1. Justice In The Brain: Equity And Efficiency Are Encoded Differently

Comment #178452 by Unregistered on May 11, 2008 at 12:57 pm

Couldn't some of the other orphans just share their meals with the one who had 15 taken away?

2. Diary of a Deserter

Comment #46845 by Unregistered on June 1, 2007 at 11:59 pm

I felt compelled to register and comment that, just as with any religion, you will have moderates and you will have fanatics.

I personally was a bit shocked reading about how Brain was treated by the Jehovah's Witnesses. I was raised a Jehovah's Witness, as was my older brother, and we are now both atheists. My mother is quite devout, attending her "meetings" three times per week, and always has her religious literature laying around the house. Besides being slightly disappointed, she has never shunned or condemned us for rejecting her religion. In fact, we get along as well as we always have, only now we engage in civil discussion about the validity of the bible, evolution, faith, etc.

Aside from the disappointment I felt with myself for taking so long to realize the truth, my exit from the faith was completely painless.

Perhaps it's just the congregation we belonged to, but all the Jehovah's Witnesses I met were just as civil and respectful as my mother. My father is in fact agnostic and still married to my mother, a fact she is not ashamed of, nor one she has ever tried to hide from the other Witnesses, and this has never caused her any problems with the church.

As I'm sure many of you have heard or know from personal experience, you are never fully freed from religion you abandoned (if I recall correctly, Dawkins himself admits he still feels a certain affinity for the Anglican church) and I just felled obliged to inform everyone that Jehovah's Witnesses, while just as mistaken, aren't necessarily anymore nutty than any other denomination.