Paranormal Warning
by Cold Steel 72 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Wayward
Sevan- we don't need a Satan for us to be evil. Its all about choices. Some people are evil because they like it, then blame the Devil when they get caught. "I'm not responsible! The Devil made me do it!"
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snare&racket
Sevan, can you stop yourself from doing things you enjoy? Of course. But sometimes you don't and sometimes you do.
So an adult that physically or sexually abuses their child do it for many reasons, but they won't do it in public because of the consequences. So there is choice involved. Don't misunderstand that with a gap between want and decision, to squeeze evil on however,
An alcoholic will drink themselves despite severe consequences due to the chemical/ emotional reward. However they will choose not to break open a bottle of vodka in front of the family /friends or for e.g. at work. So here is another example of dependence, behaviour that leads to harm, an inappropriate reward mechanism.....yet the ability to decide not to do it. Nobody would induce evil in the process.
There are interesting papers and research on evil. True evil in psychology is when a healthy mind, healthy nurtured person inexplicably does terrible acts without obvious explanation and the research papers struggle to identify such a person. I remember one paper referencing Ted Bundy (? I think) an American academic, serial murderer. He was a well nurtured man with intelligence and supposedly great charisma and charm. However he stated he had been addicted to horrendous pornography which planted terrible ideas. So he possibly rewired his reward response and fed it further because of tolerance (less response over time) with worse and worse thoughts and ideas, entangled with a very powerful human driver and reward, sex. We do not have the means to know these things for sure yet. But there is certainly no gap or evidence for inducing an ethereal "evil" into the mix, therefore necessitating demons and Devils which is far from the most logical and likely explanation in the first place.
May I just humbly ask you something I wrestled with when I let go of my belief. I read the bible around 5 times and I visualised God and the biblical story and contemplated much of it chronologically. We can't imagine God as an entity, but rewind back to a 'time' or state when there was just God. God created everything, if you accept the bible version of evil. It is more than a concept it's a thing, the opposite to good. Well you have to accept that god created evil and you will never be able to explain away how an all loving personification of goodness could do that. Evil wasn't simply formed when Adam ate the apple as Satan already existed. Likewise It is non biblical and non theological to state Satan had the means to create evil or create anything.
Another example, cancer is a complex and fundamentally essential part of life, the same process that gives us cancer, gives us genetic diversity. Who created that process? The bible indicates it was a punishment from god for disobedience. Even if you believe Satan CHOSE to be evil and Adam CHOSE a path that led to imperfection and cancers... If you accept the bible,you have to accept God created illness, disease, cancer.... And evil.
The idea that humans are becoming less perfect and more evil and more diseased simply doesn't fit the bible or data and again, humans didn't create this imperfection as a punishment or the evil ......the God did.
So even if you want to make an argument for the existence of Evil, the source of it according to the bible ...is the Jude's-Christian God...... Not spirits/Satan.... They were not able to create anything.
Snare X
(The absence of good is not the same as evil in my opinion, just as the absence of love is not hate, so more effort is required in demonstrating evil exists)
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Sevan
Wow, these are really interesting thoughts to think about snare&racket.
This is the first time in my life that I've allowed myself to question the Bible. Before I was a JW, I was raised a Christian and was taught that the Bible was the inerrant word of God. It never occurred to me to question it because who am I to question God, even though there were always things that I didn't understand or didn't seem just.
I haven't given up on God, but there are things in the Bible that I've decided cannot come from a God that is love.
At any rate, I am open to questioning and challenging all my beliefs for the first time in my life, so I appreciate conversations like this that challenge my preconceptions.
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Ucantnome
the dog got me up at 3am she needed to pee. While she was doing that I went in the bathroom and found the cat had been in there and done a crap in the bath and vomited in the middle of the floor and behind the door. At 3 am I thought I'm not cleaning in up now and left it till the morning.
when I got up later I cleaned up the bath and the vomit in the middle of the floor then looked behind the door. It was gone. No big pile of vomit. Instantly thought demons.
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Witness My Fury
or you ate it while sleep walking...
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snare&racket
Questioning your ideas and beliefs is healthy and normal. If it feels scary and wrong, then that is a clue that you have been manipulated. Truth doesn't need protecting, it's impossible to prove the truth false!
Lies and man made propaganda on the other hand......
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Vidiot
Has anyone on this thread mentioned sleep paralysis yet?
(I don't feel like looking.)
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OrphanCrow
Yup, Vidiot. Sleep paralysis was one of the first out of the chute *you lazy bum*
Huh. My son has sleep paralysis and has since he was little. Probably still does. He also sleepwalks
And I sleepwalk. It makes for some interesting lucid dreaming experiences
We both have something wired not quite right with that part of our brains. Sleeping can be quite the adventure at times
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Dunedain
I remember a "story" from an old JW family friend of my parents. She believed that she had a demonic experience. Or at least what happened, was credited to "demons".
What she said happened, was she came home at night to her apartment/home(I forget?), and all her furniture was turned upside down. The kitchen table, chairs, sofa, coffee table, dressers, all turned upside down. Some pieces of furniture were also stacked upside down, and on top of each other.
She claimed it was demons, and demons were in her house and did this, blah, blah, blah. So my Mother started really questioning her about it. Like why do say it was demons that did it? How did you know it was demons, and so on. Her answer was very emphatically, "that it WAS demons", and she even got a little angry that she was even being questioned. She continued to say, "plus I heard weird noises coming from the light bulb in the dining room".
Anyway, I do not know if demons did that or not, but I was listening in to this conversation. She didn't mention anything, like she saw a form, or felt a presence, and so on. It was blamed on demons, because she was "new in the truth", and just started studying. Satan and the demons, MUST have been trying to scare her away from the truth. This is why the demons targeted her.
I think it was all bullshit, at least concerning "demons". I don't deny that her furniture was upside down, and the light made "noises", but there could be a number of real world explanations, NOT demons. Maybe some teenagers got into the house and were screwing around. Maybe someone was playing a trick on her. Maybe they were gonna tell her after, and have a laugh, but because she really thought it was demons, and got scared, the person never fessed up to it, who knows?
The things that happened were physical, real world, things. Furniture being flipped, and moved, and a light making noise. Before she studied, she probably would have NEVER considered demons, but because she WAS studying, and learning for the first time about demons, this is where her mind went to first. SHE created the demon story as the ONLY explanation, and I am sure she still believes it today, because she is still a JW.