Posted by Friend [Friend] on November 12, 1999 at 06:15:50 {CkRQXOxAaIePXjHnUl.IOgnjR4Br/g}:
In Reply to: ***I knew it... posted by AF on November 11, 1999 at 21:40:19:
AF
To a certain extent I agree with you, except that your comments apply just as well to groups like the Scientologists, Moonies, Jim Jones type cults and just about every other nutcase group you want to name.
Nutcases or not what you stated earlier applies equally. Its what we gain from that application that is important to our choices. And, as I have already said, what one person holds valuable or redeeming another person will not. In this case that is compounded because the community in question is a religious one having spiritual values and redeeming features.
Therefore as far as I'm concerned, thinking persons not only have the right but the obligation to make judgments about whether these groups and their values are good, bad or indifferent.
Yes, thinking people have a right to make judgements whether those judgements are correct or incorrect. Yes, thinking people have an obligation to make judgements whether those judgements are correct or incorrect. Those judgements from thinking people amount to reasoned information, which I have said is good and should be considered. However, it still remains with the individual to decide what values are important to them and weigh redeeming features of whatever community they are examining.
That doesn't mean that I don't find many good things in the JW religion. I do. But those good things don't offset the bad things, and when I feel that a spade should be called a spade I will do so.
Your comment pretty well illustrates what I have said. You have examined a community and found its values incompatible with your own. Partly that results from weighing the positives against the negatives with the negatives infringing on the positives to an extent unacceptable to you. You have not found enough redeeming features to satisfy your values. That is your view and it should be respected. Nevertheless your choice is unique to you and those holding your same values and perspectives. There are other perspectives from which people may find redeeming features that you may not see. There are other perspectives still that lessen negatives altogether requiring less offsetting from positives. Yet there are more perspectives that may enhance the positives that even you see. Those perspectives are as unique to those people as yours is to you.
In the end if people have made an informed choice and their chosen community accommodates society at large then the community should be respected as well as the individuals making it. We may not like their choice but we must respect their choice and accord them as much dignity as any other human. It is that respect and dignity that I find missing amongst many and it is a shame.
Illustrating that lack of respect for choice and accordance of dignity is the demeaning insinuations leveled at Jehovah’s Witnesses. Labeling people as WWU graduates, braindead and other similar terms disrespects the very diversity and choice that higher learning has come to appreciate and respect. Such comments demonstrate lack of education rather than higher education. Higher education realizes diversity of choices and beliefs and respects it as a good thing not a bad thing. People ridiculing the informed choices of other people (JW or not) manifests the same disrespect and bias the Society has when on occasion it has spoken abusively toward other peoples in the same way.
Friend