god is life (john 5:26).
god is truth (john 17:3).
god is eternal (psalms 90:2).
"How do you know you even exist?"
I think Des Cartes gave the best response to that one.... ego cognito ergo sum
and I would wonder about anyone that can rationally doubt their own existance....
it seems to me that those who get others to pretend they doubt their own existance are merely shepherds seeking to convert humans into sheep so they can be fleeced and lead to the slaughter...
let's say there are two types of prophecies :) .
type a: god says: everything's gonna be allright.
these are irrelevant to my point here.. type b: god says: a certain man will commit a certain sin (on a certain date) and i will have to put him to death because he will choose to sin.. 1) the latter type of prophecies presuppose that the future can be predicted.. 2) now, if the future is predictable then it's predestined.
I personally simplify things to make my life easier . I like to think that I have a certain degree of freedom to decide how to respond to certain situations. If my life is threatened I can do anything possible to save it, or I can give it up, for example for some altruistic reasons (to save a friend, etc). This is not the case with lower-order animals however. So they don't have that much of a free will.
here is what I see.... I nor anyone I know or can conceive of can alter a single step which has brought us all to any present moment you happen to find yourself in.... thus I am always EXACTLY where I find myself and have NO choice in that.... because I am ignorant of what my next move will be often until I make it, I am deluded by my own ignorance to think I have a measure of freedom... the future, I find is not a window to a real place, but a mirror to a fantasy realm based on my experiences and guesswork... the future can be changed because it is only an unstable idea, not a real place.
let's say there are two types of prophecies :) .
type a: god says: everything's gonna be allright.
these are irrelevant to my point here.. type b: god says: a certain man will commit a certain sin (on a certain date) and i will have to put him to death because he will choose to sin.. 1) the latter type of prophecies presuppose that the future can be predicted.. 2) now, if the future is predictable then it's predestined.
I brought up this issue to some elders just prior to my departure around 1990...
it occurred to me that if Jehovah was willfully ignorant of the future, but COULD know it if he chose to, that implied that it was there to know and this fact would not change whether he saw it or not....
JW reasoning was flawed, they were correctly pointing out that the bible god showed himself to be ignorant at times, but they did not remove the fact that hidden behind this ignorance they still believed the future already existed in someway that could be known.
if there is true randomness invovled in the universe, it is impossible for anyone even a god to know things after a while...we can guess pretty well for a while but there are always things around corners invisible to us...and randomness would be one of those corners.
if there is NO randomness at all, the universe would still be unpredictable after a while because of something called the sampling problem... you cannot take any continuous motions and get an infinite sample... if your sample is 1 chunck per second and you miss 9, then you have a 90% loss of data....if your sample is 1,000,000 chunks per second, and you only miss 1, your noise is very much reduced but exponetial increase in that small error will soon make the noise too great to see past here too.... its like digital music, only a really well trained ear can hear the difference between it and analogue but it can still be heard, there is a loss of data.
as to freewill
if your actions are caused, are they free?
if uncaused are they willed?
god is life (john 5:26).
god is truth (john 17:3).
god is eternal (psalms 90:2).
Now that you know who God is... The Eternal question... Is He your God? Keep in mind that God already knows your heart and He knows what your going to do with Him today... Your not going to Trick Him, Fool Him, or Surprise Him...
how can I KNOW who God is just from reading your Belief System [BS]? what you state as FACT about God is just someone elses hallucination, opinion, belief, faith, etc, you have presented absolute ZERO facts... and so knowledge is not something you imparted.
as to the things you did impart, some of them are flat contradiction to the bible which you claim they represent... as in God being all knowing, [see Genesis 18:20-21], God being perfect [see Exodus 32:14], God being love [see Deut 21]... etc.
my view, GOD [the Generator Of Diversity] is ultimate reality, which of course has no beginning, is everywhere that exists and unlike your god, is all of us... your god is a jewish myth about GOD and no better than any other cultural myths.
this is my first post here, though i have been browsing these forums over the last week for more than a few hours.
in the interest of full discloser, well as much as anyone would on a public forum, i?ll tell you about me.
i was raised as a witness, and have no real horror stories to tell.
First let me say, I was not DF'd [though they wanted to], I did not formally DA [though they lied and said I did] and I have no malice nor hatred for anyone JW or not....nor was my JW experience outrageous nor angering to me....I believe that most of them were and are just like me, just trying to get a handle on the world and universe we find ourselves in and latching on to what seems true and then defending it until we are CONviNcED into something else.
Who here thinks they are Jehovah God?
I have come to beileve that YHWH or Jehovah is just jewish mythology pointing the the very same unknowable ultimate reality which we are all part of.... in a sense we are all part of the one, the whole and thus we can all say, I am that I am...or I am becoming what I will become which is why YHWH supposedly means.
Who here thinks they are Jesus Christ?
After 14 years of non-JW research, I am fairly convinced that Jesus was a gnostic myth and never existed as more than a fictional character to teach people about themselves.
Who here thinks they are of the anointed?
since I no longer view a personal god as anything seperated from all of us together I would say this does not apply.
Who here thinks they are going to heaven, but are not necessarily anointed?
I now believe in reincarnation of a sort...so again not applicable.
I personally answer negative to all the above, just to be fair and answer them myself.
i don't know about everyone else but i just want to get these stories of godly/demonic intervention out of my system.
hope it doesn't bore you but some are a good laugh now but i truly believed them and some i still believe.. 1. don't open that cabinet- one day my dear step mother was cleaning the kitchen and needed something out of a cabinet that was rarely used.
there was a plastic cake dish that makes this very audible noise when trying to close it(lil cheap cake from winn dixie).
this was told to me as a true story by an "ännointed" ancient named Bro. Cohen, I met in nursing home visiting service?
he claimed that in the "early days" he was being set up... a little girl answered the door in field service, her mother and the police were behind the door waiting for him to say anything that they could accuse him of being a child molestor or something....
he says as he tried to speak, someone invisible grabbed him and forced him out of the building and saving his skin from jail.... never explained how he knew there were people behind the door waiting to pounce...hmmm.
i don't know about everyone else but i just want to get these stories of godly/demonic intervention out of my system.
hope it doesn't bore you but some are a good laugh now but i truly believed them and some i still believe.. 1. don't open that cabinet- one day my dear step mother was cleaning the kitchen and needed something out of a cabinet that was rarely used.
there was a plastic cake dish that makes this very audible noise when trying to close it(lil cheap cake from winn dixie).
How about the pioneer sister who didn't wind up dead at the hands of the serial killer who had just killed two avon ladies in his apartment. Why didn't he kill the sister according to police? she had two big guys with her (Angels). I'd like to know how the police knew a JW was at the door, and if they knew he killed others, why didn't they arrest him?
I remember this one from my JW days in NJ mid 1980s
i am discussing this subject with a friend who believes this and who uses the passage in col 1 vs.15-17 as 'proof'.
he also uses john 8 v 58. it is of course a question of greek interpretation.
is there anyone out there who is a reliable greek scholar who could verify what these verses really say?
You really are completely resistant to the idea that any of the early Christians viewed Jesus as a deity, aren't you?
Why on earth would I be talking about the Jews, who entirely rejected him even as Messiah?
~shakes head~
since just about all the early christian writers were JEWS, until one of them STATES they he believed Jesus to be God, I have NO reason to see such an absurdity.... Paul certainly did not view Jesus as the same God he believed as the God of Israel and numerous times makes that crystal clear which is why those who want to read a trinity into his words are taught elsewhere.
christ calls himself god, the jews think he called himself a god and threaten to stone him.
jesus refers to himself and the father as one.
he says he can do things previously ascribed to the father.
the Jesus of the bible [ a fictional character in my opinion] never called himself God... but instead whenever the jews THREATENED him with harm for seemingly doing so, he CORRECTED THEM..... he told them things which showed that what he did was GRANTED by God, authority to do it was GIVEN by God, that he himself only called himself God's son, never God...etc...
John 10 is a primary example, I and my father are ONE.... causing the jews to riot... but does Jesus say, hey, whats your problem, I am God? no.
he tells them according to the very scriptures they think they are using to justify his murder, THEY are called gods [Elohim] and if that is a crime, then they should be killing themselves for it is THEY who are seating themselves on the Judgement seat belonging to God and determining whos life is worth retaining and whos is worth ending....
while pointing out that he only said he was God's son....
now if Jesus really were God, why not simply say it? why say all this and come off like he was saving his ass from death as a coward?
i have asked this to witnesses and they say it's their spirit, which is their life forces that goes up to heaven... that makes no sense to me.
because isn't the spirit, in effect, taking on the properties we normally consider the soul as having?
so what's the difference what you call it?
this is one that got to me before I left JWs... there is a hidden assumption in the mind of most JWs, that despite what the JWs claim to believe, namely that all of them dies and only a memory exists which can be remade into them, they also believe in some thing about them which persists and will make the COPY of them, into THEM.... metaphysically they hide this from themselves and tell you no such thing exists, but pragmatically its there.
consider the hole in logic... God knows us down to the quantum level, he remembers every bit, he can re-make us after we die...he could also remake us right this second, right next to us...but that would give away the game...since you KNOW that you would NOT be the guy next to you who seems for all others to be you.... so what makes him you later, after you are dead? not a thing... he still is nothing more than a doppleganger, a copy.... but you cannot get people to sacrifice their current lives on the promise that a copy of them will be allowed to populate paradise now can you?
making this double out of spirit is great trick...after all no one knows what spirit is anyway, simple mind game.
but God can do anything JWs will say...but that flies in the face of the criticisms they have for all other religions whos non-sensical beliefs are so easily ridiculed.
