The Bible designed to stagnate people and ruin lives

by WTWizard 108 Replies latest watchtower bible

  • WTWizard
    WTWizard

    And I mean the whole Bible, from start to finish.

    First, the fear factor. Many that are deeply into the Bible are afraid that, if they quit or disagree with it, they are going to suffer forever (destruction or hell). They are also promised a major reward (life on earth forever, or heaven) if they obey. This theme goes right through the Bible, and is picked up in the New Testament. Threat that God will destroy them for questioning him runs through the Jewish Testament--backed up with destruction of those who wanted to live their own lives. Starting with the original scam--God did not want us to have happiness, or he would have left it up to us to decide what is right and what is wrong (and learn from the mistakes we make).

    Next, there is the instruction to spread the rubbish through the world. Not only do they have to force people to give up their religious system that may have been working for them, but they destroy any evidence of past gods. This is so no one in the future can resurrect the good religious systems. They corrupt these systems and pillage the corrupt versions, ripping them off and putting them in the Unholy Bible. This is not new to Christianity, but started when Moses was supposed to plunder Israel and destroy Canaan. Achan merely wanted to steal rather than destroy the artifacts--Jehovah was so hot-headed about this because he didn't want anyone to reconstruct the earlier religion and make it work once again.

    Next, there are so many stupid rules. The whole books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers are full of stupid rules. They instruct people on how and when to have sex--taking the fun out of it. This is where homophobia originates--you can thank those pigs that ripped off Moses and corrupted the legends, adding these rules to make life a drudgery, for that rubbish. If you broke a rule, you were supposed to feel shame and guilt. Certain foods were off limits for people because of those rules. They also instituted strict rules about a Sabbath, making it difficult to tell if you are "working" during the Sabbath. Sacrifices, which were wasteful, were required. You also had to leave portions of your field for gleaners who were too lazy to plant their own, encouraging others to be lazy so they too can glean from the hard work of others. Being too well off was to be looked down on, because you were supposed to give to those who were too lazy and dishonest to work.

    Jesus didn't improve the situation much, though he died trying. What happened soon after was more rules. They had arguments about circumcision, and the sex rules were reinstated (more homophobia). Ultimately, the Christian religion started to resemble the Jewish system except that, instead of individual animal sacrifices, you had Jesus' sacrifice (which is one of the grandest scams on the planet). But, you still are supposed to be self denying--to add to such sacrifice.

    Notably, there is the evangelism requirement. Christians are instructed to spread their rubbish through the whole world. They go into countries. When scamming people doesn't work, they start playing hardball. After all, it would be a shame if Hindu survived in its pure form because Christi-SCAM-ity didn't ruin it. People have been murdered, kidnapped, raped, and their countries hijacked when Christi-SCAMs showed up. People practicing witchcraft were burned at the stake, and all their material on the occult and former religions destroyed. At one point, the whole world was plunged in the First Dark Ages--that lasted more than 1,000 years. To this date, censorship from Christi-SCAM-ity continues. Decency laws stem from this. Blasphemy laws persisted until the 1950s--and are still in force in parts of the world today. And it is not letting up--a few years ago, you could find black candles and other Satanic paraphenalia in stores. These days, these items are getting harder to find despite that Satanism has not resulted in the massive suppression of science and truth like Christi-SCAM-ity has.

    From the missionaries' perspective, it is even worse. They go to a country they probably don't even like, and waste much time trying to get people to listen. Often, they get run out of the country or persecuted because the natives have learned what a scam their religion is or they see through it as soon as the missionaries speak. They work, often to exhaustion, to get those churches planted. They usually get meager provisions--it is kept that way on purpose so they will continue dependent on the mother church. And the mother church has quotas of church plants--ofen, missionaries are chastised if they fall short. And the Bible itself pressures them to plant those churches, along with the parent church. Any joy is short lived--even when you plant a church, you often feel exploited. Then, you have to maintain the church or people will go right back to their former religion. For this reason, people are usually pressured to throw away any relics of their previous lives--or the missionaries will destroy them.

    No, I am no fan of the Quran. But the Bible seems to be even worse. At least the Quran doesn't say that we are all inherently sinful and deserving of hell from the start. And the Quran hasn't started a Dark Ages to the extent that the Bible has.

  • No Room For George
    No Room For George

    I have to reexamine all that you wrote again, and on the surface I agree with pretty much with everything you wrote, although there are a couple bits that you might want to research a little bit more. One of which is the following.............

    You also had to leave portions of your field for gleaners who were too lazy to plant their own, encouraging others to be lazy so they too can glean from the hard work of others. Being too well off was to be looked down on, because you were supposed to give to those who were too lazy and dishonest to work.

    WTW, this is a classic example of generalizing 101. To consider widows, orphans, homeless, or others down on their luck as simply being lazy is really a skewed outlook. With that kind of thinking we might as well just condone Limbaugh calling women he disagrees with, sluts. Or accuse people on Medicaid with legitimate disabilities as simply gaming the system. My point is, you shouldn't generalize like that as all you end up doing is taking away legitimacy away from the rest of the solid points you made.

  • bioflex
    bioflex

    Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole [duty] of man.

    @WTWizard: tell me how this ruins life and stagnate people? Is it too much of God to ask you to live a good life?

  • VM44
    VM44

    The main historical purpose of the Bible, at least what is called the Old Testament, or Hebrew Sciprtures, was to maintain Jewish society and culture as God's chosen people.

  • OldGenerationDude
    OldGenerationDude

    This seems to be written from the mindset of someone who agrees with the Watchtower teaching that the Bible should be that on which to base religion or the source from which they originated.

    Remember that the religious societies that created the Bible existed long before these written works. The Jews did not have the Tanakh (Old Testament) in the form that we know it today until after their return from Babylonian exile. And there was no effort made to mass produce it for public distribution or demand that other peoples live accordingly to what was written among the books of its collection after it was set in the current form.

    The Christian cannon also came after the religion of Christianity started. It was only the gnostic movement, especially that which tailored its philosophy after the likes of Marcion of Sinope, that believed that there was "wisdom" to be found among "proof" texts in a select library or canon of books. The early Church did not base its belief system on any set of texts (and many were against establishing a book or canon of equal status to the Tanakh in imitation of Marcion); instead they set their theology on that verbally taught by the college of apostles of Jesus of Nazareth. By its own authority, without any support from the Hebrew Scriptures, did the Church eventually develop and officially set a canon that they believed was inspired, but by this time some 400 years had passed since the original college of bishops and apostles were on the scene. There was no authority from any book or any New Testament by which the Church drew upon to create its library of Holy Writ. In fact it was due to the absence of such a canon that the early Christians developed the credo system (creeds) because there was no such list of authoritative writings that represented the basis for their beliefs regarding Jesus in their primitive times.

    It was the radical Reformists who created a sola scriptura system so separate from Martin Luther that eventually led to the development of literal theology that gave people the ideas about the Bible that you express. This inventive theology, which generally includes a denial of the need to read what is found in any particular Biblical book within the setting of the theology in which it was originally expressed, is absolutely foreign to the original societies that created the library to begin with.

    Giving the Scripture the status you have in mind is an invention of later evangelical radical movements from the time of the American revivalists, a status which holds this collection up as if it was intended to be a book of magic with secrets locked away for but only a select group. Because of the lack of historical education and Church history, groups like the Millerists and Adventists had no idea that in promoting such ideals that they were copying Marcion in giving the Bible this "power" that they claimed it have, to enrich them with knowledge that others did not have. To this date, most people from these types of religious systems know nothing or very little about Marcion's influence that eventually led to the New Testament canonization.

    While this is not to say that the religious systems from which this book came from are free of causing some of the suffering of human history, but one cannot blame it on the Book you speak of. Remember, not until 1800 CE, with the famous walk of Mary Jones, did someone see the need of making the Bible available for everyone. It would not be until the time shortly before and following World War I, which came with a decrease in world illiteracy and the introduction and increase of western Bible societies, that the average person of any population had access and could read their own copy of the Bible. But by then the time of the crusades and every other war up to the Great War had already passed, with the foundations for World War II having already been set.

    To this date very few of the population has ever read the entire Bible, let alone studied it to get any real sense of it. So it is very hard to blame a book which neither started Judaism or Christianity, and which was not available to read until modern times for all the stagnate minds and ruined lives of history up to this date.

  • EntirelyPossible
    EntirelyPossible

    Is it too much of God to ask you to live a good life?

    God hasn't asked me. So, yes.

  • mP
    mP

    of course it is. just look at jesus message, what he said and what he didnt say.

    firstly at no stage did he speak out against slavery. he never told owners to give freedom but did say slaves should be good and obedient. im sure we are all familiar with the FDS scripture in matthew. i find it particularly worrying that jesus is enouraging slaves with promises of the kingdom, instead of setting or demanding freedom.

    another strange message is the obsession with paying taxes. we have the redicvulous story of joseph trvaelling across the country even though he wife is almost due, just to pay tax. talk about priorities, i wont discuss the absurd aspects as they are important to my point. then we have several scriptures where we are told to pay caesars to caesasrs.

    this leads to an interesting and shocking question, why is jesus so preoccupied with helping and keeping the establishment and says and does nothing for slaves and women ? i cant but help that jesus is a roman stooge trying to calm the trodden poor jews.

  • ziddina
    ziddina

    I agree with your concept in your OP, WT Wizard...

    Just look at the culture from which the bible originated - Bronze-Age Middle-Eastern nomadic male-dominated society, committing warfare to obtain land - somewhat like Bronze-Age Mongol hordes, if you will...

    As for the points brought out by mP....

    I've long been intrigued by the compliant, cooperative attitudes written into the "New Testament", either directly or indirectly about the Roman overlords...

    Anyone remember "Spartacus"? The historical figure, not the movie...

    Spartacus lived in the time just PRIOR TO the beginnings of Christianity, and his slave uprising was to have far-reaching effects on Rome and its attitudes towards slaves and slavery...

    Here's a link that mentions roughly the time period in which Spartacus lived, and why the Romans feared him so much... [By the way, under the sub-heading "How Did Spartacus Die?", there appears to be an error in the dating of the account of "Appian of Alexandria", whose dates would place him as writing his account of Spartacus' death approximately 24 years before Spartacus actually died...]

    http://www.roman-colosseum.info/gladiators/spartacus.htm

    But other than that, the information corroborates what I've read elsewhere...

    Anyway, I strongly suspect that the fledgling cult of Christianity knew that it had BETTER not arouse the ire of the Roman Empire by preaching independence of slaves or non-payment of taxes.

    Nothing was more certain to bring down the wrath of the Roman Empire upon them, than to oppose those fundamental bases of Roman power and wealth.

    I've also LONG been intrigued by the way that "Jesus" apparently switched from being pacifist ["They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks..."] to militant ["I come, not to bring peace, but to put a sword upon the earth..."] at around the time that the "persecution" of Christians by Rome was on the increase.

    It appears that Christianity later succeeded in gaining many converts among the Roman Legions - which would have been very effective at pressuring the Roman Emperor to switch HIS religion - as whomever controlled the Legions, controlled Rome, so worshipping the same "god" as was popular among the Legions, would have been yet another way for the Emperor to seal their loyalty to him...

    Obviously, the emperors prior to Constantine tried to circumvent that situation by instituting emperor "worship" - placing the Emperor himself as their "god".

    However, if the Christians succeeded in changing their message from pacifist to militant, that would facilitate the conversion of greater and greater numbers of Legion soldiers, which would have given Christianity ever-increasing power in the Empire.

    Anyway, that's another possible or probable aspect of the rise of Christianity to the position of the "OFFICIAL" religion of Rome, that fascinates me...

  • still thinking
    still thinking

    Wow zid...I never looked at it like that...very interesting

    mP...I agree. God forbid he teach that they shouldn't have slaves. And don't religions love to remind us to pay God's things to god. Especially the left over money we aren't paying to caeser.

  • tec
    tec

    Well, the bible (or various books within it) has certainly been used to stagnate people and keep them under control of those wielding the bible. Can't argue with that.

    I don't think that was the intent of all the writers though. I think some simply meant to give testimony to things they had seen or that had been passed on to them. Such as the gospels. Some were just to record history of Israel, and to teach moral lessons.

    It is the men who wield these things as a means to place and keep people in shackles who are at fault for this though.

    firstly at no stage did he speak out against slavery. he never told owners to give freedom but did say slaves should be good and obedient. im sure we are all familiar with the FDS scripture in matthew. i find it particularly worrying that jesus is enouraging slaves with

    promises of the kingdom, instead of setting or demanding freedom

    Christ said that we should treat one another as we would want to be treated. (if you do not want to be forced into being a slave, then do not force others to be your slave) He also said that we who want to follow Him should be the servants, just as He also came to serve us.

    I believe that it was Paul and Peter who said that slaves should be good and obedient to their masters, and vice versa. Not Jesus. Though he did use the analogy about the FDS (though it reads as "servant" in many other translations than the NWT). But that is no different than what he asks above... that we serve one another, as opposed to lording anything over one another and beating one another. Which is unfortunately just what many religions choose to do, instead of the actual serving part.

    i cant but help that jesus is a roman stooge trying to calm the trodden poor jews.

    Odd that he would be beaten, mocked and crucified by the romans were that the case.

    Peace,

    tammy

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