HOW do you know what you KNOW you know?

by Terry 31 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • Terry
    Terry

    Remember how certain you were as a Jehovah's Witness?

    You just KNEW what you knew was right 100%

    You staked your life on it, didn't you?

    But, now you look back and find you were "dead" wrong!

    You probably didn't find out willingly through research or asking the right questions.

    Those sorts of questions target you and mark you!

    No, you changed your mind because you were whip-sawed or Disfellowshipped or faded.

    What have you done to change your methodology of being CERTAIN?

    Have you done anything at all?

    Have you just traded one set of beliefs for another?

    You once were devout JW and now you are "devout" Agnostic or "devout" something else?

    You just traded. You didn't learn anything!

    What is different?

    WHAT DO YOU KNOW? HOW DO YOU KNOW IT?

    Your brain didn't magically change from a superstition, wishful thinking, hoping, faithing lump of grey mush into a nuclear reactor of rational thought, skeptical epistemology and scientific acumen.

    Don't lie to me!

    Today, here and now----what are you doing DIFFERENTLY to be able to know what you know?

    Or, are you still guessing? Drifting? Idling your engines?

    Tell us...

  • palmtree67
    palmtree67

    I'm just in the process of "un-knowing" stuff and haven't replaced it with much yet.

    I need more time than the average person to ponder and digest information.

    That's why I'm here. And basically all over the map right now.

    But it feels really good to ponder and think about MANY different angles and not just be spoon-fed ONE line of reasoning.

  • serenitynow!
    serenitynow!

    I'm trying to approach everything with an open mind. When I found out the religion was a scam, I realized that I didn't even know what I didn't know. So as far as religion/the bible, I pretty much have to preface anything I say with, "well my understanding of the scriptures (NWT)is ..." I now leave myself open to hearing how others understand and interpret the scriptures. Whereas, as a witness when I presented something from the bible I was pretty well convinced that I knew what I was talking about.

    I've also bought myself a study bible that has 4 respected translations in it. I have found that despite been born in and studying the NWT for 30+ I now need to put all of those teachings out of my mind and just start at Genesis like I never knew anything.

    jada

  • Terry
    Terry

    Imagine standing outside in a small fenced in yard with hundreds of little baby chicks skittering hither and thither. 200 to be exact.

    Which one is Fred?

    Before you answer.....let's consider how we know things.

    Take a word, for example. I'll bet you think a word's meaning is in its definition. Right?

    No. Not really. Not entirely.

    A word is a symbol. It is representational.

    A word stands in for....for what?

    A word stands in for a concept.

    A word has no meaning other than the concept it symbolizes.

    Oh great! Now where are we?

    The dirty little secret is now out: It is not words, but concepts that man defines—by specifying their referents.

    Remember all those little baby chicks? They all look alike, don't they?

    One is virtually indistinguishable from the next one.

    Think of those little yellow chicks as concepts and let's discover something.

    Such as what? Such as this: The purpose of a definition is to distinguish a concept from all other concepts and thus to keep its units differentiated from all other existents.

    Sound like gibberish? Hardly!

    Look closer at those chicks! If you pick them up one by one and sex them (look at their little pee-pees) you find out some of them are males and the others are females!

    We have done our first act of differentiating! Male/Female.

    Keep examining them after separating the sexes into two different pens. (Differentiating.)

    Some are a little fatter and some are skinnier.

    Some are taller and some shorter.

    Some have perfectly flat feathers and others are fluffy.

    And so on and on and on we differentiate them and discover that CONCEPTUALLY all chicks are the same EXCEPT for the differences!

    What about Fred?

    Fred is a male (duh) who is the tallest chick and has fluffy feathers and is well fed.

    Now can you find Fred?

    Not unless you've done your differentiating as you discovered the differences and separated into subdivisions!

    Fred is our clearly defined existent.

    Without the work that went into noticing differences among chicks there is no way you'd find Fred.

    Know what you might do? You might guess!

    That's what people go through life doing.

    They say they are searching for Fred and they end up guessing they must have found him. But, odds are 1 in 200.

    Another way of saying it is this. The odds are against you 199 bad guesses worth.

    How do you KNOW what you know?

    You take the trouble to see how similar things are really different.

    How do you do that? You don't leave anything out when you search, examine, scrutinize, separate, categorize and learn!

    Why did I say all of this?

    Because people go through life with their Epistemology no better than a whopping Guess! Odds are always against a guess or a lucky break.

    That is why the majority of people you will ever meet are pig-ignorant about almost everything! Their epistemology is whack!

    Even among the best-educated professionals there are lazy and incompetent experts such as lousy doctors, lawyers, builders, teachers and politicians.

    Likely, most of what you THINK YOU KNOW came from those people!

    Only a lifetime of careful, painstaking scrutiny, classification, defining and separating will allow you to escape the clutches of bad Epistemology!

    Think about it.

    Now, go find FRED.

  • Terry
    Terry

    The single most important thing an Ex Jehovah's Witness needs to discover through research, study, examination and honesty (in my opinion) is that

    there is NO BIBLE in existence!

    What everybody refers to as THE BIBLE is a fraud.

    The original uncorrupt autograph texts simply up and disappeared and nobody thought enough about them to keep them, preserve them, safeguard and cherish them!

    About 250 years passed before there is anything at all we have in a tiny little tattered shred. After about 300 years we find larger pieces of copies that were copies OF copies purporting to be authentic.

    It is all pretend!

    We have been LIED TO!

    Deeply religious people lie to themselves and lie to their children and go on lying about the foundation of Christianity.

    THERE IS NONE!

    That is why Faith is stressed so much!!

    You just have to swallow a large lump of PRETEND and be hopeful it is real.

    How do you know your Bible is the inspired Word of God? You Don't. You can't. It doesn't exist.

    Now get over it.

  • palmtree67
    palmtree67

    Good illustration.

    But I was told early in life, "Don't bother looking for Fred. We already found him and here he is!!"

    Then I felt something pecking at my ankle. I looked down to see a chick. He smiled at me and said, "Hi, I'm Fred."

  • jaguarbass
    jaguarbass

    27 years after I crawled out of the tower.

    I know that I really dont know what is going on.

    I must say I never conciously chose to be a JW I was raised in it and went with

    the flow and from the time I was a teenager I was trying to get out of the trap.

    1976 was the key to my freedom, it took until 1983 to figure out how to use it.

    I have made somewhat of a study.

    I have a wall full of books and I have taken a job in the past 5 years that gives me

    lots of time to read, a detention officer on the midnight shift. I can read about 48 minutes

    of every hour.

    I have read the bible cover to cover 5 times.

    I have read Dawkins and Darwin.

    I have read a lot of books attempting to explain the mysteries of the world.

    This month I am reading the 7 mysteries of the World by Guy Murchie.

    I have taken anatomy and physiology classes in college.

    I have witnessed 3 autopsies in person in the police academy.

    I have read about and experimented with having out of body experiences.

    After I left the tower I reprogrammed myself with silva mind controll a self hypnosis

    to burry all the negative watchtower thoughts.

    Having been on a quest for 27 years,

    and a very obsessive quest for the past 5 years,

    I really dont know whats going on.

    Godless atheism leaves me empty, thats my first clue to turn from it.

    And if I tried to embrace atheism based on my research and reading atheistic material,

    it would take as much faith and energy as beliving in God.

    And there would be no pay off in the end.

    I choose to believe in God, I choose to believe in Jesus, I choose to believe in an after life

    that will be better than this one.

    The scales that I observe on that matter are 50/50 So my faith tilts them towards faith in a

    designer creator.

    But my faith in Jesus/ God is nothing like being a JW.

    Jesus said he came to the down trodden and oppressed, thats me thanks to the watchtower.

    But I dont go to church, I dont send anybody money and I am always looking for truth.

    The search for truth lead me out of the tower. Its a journey.

    I find peace believing in Jesus,

    When I feel peacful and rested enough I tend to explore other realities or explanations

    of reality.

    How do I know what I know, I do try to read both sides of an issue, for every bible thumping

    God book, I make myself read something by Dawkins or some other atheistic material.

    But what we are experiencing may go beyond mainstream God and mainstream Dawkinism.

    I have 3 or 4 posibilities of what might be going on so far the best explanation I have found

    for what we are experiencing here on earth outside of the Jesus, God, bible story,

    is the works of Zechariah Sitchin as explained by Michael Tillinger in "The Slave Species of God"

    My personal major contention with Sithcins theories are they are based on evolution,

    While I can accept the evolution that is observed and documented, I believe we started

    out as humans and we adapt or as Dawkins would say evolve, but I believe we adpat

    to our enviroment but we are always human.

    But once again I dont even know that, I cant prove it and I havent found anybody who can

    disprove it.

    Which leads me to quantum physics we see what we want and what we believe and

    we will probably go where we believe we are going when we die, another reason

    for me not to be an atheist.

    The third posibilitie that I find very entertaing, but which I cant prove any more than

    I can prove anything else is that we are in a matrix like the movie the matrix.

    We are in a computer program generating energy for machines.

    In the future from today machines have taken over mankind and enslaved us and

    now we are pods. Issac Asimov writes about artifical intelligence and were it

    might lead.

    When I find someone who does know whats going on, I find them amusing and entertaining

    but when I look hard and long enough I see they are full of shxt.

    Which makes me think of Dawkins writing about memes, we are like different

    sheep responding to various shepards voices.

    Probably the best book that I can agree with to explain what is going on is the book

    of Eclesiastes, it can be read in an hour or two and Solomon earns the title

    worlds wisest man in my book.

    Im kind of hoping you are going to tell us in this post what is going on or how we

    can figure it out, tell me something I dont know.

  • cyberjesus
    cyberjesus

    Godless atheism leaves me empty, thats my first clue to turn from it.

    And if I tried to embrace atheism based on my research and reading atheistic material,

    it would take as much faith and energy as beliving in God.

    JB: Godless atheism as opposed to Godless theism? sorry I had to write that.. leaves you empty? well if you believed in a God and decided not to believe in another God then probably you would feel the empty space left by your prior deity, dont you think? What is what left you empty? and if that was the first clue to turn from it, are turning from the empty feeling? regardless of what that might represents? did you ask why felt empty? and what was wrong for feeling empty? When I broke up with my girlfriend the worst to do was to jump in another relationship just to fill the void..

    How do you embrace the non-believing in a God? I dont believe in Santa Clause but I never say I embrace not-believing in it. What is atheistic material exactly? Someone who doesnt believe in a God is not for the excess of information of his non-existance rather because of the abscense of the opposite. It doesn take faith no to believe in God. Actually I have zero faith in a God. I am just saying

    TERRY: When I realized the WT lied in many issues I questioned everything the WT said. When I realized the NWT was corrupt I questioned all the bibles. When I found out the Bible was a fraud I questioned all the Holly Books. When I realize one religion had deceived me I questioned all religions. When I realized there was no evidence to believe in my God. I questioned all Gods.

    So now I dont believe on any of the above not because of the amount of reasons to believe rather the abscence of evidence.

    I was told what to know. thats how I got to know it. I cleaned the slate and am now relearning everything. I feel I was born yesterday in a 40 year old body and with some recycled brain material. haha I am eco-friendly

  • Terry
    Terry

    I look down at all those books on my book cart that must go on the shelves.

    The Secret of this and the Solution to that in so many titles.

    People so eager to tell you how to live your life, shtupp your wife, sharpen your knife and overcome strife for the purchase price!

    Deepak Chopra and Oprah and Wayne Dyer and Dr. Laura, Dobson on the Family, PTL club, Stormie Omartian, Beth Moore and a host of others can tell you exactly what the answers are to all your questions.

    Sure.

    They all know more that we do.

    All we have to do is buy their book, trust their advice and it's a bright sunny tomorrow!

  • jaguarbass
    jaguarbass

    Cyberjesus, your quoting from "The God Delusion"

    I think my god is the mystery of the universe he/she/it is the intelligence behind life and evolution.

    I know Dawkins says there is no intelligence behind dna. Thats where I dont accept Dawkins.

    Some people use God to control others, some people are looking to be controlled.

    I find God fits in the empty space in my being, a place some put drugs, alcohol, sex

    various escapes from reality.

    Thats something only I can know.

    Each person has to work out there own salvation.

    The topic is how do you know what you know you know.

    I do know my personal understanding of God fits in my empty spot.

    I also know in my search for peace and happiness that deluding oneself is recommended,

    knowing that I have to go back to my original statement that I really dont know what

    is going on because I have no way of telling.

    If I'm not misstaken Dawkins refers to that phenonoma that we cant really know whats going

    on yet somehow he knows there is no God.

    I know I have to go to work now.

    There are many differnt kinds of people.

    Some people do things that I could never do,

    Smoke cigarettes, drink till they pass out, cheat, lie, steal, kill, it goes on and on.

    For all I know you could be right there could be no God.

    We could all be pods in the matrix and we would never know.

    Terry sometimes a bright sunny tommorow is all we have.

    Thats a survival tool. Especially at our age, there is not a lot to look forward

    to or a lot we can do to fix what the watchtower screwed up. The clocks running down.

    Most of what I read I can see through but reading it does get me through the night.

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