I seen similar study from European Union, where JWs were at the bottom of same-sex marriage support and far more disapproving than Islam. Last three censuses conducted in the Czech Republic and Slovakia showed that JW have the lowest educational achievement and lowest income from all examined religious groups. Jews had the highest income and highest educational achievement followed by Protestants (Bohemian Brethren), while Catholics fall somewhere in the middle.
Posts by kaik
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6Stats on Gay Marriage & Religious Belief
by snare&racket inso just how non-judgmental, tolerant, respectful, caring, loving, liberal and humane are the religious groups?.
"findings from prris american values atlas, which draws on 40,000 interviews among a random sample of americans, provides the most in-depth portrait to date of attitudes on same-sex marriage by religious affiliation.. the most supportive major religious groups are buddhists (84 percent), jews (77 percent), and americans who select other religion (75 percent); additionally, more than three-quarters (77 percent) of the religiously unaffiliated also support same-sex marriage.. more than six in ten (62 percent) white mainline protestants support same-sex marriage.
among white mainline protestant denominations, support ranges from 69 percent support among white mainline presbyterians and 68 percent among both white episcopalians and white congregationalists/united church of christ members, to lower support among white mainline baptists (53 percent) and white mainline church of christ/disciples (50 percent).. and while the catholic church officially opposes the legalization of same-sex marriage, about six in ten white (61 percent), hispanic (60 percent), and other non-white catholics (60 percent) support allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally.
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kaik
Greece is broken beyond help. It is unfortunate, but nobody can fix their own mess except Greek alone. They need to figure out a way how to make their economy growing. However, they cornered themselves into the position, and their elective leadership isolate Greece from rest of Europe. They are without ally. I expect total disintegration of their economy, because their banking system had collapsed, and they would need at least 90 billions to restart the economy, which is 1% of GDP of EU. However, ECB would need to get all other 18 members to vote on it unanimously, which they wont. All of Eastern EU member are deeply against Greece, and Slovakia called for expulsion of them from EU.
Greece needs to reform and modernize their economy to be strong and enable generate extensive export. Greek export 1/3 of good what is generated by much smaller Slovakia. Czech Republic with the same population size, export 6x more. Yet, all these countries have lower income and lower per capita output than Greece. Something went horrible wrong in the past decade in the Greek economy. The leadership that is responsible for it should be jailed. Austerity only deepened the misery and very little was done in reforming the system.
With collapsing system, Greece may experience a military junta, and leave NATO and EU all together.
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What was so new about The Theory of Evolution?
by iconoclastic inthe east had already been teaching the 10 stages of human evolution (that should happen in the life-span of a human being) using an allegorical story of 10 incarnations of god:.
1) fish (water borne life, a fish-like start in the womb of mother) amoebae or primeval evolution..
2) turtle (life moves into land, crawling child once outside the womb) amphibians..
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kaik
Whatever any Eastern religion/philosophy teaches about evolution is irrelevant, as evolution is about change of species over time, from one generation to the next. This is taught in USA, Europe or Asia, and has nothing to do with "something spiritually evolved". -
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How do you feel about exJW's who resist our efforts to effect change?
by nicolaou ini've met a few.
i'm not talking about the jw who, whether df'd or not, falls off the radar and just gets on with living a normal life - good luck to them and may there be many more!.
i mean the former jehovah's witness who is now enjoying all the benefits of a cult free life thanks to the efforts of many bloggers, posters and activists, but is critical of the efforts of someone close them to free more jws.
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kaik
Some ex-JWs still hold belief that WT is the channel of God' communication, but organization is imperfect due human nature of the people. They get defensive of WT, and does not matter how many mistakes the organization makes. Some of the exJW crowd also hope to return once the WT "reforms" and gives them justification for their DA/DF. I met these exJWs like that, who are out for years, yet they internally feel connected to the WT. -
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What Road Would You Choose---IF?
by John Aquila insay you could go back in time to when you were 15 years old.
no watchtower in your life.
but the experience you have now you could keep.
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kaik
I would not change much because I generally have successful corporate career and I have earned a good education. However, I would change different path to it. I would not waste a time on my undergrad in my field, and later I had to go through various graduate courses and certifications to fill my gaps. It was just too expensive and time consuming.
If I knew my biological father would die in my teens, I would probably spent more time with him, as he left us due my mom became JW and he did not. I barely know much what he liked and what were his dreams/aspirations. I could hike, ski, mountain climb with him in my 15th birthday instead spending my teens years in KH.
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On the Relevancy of The Institutionalization of Sin
by Perry inchild murder, sodomy & corrupting the human genome are not new sins, they are old ones.
what is new is their institutionalization.
but even that isn't totally new.
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kaik
I never understood how someone would leave the WTS for any other religion. I just dropped my faith like a hot potato after 25 years of indoctrination in JW hullabaloo.
Some people feels that WT is not radical enough, and will leave to pursue even more radical, crazy religion with more extreme devotion that they had left behind.
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Why would Jehovah and Jesus talk to Satan?
by hardtobeme inif satan is the greatest apostate there is, why he was allowed to be in heaven?
job chapters 1 and 2 says that jehovah talked to him.
wasn't jehovah supposed to shun his son and set an example to all parents?.
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kaik
This is one the most ridiculous part in the New Testament. Considering the nonsense Jesus and Satan go on hike together, Satan tempting Jesus, etc. From Judaism point of view, this does not make a sense, since Satan is not antagonist of God, but someone who is employed by Him. -
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On the Relevancy of The Institutionalization of Sin
by Perry inchild murder, sodomy & corrupting the human genome are not new sins, they are old ones.
what is new is their institutionalization.
but even that isn't totally new.
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kaik
- A sin is a human construct
- What you believe is irrelevant in society that is defined by sets of laws not by your religious conviction
- Majority of humanity does not believe in Jesus, never did
- What adults do in the privacy of their bedrooms is not your damn business
- "God, in his wisdom gives people what they want..... complete freedom in him, or from him.". nonsense sentence with the use of words "giving, want, and freedom". Parents of children dying with cancer or people born with deformities would disagree with you. There is a saying "If God wants, he will bless someone with blindness".
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What percentage of the population are gay?
by fulltimestudent induring the long debate on the question of gay marriage, there have been many competing answers to the question of, "how many people are gay?".
a very anti-gay christian minister in sydney, the reverend fred nile, (who is also a member of the state parliament) claims that the percentage is as low as 1%.. some university (u.of new south wales) research in sydney has suggested 5%, but the authors of the study cautioned that there was a problem in the fact that an unknown number of respondents would likely not admit to being gay.. there are other problems in asking the question.
for example, what does being gay mean?
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kaik
The percentage of the homosexual men attracted to same sex is probably constant though the ages. Austrian and Prussian/German research is interesting, because it was first larger scientific approach to understand homosexuality instead of religious one and is well documented. In the case of Austrian Empire, there was an introduction for new criminal law that was put into the effect in 1855 and survived in most of countries build upon ruins of Austria-Hungary until 1950 or 1961 respectively. Many laws were analyzed by logical approach by inviting the best scientist the Austrian monarchy had from universities of Vienna, Prague and Gratz. Homosexuality was considered for decriminalization and the discussions were led by Dr. Purkyne, who presented the findings that 1:50 of men have permanent, irreversible attraction to same sex and do not wish to change that. However, emperor Franz Joseph was not interested in legalizing it, and the anti-gay law became effective for the next 100 years.
Forty years later, Austria-Hungary was engulfed with antisemitic waves that reached apex during so called Hilsner affair, where Jews were accused of ritual killing of young maidens. The hysteria originated after several unsolved murders of young women (four or five). Another murder of young woman was associated with local Jewish community and population singled out Jews as the perpetrator of the crime with Hilsner in lead. Nationalists from various Austrian nations accused Jews for committing sexual crimes against the Christians and seducing young men to homosexuality to weaken the morals. Czechs and Germans equally blamed Jews that homosexuality was introduced into the society by them. Various studies from arrest reports from 1890's to 1900 proved nothing that the Jews were more inclined to homosexuality than Germans, Hungarians, and Czechs. I think this was done after analysis of 14000 or so arrest records across the monarchy based for the same "crime against the nature". Actually the numbers were equally distributed among the population around 2%. Nationalists refused to accept that study and maintained well to the Nazi era claiming that Jews were recruiting Germans and Czech boys to homosexual behavior.
So any case, Victorian era concluded that 2% of men are totally attracted to same sex gender. That has not changed with present CDC statistics http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr077.pdf where in 2013 it was estimated that 1.8% of men are gay.
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Looking Back In Retrospect To 1975...
by titch ingreetings, folks: so, it's been 40 years since 1975. and, if you were actively involved with the witnesses back then, the mindset of many was, that by early autumn of 1975, it would mark the anniversary of 6000 years of human existence.
and, the hope was then, that it would mark the start of the 1000-year of christ, from the heavenly realm.
but, looking back now, 40 years ago, in june of 1975, only 3 more months remained until early autumn.
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kaik
I was just a kid, but I remember that my JW relatives told me that I do not have to worry about going to school because Armageddon is behind the corner. My parents were not buying anything because they would get all in new world. Eventually with the saving in, my dad bought a car in 1976. I remember it as was yesterday and he did it to annoy my JW relatives as the Armageddon had not arrived. My uncle told him back then if he waited a bit, he could get a car for free from all these exterminated unbelievers.