sentence-transformers/squad huggingface dataset:
Passage: Formal discipline is administered by congregation elders. When a baptized member is accused of committing a serious sin—usually cases of sexual misconduct or charges of apostasy for disputing Jehovah's Witness doctrines—a judicial committee is formed to determine guilt, provide help and possibly administer discipline. Disfellowshipping, a form of shunning, is the strongest form of discipline, administered to an offender deemed unrepentant. Contact with disfellowshipped individuals is limited to direct family members living in the same home, and with congregation elders who may invite disfellowshipped persons to apply for reinstatement; formal business dealings may continue if contractually or financially obliged. Witnesses are taught that avoiding social and spiritual interaction with disfellowshipped individuals keeps the congregation free from immoral influence and that "losing precious fellowship with loved ones may help [the shunned individual] to come 'to his senses,' see the seriousness of his wrong, and take steps to return to Jehovah." The practice of shunning may also serve to deter other members from dissident behavior. Members who disassociate (formally resign) are described in Watch Tower Society literature as wicked and are also shunned. Expelled individuals may eventually be reinstated to the congregation if deemed repentant by elders in the congregation in which the disfellowshipping was enforced. Reproof is a lesser form of discipline given formally by a judicial committee to a baptized Witness who is considered repentant of serious sin; the reproved person temporarily loses conspicuous privileges of service, but suffers no restriction of social or spiritual fellowship. Marking, a curtailing of social but not spiritual fellowship, is practiced if a baptized member persists in a course of action regarded as a violation of Bible principles but not a serious sin.[note 4]

Question: Who administers formal discipline?

Question: What is formed when a baptized member is accused of doing something serious enough for Jehovah Witnesses to take notice?

Question: What is the strongest form of discipline the Jehovah Witnesses' judicial committee can render?

Question: What do Jehovah Witnesses describe anyone who formally resign from the church as?

Question: What are Jehovah Witnesses taught that avoiding social and spiritual interaction with disfellowshipped individuals does?
Passage: Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the Bible condemns the mixing of religions, on the basis that there can only be one truth from God, and therefore reject interfaith and ecumenical movements. They believe that only their religion represents true Christianity, and that other religions fail to meet all the requirements set by God and will soon be destroyed. Jehovah's Witnesses are taught that it is vital to remain "separate from the world." The Witnesses' literature defines the "world" as "the mass of mankind apart from Jehovah's approved servants" and teach that it is morally contaminated and ruled by Satan. Witnesses are taught that association with "worldly" people presents a "danger" to their faith, and are instructed to minimize social contact with non-members to better maintain their own standards of morality.

Question: Why do Jehovah Witnesses believe the Bible condemns mixing of religions?

Question: What are Jehovah Witnesses taught it's vital to remain?

Question: What do Jehovah Witnesses believe is true of their religion and their religion alone?

Question: What are Jehovah Witnesses taught association with worldly people presents to their faith?

Question: What does Jehovah Witnesses define the "world" to mean?
Passage: Jehovah's Witnesses believe their highest allegiance belongs to God's kingdom, which is viewed as an actual government in heaven, with Christ as king. They remain politically neutral, do not seek public office, and are discouraged from voting, though individual members may participate in uncontroversial community improvement issues. Although they do not take part in politics, they respect the authority of the governments under which they live. They do not celebrate religious holidays such as Christmas and Easter, nor do they observe birthdays, nationalistic holidays, or other celebrations they consider to honor people other than Jesus. They feel that these and many other customs have pagan origins or reflect a nationalistic or political spirit. Their position is that these traditional holidays reflect Satan's control over the world. Witnesses are told that spontaneous giving at other times can help their children to not feel deprived of birthdays or other celebrations.

Question: Who is king of God's kingdom in heaven?

Question: What do Jehovah Witnesses remain politically?

Question: What are Jehovah Witnesses discouraged from doing?

Question: Why do Jehovah Witnesses forego religious holidays and birthdays or other celebrations?

Question: What do Jehovah Witnesses feel all the traditional holidays reflect?
Passage: They do not work in industries associated with the military, do not serve in the armed services, and refuse national military service, which in some countries may result in their arrest and imprisonment. They do not salute or pledge allegiance to flags or sing national anthems or patriotic songs. Jehovah's Witnesses see themselves as a worldwide brotherhood that transcends national boundaries and ethnic loyalties. Sociologist Ronald Lawson has suggested the religion's intellectual and organizational isolation, coupled with the intense indoctrination of adherents, rigid internal discipline and considerable persecution, has contributed to the consistency of its sense of urgency in its apocalyptic message.

Question: What industries do Jehovah Witnesses avoid working in?

Question: What may a Jehovah Witnesses' refusal to serve in the natural military service result in, in some countries?

Question: What do Jehovah Witnesses see themselves as, which transcends national boundaries and ethnic loyalties?

Question: What profession is Ronald Lawson?

Question: What does Lawson suggest has contributed to the consistency of the sense of urgency in Jehovah Witnesses' apocalyptic message?
Passage: Jehovah's Witnesses refuse blood transfusions, which they consider a violation of God's law based on their interpretation of Acts 15:28, 29 and other scriptures. Since 1961 the willing acceptance of a blood transfusion by an unrepentant member has been grounds for expulsion from the religion. Members are directed to refuse blood transfusions, even in "a life-or-death situation". Jehovah's Witnesses accept non-blood alternatives and other medical procedures in lieu of blood transfusions, and their literature provides information about non-blood medical procedures.

Question: What biblical passage informs Jehovah Witnesses' refusal of blood transfusions?

Question: What is grounds for expulsion from Jehovah Witnesses, since 1961?

Question: What do Jehovah Witnesses accept in lieu of blood transfusions?

Question: What does Jehovah Witnesses' literature provide about non-blood medical procedures?
Passage: Though Jehovah's Witnesses do not accept blood transfusions of whole blood, they may accept some blood plasma fractions at their own discretion. The Watch Tower Society provides pre-formatted durable power of attorney documents prohibiting major blood components, in which members can specify which allowable fractions and treatments they will personally accept. Jehovah's Witnesses have established Hospital Liaison Committees as a cooperative arrangement between individual Jehovah's Witnesses and medical professionals and hospitals.

Question: What are Jehovah Witnesses allowed to accept at their discretion?

Question: What pre-formatted durable power of attorney documents are provided by the Watch Tower Society to prohibit?

Question: What can Jehovah's Witnesses' members specify on the canned legal forms from the WTS?

Question: What cooperative arrangement did Jehovah's Witnesses establish?

Question: The Hospital Liaison Committees serve to bridge between hospitals, medical professionals and who?
Passage: As of August 2015, Jehovah's Witnesses report an average of 8.2 million publishers—the term they use for members actively involved in preaching—in 118,016 congregations. In 2015, these reports indicated over 1.93 billion hours spent in preaching and "Bible study" activity. Since the mid-1990s, the number of peak publishers has increased from 4.5 million to 8.2 million. In the same year, they conducted "Bible studies" with over 9.7 million individuals, including those conducted by Witness parents with their children. Jehovah's Witnesses estimate their current worldwide growth rate to be 1.5% per year.

Question: What term do Jehovah's Witnesses use for members actively involved in preaching?

Question: How many publishers did the Jehovah's Witnesses have as of August 2015?

Question: How many congregations did the Jehovah's Witnesses have in 2015?

Question: Over how many hours had Jehovah's Witnesses spent preaching and in "Bible study" activity in 2015?

Question: What do Jehovah's Witnesses their worldwide growth rate to be?
Passage: The official published membership statistics, such as those mentioned above, include only those who submit reports for their personal ministry; official statistics do not include inactive and disfellowshipped individuals or others who might attend their meetings. As a result, only about half of those who self-identified as Jehovah's Witnesses in independent demographic studies are considered active by the faith itself. The 2008 US Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life survey found a low retention rate among members of the religion: about 37% of people raised in the religion continued to identify themselves as Jehovah's Witnesses.

Question: Where do the officially published membership statistics come from?

Question: Only about half all Jehovah's Witnesses are actually considered what in the faith itself?

Question: What did a 2008 US Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life survey discover about Jehovah's Witnesses' retention rate?

Question: Only about what percentage of the people raised in the religion continue to identify themselves as Jehovah's Witnesses?
Passage: Sociologist James A. Beckford, in his 1975 study of Jehovah's Witnesses, classified the religion's organizational structure as Totalizing, characterized by an assertive leadership, specific and narrow objectives, control over competing demands on members' time and energy, and control over the quality of new members. Other characteristics of the classification include likelihood of friction with secular authorities, reluctance to co-operate with other religious organizations, a high rate of membership turnover, a low rate of doctrinal change, and strict uniformity of beliefs among members. Beckford identified the religion's chief characteristics as historicism (identifying historical events as relating to the outworking of God's purpose), absolutism (conviction that Jehovah's Witness leaders dispense absolute truth), activism (capacity to motivate members to perform missionary tasks), rationalism (conviction that Witness doctrines have a rational basis devoid of mystery), authoritarianism (rigid presentation of regulations without the opportunity for criticism) and world indifference (rejection of certain secular requirements and medical treatments).

Question: What is the profession of James A. Beckford?

Question: When did Beckford study the Jehovah's Witnesses?

Question: What did Beckford classify the Jehovah's Witnesses organizational structure as being?

Question: What is the conviction that Jehovah's Witness leaders dispense absolute truth?

Question: What is the term for Jehovah's Witnesses' rejection of certain secular requirements and medical treatments?
Passage: A sociological comparative study by the Pew Research Center found that Jehovah's Witnesses in the United States ranked highest in statistics for getting no further than high school graduation, belief in God, importance of religion in one's life, frequency of religious attendance, frequency of prayers, frequency of Bible reading outside of religious services, belief their prayers are answered, belief that their religion can only be interpreted one way, belief that theirs is the only one true faith leading to eternal life, opposition to abortion, and opposition to homosexuality. In the study, Jehovah's Witnesses ranked lowest in statistics for having earned a graduate degree and interest in politics.

Question: Jehovah's Witnesses in the United States ranked highest in people whose education extended no further than what?

Question: Compared to other religions, Jehovah's Witnesses have the highest frequency of doing what with the Bible outside of religious services?

Question: What religion ranks highest in frequency of religious attendance?

Question: Statistically, what is a Jehovah's Witnesses likely not to care about at all?

Question: What do few Jehovah's Witnesses earn?
Passage: Political and religious animosity against Jehovah's Witnesses has at times led to mob action and government oppression in various countries. Their doctrine of political neutrality and their refusal to serve in the military has led to imprisonment of members who refused conscription during World War II and at other times where national service has been compulsory. In 1933, there were approximately 20,000 Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany, of whom about 10,000 were later imprisoned. Of those, 2000 were sent to Nazi concentration camps, where they were identified by purple triangles; as many as 1200 died, including 250 who were executed. In Canada, Jehovah's Witnesses were interned in camps along with political dissidents and people of Chinese and Japanese descent. In the former Soviet Union, about 9,300 Jehovah's Witnesses were deported to Siberia as part of Operation North in April 1951. Their religious activities are currently banned or restricted in some countries, including China, Vietnam and some Islamic states.

Question: What has at times led to immense violence against Jehovah's Witnesses?

Question: Why have Jehovah's Witnesses sometimes been imprisoned?

Question: Of the 20,000 Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany in 1933, how many were later imprisoned?

Question: What were Jehovah's Witnesses identified by in Nazi concentration camps?

Question: What countries ban the religious activities of Jehovah's Witnesses?
Passage: Authors including William Whalen, Shawn Francis Peters and former Witnesses Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, Alan Rogerson and William Schnell have claimed the arrests and mob violence in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s were the consequence of what appeared to be a deliberate course of provocation of authorities and other religions by Jehovah’s Witnesses. Whalen, Harrison and Schnell have suggested Rutherford invited and cultivated opposition for publicity purposes in a bid to attract dispossessed members of society, and to convince members that persecution from the outside world was evidence of the truth of their struggle to serve God. Watch Tower Society literature of the period directed that Witnesses should "never seek a controversy" nor resist arrest, but also advised members not to co-operate with police officers or courts that ordered them to stop preaching, and to prefer jail rather than pay fines.

Question: Who were Jehovah's Witnesses accused of intentionally provoking in the 1930s and 1940s?

Question: What authors have suggested Rutherford invited and cultivated opposition for the purpose of publicity?

Question: What did Rutherford hope to convince members about the persecution from the outside world?

Question: What did Watch Tower Society literature tell Jehovah's Witnesses they should never seek?

Question: What should a Jehovah's Witnesses prefer to paying fines?
Passage: In the United States, their persistent legal challenges prompted a series of state and federal court rulings that reinforced judicial protections for civil liberties. Among the rights strengthened by Witness court victories in the United States are the protection of religious conduct from federal and state interference, the right to abstain from patriotic rituals and military service, the right of patients to refuse medical treatment, and the right to engage in public discourse. Similar cases in their favor have been heard in Canada.

Question: What did Jehovah's Witnesses persistent legal challenges result in, in the United States?

Question: What is religious conduct protected from the interference of?

Question: What right to abstain from do Jehovah's Witnesses exercise?

Question: What do patients have the right to refuse?

Question: Where have cases in the Jehovah's Witnesses favor been heard outside of the U.S.?
Passage: Doctrines of Jehovah's Witnesses are established by the Governing Body. The religion does not tolerate dissent over doctrines and practices; members who openly disagree with the religion's teachings are expelled and shunned. Witness publications strongly discourage followers from questioning doctrine and counsel received from the Governing Body, reasoning that it is to be trusted as part of "God's organization". It also warns members to "avoid independent thinking", claiming such thinking "was introduced by Satan the Devil" and would "cause division". Those who openly disagree with official teachings are condemned as "apostates" who are "mentally diseased".

Question: Who establishes the doctrines of the Jehovah's Witnesses?

Question: What do the Jehovah's Witnesses religion not tolerate any of?

Question: What happens to members who disagree with the religion's teachings?

Question: Why should the counsel received from the Governing Body be trusted?

Question: Who do Jehovah's Witnesses believe introduced independent thinking?
Passage: Former members Heather and Gary Botting compare the cultural paradigms of the religion to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four, and Alan Rogerson describes the religion's leadership as totalitarian. Other critics charge that by disparaging individual decision-making, the religion's leaders cultivate a system of unquestioning obedience in which Witnesses abrogate all responsibility and rights over their personal lives. Critics also accuse the religion's leaders of exercising "intellectual dominance" over Witnesses, controlling information and creating "mental isolation", which former Governing Body member Raymond Franz argued were all elements of mind control.

Question: What do former Jehovah's Witnesses members Heath and Gary Botting compare the culture of the religion to?

Question: Who describes the Jehovah's Witnesses' leadership as being totalitarian?

Question: How do the leaders of the Jehovah's Witnesses cultivate a system of unquestioning obedience?

Question: What do critics of the Jehovah's Witnesses accuse the religion's leaders of exercising over members?

Question: What did former Governing Body member Raymond Franz argue the methods employed by the religion were all elements of?
Passage: Sociologist Rodney Stark states that Jehovah's Witness leaders are "not always very democratic" and that members "are expected to conform to rather strict standards," but adds that "enforcement tends to be very informal, sustained by the close bonds of friendship within the group", and that Jehovah's Witnesses see themselves as "part of the power structure rather than subject to it." Sociologist Andrew Holden states that most members who join millenarian movements such as Jehovah's Witnesses have made an informed choice. However, he also states that defectors "are seldom allowed a dignified exit", and describes the administration as autocratic.

Question: What profession did Rodney Stark grow up to become?

Question: What statement does Stark make about the leaders of the Jehovah's Witnesses?

Question: How do Jehovah's Witnesses see themselves in regards to the power structure of the church?

Question: Another Sociologist, Andrew Holden, feels anyone who joins a movement such as the Jehovah's Witnesses has made a what?

Question: Holden acknowledges that defectors are seldom allowed a what from the church?
Passage: On the other hand, in his study on nine of "the Bibles most widely in use in the English-speaking world", Bible scholar Jason BeDuhn, Professor of Religious Studies at the Northern Arizona University, wrote: “The NW [New World Translation] emerges as the most accurate of the translations compared.” Although the general public and many Bible scholars assume that the differences in the New World Translation are the result of religious bias on the part of its translators, BeDuhn stated: “Most of the differences are due to the greater accuracy of the NW as a literal, conservative translation of the original expressions of the New Testament writers.” He added however that the insertion of the name Jehovah in the New Testament "violate[s] accuracy in favor of denominationally preferred expressions for God".

Question: What is the New World Translation the most accurate translation of?

Question: What do many Bible scholars assume the differences in the New World Translation are the result of?

Question: BeDuhn clarifies that the differences are actually due to what?

Question: The NW often errs on the side of what type of translation?

Question: What insertion into the New Testament violates accuracy in favor of denominationally preferred expressions?
Passage: Watch Tower Society publications have claimed that God has used Jehovah's Witnesses (and formerly, the International Bible Students) to declare his will and has provided advance knowledge about Armageddon and the establishment of God's kingdom. Some publications also claimed that God has used Jehovah's Witnesses and the International Bible Students as a modern-day prophet.[note 5] Jehovah's Witnesses' publications have made various predictions about world events they believe were prophesied in the Bible. Failed predictions have led to the alteration or abandonment of some doctrines. Some failed predictions had been presented as "beyond doubt" or "approved by God".

Question: Who do Watch Tower Society publications claim God has used?

Question: What have various Jehovah's Witnesses' publications made predictions about?

Question: What does God use Jehovah's Witnesses for?

Question: What has God provided to Jehovah's Witnesses?

Question: What had some of the failed predictions of Jehovah's Witnesses been presented as?
Passage: The Watch Tower Society rejects accusations that it is a false prophet, stating that its teachings are not inspired or infallible, and that it has not claimed its predictions were "the words of Jehovah." George D. Chryssides has suggested that with the exception of statements about 1914, 1925 and 1975, the changing views and dates of the Jehovah's Witnesses are largely attributable to changed understandings of biblical chronology than to failed predictions. Chryssides further states, "it is therefore simplistic and naïve to view the Witnesses as a group that continues to set a single end-date that fails and then devise a new one, as many counter-cultists do." However, sociologist Andrew Holden states that since the foundation of the movement around 140 years ago, "Witnesses have maintained that we are living on the precipice of the end of time."

Question: What does George D. Chryssides suggest the changing views and dates of the Jehovah's Witnesses can be attributed to changed understandings of?

Question: What accusations does the Watch Tower Society reject?

Question: What have Jehovah's Witnesses maintained we are living on the precipice of since their formation?

Question: How long ago was the foundation of the Jehovah's Witnesses movement?

Question: What profession does Andrew Holden smugly self-identify as?