Lost in the fog - "Why do JWs insist on still quoting from the Old Testament to back up some of their wacky ideas?"
Well, they can't very well admit to the real reasons, now, can they?
Why go back to the Old Testament?
by Lost in the fog 51 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Vidiot
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eyeuse2badub
The wt stresses the old testament IMHO, because it features: male dominance as god's plan, vengeance on god's part, strict laws that made very little common sense, terrible consequences for those who questioned the leaders, control based on fear!
just saying!
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TTWSYF
Doug Mason7 hours ago
Actually, things like hospitals, etc., came from Islam. They were miles ahead, as well as with astronomy, architecture, and mathematics, while the superstitious Christians were dunking women in the pond to see if they would drown, while the church was selling Indulgences, while Luther and Calvin were urging and praising the authorities for burning and torturing their religious opponents.
Thomas Wood wrote "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization" in which he details all of the things which are attributed , from real history, to the Catholic Church.
Where are you getting your info that says Islam brought these things to the world?
Part of our healing here is to embrace real truth and not be follies to more lies or erroneous teachings.TTWSYF
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sparrowdown
JWs believe they are the spiritual jews and the jews of old were the original JWs, they believe they have more in common with the old testament and all their boys like Moses, David, Solomon, Abe etc.
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fulltimestudent
TTWSYF Where are you getting your info that says Islam brought these things to the world?
Well, one source you could investigate is the U.S. National Library of Medicine. On one web-page that source says:
"The hospital was one of the great achievements of medieval Islamic society. The relation of the design and development of Islamic hospitals to the earlier and contemporaneous poor and sick relief facilities offered by some Christian monasteries has not been fully delineated. Clearly, however, the medieval Islamic hospital was a more elaborate institution with a wider range of functions.
In Islam there was generally a moral imperative to treat all the ill regardless of their financial status. The hospitals were largely secular institutions, many of them open to all, male and female, civilian and military, adult and child, rich and poor, Muslims and non-Muslims. They tended to be large, urban structures.
The Islamic hospital served several purposes: a center of medical treatment, a convalescent home for those recovering from illness or accidents, an insane asylum, and a retirement home giving basic maintenance needs for the aged and infirm who lacked a family to care for them. It is unlikely that any truly wealthy person would have gone to a hospital for any purpose, unless they were taken ill while traveling far from home. Except under unusual circumstances, all the medical needs of the wealthy and powerful would have been administered in the home or through outpatient clinics dispensing drugs. Though Jewish and Christian doctors working in hospitals were not uncommon, we do not know what proportion of the patients would have been non-Muslim.
An Islamic hospital was called a bimaristan, often contracted to maristan, from the Persian word bimar, `ill person', and stan, `place.' Some accounts associate the name of the early Umayyad caliph al-Walid I, who ruled from 705 to 715 (86-96 H), with the founding of a hospice, possibly a leprosarium, in Damascus. Other versions, however, suggest that he only arranged for guides to be supplied to the blind, servants to the crippled, and monetary assistance to lepers.
The earliest documented hospital established by an Islamic ruler was built in the 9th century in Baghdad probably by the vizier to the caliph Harun al-Rashid. Few details are known of this foundation. There is no evidence to associate the construction of the earliest hospital with any of the Christian physicians from Gondeshapur in southwest Iran, but the prominence of the Bakhtishu` family as court physicians would suggest that they also played an important role in the function of the first hospital in Baghdad.
Link: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/islamic_medical/islamic_12.html
There's no need in today's world, to continue to be blinded by your credulity.
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fulltimestudent
TTWSYF: This same church gave the world great fruits thru it's works. Things like a universities,
Here's a wikipedia quote on the first learning institutions that we now call "universities."
Hellenism[edit]
The Platonic Academy (sometimes referred to as the University of Athens),[3][4] founded ca. 387 BC in Athens, Greece, by the philosopher Plato, lasted 916 years (until AD 529) with interruptions.[5] It was emulated during the Renaissance by the Florentine Platonic Academy, whose members saw themselves as following Plato's tradition.
Around 335 BC, Plato's successor Aristotle founded the Peripatetic school, the students of which met at the Lyceumgymnasium in Athens. The school ceased in 86 BC during the famine, siege and sacking of Athens by Sulla.[6]
During the Hellenistic period, the Museion in Alexandria (which included the Library of Alexandria) became the leading research institute for science and technology from which many Greek innovations sprang. The engineer Ctesibius (fl. 285–222 BC) may have been its first head. It was suppressed and burned between AD 216 and 272, and the library was destroyed between 272 and 391.
The reputation of these Greek institutions was such that at least four central modern educational terms derive from them: the academy, the lyceum, the gymnasiumand the museum.
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_higher-learning_institutions
So the first institutes for higher learning were actually pagan. Got that!!!!
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And likely predating, any European higher learning institution there were Buddhist universities, established in India. For example the Buddhist University of Nalanda.Nalanda
UNESCO World Heritage Site Official name Archaeological Site of Nalanda Mahavihara(Nalanda University) at Nalanda, Bihar Nalanda (IAST: Nālandā; /naːlən̪d̪aː/) was a Mahavihara, a large Buddhist monastery, in the ancient kingdom of Magadha (modern-day Bihar) in India. The site is located about 95 kilometres (59 mi) southeast of Patna near the town of Bihar Sharif, and was a centre of learning from the fifth century CE to c. 1200 CE.[4] It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site
At its peak, the school attracted scholars and students from near and far with some travelling from Tibet, China, Korea, and Central Asia.[14] Archaeological evidence also notes contact with the Shailendra dynasty of Indonesia, one of whose kings built a monastery in the complex.
Much of our knowledge of Nalanda comes from the writings of pilgrim monks from Asia such as Xuanzang and Yijingwho travelled (from China) to the Mahavihara in the 7th century. Vincent Smith remarked that "a detailed history of Nalanda would be a history of Mahayanist Buddhism". Many of the names listed by Xuanzang in his travelogue as products of Nalanda are the names of those who developed the philosophy of Mahayana.[15] All students at Nalanda studied Mahayana as well as the texts of the eighteen (Hinayana) sects of Buddhism. Their curriculum also included other subjects such as the Vedas, logic, Sanskrit grammar, medicine and Samkhya.[7][16][17][18]
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda
It maybe enlightewning to your mind to recall that state of western Europe in that era. A Buddhist scholar contrasts India and western Europe in these words.
Quote: "It is well-known that with the rise of Buddhism in India there dawned the golden age of India’s culture and civilisation. There was progress in all aspects of Indian civilisation under the impact of Buddhism. This is very much in contrast to what happened in the Roman empire in Europe with the rise of Christianity. With the coming of Christianity into power the Dark Ages dawned upon Europe. During this era whatever progress that was achieved by the Greeks and the Romans received a set-back and came to a stand-still. Schools and centres of philosophy were closed down. The famed library at Alexandria was burnt down by a Christian mob led by a prelate. Hypatia the learned philosopher and teacher was dragged into a Church and her flesh was torn off her body. As a result of these barbarities Europe was plunged into the darkness of ignorance and poverty for a thousand years. The Dark Ages of European history was really the golden age of the Christian Church, because it did the conversion of the barbarians to Christianity during this time. The great philosophers and intellectuals of Europe who left their mark on human civilisation were all pre-Christian pagans who lived prior to the rise of Christianity, e.g. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Pliny, etc. The Christian era was masked by an absence of such men. Illiteracy and religious intolerance prevailed during the Dark Ages.
At the end of this period the Muslims had conquered parts of the Roman empire and established their rule in Spain, Portugal and parts of France. They introduced the learning of the Greeks and Romans as well as knowledge gathered from their contacts with India. This set the pace for Martin Luther’s reformation which broke the power of the Catholic Church. The ensuing liberal policies persuaded by the Protestants brought about the Renaissance, after this the Europeans pushed back the power of the Churches and began to make progress in civilisation.
In contrast to this with the rise of Buddhism in India, there arose many centres of learning which did not exist before. Buddhist monks could opt for a life of meditation in the forests, or a life of teaching, preaching, propagating the Dharma as a result of the activities of the teaching monks, seats of learning arose. These seats of monastic learning (Pirivenas) gradually developed and some of them became full-fledged universities. As a result Buddhist India came to have five major universities which achieved wide fame. These five were 1. Nalanda, 2. Vickramasila, 3. Odantapuri, 4. Jagadalala and 5. Somapura."
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fulltimestudent
And one more flash of enlightenment for the minds of blinded christians. Let's return to the topic of the first centres for healing.
Have you ever heard of an Asclepeion? Asclepeions, wwere temples of healing dedicated to the Greek God of Healing. named Asclepius, the son of Apollo who was also regarded as a healer. When we read of the claimed healing miracles of Jesus, we should think of the early christian need to compete with both Apollo and Asclepius.
You can read more about Ascepius and his sisters who also are still remembered by their names in western terminology at :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asclepius
Wikipedia also describes these Temples of healing:\.
Quote: "Starting around 350 BC, the cult of Asclepius became increasingly popular. Pilgrims flocked to asclepieia to be healed. They slept overnight ("incubation") and reported their dreams to a priest the following day. He prescribed a cure, often a visit to the baths or a gymnasium. Since snakes were sacred to Asclepius, they were often used in healing rituals. Non-venomous snakes were left to crawl on the floor in dormitories where the sick and injured slept.
Asclepeia included carefully controlled spaces conducive to healing and fulfilled several of the requirements of institutions created for healing.[3] In the Asclepieion of Epidaurus, three large marble boards dated to 350 BC preserve the names, case histories, complaints, and cures of about 70 patients who came to the temple with a problem and shed it there. Some of the surgical cures listed, such as the opening of an abdominal abscess or the removal of traumatic foreign material, are realistic enough to have taken place, with the patient in a dream-like state of induced sleep known as "enkoimesis" (Greek: ἐγκοίμησις), not unlike anesthesia, induced with the help of soporific substances such as opium.[4"
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asclepeion
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myelaine
dear EverApostate...
Scripture doesn't say the law was nailed to the cross. It says, "Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross;"... as you have said, the law of God is everlasting.If a person does what God says to do, he will be blessed. If a person doesn't do what God says to do, he will be cursed. If a person doesn't do what God says don't do, he will be blessed. If a person does do what God says don't do, he will be cursed.
Disobedience toward God is a sin. Sin against God is worthy of death, that is the gist of the law. When Jesus hung on the cross, He became sin, 2 Corinthians 5:21. In so doing, He blotted out that which was against us, our sin debt. He didn't blot out the law, contrary to what "Lost in the fog" said.
Without the written law, we wouldn't really know what sinning against man is (sinning against someone would be relative to how we feel)...or at least the extent of our sinful ways. When we sin against man, we are ALSO sinning against God in our disobedience. As the apostle Paul said in Romans 7:7.
If there is no law, the penalty of death for breaking it (sin) is moot. The christian message of reconciliation to God by remission of sins through Jesus is completely lost.
❤
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Bungi Bill
FTS,
Once again, very interesting.
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Onager
Don't forget the Sikhs! They're famous for their good works, it's a central tenet of their religion, called Seva:
http://www.sikhiwiki.org/index.php/Seva
"Sikhs believe that wealth is only acceptable if it is used for other people such as giving them work or food. It is the responsibility of the rich to look after the poor."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/rs/poverty/sikhismrev2.shtml
Christians are in fact late to the party in every single area of charity. They're not unique and they're not even particularly good at it. That's the truth.
