by poor places 126 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
So which scripture is telling the truth?
It became VERY obvious to me once I understood the AGENDA: Dumbing down the masses.
I think that's what Paul was alluding to when he said to "rightly divide the word of truth". There is a lot of Divine Wisdom in the Bible that was stolen from older works and added to by an unscrupulous priesthood.
The Christians I have spoken with on this forum take most of their inspiration from the new testament. The Old part of the bible is considered to be a collection of guesswork by men.
You seem to see it other way around, which confuses me even more.
The Christians I have spoken with on this forum take most of their inspiration from the new testament. The Old part of the bible is considered to be a collection of guesswork by men.
You seem to see it other way around, which confuses me even more.
I see the same pattern of plagiarism, redaction and interpolation in both testaments. They each had an agenda... the first was to dumb down the Jews and the second was to dumb down Christians. The difference is between a tyrannical and jealous tribal desert god and a 'reformed' god more suitable to the modern era.
Edited to add: As for the "Divine Wisdom" the Bible contains, that's only if it's viewed as a metaphor. Reading it literally is where the dumbing down comes in.
A simple way to tell God probably doesn't exist
The accumulative amount of factual evidence acquired by scientific discovery, sided with the known acknowledgment of
mankind's inherent ignorance of the world which he exists.
The gods only existed in mans perceived expressed imagination and thats where they will always remain.
Chariklo,
It isn't as simple as God simply saying no to one of my requests for a sign. Sure, I'm one puny human being. My point is that if God exists (especially the omnipotent God presented to us by religion), it is impossible to explain why he wouldn't help those who are suffering. It is impossible to explain why he didn't stop the Holocaust, for example. Go ahead, try to explain it. And the explanation that God works in mysterious ways isn't satisfactory; people are suffering right now and don't need mystery, they need help. The explanation that God's purpose will be revealed is also unsatisfactory; people are suffering now, and they don't need God's purpose later, and He should be able to see that. The Witnesses have their own theory, and it makes God look awfully selfish.
Here are your main options: If God is omnipotent and isn't doing anything about suffering, he doesn't care. Or, he isn't powerful enough to stop suffering, in which case he is weak. This argument is nothing new. I forget which writer made it a long time ago. I'm just saying that there isn't any answer to it.
It was Epicurus
Like I've said, God acknowledges Satan's propaganda is well presented and strong, so to save the elect from being distracted, he just appears to them personally, or via holy spirit, etc. That way, they know directly God exists and all those "scientific" questions remain just that. They don't impact on their dismissal of the reality of God as would someone who only has the scientific stuff to go by and deduce that increases the improbability of God. I know there's a god for a fact due to personal experience, so I'm out of the "guessing" loop of wondering if God exists or not, so likewise all the elect. God is real and he's the God of the Bible. LS
I seem to have offended bohm.
"Thanks for spending your 31th post telling us we are stupid. We really appreciate that kind of input, especially since you put it in a condescending way. I bet many are now thinking: Who the f#ck is she to judge us after 31 posts, what does she know? and giving us your life-altering words despite such stigma is something we all appreciate."
Well, I don't know if I told all of us that we were stupid. But the idea that a bad accident somehow disproves the existence of God is fairly childish; it really is JW-like in its stupidity. And it's childish whether we say so or not, so we might as well say so. Indeed, it is childish whether it is my first post or my 1,000th post, though such a rigid pecking order comes as a bit of a surprise. And Sulla is a guy.
" I know I (and i think 100s of fellow posters) are right now going: "sweet jesus that's profound, we have to use our mind. I am just being a bad JW right now!". Thank you for that firm piece of advice. "
You're welcome. One thing I've noticed about this board is the number of ex-JWs who have left the religion, but who still have all the intellectual markings of the JWs. Specifically, I refer to sloppy thinking and straw man arguments. That, and the really irritating (JW) habit of giving each other fist-bumps with explosions for making juvenile arguments.
So, if somebody is going to mock a discussion by suggesting that we should saw an arm off to prove God exists or assert that, if he exists, no child would die, then I feel pretty empowered to mock right back. I'm not at all sorry this offends you.
Sulla:
you wrote: " But the idea that a bad accident somehow disproves the existence of God is fairly childish"
to this: "Yes, its rather simple really- communicate to a goddamn Baptist Sunday School bus driver that he needs new brakes. How frickin simple is that!"
then remarked: "If you leave the JWs but remain stupid, how are you really helped?"
the soundness of your argument is not adjusted to your arrogance. the problem of evil is clearly not solved by you claiming it is and then calling us stupid for not accepting what you say at face value.
then you wrote: " One thing I've noticed about this board is the number of ex-JWs who have left the religion, but who still have all the intellectual markings of the JWs. Specifically, I refer to sloppy thinking and straw man arguments. That, and the really irritating (JW) habit of giving each other fist-bumps with explosions for making juvenile arguments"
just keep suggesting people on this board in general thing like jws... thats soooooo profound....never heard that one before.
(updated)
My point is that if God exists (especially the omnipotent God presented to us by religion), it is impossible to explain why he wouldn't help those who are suffering. It is impossible to explain why he didn't stop the Holocaust, for example. Go ahead, try to explain it. And the explanation that God works in mysterious ways isn't satisfactory; people are suffering right now and don't need mystery, they need help. The explanation that God's purpose will be revealed is also unsatisfactory; people are suffering now, and they don't need God's purpose later, and He should be able to see that. The Witnesses have their own theory, and it makes God look awfully selfish.
This is the heart of the question, it seems to me. But, look, the entire Jewish and Christian approach to the question of God has been to start with the observation that something about us and about our world is broken. We aren't right and neither is our world. How it is broken and how is comes to be fixed is precisely the stuff of the sacred writings.
Of course everybody is offended by the Jw idea that all this is a big contest between God and Satan: the elephants fight and the grass suffers, or something. But that doesn't mean we are stuck with the impossibility of the existence of God because we are stuck with the same broken world we've always had.
Or, are we to suppose that a Christian who has lost his child is not really experiencing grief?
Look, it is the witness of the Christian faith that all this -- the Holocaust, the tsunami, the 90 dead teenagers -- all of this broken world matters greatly to God. We know it matters because he joined his nature to ours and he is now inseparably human. And because of that, all of this will get fixed, has to get fixed. But that time is not this time.
Now, you're free to reject that assertion and say, "If God existed, we wouldn't have a broken world." And, indeed, such a God might have existed; but he would not have made human beings, not human beings with free will, anyway. And my problem with your theodicity argument is that it boils down to the assertion that, if God exists, then I shouldn't have free will. And I don't think we can follow there.
