by cassuk11 23 Replies latest watchtower bible
Let's not forget that there's a significant percentage of the population that - no matter what - will always feel disenfranchised from society in general; and that it's innately hostile to them and/or on the verge of spiraling out of control with no perceivable solution.
Apocalyptic millennialism, in effect, promises an end to that anxiety in the near future.
Taken to an extreme, Armageddon becomes - for all intents and purposes - the ultimate supernatural revenge fantasy.
Fairy stories capture an innate vulnerability and longing in the human race: "And they lived happily everafter". It is a vulnerability and longing that religious belief systems endlessly milk.
Below is in many respects the same reasoning used to arrive at the 1914 date, except this particular chart failed in 1844 and resulted in the Great Disappointment. The end didn't come as promised.
Charles T Russell picked it up, changed a few start dates and landed on 1914 as the year the end would come. That, too, failed, but his followers were able to convince millions that they actually predicted something different altogether, the beginning of the "end times." Here we are 100 years later (and 170 years after the Great Disappointed) and millions of Witnesses around the world cling to this belief.
100 years from now they (or a group just like them) will cling to a modified version of the same damn thing.
a
Yes as steve2 said, everyone loves to beleive in fairy tales...it gives a chance for escapism and feels good....
What about end of the world by man? It's a fact that the bible lands weren't always desert. Thousands of years of cutting down trees, farming, fishing, hunting, etc, the land just died.
With population exploding worldwide, expansion, more need for resources, pollution, how long really until the Earth dies? or human population gets wiped out then the Earth regenerates.
Being pushed by religion since the 17th century. My question is WHY ?
Perhaps the foundational question here is, why did humanity shift from a living connection with universe and nature, into a mind generated belief system about it?
For example: if we knew intellectually all the knowledge ever written about trees, it would amount to nothing in the event of actually being with: touching, smelling, listening, etc, to the actual presence of a real tree. Religious dogma written on pages, degrades to its nothingness in the actuality of wind and rain.
Somewhere along the line, we forgot our natural, indescribable and wondrous connection with life, and started to create anecdotal descriptions of things and took them to be significant, valid, and all important....when they actually amounted to nothing but empty illusions and deceptions.
So perhaps the real question is, how real is the life we are living this moment?
Religion is a bullshit story - but it works and has worked for as long as people existed and needed ways to exert power over others.
Connecting people to the dead helps create societies and cultures. If dead people were just - dead - and nothing more, we might lose our connection to the past. Thus, religion completes the cycle. With end time predictions religion is able to strategically use this connection for the purpose of exerting even more control over people.
James Thomas
James Thomas is on the ball with this question. Religion cheapens the present life by saddling it with "original sin" and preoccupation with securing eternity - at the cost of being present to the preciousness of our lives lived and nourished in the present. Religion appeals primarily to those who cannot cope with the present and who need "rewards" to nail themselves to their blood-stained crosses - a slightly less gross form of sacrifice than beheading - but lacking the latter's stunning immediacy. But religious conviction craves an audience to slowly and mesmerisingly unfold its narcissistic appeal. God loves me and me and me and me.
The "virtue" of religion is its immersion in a system of tomorrow-promises and a juvenile "handing over " to some invisible mighty "Being" that which healthy adults refuse to relinquish: Adult responsibility with its well-occupied brain power that places "real" life in the here and now and not some "forever" that never, ever comes.
God occupies a crowded and darkened stage, jostling with fairies, goblins, angels, Krishna, Christ, magicians, talking snakes, virgin mothers and Cher, flawless, bo-toxed goddess if ever there were one - and a damn sight more believable when transforming "I Got You Babe" into "You Got Me, God". For if men are suckers for the next pretty thing who sashays by, women and men are even more suckered by gods and goddesses who promise heaven while keeping believers planted and decaying on this our only home ever, planet earth but pining for a place where cuddles last an eternity.
It's the fear of death and hope for something more than this short life that drives it.
