by Honesty 39 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
That picture of worms reminds me why I have instructed family to cremate my body!
My exwife insisted that she be cremated, so she wouldn't be declared medically dead, but still somehow be alive and conscious, and be buried alive. Burning her would ensure she was dead.
I am always amazed by the number of people who have dismissed religion but yet retain some lingering belief in an afterlife. Movies and books have powerful influence upon the unconscious dreams fears. I particularaly like the "white noise" movie/website etc. that assets that your dead loved ones are trying to talk to you through the electric hum of your blender or weed wacker. Is there no end to the insanity? Take any random pattern of electric static, filter it, selectively extract segments and you can hear your great grandma saying she loves you from beyond the grave.
First question to ask is, What happens to us when alive? Are we ghosts in a bottle? If so then why is it that the introduction or extraction of trace chemicals alters the personality, changing 'us' to someone else? We are biological organisms whose mind and person is a manifestation of the machinery, chemicals, and data we are made of. Since this is the case of us and animals alike then what happens to animals at destruction of the machinery happens to us. This was the understanding of many ancient cultures including the Jews. They and surrounding cultures took very little interest in after death questions. Why then are so many today obsessed with the question? While some cultures had mystical theories approaching the notion of an afterlife, the can of worms was really opened by Greek philosophers who extrapolated complex arguments from nothing. If we had lived in ancient Mesopotamia or Palestine circa 2000 B.C. this question would never have even been asked. They were too concerned with the realities of present living to spend time worrying about how dead the dead are.
I too want to be cremated and my ashes, well they wouldn’t be ‘my’ ashes because I would have ceased to be - ‘the’ ashes sprinkled from a bridge into a river. The worms are going to be disappointed!
My wife insists on waiting until I am dead, before carrying out my wishes, so I cannot arrange this event at my convenience. Can’t women be difficult!
I am more concerned about what will happen to her-indoors than what will happen to me. I will be ‘out of here.’
My half century of Watchtower indoctrination presents this:It is not natural to die,the WT's argument (no doubted adapted from another source) describes the 'great paradox of dying' that an organism (human beings) so fantastic that it can produce itself by extraordinary means,but then be incapable of sustaining itself forever in perfect condition.
Prenatal surgical incisions performed in the womb will heal without scaring,why can't this process of regeneration continue forever?We have had topics on the aging process here at JWD.The oversimplified explanation is cells can replicate only so many times and then they just stop.This determination is made according to how fast/slow the metabolic processes are.The slow snapping turtle can live 300 years a house fly only seven days many birds are an exception to this rule.The Watchtower says this biological default was the sentence made on Adam & Eve.
The Watchtower further say's that "the immortality of the soul dogma was formed in ancient mystery cults and then elaborated by the pagan philosopher Plato".It all goes back to Satan still trying to perpetuate his lie in the garden of Eden that "you positivly will not die".
I share this-it was a shock and horror to have to come to terms with my own mortality,that i had squandered my life and youth for the Watchtower cult.
Man i am pissed.
i hope that when i die, i am alone in the great canadian wilderness somewhere, and the animals can just tear and peck me apart.
ts
Perhaps the answer lies in first investigating into and clearly determining what makes up a "person". And to think, we need go no further than right here and now where we are.
Focus attention inward and see what elements come together to create an individual identity. I mean, who/what are you, really?
There is certainly physical bodies and phenomenal which are born and die (even the sun will die). There is a complex matrix of remembered stimuli, emotion and circumstance which is weaved into a complex "life story". But is any of this what we truly are?
Is there an underlying Reality, that allows for all the drama of phenomenal life expression to be? Is there an unmoving Stage on which birth and death are played? Is there? And if so, can it be actually seen? And when seen, is It, separate from what we really are? Have we mistaken ourselves for something we are not, and so blinded awarness to what IS?
Perhaps we hold the answer to all life major questions; perhaps we are the answer; it's just that we have never looked beyond the made-up "person" we believe ourselves to be.
What really looks out these eyes?
j
What really looks out these eyes?
Umm colour blindness? Perhaps the poor girl had to put on her make-up in the dark...without a mirror...with a number 12 brush?
Sometimes when you cast it lands in the deep. Other times it snags in a tree.
Sometimes when you cast it lands in the deep. Other times it snags in a tree.
Always happy to help.
LOL @ James.
I'm busy living this life to the full, in all it's facets (physical and spiritual - if you can truly make such a distinction) and encouraging others to do likewise. I'm not into "spirituality" for reward. If the end result is reward, so be it - one up for the home team.
