BTS, the distinction between "passive" and "active" is simply a construct to assuage our conscience and apportion the degree of culpabillity.
Razziel
JoinedPosts by Razziel
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Razziel
First, let me say unbiased education is the key to reducing the number of abortions. Not making them illegal, or making laws that intimidate women into not having them.
Secondly, and this is off-topic, but I want to point out, there is a price on every human life, regardless of the moral belief that every life is priceless.
The city/county installs a stop light at a busy intersection once so many are killed there every year (because they can't afford to put them everywhere). They just put a price on human life.
The military provides standard protective gear that is nowhere near the best available to avoid serious injury and death (because it would be prohibitavely expensive). They just put a price on human life.
The auto industry could produce vehicles virtually guaranteeing you would never die in a vehicle crash (but they'd be so expensive few could afford them). They just put a price on human life.
The insurance industry puts a price on human life everyday and will provide you a quote. There are a million examples of how a price is given for the value of a human life every day.
My point is, beyond morals, every life has value. But it's not priceless, and that value is defined in monetary terms. You can argue that yeah, we have free will, where the unborn don't, but it doesn't matter. Statistics don't lie, and for every dollar spent on safety and education, a certain percentage of human lives are saved. So whether you feel life begins before, or after conception, in the third trimester, or at birth, it's still not priceless. Even if you feel it should be against the law except when the mother's life is in danger or in cases of rape or incest, you still just put a price on it.
Should we really be suprised that prenatal life carries the least value of all? Not really. This isn't a perfect world, and holding to utopian beliefs only makes matters worse. There aren't stoplights (or better yet cops directing traffic) at every intersection because we can't afford it. Our soldiers don't have the latest and greatest because we can't afford it. We don't drive crash-proof cars because we can't afford it. And some people terminate their pregnancy because they can't afford or otherwise provide a good life to the child. I wish adoption was considered more often than it is, but conservatives have historically stigmatized and given the scarlet letter to women giving up their child for adoption almost as badly as abortion.
At least we don't eat our young like some animals do.
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Latest Watchtower page 30... They have some nerve to put this!
by TimothyT inone thing that i have always noticed even when i was a jw is that the jw org has lots and lots and lots of rules for allsorts of stupid petty rules which make no difference.
when you read the bible you see how they are clearly in the wrong here and are acting like the pharisees themselves, who imposed so much pressure on others to conform to the law.
am i missing something here!?!?
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Razziel
I'm glad some of you have the patience to respond to posters like this. I don't. 10,000 years ago, if I were the leader of a tribe, I'd try to explain things a couple of times to the village idiot, then he'd get run out of the village with the idiot stick and exiled.
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The Surprising Faith Of 8 American Presidents... # 6 is interesting!
by koolaid-man inhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/darrin-grinder/the-presidents-and-their-_b_1283210.html.
6. dwight d. eisenhower.
eisenhower may have been instrumental in bringing "under god" to the pledge of allegiance and making "in god we trust" the national motto, but he was reared in a religious tradition that does not allow its adherents to take oaths of office or to recite the pledge of allegiance--the jehovah's witnesses (a religion/denomination born in the united states, as was mormonism).
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Razziel
He was never baptized. I read about this several years ago, as I have a habit of picking a subject or person in history and then reading all the wikipedia links about it, and read his bio while reading about WWII. At the time, I had just left the organization, and as a born-in, I found a lot of respect for Eisenhower. His upbringing obviously influenced his life, but he seemed like a logical man and found a balance between principles and reality. He took the good stuff, left the rest behind, and followed his own path in life.
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Latest Watchtower page 30... They have some nerve to put this!
by TimothyT inone thing that i have always noticed even when i was a jw is that the jw org has lots and lots and lots of rules for allsorts of stupid petty rules which make no difference.
when you read the bible you see how they are clearly in the wrong here and are acting like the pharisees themselves, who imposed so much pressure on others to conform to the law.
am i missing something here!?!?
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Razziel
"but in my opinion only, such a child isn't teaching me and cannot teach me, ok? Maybe one day he or she will, and if it's a "she," she will be unmarried and I will be the only baptized male in the Kingdom Hall and in an incapacitated state, so that this child, now a baptized minister of God, will teach me with "her" head covered to signify her submission to God's arrangement."
I guess also in your opinion, humility is only applicable to women and children. Makes you feel powerful and good about yourself doesn't it? You're already in the top 25% since you're not a woman and aren't a child. Why don't you rewrite some more literature for us, and tell us what the Society meant to say, or how they should have worded things. They use weasel words for a reason. One of them is so people like you, can write crap like that.
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Do you know of judicial committee cases about a bro/sis who denies to have sex with the confessing one?
by testando inhi people, this is my first post here.
nite for everybody.
i wanna know if you ever heard of judicial committee where an accused bro/sis denies to have sex with a confessing bro/sis.
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Razziel
To add, in my situation, it was an issue between me and a sister in another congregation. I didn't do anything "wrong", (neither did she, it was all immature boy/girl bullshit). It's complicated, but the short of it is my elders took my side, and her elders took her side, the CO, DO and even the Society got involved, and their resolution to assuage everyone was to say we were no longer without reproof, remove our privileges and assure us we'd have them back again in a few months after it all blew over. Again, it gets even more complicated after that, as we had begun talking about getting together again, gotten our privileges back, and then she was killed in an accident, and I began the long road of fading and some bad relationship decisions.
But the point is, you are pretty much up to the mercy of your local body of elders.
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Do you know of judicial committee cases about a bro/sis who denies to have sex with the confessing one?
by testando inhi people, this is my first post here.
nite for everybody.
i wanna know if you ever heard of judicial committee where an accused bro/sis denies to have sex with a confessing bro/sis.
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Razziel
Yes, since they are in different congregations, one could have a JC and the other one not. It's all up to the local body and what they decide. Even if the local body doesn't consider it to be a disfellowshipping offense, they can still act against you and remove privileges from you until the situation "blows over". Trust me on that one, I know from experience. My situation was very complicated, but I was given the choice of resigning or being removed (no disfellowship, no reproof) for no other reason than until the situation "blows over", don't worry, you'll be appointed again in six months. It doesn't matter that I didn't do anything scripturally wrong. The local body chose to interpret it as I was no longer without reproof. Once again it's all up to the local body and what they decide.
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What We Owe Jehovah's Witnesses
by Butterflyleia85 inwhat we owe jehovah's witnesses.
by sarah barringer gordon .
published online: january 27, 2011 .
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Razziel
Well I guess once you get past Rutherford's letters to the Nazi's saying their goals were one and the same, and then the change of heart when he didn't get a favorable reply, then sure JW's have done good things for religious freedom!
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Did field service ever scare any one.
by life is to short ini was always scared somewhat by who i might meet at the door.. where i live we just had a mom murdered with her two young sons.
it is really sad, from what i just read in the paper the husband and wife took in this young man he was 22 years old and needed a place to stay.
he had been with them for months and had celebrated christmas and thanksgiving with all the family, etc.
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Razziel
Oh hell yeah Talesin, bookbags were good for that. I remember being at a backwoods not-at-home and turning around with a growling rotweiler ready to bite my ass off. He took a book bag to the face instead and then I ran my butt off to the minivan. GOOD TIMES! /sarc
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Did field service ever scare any one.
by life is to short ini was always scared somewhat by who i might meet at the door.. where i live we just had a mom murdered with her two young sons.
it is really sad, from what i just read in the paper the husband and wife took in this young man he was 22 years old and needed a place to stay.
he had been with them for months and had celebrated christmas and thanksgiving with all the family, etc.
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Razziel
I had householders in rural territory answer the doors with guns on several occasions. They were never "pulled on me" but just the fact they were there was unnerving. I have two experiences that stand out in my mind.
The first was being in a cargroup full of sisters, and driving up to a house out in the country with several men shooting skeet. Since I was the only male in the group, even though I was only 12 or 13, I was sent out alone to talk to these guys, who turned out to be pentecostals, two of them Preachers, who also happened to be drunk and shooting guns. I gave them some mags and left ASAP.
The other occasion was again a group of sisters working rural territory and calling on a compound for "The Republic of Texas". This is an anti-government group that doesn't pay taxes or recognize the authority of the US government, believes US annexation of Texas was against the law, and lives on rural land in Texas. They are watched by the Feds, but are left alone. The entire property was covered in no trespassing signs, violaters will be shot, etc, etc. Again, I was sent out alone to a group of men with guns and drunk. I found out later that they were on the do-not-call list, but the sister who checked out the territory didn't look at the notes on the back.
All things considered, they were pretty hospitable to a pre-teen boy, (I guess they saw me as no threat). But they had AR-15s and shotguns in hand. They had a saddled horse in the driveway, and I was positioned right at his hindquarters. I did notice at the time that the horse was a little agitated at having a stranger standing there. I can't remember exactly what my talking points were, but I know I made some analogy to God and the "remarkable" animals, and then patted the horse right on the ass. All the guys looked at me and started laughing. I didn't know why then, but I do now. It's a miracle the horse didn't buck and kick me right in the face.
They didn't take the magazines but I left them a tract, and thank goodness I was at least smart enough not to go back there for a return visit. I did all sorts of stupid things firstly because I was put in that position, and secondly thinking God would protect me. What an idiot I was.