(June 5, 2015 at 11:09 am)Losty Wrote: The thing is I'm not even Hispanic and they still find me even when I move. I don't mind them so much. It's a good way to keep my Spanish fresh. It just amazes me how they always find me.It might be because you're a saucy mama... oh, F&F covered that.
Wyrd of Gawd Wrote:So basically JWs are on a mission to recruit new members in order to keep the cash flowing or else they will cease to exist as individuals.I'll simply point out that the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society is a corporation. I can remember being in normal congregation meetings where "corporate business" was discussed, including the occasional motion that would be voted on by the congregation in our capacity as 'shareholders' of some kind. The votes were, as might be expected, unanimous, and I cannot ever recall any discussion on the motions. They were presented (by an elder), seconded (by an elder) and voted on by the congregation. Then we got on with our Bible lessons.
One thing you realize quickly if you read that link: the JW leadership left nothing to chance when it came to corporate control, to the extent of taking steps that seem at the very least to be unethical, if not outright illegal ("From 1908 Russell required the directors to write out resignations when they were appointed so Russell could dismiss them by simply filling in the date"). Incorporating seems to have been a way to protect the "business of religion," so to speak. With a membership numbering in the low millions, the corporation is estimated to be worth well over one billion dollars today. Their real estate holdings alone might be at least half of that value.
"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