Will the logic and science of this world apply on Paradise Earth?

by HB 16 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  HB

  OK that went through so I wonder why there is a problem with my other email?
• 

  HB

  The post I want to make failed again, anyone any ideas what I can do?

  (Just thought, is it anything to do with the fact that I wrote the reply in a word doc and then copied and pasted it into the reply box? I'm not very technical!)
• 

  R.Crusoe

  All sorts of reasonings surround this - such as will everyone be equally gorgeous and if so how will everyone know who they were since they changed so much - although that pressumes we will have memory of this life which in some ways is crazy for babies who died!

  And if we have no memory of this life then what was the poiny of it? Sorta not only don't you recognise yourself but you dont know who you used to be - suggests it was pointless being resurrected!= god may just as well have destroyed us all and started afresh!
• 

  HB

  (I have been trying to post this for a few days now but every time I tried there was an error message, which I was told the system administrator was aware of. Am now trying without any formatting. If you are reading this, I have obviously now been successful!) Thanks to everyone who replied, very interesting. WTWizard - I understood when you advised me to avoid reading WT mysticism except for entertainment purposes. I would find this whole cult extremely amusing and high comedy if it wasn't so tragic and people's lives weren't being devastated. I guess there must also be some people who find happiness in being a JW, but judging by the number of people using this forum and the comments I've read, there are too many other people getting badly hurt. I picked up two books from a second hand bookstall....""You can live forever in Paradise Earth" and "Mankind's search for God". Reading these I do find myself laughing out loud but with a note of despair in there somewhere that apparently educated people are deluded enough to write such nonsense. The more I read, the more I wonder if the people at the top are actually not deluded but are cynically manipulative and don't believe a word of what they write. Maybe they're just playing a game to see how long they can stay in power and how many people they can convince that 'airy nothing' is fact. WTWizard was concerned that in being curious about JW beliefs if I did not have a solid grounding in science, I could easily become sucked in. Thanks for your concern but fortunately there's no danger as I am very solid, confident and comfortable in my humanist philosophy. I believe in trying to make the world a better place in any way I can, putting family, friends and those in my community first, and as I go, aiming to fulfil my own potential for happiness and good in a positive way. I don't need a god for this. Formerly as a teenager I was involved in a fundamentalist Brethren church which was not altogether a negative experience as it now enables me to understand what is meant by a religious experience and I also learnt some bible history which is useful in pub quizzes.... I was the only one who could spell Nebuchadnezzar recently!!! I think religion also helped me avoid some of the worst excesses of teen behaviour, although I still had a good time, but apart from that I am really glad to be out of it. I now don't believe in anything that can't be proved by science, am not superstitious, have no interest in new age mumbo-jumbo I find it frustrating how many highly intelligent people believe in feng shui, numerology and astrology etc. So I am in no danger of getting hooked into the JW beliefs myself while investigating and being curious . However I can sadly see how my vulnerable 18 yr old friend is being seduced by it. Good news though that she is questioning. My way of thinking is that Truth corresponds to ascertainable fact and falsehood doesn't. Based on the methods of getting to the truth in a court of law, I try to weigh up both sides of an issue and form opinions based on 'ascertainable facts' where possible, and go by the 'balance of probability' where facts are not black and white. Nothing I've read about Jehovah's Witnesses beliefs so far has passed my Truth test. I am aimimg to get my friend to use her head rather than be led by her emotions. I feel however that I should not laugh at anyone who is taken in by the Watchtower fantasy. BluesBrother, you said " My only excuse for swallowing it is that I learned it as a child and what you learn then stays with you. Please don't feel guilty, you don't need to look for excuses for why you believed. American Indians had a saying....no-one should judge another until they've walked a week in his moccasins. I am reading a great book called "Religion Explained" by Pascal Boyer which examines the origins of religion and overtakes all the previously held notions like "Religion began because people couldn't understand natural phenomena so they invented god to make sense of things". The author explains that there are good scientific and evolutionary reasons why human brains have developed to believe weird things. It is definitely not a symptom of lack of intelligence. Thank you for your explanations of points I wanted to know BluesBrother, and Eyes Open your insights into how you felt about Paradise when you were a believer helped me understand a lot. I was very interested in Alex's statement that evolution and the history of life on earth is the bottom tier card in the Dubs' house of cards of doctrines and beliefs. That was my instinct too and is an area I want to discuss with my friend. I just wanted to ask, how do I find the article you recommended? I would be interested to read it, and found a website called Freeminds.com but after that I was lost. Incidentally at the risk of showing my ignorance, where does the term "dub" come from? Is it an American word for 'gullible person', an abbreviation for something or is it specific JW jargon? I vaguely thought it was a kind of reggae.... By the way WTWizard, talking of words, I loved your word "longage" in the context of the opposite of "shortage" - if we all start using it maybe one day it'll be in the English dictionary. There's definitely a longage of interesting people on this forum! Heather
• 

  HB

  See above... hooray it worked at long last! But sorry about no paragraphs, they were there in the original!
• 

  Meeting Junkie No More

  HB,

  You know, I never really thought about this. It's all rather nebulous, after you've 'come into the truth'. Initially, you have the pictures to show you what paradise will 'more or less' be like - mostly I think it's the resurrection, where you'll be able to see your loved ones again and that is used to the full to encourage you to 'remain faithful'; otherwise you won't be there to welcome them back!

  But after being 'in the truth' for years, I think most dubs (short from JW - J Double U/'dub') don't even care what the paradise will be like - the main thing is to get there...blah blah - All I ever hear them say is "This sytems has to go". That is, most of them are concerned about the ending of this system and leaving to God what paradise will be like. From the platform, dubs are always encouraged never to 'speculate' but to trust that what God has in store far surpasses anything we could ever hope or imagine.
• 

  DoomVoyager

  The more I read, the more I wonder if the people at the top are actually not deluded but are cynically manipulative and don't believe a word of what they write.

  You've hit the nail on the head there. It's all about the power struggle.