nicanica123 Wrote:you can use the perceived misbehaving of god as a proof as to his non existence. Its just a faulty reasoning.I agree, in and of itself it is not evidence of god's existence or lack thereof. Some people do try to use it as such, in the sense that a god who acts in a contradictory or illogical manner cannot be real. That makes sense, though it's more along the lines of hoping that such a being is only imaginary. The god of the Bible is both unstoppable and unpredictable, and that's a scary combination.
nicanica123 Wrote:Its a lot harder to stomach when you don't believe in the veracity of scriptures but Ray Franz did believe in them. Clearly his views were not so minor that he and others left because of them. Yes, they left.That's disingenuous. Franz did not want to leave the organization, nor did the others who were removed. One (and perhaps others) wrote a heartfelt letter making clear that he and his wife had served the organization faithfully for decades and had not spread any sort of conflicting opinions.
nicanica123 Wrote:They could have "conformed" and continued to be witnesses and kept their views to themselves but they were important enough that they couldn't.After the whole incident, the organization sent a letter to the elders of every congregation instituting a new policy which effectively stated that just holding differing beliefs was sufficient to have someone disfellowshipped. Once that happened, even keeping it to yourself would not have been enough, since you were now committing two wrongs: having differing views and hiding this fact. You may wonder how they intended to enforce this, and my belief is that they did not intend to enforce it-- they were simply making their policy on differing views clear. A JW was to believe what the organization's leaders told him to believe, and any dissenting thought was to be rejected.
nicanica123 Wrote:And you only know one side of that story.If that is true, then it's because the Watchtower organization has not been forthcoming. Franz (and at least one or two others) gave their side of the story, after all. Why would the organization not want to get the truth out, instead of simply removing people and giving as few details as possible?
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould