Believe what we will, we still live in the real world and what happens to us proceeds from confrontations unavoidable.
The Christian Scientist can die from an illness which (to him) does not exist.
The Hindu can starve to death in a pasture full of sacred cattle.
The Jehovah's Witness can sell his house and Pioneer full time as he tears the pages from his 1975 calendar in exasperation.
And many is the parent who prays for mercy over the child who dies.
To think or not think is our choice. The content of our thought can be real or illusory. The progress report comes at the end of each day as we lie in bed and count the costs of our beliefs.
Here are 7 things we probably need to wrestle with and keep before our mind to challenge our view of true and false, good and bad, right and wrong.
1. It boggles the mind. Most religions are smart enough to keep their doctrines out of the area of objective disproof.
The Watchtower Society obsessive date-setting has put it all to the test over and over again.
HOW DO THEY GET AWAY WITH IT?
2. Time is money and the GB demand your time from you. They promise reward for time well spent serving...uh hem..THEIR agenda. Are the Governing Body writing "bad checks" (phony promises) on Jehovah's account thinking they have power of attorney? Or, are they forging his signature? Or, are they simply saying to the True Believer, "The check is in the mail?"(Should they say, "The money is there--it's just invisible."?
3. Remember the 1975 thing?? Who made all the predictions about 1975 being the "end of 6,000 years of human existence on earth"?? Who published "suggestions" about the end being a matter of "months" away, not "years" or even "decades"?? Who claimed it would be foolish and an utter waste of time for young people in the early to mid-70s to get an education or put money away for retirement when the urgency of Armageddon was upon the world??
Then, when 1975 came and went without incident... what did the GB say?? What did they have the complete and utter audacity to say??? They claimed that it was "overzealous" JWs who put too much emphasis on 1975. Fred Franz stood up in front of an audience and shook his finger at them and scoldingly said that Armageddon didn't come in 1975, because "YOU" believed (what we told you) that Armageddon would come then."
4. Give me an example of a Watchtower teaching that is unique to the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society that is demonstrably TRUE.
5. Isn't the quintessential example of GB dishonesty (aside from the UN-NGO thing) the Mexico-Malawi contradiction? Two opposite choices foisted on different nations - one excused bribery of goverment officials so as to avoid military duty, the other caused tens of thousands to be plundered and raped for the sake of not buying an identification card. When you think about the hardships caused to the thousands of families in Malawi, over something so meaningless, it just makes one's heart ache. 6But apparently not for the GB, since they held to their hard line for 30 years. The persecution in Malawi continued into the 1990s, overlapping the time when the Society became an NGO member of the UN.
6. What does it say about intellectual honesty when the Watch Tower misrepresent the views of scientists in books such as Life-How Did It Get Here? For example, in one source, a scientist asked, "How could something as complex as the eye develop through evolutionary means?" He then went on to explain at length how such a thing was possible. The question was just a lead-in to the explanation. But the WT quotes the scientist with the line, "Even respected scientists have doubts about evolution's ability to create complex organs." This is a total misrepresentation.
7. If the Gentile times began in 607 BC then why did Jesus say: "But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near... and Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled." So why link the start to 607 BC when, according to Jesus' words above, it is more logical to start at 70 AD?