Great quote by a secular humanist re JWs

by acsot 6 Replies latest jw friends

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  acsot

  I love A.C. Graylings essays. Here is a quote from one of his books:

  "The world's major religions - especially Christianity, Islam, and Judaism - are not merely incompatible with one another, but mutually antithetical. All religions are such that if they are pushed to their logical conclusions, or if their founding literatures and early traditions are accepted literally, they will take the form of their respective fundamentalisms. Jehovah's Witnesses and the Taliban are not aberrations, but unadulterated and unconstrained expressions of their respective faiths, as practised by people who are not interested in refined temporisings or theological niceties, but who literally accept the world-view of the writings they regard as sacred, and insist on the morality and way of life prescribed by them."

  Believers and non-believers should read his stuff, witty, well-written, caustic, to the point. Compilations of his essays are in book form and can be found at Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com, etc.
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  Valis

  Good quote and very true. Also IMO the reason the JWs hate Plato so much...

  from Socrates' speech ala the Plato's Symposium..

  "But-who then, Diotima," I said, "are the lovers of wisdom, if they are neither the wise nor the foolish?" "A child may answer that question," she replied; "they are those who are in a mean between the two; Love is one of them. For wisdom is a most beautiful thing, and Love is of the beautiful; and therefore Love is also a philosopher: or lover of wisdom, and being a lover of wisdom is in a mean between the wise and the ignorant.

  Sincerely,

  District Overbeer
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  Narkissos

  Interesting. Although I think the fundamentalistic reading of the Bible or the Quran is not a sufficient explanation for the doctrine and practice of JWs and Talibans. Their specific reading has also to be explained by their historical origin and their own consecutive history... For instance, the WT "two hopes" doctrine is hardly a consequence of "natural" fundy Bible reading, if one leaves the struggle for power within the WTS and Rutherford's individual character out of the picture...
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  acsot

  Narkissos:

  I know what you mean. I'm wondering though if Grayling was aware or particularly cared about the arcane details of JW reasoning.

  Perhaps "fundamentalist" in the sense of declaring the Bible (or the Quran) as the only source of guidance, irrespective of scientific facts to the contrary (i.e. creation in 7 days, whether a literal seven days or thousands of years, it still doesn't make sense), or the dubs use of one or two Bible verses to prohibit blood, irrespective of context or cultural conditions at the time of writing, etc.
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  willyloman

  JW's like to boast that they have spent 120 years going door to door distributing millions of magazines and books, and billions of hours spreading their message, yet scholars and the general public have not the slightest clue what JW's are about. Remarkable, isn't it?
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  William Penwell

  It is surprising as JW's we always thought we were the center of the universe but after when you get out of the borg and talk to a number of non JW people you realize most outsiders have no clue what we believe in.

  Will
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  JeffT

  I think I see what he is trying to say, but he misses on the details. The problem with groups like the Taliban and JW's is not that they are teaching an unadorned version of the main faith, but that they've filtered it through there own dogma. How many times to we talk about the fact that the WTBS has gone way beyond the bible in many areas. I suspect this is true of many fundamentalist muslim groups as well.

  It is interesting how little the outside world knows about witnesses. I did a poll awhile back on a nonwitness board, and the only guy there that knew anything about them was a minister.