SHAWANGUNK, N.Y. — State officials are investigating chemical pollution found buried at an upstate New York property owned by the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization.
Blood-free kidney transplant carried out between two Jehovah’s Witnesses
Surgeons have performed a blood-free kidney transplant between Debra and Jade Gouldbourne, two Jehovah’s Witnesses – despite the patients not being a donor match.
Brooklyn man leaps 15 stories to his death
A troubled man jumped to his death from a Brooklyn rooftop Wednesday in front of horrified bystanders below, police and witnesses said.
Note that another article about the suicide can be found here which is less informative, but has a healthy debate taking place among its readers.
On a related point, at least one source claims that suicide is 5 to 10 times higher among Jehovah’s Witnesses than the general population. This is interesting, but is the claim true? It isn’t hard to find articles that claim Witnesses have a higher instance of mental problems like suicide, yet many of them don’t seem to give a lot of detail about how they came about that information. They really should.
In the future, I hope more of the authors behind these claims will give real details about their findings. Otherwise, we can only wonder if they’re telling the truth. I may be a critic of the Society, but I don’t instantly believe every criticism I hear.
If the Apostles Had Been Like the Governing Body….
Whenever challenged on the false dates set by the Governing Body (representing the “faithful and discreet slave” class) such as 1914, 1918, 1925 and 1975, a Jehovah’s Witness will likely fall back on the official Watch Tower Society defence, and it will probably go something like this;
Belief Contamination | Psychology Today
Except that I don’t believe our negative reaction to finding out that people about whom we care believe differently from us is fueled by a desire to help them become happier. I think, in fact, our negative reaction is far more consistent with a response to a threat. Not a threat to our ability to believe as we do, but rather a threat to our very existence. At some level, coming into contact with contradictory beliefs seems almost to trigger our fight-or-flight response, as if the existence of contradictory beliefs might threaten, if not our lives, our personal way of life.
Perhaps because, in fact, this is often the case. We live in the midst of a sea of other people whose beliefs do impact our lives. It does matter what others around us believe. Which is perhaps why contradictory beliefs create such overreactions in people (far too often tragic overreactions).
Presentation to Exmormon Conference
I continue to find that ex-Mormons and ex-Witnesses have a lot in common. The link above will offer you a downloadable MP3 on a conference given to ex-Mormons that might be of interest to fellow exxers.
I just received an update on the 