Your opinion on Jehovah's Witnesses

Is it bad form to ask why Captain's post was whacked with the mod stick?

Generally, yeah.

Since coming back from the dead seems to be a speciality of this thread (rather appropriately :) I hope no one minds if I say, "Hi" :P

re: Fanatical Roman Catholics? Uh, yeah - my mother was a JW missionary in Ireland during the 60's. She was on more than one occasion chased out of town by mobs organised by the local priest. It happens. Things are obviously a /lot/ better now, and usual disclaimer that I know that doesn't reflect all Catholics, etc. But, yeah, it's possible for any belief or opinion to become fanatical. Sadly some witnesses too, though we do our best not to.

JW's sure are easy to spook. Really, Pepper is harmless, more scared of you than you are of her black fur. And I'm not a witch. I'm odd and I have a writers knowledge of fantasy, sci fi, and the occult; but I'm not a witch.

Well, granted, Ireland has a pretty huge number of Catholics, so I imagine it's easier to find fanatical ones there... Plus, the absence of dissenting opinions tends to make people extreme in their own views, so it's understandable how people there might be more extreme about it.

edited 21st Feb '14 7:31:58 AM by Odd1

To be fair Katie, we ARE going door to door and interrupting people's lives on a regular basis for a message they may not even want to hear, and given people's penchants for assuming the worst it's easy to imagine yourself going up to a door and some wacko comes out and roughs you up. It's not even that big of a stretch either, with me living in "The South" of the US I personally know a couple people that have either had a gun shoved in their face or had the door opened to show the person in the house was either almost or fully naked.

Granted depending on where you live you'll get your own regional brand of crazy, but that's what we have to deal with here.

EDIT: @cruise Going off of our yearly yearbook (basically a book that compiles inspirational/important stories from a few countries at a time) we still have stuff like that happening in some of the more remote places and/or areas that don't take kindly to outsiders, like some tribes in Africa or South America.

edited 23rd Feb '14 5:56:52 PM by Epicsigh

Hey!

I'm agnostic, but I don't mind hearing what people with other beliefs have to say. I also kind of feel bad that every one tends to slam the door in the face of various door-knocking religious sects (in my case, Mormons).

I've never shoved a gun in anyone's face, that's rude. But I have had to go to drastic measures to get people away from the door because I was babysitting a kid with Autism who really didn't like strangers.

Question, do you guys follow the "no solicitors" signs on private residences?

I have no formal opinion one way or the other about Jehovah's Witnesses. I'm sure that must disappoint you.

@Cats Most people usually do, and we're generally told to not go to a door if we can clearly see one, but like with anything you do get some who are just so into it that they don't pay attention to those kinds of things.

Personally I find them hilarious. I was on the receiving end of a call from one and generally listened through the whole thing, holding back an urge to cackle. Good for a laugh, but it's hard to take them seriously in their all-year long black clothes.

That being said, if someone happens to just be of that faith, I suppose it's their business. Then again, the way I heard it Witnesses are more of an organization than they are a religion/sect.

All year long black clothes?

Also yeah we're pretty organized, but to be fair that's kind of mimicking how things were "back in the day", after all like, half of the books in what people call the New Testament are letters and notes to the congregations of Christians in various cities and towns, plus when you're as connected to each other as we are it helps build a sense of community beyond just the people in your specific building, which let's be honest you see a lot of in more individualistic churches.

I'm not a huge fan of people coming to my door randomly, regardless of faith, haha. I'm good friends with a JW, though. They seem to be rather strict when it comes to their doctrine.

International convention was awesome this year, a lot of good information was covered and I liked the increased use of communications technology and visual aids in a lot of the talks. The turnout was insane as well, here in North Carolina we'd just about maxed out the PNC arena we'd rented out that is usually reserved for hockey and basketball games, with 15K people on Sunday! Absolutely incredible.

What? No one here has been trying to proselytize at all, and I'd hardly call that harassment either way.

Obviously, it was meant as a sarcasm...

I didn't Pot Hole the post as such because I thought it would have been pretentious...

Hey, you know we have a rule about not posting in a thread just to complain that you don't like the thread?

Follow it.

I actually wanted to ask, if there's any Jehovah's Witness present... Have you, on your door-to-door visits, ever "converted" someone?

Having not seen most of the thread and its controversies...

My father was raised one. He got out of it just about as soon as he was an emancipated adult. He kept an interest in religion, but read widely on his own, listed himself as an organ donor, was insistent that he believed blood transfusions were a GOOD thing, and this was probably the reason why I didn't go to church as a kid - he did not like going to church, ANY church, due to having too much of it as a child.

I've always been pretty polite when they've come to the door. There used to be a sweet old lady in my old neighborhood. When I couldn't pretend to not be home/asleep and caught her at the door, I was nice because she was nice. Gave the literature, wasn't pushy.

In Pennsylvania, had them come to the door of my old house - a pair of men - when I was PLAYING THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: OCARINA OF TIME for the first time in my life - I had just beat the Shadow Temple. Amazingly, this did not end in blood and tears. I was polite, got them out of the door quickly, and got back to my game.

Where I am living now, the door is in the back and hard to find. We've never gotten door-to-door anything. Even the mail tends to go to our neighbors in the complex first.

I find it odd that you capitalized "PLAYING THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: OCARINA OF TIME" there, as if that itself is a religious experience.

I've had one door-to-door encounter, one where people who were going door-to-door caught me in the street, and one last week when a pair of them set up what was effectively a checkpoint on one of the paths onto the university campus and were handing out literature.