Apostates are blown out of the water by an elder's response to my e-mail (page 3)

TheSophist

^^^
Just goes to show you are always spinning your wheels when it comes to discussing doctrine with them...

AnnOMaly

I do not have a good answer to those questions because I have not taken the time to study them in detail.

"I don't know." That's honest, at least.

I have, however, many times studied similar issues in detail and have always arrived at the same conclusion: they boil down to matters of opinion that cannot be unconditionally proven true or false. That is the state of things.

There is only opinion and never objective truth? 587 and 607 are opinions? The WTS joining the UN's DPI for the sake of a library card is only opinion? The issues of the WTS's' historical revisionism and misquoting are matters of opinion? Does he think choosing between believing in a flat earth or spheroid earth is purely down to individual opinion? Is the idea of a geocentric universe a simple matter of opinion?

Besides, you're not talking about his 'similar issues,' you're talking about your specific questions and issues!

This may sound like I'm avoiding the issue, and I am, in a sense. But I have a good reason for it.

Yes he is and there is. Your questions are too difficult and overwhelming for him; he's shrugging his shoulders and giving up.

To me, the evidence that the Bible is the Word of God is so overwhelming that I choose to devote my energies to understanding it better, and gaining a closer relationship with God rather than spending that time looking into the issues you mention. Time is limited, and, to use a quote think I used before: "If you would love life, take care of how you use your time. For time is the stuff that life is made of."

So pursuing truth is time wasted?

They say some people cannot see the forest for the trees. I consider many of these issues to be the trees, and I will not allow them to cloud my clear thinking ability, just as you will not allow the Watchtower publications to cloud yours. And that is as it should be.

I know you will find fault with something I have written above. And that is as it should be as well.

The mental shutters are well and truly fastened closed now. I think you've gone as far as you can with him, imho.

never a jw

AnnOMaly,

You are right, that's as far as I can go. Here's the very last e-mail I sent

Mr. Elder,

As an avid student of the WT history and doctrine, especially anything related to the 1914 prophecy, I can assure you that most arguments don't boil down to opinion. But if you are avoiding the issue "for a good reason" I must give it a rest.

Just like in the Good Brahmin story by Voltaire, there are people today whose sole purpose is the pursuit of happiness. You may be able to handle that kind of life. I can't. Principle and truth are more important to me.
.

Voltaire's "Story of the Good Brahmin" is an eloquent defense of the lowly philosopher. On the one hand, the Brahmin is upset that so much time pondering the big questions has left him nowhere; but on the other hand, he wouldn't trade places with his happy but unknowing neighbor. Here's a condensed version of the story, lifted from Durant's Story of Philosophy:

"I wish I had never been born!" the Brahmin remarked.
"Why so?" said I.
"Because," he replied, "I have been studying these forty years, and I find that it has been so much time lost...I believe that I am composed of matter, but I have never been able to satisfy myself what it is that produces thought. I am even ignorant whether my understanding is a simple faculty like that of walking or digesting, or if I think with my head in the same manner as I take hold of a thing with my hands...I talk a great deal, and when I have done speaking I remain confounded and ashamed of what I have said."
The same day I had a conversation with an old woman, his neighbor. I asked her if she had ever been unhappy for not understanding how her soul was made? She did not even comprehend my question. She had not, for the briefest moment in her life, had a thought about these subjects with which the good Brahmin had so tormented himself. She believed in the bottom of her heart in the metamorphoses of Vishnu, and provided she could get some of the sacred water of the Ganges in which to make her ablutions, she thought herself the happiest of women. Struck with the happiness of this poor creature, I returned to my philosopher, whom I thus addressed:
"Are you not ashamed to be thus miserable when, not fifty yards from you, there is an old automaton who thinks of nothing and lives contented?"
"You are right," he replied. "I have said to myself a thousand times that I should be happy if I were but as ignorant as my old neighbor; and yet it is a happiness which I do not desire."
This reply of the Brahmin made a greater impression on me than anything that had passed.
.

.

Thank you for your time Mr. Elder

tiki

Snare & Racket - thank you for your response. The misquoting and tailoring things to fit their theme just goes against all professionalism and scholarly honesty. I've always been appalled by how they just grab things at random out of the air and publish them as fact.

Finkelstein

I've always been appalled by how they just grab things at random out of the air and publish them as fact.

Thats because the leading bible theologians of the WTS/JWs, are also the top executives of a religious publishing house.

Thats a true and known fact that anyone can accept.

Sayswho

Snare & Racket...It was a good read for me...thanks, you made sense on many points.

So many facts shown from the posters... that if read by anyone searching for information on how this org has conducted itself they WOULD RUN. Those in control certainly are not being directed by who they claim is the Loving, Just, all truth telling Jehovah God!!

SW

AnnOMaly

Nice reply, NaJW (especially the Good Brahmin story).

snare&racket

Sorry about typos.... IPAD

Apostates are blown out of the water by an elder's response to my e-mail

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