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I left in the 90's. Maybe they've changed their stance since then but it WAS indeed one of the reasons I left.
Of course. JWs rely heavily on attracting people based on their self-interest. In fact it's one of the strongest tactics Christianity as a whole used. They're so obsessed with preserving their own life that the first thing that graces their lips when starting their door to door spiel is 'do you want to know how you can have everlasting life?' The reasoning sounds selfish because Christianity appeals to selfishness. The ultimate goal, no matter how many try to delude themselves into believing it's some grander purpose, grander good, or grander relationship, really boils down to saving their own asses. And it's something I recognized as childish, and that I didn't need an eternal cookie or an eternal spanking to motivate me to help other people. Especially since I didn't really actually believe what the bible was selling anyway.
It wasn't. They were isolationist and echo chamber because the organization is built around immediately scorning anyone around them that refused to share their beliefs. Writing them off as worldly unbelievers they wouldn't help unless it bolstered their own numbers, that's why JWs are one of the least charitable Christian organizations out there. Being charitable requires coming into contact with people outside their faith. New ideas, growth and learning is tiny in Kingdom Halls. Even when I left in the 90's, it clung to 70's culture, dress and mannerisms. Nobody talked about the world around them, because they've already written it off a weigh station to their own afterlife. It was sad.
Actually the broken families I referred to is once a friend of mine went 'missing' for a time, because he was in such an unhappy and abusive marriage that he was seeking a divorce even against his JW parents (and their congregation elders) disapproval. His parents knew where he was, but they let their daughter, who left the church, wallow in worry about her brother. Beliving he was missing. Because they thought that, in his time of 'weakness,' she would lead him astray. That sort of cult-like behavior, and I do not use that term lightly, should sour anyone to the organization. Because that kind of crap happens over and over again.
They were when I left. I still have the Life/Creation book which called Evolution a scientific hoax and talks about the brevity of human existence and literal creation event. All known to be scientifically unsound statements even when it was published, let alone today.
There's already been entire threads devoted to soundly rebutting the JW doctrine on blood to actual medical data. And that you still cling to it after being shown pages and pages and pages of evidence against it is more a testament to your cognitive bias than anything. So I won't bother trying to dredge up that subject. You can refer back to the pages of people you never replied to in your own thread.
"Not a Bible teaching" to them means it is not the truth.
There is no actual difference between Micro and Macro evolution. It's like saying that there is a micro and macro plate tectonic movement, that it can move several inches but not thousands of miles over a long amount of time. They've never actually presented any sound reasoning for something that prohibits large change. And even constantly shift the goal post on what they categorize 'large change' to be. As we have seen, in our lifetime, speciation events, as well as transition from unicellular to multicellular life.
*Looks over at the left side of the screen, under her username, where it clearly says 'Agnostic Atheist.'* I believe the bible is about as meaningful and reliable as the Vedas, the Sutras, the Quran, the Talmud, and other religious scripture. With some beautiful prose, some words of wisdom, some historical events, and loads of irrelevancies.
Boy, are you wrong on so many levels! The book you mentioned you have, talks about genetics. And many other aspects. But it's what you want to believe, even with the twisted evidence (Reference "Perry Mason"); so be it. Revelation 12:9 is such a truth! He's got the whole world (spiritually, scientifically, racially, politically etc) misled, as was prophesied.
It really doesn't. It barely mentions inheritability at all, and more in the language Darwin himself would have been familiar with, not with classical genetics. It doesn't talk about genetic markers, pseudogenes, gene flow, gene models of speciation, epigenetics, etc. It's such a reduced and strawman representation of what the entire body of evidence that evolutionary biology has that it's no wonder believers in it can't actually have a productive discussion about it. They just fall back on their beliefs and insist anything outside it, not even knowing what actually IS outside it, is wrong and Satan led. To me, that's a pretty silly 'boogie-man' approach to life.
If mankind is only 6000 years old, then who built the earlier layers of cities like Jericho, Damascus, Aleppo and Uruk, in which they each predated 4000 BCE?
