@neologist,
At the risk of going off topic (though discussion has already been diverted into an examination of some tenets of Jehovah's Witnesses), here is a question for you:
I have often, while sitting at a bus stop, been offered a choice of reading materials by Jehovah's Witnesses. I found The Watchtower to be a standard religious screed, but the companion magazine Awake! to contain many interesting general interest science and history essays with the religious "bite" usually limited to a paragraph or two, often at the end.
One thing I noticed is how the articles on the complexities of nature carry a moral pointing to this as proof of the Creator. But as any naturalist (or Hobbes) can tell you, nature in the raw is often cruel and merciless. The parasitical conditions, birth defects, and childhood diseases that (particularly in poor countries, which is many of them) afflict infants and toddlers alone, are truly horrific. In the animal kingdom things are only worse. In the insect kingdom, it is not uncommon for one species to stun prey, lay eggs in them, and keep them as living food sources for their hatched offspring. Even if one discounts the consciousness or pain sensitivity of insects, the scheme seems particularly perverse. These little factoids never seem to make the editorial cut, unlike the essays on the mathematical patterns in snail shells.
Another recurring theme is the claim that the Earth is under Satan's dominion. It is never explained how this is consistent with newspapers, scientific publications, or for that matter, Jehovah's Witness tracts that we can trust. If Satan controls mammon and mammon controls temporal power and influence, to say nothing of his reputedly expanded end-time powers (and Jehovah's Witnesses seem to believe that the end times began around World War One), then how should anyone trust earthly authorities, whether secular or religious? Did you ever see that Al Pacino movie, The Devil's Advocate?
