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AR 24:20 - Latest Templeton Prize mitigates science fundamentalism
In this issue:
JEHOVAH'S WITNESS - a hero and "key ex-JW in the ex-JW community"
POLITICS - "the religious left as a potent political force to counter the religious right"?
SCIENCE - "just another way for us to engage with the mystery of who we are"
Apologia Report 24:20 (1,428)
May 15, 2019
JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES
Finally, a mainstream media source takes notice of JW corruption and subterfuge. Writing for The Atlantic (Mar '19), Douglas Quenqua explains how concealed JW documents are being leaked at a growing rate in "A Secret Database of Child Abuse: A former Jehovah's Witness is using stolen documents to expose allegations that the religion has kept hidden for decades."
Quenqua begins: "In March 1997, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, the nonprofit organization that oversees the Jehovah's Witnesses, sent a letter to each of its 10,883 U.S. congregations, and to many more congregations worldwide. The organization was concerned about the legal risk posed by possible child molesters within its ranks. ...
"Thus did the Jehovah's Witnesses build what might be the world's largest database of undocumented child molesters: at least two decades' worth of names and addresses - likely numbering in the tens of thousands - and detailed acts of alleged abuse, most of which have never been shared with law enforcement, all scanned and searchable in a Microsoft SharePoint file. ...
"[R]ather than comply with multiple court orders to release the information contained in its database, Watchtower [sic] has paid millions of dollars to keep it secret, even from the survivors whose stories are contained within.
"That effort has been remarkably successful - until recently.
"A white Priority Mail box filled with manila envelopes sits on the floor of Mark O'Donnell's wood-paneled home office, on the outskirts of Baltimore, Maryland. Mark, 51, is the owner of an exercise-equipment repair business and a longtime Jehovah's Witness who quietly left the religion in late 2013. Soon after, he became known to ex–Jehovah's Witnesses as John Redwood, an activist and a blogger who reports on the various controversies, including cases of child abuse, surrounding Watchtower. (Recently, he has begun using his own name.)"
These materials "had been stolen by an anonymous source inside the religion and shared with Mark." Quenqua then reviews the events in Mark's life which precipitated his disenchantment with the Watchtower. The "Watchtower's prediction that the world would end in 1975" figures prominently. ...
The "Watchtower adjusted its estimates for the apocalypse several more times. In 2010, it introduced the Overlapping Generations theory, which claims that the end will come before the death of everyone who was alive at the same time as anyone who was alive in 1914. Mark found these revised predictions difficult to accept."
This eventually led to him to "delve into so-called apostate material, books such as Crisis of Conscience [1], a 1983 exposé written by a former member of the Jehovah's Witnesses Governing Body. He also started watching YouTube videos <www.bit.ly/2Jqv8YT> by Lloyd Evans, a former British elder who has amassed a dedicated following with his anti-Watchtower arguments. ...
"In the summer of 2015, the ex-Witness community was transfixed by Australia's royal-commission hearings <www.bit.ly/2Hl3iuE> into sexual abuse in religious organizations. The commission had been trying to get testimony from a member of Watchtower's Governing Body - the organization's all-male ruling council, which then consisted of eight men. ...
"[Mark] dug out a copy of the 'Branch Organization Manual,' an obscure document explaining all the functions of the Governing Body, and emailed it to Angus Stewart, the lead litigator in the proceedings. Stewart used the manual to subpoena [Geoffrey] Jackson.
"In front of the commission, Jackson became the first active member of Watchtower's Governing Body to acknowledge that 'child abuse is a problem right throughout the community.' He also admitted that in most cases, children who make such charges against Watchtower are telling the truth. ...
"Mark has built an international network of abused, disfellowshipped, and aggrieved Witnesses, whom he has connected to journalists, attorneys, and one another. 'Mark is probably the key ex-JW in the ex-JW community,' says Jason Wynne, the founder of AvoidJW.org." Lengthy. <www.bit.ly/2J4sbg5>
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POLITICS
"The 2020 race to the White House has become uncharacteristically religious in recent months" reports Religion News Service (Apr 12 '19). The piece adds that "presidential hopefuls Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sens. Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren and former Obama cabinet secretary Julian Castro [are] all taking time on the stump to opine at length about faith, perhaps trying to summon a religious left as a potent political force to counter the religious right.
"Amid all this God-talk, only one candidate talks about the spiritual world for a living: Marianne Williamson." (With a long history as a new age celebrity, Williamson has frequently been mentioned <www.bit.ly/2H8bVrd> in Apologia Report over the years. This piece serves as an update.)
In particular, "Since 2011, Williamson's largest pulpit has been her regular guest spot on the Oprah Winfrey OWN Network's 'SuperSoulSunday.' ...
"She maintains a Jewish identity, and last year she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that she attended Hebrew school growing up, still makes her way to synagogue for Jewish High Holidays and may have become a rabbi had her education been different.
"Yet today she is known as a key leader in a loose community of positive, self-actualizing celebrities, from Kim Kardashian to Oprah Winfrey, the latter of which helped cement Williamson's place in popular culture." <www.bit.ly/2vITUKH>
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SCIENCE
"Dartmouth physicist, known for doubting skeptics, wins 2019 Templeton Prize" by Chris Herlinger (Religion News Service, Mar 19 '19) -- "Marcelo Gleiser, 60, a native Brazilian, is the first Latin American to win the prestigious prize, which honors an individual 'who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works,' said the John Templeton Foundation, which is based in West Conshohocken, Pa.
"Gleiser, whose full title is Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy and a professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., won the honor for being 'a prominent voice among scientists, past and present, who reject the notion that science alone can lead to ultimate truths about the nature of reality,' the foundation said today, March 19, 2019, in announcing the award. 'Instead, in his parallel career as a public intellectual, he reveals the historical, philosophical, and cultural links of being alive.'
"While Gleiser describes himself as an agnostic, he is an avowed critic of atheism.
"'I see atheism as being inconsistent with the scientific method as it is, essentially, belief in non-belief,' Gleiser said in a 2018 interview <www.bit.ly/2VqSoY6> in Scientific American. 'You may not believe in God, but to affirm its nonexistence with certainty is not scientifically consistent.'"
Heather Templeton Dill, president of the John Templeton Foundation, explains "'Professor Gleiser's work displays an undeniable joy of exploration. He maintains the same sense of awe and wonderment that he first experienced as a child on the Copacabana beach, gazing at the horizon or the starry night sky, curious about what lies beyond. ...
"Though widely published in academic journals, Gleiser has also taken on the role of a public intellectual, co-founding the National Public Radio blog, '13.7: Cosmos and Culture,' and penning a weekly column in Folha de São Paulo, Brazil's largest newspaper. He also narrated the Latin American edition of the four-part documentary series 'The Known Universe' for the National Geographic Channel.
"In a videotaped acceptance of the award, Gleiser said the 'path to scientific understanding and scientific exploration is not just about the material part of the world.
"'My mission is to bring back to science, and to the people that are interested in science, this attachment to the mysterious, to make people understand that science is just one other way for us to engage with the mystery of who we are.'
"The Templeton Foundation noted that through the years, Gleiser has become skeptical of pronouncements that 'physics has solved the question of the universe's origin. He also increasingly rejected the claims of fellow scientists who asserted the irrelevance of philosophy or religion.'" <www.bit.ly/2JnXC4E>
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - Crisis of Conscience: The Story of the Struggle Between Loyalty to God and Loyalty to One’s Religion, by Raymond Franz (NuLife, 5th Ed., 2018, paperback, 608 pages) <www.amzn.to/2JEjZTu>
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