Posts by Mephis

26

lf you had the opportunity to ask the GB a question what would it be?

by atomant in

l thought this would be an interesting exercise to read the different responses.

my question is what makes you think your gods chosen medium?and prove it.

Mephis

Won't you be screwed if there's no wifi in paradise?

13

Jehovah or Jesus: Who Is To Come?

by Cold Steel in

one thing i've never understood about jw eschatology is how it views armageddon and the end times.

the leaders and writers have evolved in their understanding of what's supposed to happen in the timeline.

below are bible scriptures relating to biblical armageddon.

Mephis

Elaine Pagels' work on gnosticism (and indeed Revelation) is excellent if you're interested in the history and beliefs of the various gnostic groups.

Don't wish to divert your thread futher. But I'll flag up the point again that if you're looking for a logical way to deconstruct JW beliefs then you may need to do that from within the beliefs themselves on something like this. Because they are so idiosyncratic and logically inconsistent. And basic assumptions of any particular church as to meaning frequently don't hold true when passed through the WBTS filter. Makes chopping theology which requires that outside perspective (and equally subjective too it has to be said) difficult I'd imagine.

All the best!

83

Christadelphian

by Billy1000 in

my name is stephen and i am new to the forum.

i am a christadelphian and through my discussions with fellow members of my ecclesia it has inspired me to reach out to other religions to find out exactly what others believe to enhance my own faith and further bring me closer to our heavenly father.

in no way do i mean disrespect if it has been caused.

Mephis

I'm a non-JW, though I have some in the family. So, I'm on the outside looking in. I do consider myself a believer in JC's sacrifice, but I don't judge. I don't shun. And some of my best buds are what you'd consider agnostic/atheist. One of them is a dog lover, and raises service dogs. Anyway, here's a link to that article:
http://thewatchtowerfiles.com/ex-jws-atheists/

Whilst acknowledging the limits of such surveys, the polls of ex-jws online I've seen mirror within a few percentage points polls of wider society in my country. ie around a 50/50 split. (https://humanism.org.uk/campaigns/religion-and-belief-some-surveys-and-statistics/).

The article is correct in one sense for my journey. The logical end point of reading the bible critically was a lack of belief in an Abrahamic god or any variation based upon it. A god who decided to ban shellfish over slavery? Really?

edit: I agree very much with several other points the author of that article makes, especially his conclusion on encouraging people to live their lives without damning them for having a belief or not, just not every point he makes in there.

9

ten plagues of egypt explained.

by atomant in

lve been researching the ten plagues of egypt.saw a tv doco few years back explaining scientifically how they all occurred.for anybody interested simply google ten plagues of egypt explained.

sure is worth a look.cheers.

Mephis

They don't quite prove all the plagues were possible (eg blood is not algae, nor does algae in a river mean every other source of water suddenly contains algae), but they demonstrate that natural events could cause effects which people may ascribe to being the work of a god or gods.

But then the idea that natural events can do that is not really an issue. Some societies would even go so far as to link the life of their ruler with his ability to keep the gods happy and so hoped to prevent natural disasters.

The issue with Exodus is whether all those natural events, and more, happened in a short period of time outside of a story. Having evidence of that would at least give some historical seed to the Exodus story. It still wouldn't prove the whole story true, and there'd still be the huge barrier over whether natural events should be seen as being from a god or gods. God causes floods because of gays. God delivers sand in typhoons to get kingdom halls built. Ba'al made the crops grow well. El let the rains fall. It's not convincing whether it's written or said today, even less so when viewed from a few thousand years' distance.

83

Christadelphian

by Billy1000 in

my name is stephen and i am new to the forum.

i am a christadelphian and through my discussions with fellow members of my ecclesia it has inspired me to reach out to other religions to find out exactly what others believe to enhance my own faith and further bring me closer to our heavenly father.

in no way do i mean disrespect if it has been caused.

Mephis

Mephis - I would say i am similar to you however have gone the similar way, i love history and used that to prove to myself that the Bible is real, especially what i stated before with the prophecies in Daniel especially.
There are a lot of questions over whether Daniel is indeed one author, let alone an author making prophesies about world powers in advance. Most scholars date the book to the mid-2nd century BCE which would leave the main 'prophesies' fitting neatly into a whole genre of 'end of times' literature. You can fit the later beasty things to almost any period of history you care to after that. As various groups have done. But, yeah, I started at Genesis and went through the Bible as history from there.

21

Evolution is a Fact #20 - Lucy in the Sky ....

by cofty in

when donald johanson and his colleagues returned to the afar region of ethiopia in 1974 they were full of optimism.

it was their second season searching for human fossils around hadar.

the previous november johanson had found a fossilised knee joint that was dated to more than 3 million years ago.

Mephis

What could be an idea is to gather together all the intelligent design ideas from around the world and across history and give them their own place on an academic curriculum. We could call it something like, I don't know, religious studies.

83

Christadelphian

by Billy1000 in

my name is stephen and i am new to the forum.

i am a christadelphian and through my discussions with fellow members of my ecclesia it has inspired me to reach out to other religions to find out exactly what others believe to enhance my own faith and further bring me closer to our heavenly father.

in no way do i mean disrespect if it has been caused.

Mephis

I am sorry if i have caused offence, but i have not had one reply actually saying why they believe what they do, mostly it is the fact that they can't believe it anymore.

I was born into a JW family (third generation). I was told the bible is historical fact, that its historical facts could be used to prove prophecy would be fulfilled. So I started to read history because what could go wrong? And I learned that the bible has large sections which are not historically true. And that got me wondering about how that could happen. So I started to study how the bible came to be. And you quickly learn that there are huge problems with what some religions teach about the bible. And the other Christian denominations which don't require that historical truth, require a spiritual truth - about Jesus life, his death and then early christianity. And even there history isn't the same as the tales told to explain early christianity. So I ended up agnostic (generally), but certainly an atheist so far as it concerns anything based on Abrahamic religions.

83

Christadelphian

by Billy1000 in

my name is stephen and i am new to the forum.

i am a christadelphian and through my discussions with fellow members of my ecclesia it has inspired me to reach out to other religions to find out exactly what others believe to enhance my own faith and further bring me closer to our heavenly father.

in no way do i mean disrespect if it has been caused.

Mephis

Yeah, you won't get many converts here Billy. Although you may get more willing to listen and debate sensibly than you would on a site of active believing JWs.

Just on the 'proof' thing, using the bible to prove the bible doesn't really work for anyone but those who already believe in the bible. And the (non-biblical) evidence for Jesus is at best that a man lived, a man was executed, and a bunch of people said lots of things about him after he died. I don't argue that he lived, nor that he was executed, but if I accept that he did miracles and got resurrected and there was a zombie apocalypse (Matthew) etc etc, then I've got to accept similar stories for a whole host of other semi-historical characters too. Which then makes Jesus less extraordinary. Or I can just reject all those stories, and Jesus becomes much more mundane.

In any case, regards and good luck with your own personal search for truth.

5

Audio link to talk I gave in 2001-"BROOKLYN GIRL." In it I discuss my conversation with Don Adams, Pres. of WTB&TS of PA, about a child

by AndersonsInfo in

http://watchtowerdocuments.org/brooklyn-girl/.

in may of 2001, i attended a small conference in soap lake, washington, where some thirty former jehovah’s witnesses (jws) were gathered.

the conference was sponsored by the late richard rawe.

Mephis

Just additional external support to that suggestion from Britain very recently. "A perfect storm" for abuse as Stewart said at ARC.

From the (British) National Crime Agency's October 2013 report into abuse within organisations (CEOP Thematic Assessment The Foundations of Abuse: A thematic assessment of the risk of child sexual abuse by adults in institutions), the key findings:

1. Children in institutional settings are not only at risk from adults who are inclined to abuse them sexually; but also from adults who either fail to notice abuse or, if they do, fail to report it.

2. Where institutions put their own interests ahead of those of the children who engage with them, abusive behaviours are likely to become normalised, potentially leading to sexual abuse.

3. The culture within an institution has a strong influence on the degree to which abuse might occur within it. Poor leadership, closed structures, ineffective policies and procedures together with the discouragement of reporting, facilitates a malign climate which colludes with those inclined to sexually abuse children.

4. Where institutions are held in high regard and respected by the communities they serve, positional grooming can be perpetuated, whereby offenders conduct social or environmental grooming and mask their actions by virtue of their formal positions within an organisation.

5. Potential risks from those with a sexual interest in children who pursue work in institutions can be mitigated by vigilant and effective leadership and management.

6. Intense loyalty and conformity of workers to the mission, norms and values of an institution can inhibit them from reporting concerns.

7. The historic nature of many cases currently exercising media attention, together with developments in safeguarding, might give a false perception that this type of offending can no longer occur. Offenders continue to exploit systemic vulnerabilities where they exist

http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/publications/49-ceop-institutions-thematic-assessment/file

https://www.ceop.police.uk/

90

Where are the EXJW Feminist Philosophers?

by Luther bertrand in

i am working, more in the planning stages, where i am going to offer a commentary on the caleb and sophia cartoons that the org puts out.

i noticed a heavily patriarchal bent to the narrative that these cartoons offer.

i would really enjoy working with someone who has an academic background in feminist philosophy, or at least someone knowledgeable.

Mephis

Regardless of where feminism is in other areas, a feminist critique of JW world has the potential to offer up useful insights. As feminist criticism has done in the past for other fields.

One of the most useful things I ever had done for me when I had physically left but was still carrying a lot of JW theological baggage was a (female) Anglican theologian rip the New Testament apart using feminist criticism. Stripping things back to a counter-history where the message to women of Luke's gospel is taken up, rather than a (patriarchal) hierarchy imposed.

All those JW assumptions which you really don't notice growing up with a penis but of which if you chat with female ex-jws they were or came to be very aware.

I'd personally read with interest if anyone were able to do that. It may well be niche, but so are many other things.