What is the alternative to JW?

by Formerbrother 475 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Half banana

  I guess Acts 5, 29 contains the most oppressive statement ever to be unleashed on people who have no sense of self worth.

  We are born free (as J.J. Rousseau said) but everywhere people are in chains. If you believe the Bible as words from God... your fate is sealed, you are a chained victim to the power of a priesthood.

  Acty friend, it would do you a lot of good to get out of that slave mentality and learn that the Bible is a book of folk magic only made "sacred" by the Catholic Church in the fourth century.

  Listen again to what you have asserted; there is no basis for it except in the imagination. The only information worth knowing and using is that which is measured, recorded and critically questioned.

  There is overwhelming evidence that there was no flood, it did not and could not have happened. Likewise Eden bears all the hallmarks of myth. Why believe myth as if it were fact?

  God is a concept which is not available to the five senses and therefore anything, yes anything, can be imagined to be God and what he does ...and don't the intermediaries between men and God know it! Think again please and base your thoughts on evidence in future. The Bible is literature, not evidence.

  Climate change incidentally is the norm...it just doesn't happen at the human life-scale but the over geological time. It takes roughly 100,000 years to go from the peak of the ice-age episode to the inter-glacial temperature maximum (which we enjoy today) and back again with various temperature peaks and troughs in between. The temperature graph over the long period might be illustrated by the irregularities seen in the ebbing and flowing of a tide going in and out. This is science; not conjecture.
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  Acts5v29

  Then I would have to wonder why you are here on a religious forum - but I think the answer is evident.

  Stay with your lack of belief - I won't try to change you. Nevertheless, intransigence hinders so very much of ones potential.
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  OrphanCrow

  Acts: Then I would have to wonder why you are here on a religious forum - but I think the answer is evident

  Of course it is evident.

  There are many members here who are EX Jws. Myself included.

  Stay with your lack of belief - I won't try to change you. Nevertheless, intransigence hinders so very much of ones potential.

  Ah...a sophisticated (and arrogant) putdown.
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  LisaRose

  I understand your feelings, but can you perceive how many of them are due to what religions have said to you? Blame those who form the religions - blame centuries of bad direction also - but in all honesty God is completely separate from them.

  I am not anti religion, I think most are sincerely attempting to do Gods will, it's not their fault the instruction book is bad. And if God is separate from them, then that is his fault, not theirs, they were trying.

  I thnk the notion "what God wants" is part of the problem - religions preach that God wants this and God wants that, but He has made perfectly clear what the issue is - only nobody likes it.

  You are creating a false premise, that others know what the issue us but don't like it. Do you really think those who believe in God all are deliberately choosing to get it wrong? That is absurd.
  

  I can show you if you like why God cannot intervene, why His omnipotence is not enough to let Him do whatever He wants, and what that issue is - none of which involves belief or religion.

  Why do you imagine you alone understand God? What makes you so special? Sorry, I don't buy it. You are simply going through mental gyrations in an attempt to explain away why an omnipotent being wouldn't simply tell us what he is about, because you need to believe in such a being. Then you come up with some reason that makes sense to you and imagine you have been gifted with some special knowledge. If that makes you happy then good for you, but don't expect anyone else to buy into it. As they say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Unless you can perform miracles or predict the future (in a way that can be proven) then your ideas are just your ideas, you have no more idea of God than anyone else.
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  Giordano

  Then I would have to wonder why you are here on a religious forum - but I think the answer is evident.

  This is not a religious forum because we are either ex JW's, fading JW's or still in and faking it because of family. At least half the people are non believers and I am pretty sure that 95% of the people on here are not going to be too interested in your religious mumbo jumbo nonsense.

  What you appear to be friend is another self guided person who is making stuff up in hopes of setting up your own religious business. If so you will probably be kicked off of this site. No problem though you can come back as another scripture.
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  sparky1

  Stay with your lack of belief-I won't try to change you. Nevertheless, intransigence hinders so very much of ones potential.

  RELIGION- 1. Boundless conceit concealed as utmost modesty. 2. Justification for regulating one's behavior and coercing others to regulate theirs. 3. An inexhaustible mine of meaning for the mentally lazy. - Thomas Szasz
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  cofty

  Professor Lovelock spent 40 years trying to induce credence in his Gaia theory before it was accepted - Acts

  It never was accepted by rational people. It's a pseudo scientific fantasy. Lynne Margulies was a genius when she proposed endosymbiosis but a fool for hitching her wagon to Lovelock.

  as the climate crisis continues, perhaps you will wonder where we will get help from

  We fix it or else it won't get fixed. Waiting on a non-existent deity to intervene is silly and dangerous.

  Acts5 - Evolution is a FACT! There was no Adam, no perfection, no fall. Therefore your theology is built on nonsense. You are continuing to ignore this "Inconvenient Truth". How ironic.

  I searched your website where you have a page that pretends to address the problem of evolution except that it totally doesn't deal with it.

  Your theology is based on the two most symbolic books of the entire bible. Genesis is a Bronze Age creation myth on a par with "turtles all the way down" and Revelation is typical 1st century apocalyptic gibberish.

  All of the symbols in Revelation refer to the situation in the Roman Empire. To pretend that it is actually about god coming to sort out global warming is bizarre.

  Deal with the fact of evolution or else everything you have to say after that can only be addressed to the scientifically illiterate.

  I read your 96 page book. you could have said it all in 3 pages.
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  Acts5v29

  As five of you have given separate posts but in a similar manner, I'll just give one in response to all.

  worshipJehovah.org takes no income from anyone, and what it produces it gives away - it is not a business, nor a religion, nor does it tell anyone what to do, nor does it claim to have special knowledge which others cannot have. The scripture has been there throughout the millennia for those who wanted to read it and see that it was, indeed, an issue.
  

  
  

  As for Revelation being the Roman period, I have repeatedly mentioned that the 1st earthly event of that vision has not yet occurred - that of a united cry of appreciation from everyone alive to both God and to His Son. This - alone - undermines the watchtower, but nobody will take it up, because it simultaneously undermines all other Christian groups which preach that Revelation has begun.
  

  
  

  Thus far, the only contentions ever received to what I proposed to you have been:

  
  

  1. Prove God exists
  2. There is no climate crisis

  
  

  The 2nd one is a scientifically unwise statement. The 1st one is intransigence, because we all accept things on trust - even things which simply cannot be proved, we accept them on trust. But as for the watchtower people, they all run away from it.
  

  
  

  Had I said à la Harold Camping:

  "The world will end at 6 pm EST - sell your belongings in order to get into Heaven"

  then some people would do that. Or had I said:

  "I have found an ancient calendar in Lake Wobegon which says the world will end on October 19th 2017"

  then some would believe it and even make a film about it. Or if I were to say:

  "I am the faithful and discreet slave - the only prophet - and you should sell magazines for me"

  then again, some people would believe it and do it.

  But all I have done is offer a simple correlation and ask - not demanding belief in God, but just reason on the existence of that scripture and of the climate crisis - that a measure of credence would be sensible and reasonable. That is simple enough - so why the tumult? if you don't like it then don't, but when one is in a burning building, it is strange to disbelieve someone who says they know of an exit, just because he happens to belong to a race or religion you do not like. Reason would impel credence.
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  TTWSYF

  So it seems that there are a lot of alternatives to the JWs.
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  cofty

  Acts 5 - You continue to totally refuse to deal honestly with the fact of evolution.

  Your entire theology is predicated on a literal Edenic paradise that never existed.

  This is your "Inconvenient Truth".