Apparently they don't need ramps in the afterlife

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Just had some Jehovah's Witnesses come to the door and since I was bored I had a talk with them (the way I see it we both get a chance to refine our arguments with a polite determined advocate for the other team).

They were reasonable enough as evangelical doorknockers go, though they refused to believe me when I said the "We only use 10% of our brains" myth is bunk. (I mean, they refused to believe me about various creationist etc things too, but I was expecting that)

But when we got to death (eg "What will happen to my dead grandma?" and didn't I appreciate them latching onto that) I asked what would happen with my Grandad: will he be resurrected with his Alzheimers? If not, what happens to the person he is now, who is quite distinct from the person he used to be? "Well, he'll be resurrected as he was before he got the memory loss, because God will make him perfect."

When I asked about people who have "disabilities" like deafness that they see an inherent part of themselves the response was that they were wrong, because who wouldn't prefer to be able to hear? "Well then I would like to be taller. Would God make me taller?" No: that's a difference, not disability. I tried explaining my opinion that there's no neat dividing line between innocuous/positive difference and imperfection/disability but they had to go (yes, I won the game of chicken :D)

Some googling found me:

• a JW site How Disabilities Will End which tends to match the impression I got from the doorknockers.
  
• Living With a Learning Disability gives some to my mind relatively sensible advice for parents of children with learning difficulties, and I don't have too much of a problem with people following a theology with Unfortunate Implications if they act ok in practice.
  
• This post from a disabled people who met some really annoying Witnesses implies they don't always do that though.
  

Anyway, not meaning to pick on Jehovah's Witnesses in particular, I just found it interesting. It's funny how much disability related stuff I never noticed before (for certain definitions of "funny")

(nb pleas try and avoid unnecessary ranting about he Evils of Religion. I'd like this to be a conversation which reasonable Witnesses could engage with if any come along. And yes they do exist :P)

Comments

[furikku.livejournal.com]

Technically, I am supposed to believe in bodily resurrection upon the Second Coming, as a Lutheran.

In actuality, I am more inclined to believe in some kind of spiritual Thing like Oneness With God.

Though for complete accuracy, I just believe that there's some kind of afterlife and don't think about it too much because there's obv. no way to know what happens then.

To wrangle on the terms of bodily resurrection, I can't say I'd agree with the idea of God slapping things onto people that they didn't have before (such as hearing for the hearing impaired). I'd say it'd be more likely that the Kingdom Come would just be a setting where disabilities are dispensed with on account of God is omnipotent and can do anything, including making a society that works on the social disability model.

Xtianity of most denominations would work better if they'd focus more on helping people according to the individual situation, rather than the weird conformity issues they got goin' on now.

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That all sounds eminently sensible.

Xtianity of most denominations would work better if they'd focus more on helping people according to the individual situation, rather than the weird conformity issues they got goin' on now.

In defense of Christianity, this is true of many non-Christian groups as well :/