my neighbor called yesterday and asked if she could come over and visit me today.
i replied, "well, it looks like interpretation is a big issue.
the jws list their bible verses, and claim the same.
Jeez, I've been out 17 years, and I still remember that Jesus was technically only the mediator for the 144K. Maybe I haven't lost all the holy spirit after all.
Well done. Not sure I would have pitched the WTS against the Catholic Church - probably could have made the point without selecting a large organization that might have backed her up a bit (only the largest denom in the world - a bit imposing) but a minor point.
Regards,
Phantom
incase you didn't know.
i got this through e mail and thought i would pass it on to you.
could nuking your water be dangerous?
If your clothes are all on fire, don't jump in the swimming pool - the steam will sear your skin.
Roll around on the ground instead.
i would say one of the best things in my life is my true friends, it's nice to have someone you can tell anything too!.
beans.
http://quotes.jehovahswitnesses.com
Wasn't this a Barry White song?
we'll give this a try and see if it works ...
1. on a piece of paper, write down a three or four digit number.
make it completely random with lots of different digits, like 6710 or 741. .
Aztec LOL.
446 Simon.
(this is not short.
please be warned.
it?s said that there are three ways of listening.
Well-said, jgnat. Thanks.
" if the watchtower said it, and the men on the platform preached it, then it must have been true.
so it was very hard to accept as an adult, that they were wrong.
i blame myself.
Great post, Lee - I especially liked the negative and positive connotations of the words in each definition.
So as adults are we only responsible when we are given accurate information? Or are we also responsible for what we choose to believe?
I suggest that we as humans are born with the ability to be personally responsible, once we are adults. Most of us abdicate it, as Lee points out.
" if the watchtower said it, and the men on the platform preached it, then it must have been true.
so it was very hard to accept as an adult, that they were wrong.
i blame myself.
Nos, no child is responsible for what is done to them. You are making responsible decisions to deal with the effects of those things. The idea of responsibility is an adult one, and I see that in the original post on this thread the words "as an adult" were used several times. I respectfully suggest that your situation is not being referred to here, especially as you lead off with "under the age of 18".
Regards,
PS
(this is not short.
please be warned.
it?s said that there are three ways of listening.
Well, go to England and tell them you'll be their space program. They'll be ecstatic.
" if the watchtower said it, and the men on the platform preached it, then it must have been true.
so it was very hard to accept as an adult, that they were wrong.
i blame myself.
Thanks, rocketman. I concur that that case is an extreme situation, and I want to comment on it very narrowly and specifically, or I will have somebody on here telling me I am in favor of child molesters or some such twaddle. Also, I don't know what went on in her mind, and if I inadvertertently mis-state anything about her, I hope to be corrected. I have not followed the Boer case closely, and I assume that we are dealing with someone's choices as a responsible adult. Children are by definition not responsible for themselves and what I have written should not be taken as applying to kids.
You are saying that she was "technically" free to make that choice, but she didn't feel free to do so. Ignoring the legal situation for a moment, which I am not qualified to comment on, I suggest that she felt that way because of prior choices she had made about her beliefs, and if she feels differently now, it's because of later choices she made about her beliefs. Regardless of the legal finding, I suggest that as part of her journey of recovery from these events, she has chosen to feel differently, and has taken action accordingly. This is why I referred to heroism earlier. It's extreme, absolutely. It's hard. Many of us know this firsthand, and I mean to lessen it not at all when I say that we had the ability to make a different choice the whole time, and didn't realize it right away.
Your use of the word blame over and over, Rocketman, I think really ties in to what I have said. I actually totally understand blaming the WTS. But when you are focused on how to be as effective as possible and to be as responsible as possible in your own life, does blaming others or yourself really help? No, it doesn't. Blame is a criticism. Responsibility is a choice.
I chose to be a JW. I chose to not be thrown out of the house, shunned, rejected by everyone close to me. I chose to not go to college, etc. I chose not to be a JW. I make different choices now. Blame doesn't have to enter into it, and I truly believe that the more you focus on blame, the less you experience the power your own responsibility.
(this is not short.
please be warned.
it?s said that there are three ways of listening.
Tried twice - can't get the font size to match. Anyway, this post can be considered a non-essential appendix to the post above. Most of the work below is excerpted from an article by Jeremiah Lewis.
Robert Pirsig, in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, describes in detail the development of the Western philosophical tradition, and how it has shaped Western society. In doing so, he offers a critique of certain aspects of Western thought that resulted from a momentous battle for the ?mind of man?. What came about was a fragmenting of the mind from matter, of perception from experience. In addition to outlining the history and philosophy behind Western thinking, he offers a rediscovery of the very concept that got buried under the ?rubble of declining Athens? and Rome, buried deeply under the new champions of Western man, Reason, Intellect, and Knowledge. Pirsig cites Thoreau in writing, ?You never gain something but that you lose something?. This applies with direct impact to Western development. In understanding the world through ?dialectic truths? man lost the ability to understand how to be part of the world, and ?not an enemy of it?.
The idea that nature itself can be divided rationally into ordered systems is inherently Western in origin. That implies that a system of concepts exists to explain the world, the universe. The ?structure of concepts? is called a hierarchy, and broken down even further, is a system of divisions, or distinctions. Pirsig asserts that this has been a ?basic structure for all Western knowledge?.
According to William Barrett, what we call Western traditions in thinking really stem from two cultural backgrounds, Hebrew and Greek, both of which are ?profoundly dualistic in spirit? (ix). That is, they ?divide reality into two parts," setting one division off against the other (Barrett ix). The Hebrews did it on the basis of morality and religion, separating God from Creation, flesh from spirit, right from wrong. The Greeks divide along the basis of philosophical and intellectual lines. It was Plato who almost ?single-handedly? established Western philosophy. Plato ?absolutely cleaves reality into the world of the intellect and the world of the senses?. To understand the impact of this, we need to step back a little in history.
The fourth century of Greece claimed the thinking of the Sophists who, no longer concerned with the problem of Cosmology (that is, man, as a divinely created being, subject to divine laws), centered their thoughts on man as his own entity, his knowledge, and his morality. Their object, according to Pirsig, was ?not any single absolute truth, but the improvement of man?. The Sophists, in abandoning the idea that all of nature (and consequently, man) were divinely instituted, stopped at the immediacy of sensory, or empirical impressions of man. Their teaching centered on the concept of aretê, which was Greek for ?excellence? but today is often translated as ?virtue?. Aretê was the pre-Socratic ideal, a sort of ?duty toward self?, seen in Homeric myths and legends of Heroes. This aretê can be represented as the Good. With the Sophists was born the relativism of knowledge, culminating in the ?nothing exists? of Gorgias. In the fragment of Protagoras preserved by Plato, it is stated that, ?Man is the measure of all things, of those that are in so far as they are, and those that are not in so far as they are not?. From this one gathers that reality is subjective. For instance, two bodies might differ as to the air temperature. One might say ?it is cold? while another might say ?it is hot?. Both would be correct, but their reality is subjective. Hence, knowledge itself is subjective. Gorgias went on to say that if ?[something does exist]," then we cannot ?apprehend? it (Sprague 42). If reality is subjective to empirical data, then it does not exist at all. Such a relative view of reality was the basis of Sophist thought.
Socrates countered Sophist thinking with the notion that full knowledge was universal, underlying all human thought. He called these concepts. He arrived at this idea through use of the dialogue, from which the dialectic gets its name. What he argued against was the idea of relativistic knowledge. Pirsig saw that Socrates was not just ?expounding noble ideas," but was in reality fighting a battle with the Sophists ?with everything he [had]?.
Plato, like Socrates, saw Truth as the highest Ideal, and because Knowledge was a principle of Truth, it could not be undermined by the Sophists who believed that ?everything is relative?. Plato defended Socrates; defended the independence of Truth and Knowledge; he defended the superiority of Truth over Aretê. He had identified the Sophists? teaching as ethical relativism. What his Dialogues developed is nothing less than the ?whole world of Western man?.
However, the hierarchical nature of Western thought was fully developed by Aristotle, who, taking the ideas of Plato, ?[invented] an endless proliferation of forms about the substantive elements of the world and [called] these forms knowledge?. Aristotle believed that knowledge was gained through categorization, and through this ordered system, experience of each entry in the category could be gained. Plato himself saw the need for Good, but in order to resolve it to his own beliefs of Truth, he took the teaching of the Sophists and tried to turn it into an Idea, that is, an immutable, defined entity called Good. Plato?s teaching represented Truth, and as Phaedrus discovered, the Good and the Truth ?were engaged in a huge struggle for the future mind of man?. It was this battle that determined the future of Western thought. Aristotle demoted Good to a ?branch of ethics," Truth (or Knowledge, rationalism) won the battle, and thus, the Western way of thinking was established.
