–true that you consider such to be so. I don’t see it that way.
I found that in Red Stangland’s book of Norwegian Jokes. 
Um…what? What does the way people spoke in 1970 have to do with, well, anything discussed in this thread?
As for the first part of my post being nonsensical - I assume you meant the bit about the guy doing drugs and wearing underwear on his head - of course it was nonsensical. So was yours. That’s the point. An unverifiable, hearsay, irrelevant anecdote from a biased source is not a credible argument.
And yes, I *am *an atheistic humanist who thinks Darwinian selection explains evolution. (Not a libertine, though - you need at least one other person for libertinism, it turns out…). But I don’t think that I possess the whole truth and nothing but the truth. There’s a lot I don’t understand. I hold the views I do because they seem to me to be the most true, based on what I think I know. "Say not, ‘This is so’; say rather, ‘So it seems to me, as I think I understand what I think I am seeing’ ".
Well, he’s wearing underwear on his head and mainlining bath salts right now, so his impetus couldn’t have been all that good.
Now where did you get THAT inane statement? Or are you just being smart-aleck?
I could come up with some imaginary statements about YOU and that wouldn’t prove anything either.
My point was just that you can’t point to an anecdote of someone making a positive change and say that proves an organization is good.
For example, what about the numerous cases of Jehovah Witnesses trying to hide pedophiles from law enforcement? I personally would not want to be part of an organization that has allowed pedophiles to rape countless children without facing punishment, regardless of any other good that they have done.
My family is half JW and half Catholic. Apparently, we’re okay with that 
By “last several posts,” do you mean “all your posts ever”?
Seriously, **dougie **replying with odd confrontational non-sequiturs is kinda what he does. He’s not all there.
I think you’re measuring me against a rigid standard you have set for yourselves, which I know I could not meet. Well, that is true–possibly because of my lack of social inclination, which I don’t mind mentioning. I try to express myself plainly, but I have a large, expressive vocabulary and apparently readers such as you, go off on tangents when they see some of the (supposedly arcane) words ans expressions I use. My goal is NOT to confuse or frustrate readers.