by frankiespeakin 32 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Of course, just like the lotteries, the WTBTS is selling a dream. I found this article on the subject fascinating, and could explain the dreamlike pull of the WT version of paradise.
http://www.unc.edu/~elliott/icon.html
Here is an interesting experiment to seal a group of people in an enclosed, controlled environment. Crops did not thrive, trees became stringy. The people had trouble getting along. The experiment failed.
The whole paradise idealic thing reminds me of the matrix. First one everyone lived in perfection, it did not work.
Do we want the JW matrix or the real world. Give me the real world.
New thought. If you cant die yet you can have kids and you live in a place of finite resources is this hell? In hell you are tortured and killed and then revitalized to endure it for eternity. Lets say the paradise comes after the 1000 years everyone and their offspring is immortal but God does nothing else to help man kind. We keep having kids.
I assume we will deplete the resources of this world some time in the future. Meaning endless war, pain, torture, violence between the immortal haves and have nots possibly living on a scorched earth uninhabitable by most life forms. What if the JWs are just painting damnation with rose colored glasses hence what wever the wts says do not matter because they know what the new world will be like in the long haul.
[deleted] They would say now that you are perfect control your urges :P
first good and evil are judgements. to make any judgement you need a standard of measure. if that standard is not reality, what is it??
ideal fantasies are not real, but they form the basis for any judgement of good or evil... what is good supports the ideal what is evil harms it... so simple yet so hard to comprehend because people seem to see good defining evil and vs versa and miss the ideal fantasy world that underpins both concepts.
reality without comparison to ideals is just real... not good not evil.
When the virus now known as DNA first infitrated bacteria and symbiotically invented a new mode of travel mechanism, it seems to have developed two main stradegies for its replication and survival.... prey which multiplies like crazy without much intellect and predators who hunt the prey for food and helps prune off the worst mutations and the ones with poor immune systems, etc... both together form unstable relationships as they deal with enviornmental changes, mutations, resource scarcity, etc... an arms race between them has been documented in evolutionary history... prey develope generally along defensive stradegies while prey develope offensive which includes greater intellect and cunning...
humans are among the few species which seems to have divided itself into both predator and prey among its own kind....
its no accident that leaders are called shepherds and their prey sheep (^_^)
as to paradise.... the words boredom and stagnation springs to mind.
the JW paradise seems to avoid this by saying that paradise will not be like the garden of eden, but instead a massive clean up of a toasted world and a re-forming it to some paradise like status in the far distant future...and then perhaps moving off world to do the same to the rest of the planets that may be out there.
Zen,
reality without comparison to ideals is just real... not good not evil.
I agree. I think most would agree,, but for some the idea is just too radical,,and very impersonal. The ego give us the personal view of good and evil (I think).
But reguardless of what "really" is G or E,, if we didn't have evil,, we would not be conscious enough to comprehend a discussion of it.LOL Evolutionarily speaking.
if we didn't have evil,, we would not be conscious enough to comprehend a discussion of it.LOL Evolutionarily speaking.
we do have good and evil and the important point, easily missed, and often unseen is why we have it.....ideal fantasies.
our mind has a natural tendancy to make worlds and to designate some of them as perfect and if enough emotional energy is invested in one of those ideals it becomes the drving force for just about everything we do and consider worth doing.... instead of seeking contentment by acceptance of what is, we are driven to believe that contentment is not possible until the real world matches the inner ideal world... rather than the obviously simpler step of getting the ideal world to match the real world.... the path of zen.
Zen,
Are you talking about a complete acceptance of the world as it is,, with no desire for it to be any other way?
You can't have paradise. Paradise is different for every person. Hence the expression 'One man's heaven is another man's hell'.
LH
[deleted]
I can wait for the new order.
I think living forever in a perfect world would be great...no disease etc? great
getting along with people?
great
that wouldn't mean that there would not be challenges...I am a firm believer that one could live forever and never learn everything there is to know in the universe...things are always changing. I think just because people would be disease free wouldn't mean that they all would be equal in their abilities, or desires.
But I don't believe it will ever happen. So THAT's why we have to take this life we have now and make the most of it.
