Posts by zen nudist

11

How can an 'impersonal force' feel hurt?? (Isa 63: 10 NWT)

by Tyre in

but they themselves rebelled and made his holy spirit feel hurt.

he now was changed into an enemy of theirs; he himself warred against them.

*how can an 'impersonal force' feel hurt??

zen nudist

how can an all knowing god feel hurt?

if there is an all knowing god, that god cannot possibly feel what humans feel in our ignorance of reality by our comparison to false expectations.

the bible god is far too human, far to ignorant.

83

You are EX-JWs because you want to live an immoral life!

by Sirona in

jw
friends

many jehovah's witnesses believe what they've been told about ex-witnesses.

they say that exjws simply want to live an immoral life.

they say that exjws cannot live up to "jehovah's standards".

zen nudist

immorality was not the reason I left....

and now immorality is basically arbitrary....

the bible's high moral principles seems to include, but are not limited to:

warcrimes [numbers 31]

mass murder [exodus 12]

child murder [deut 21]

sacrificing ones daughters to save male strangers [see Lot in Sodom]

having sex with females as long as they are not married and you can pay their father the brides price for damage to their virginity.

14

Twisted Childhood

by new light in

this is one of the saddest pictures i've seen.

Spirit-Directed Organization

by UnDisfellowshipped in

this is what the watchtower society claims (i can post quotes if anyone wants them):

* jehovah does not directly communicate with anyone today.

* jehovah is using the watchtower society and the faithful and discreet slave class as his only "channel of communication".

zen nudist

spirit has two alternative meanings which seem very relevant....

alcohol, which explains way to much.

and Spirit from Latin for Breath, or hot air, or Bull $#!+.

which could also explain way too much.

10

Harvest Siftings - The Judge's takeover

by RR in

back in 1917, judge rutherford published a paper called "harvest siftings" as a defense of his actions, in taking over the presidency of thee society and ousting the fourdirectors.

the four directors as well as others made a reply to that paper,all in all therewere about a dozen or so of these papers floating around.

here is an excerpt of wwhat the four ousted directorss claimed rutherford did:

zen nudist

history does not really repeat itself, but it seems to rhyme a lot --mark twain.

29

Spirit-Directed Organization

by UnDisfellowshipped in

this is what the watchtower society claims (i can post quotes if anyone wants them):

* jehovah does not directly communicate with anyone today.

* jehovah is using the watchtower society and the faithful and discreet slave class as his only "channel of communication".

zen nudist

Reasonable ifs either defend themselves, or nobody is interested in defending them, because the assumption is that they are a matter of faith and so it's up to you to decide if they have any consequences for yourself.

I found the best defense to be honest ignorance... if's that cannot be verified one way or the other need not lock one in if one just remains honest and accepts that the current real answer is I don't know.... and neither do you!

IF there really is a god who does not respect honesty.... well, to hell with him as such a god is not worthy of anything but contempt.

29

Spirit-Directed Organization

by UnDisfellowshipped in

this is what the watchtower society claims (i can post quotes if anyone wants them):

* jehovah does not directly communicate with anyone today.

* jehovah is using the watchtower society and the faithful and discreet slave class as his only "channel of communication".

zen nudist

But usually even their fundamentalist faith is not purely cynical. Such people fool themselves for different reasons. Sometimes they're dumb, sometimes they are very intelligent but benefit from living their big relligious lie emotionally, and sometimes they're slightly insane.

Which category did you fall under?

***************

I was under the delusional belief that there was something called THE TRUTH and that one could find it... and the IF THEN logic of JWs seemed to provide the answers I was looking for....as long as I did not think to hard...which of course I did and is part of the reason I am now out.... their IF THENs had flaws and I could see all too many times that THEY were defining the IFs as IF there was only THEIR view of it and no other possibilities...as many others do as well... they had no desire to explore other possibilities, they present their IFs with an absoluteness they never justified.

more than that, they wanted me to say I KNEW I had found THE TRUTH...and I told one elder point blank...well, I believe [at that time] that I have found the truth, but I don't KNOW it... but he was not happy with that and tried to press me more.

29

Spirit-Directed Organization

by UnDisfellowshipped in

this is what the watchtower society claims (i can post quotes if anyone wants them):

* jehovah does not directly communicate with anyone today.

* jehovah is using the watchtower society and the faithful and discreet slave class as his only "channel of communication".

zen nudist

its a great scam...

We are NOT inspired-- we can make mistakes.

we are spirit lead -- you had better blindly follow what we say.

here is the interesting twist... if they are not inspired, they only got the idea that they were the only ones from their assumptions about what the bible says... and since they admit they could be wrong, they should be honest enough to admit it in this case as well...

there Claims are based on one ASSumption after another

If there really is a god and the bible really is his word, and the bible really indicates that only one organization at a time has ever been the one that this god has used......etc. once they define all the IFs they then go back and show that THEY are the ONLY ones who fit all thoses IF, which they conveniently, and of course unbiasedly, just gathered for you.

Like many they cross the line from HONEST belief and faith to DISHONEST pretendings to knowledge.... too many people of all religions and faiths fall into this very same trap. NO matter how much you believe or have faith, such strength of CONviction does not turn such beliefs or faiths into FACTS.

to pretend that faith is fact is to lie....and liars have their portion in the lake of fire according to their beliefs...so take heed (^_^)

117

Was Jesus the first creation of God ?

by enquirer in

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?

zen nudist

which "physical" are we talking about? the perceptions we "seem" to be sharing? [data?] or something you believe to exist as the foundation of those perceptions [symbols in your mind]?... for which you have nothing more than belief or faith as to their existance, or am I mistaken and you have found a way to get outside your mind and see the source of data by some other means?

the universe may be made of objects which are the source of our perceptions of them.

the universe may be made of minds made of something completely unknown and unknowable by us --sharing data which originates in those minds.

in either case the ONLY universe we know is the one we perceive... so you can have faith in the "physical" model if you like, but I would point out that quantum physics has made that model a bit more complicated by saying that matter and energy is different depending on the test the observer uses to detect it...sometimes appearing as a wave and sometimes as a particle, and often times making no "classical" sense what so ever. [that is the idea of objective things does not make sense of the results of all tests].

some physicists reject the notion that the observer plays a key role in the things observered...but have not been able to demonstrate another solution. Einstein, btw, hated this aspect of quantum physics and fought it with the remainder of his life-- if I am not mistaken, he was quoted to have said, if I had known it would turn out this way, I would have been a plumber....

his famous quote-- "God does not play dice with the universe" was a rejection of quantum physical rules which demonstrated the possibility of true randomness having a place in the universe... he held out hope that some hidden determinism might be found... which some string theorists claim they have discovered... assuming a universe of more than nine dimensions.

117

Was Jesus the first creation of God ?

by enquirer in

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?

zen nudist

Ah, I disagree with this.
Is the physical really not "real"?

in a dream I had right after my second past life regression session, I found myself inbetween lives in a world that was made to ease the transition... I asked someone there who seemed to be in charge... why it was I could still remember "this world" while I was in "the inbetween world" but I could not remember the "in between world" while in "this world"

while most of what he said vanished, everything was crystal clear before and after his explanation [not meant for this world yet], his last words were... P T Barnum... which triggered in my mind "there's a sucker born every minute", to which I replied--- "yes, but this world [the inbetween one] is ALSO a MENTAL creation, right?" He walked over to a window over looking a city I had not know in this world, and tapped on the frame and said: "It's as real as real gets" to which I protested, "but it is still in the mind, right? he did not answer...but another who seemed to be in charge looked at an object in the room and that object of its own accord lept into the air... demonstrating to me that I was correct, mind was the place where this was happening....

A year later, I was in Kansas City on business for three week...without much to do at night, I read a book on out of body experiences and it had a section for experimenting... I tried for two solid weeks without results but then I got this sudden urge to snap my fingers on my right hand....and after doing so I noticed something remarkable... there was my right hand, elevated off the bed in the position just after snapping my finger...there was also my "other" right hand lying on the bed next to me where it had been during the meditation excersize....I felt both at the same time, they both felt like MY right arm and hand, I could not tell which was the "real" one...and then the excitement snapped them back together and I got up... I did not acheive out of body, but I did know with certainty now that those who had were not lying about the experience, because it does seem quite real...but I realized something more important....

I had struggled since my past life regression to try to make sense of something that seems impossible... how could it be that a mind could be seperated from its body? there seemed to many things that made them two sides of the same coin...to lose one seemed to be the end of the other and vice versa...but this experience showed me something that clicked with my prior years dream.... as real as real gets... is not real at all...it just SEEMS real.

the body I know, is not my REAL body, but an image within my mind, it is NOT real and my apparent seperation from my body was no such thing, it was another body IMAGE being formed with the first one...BOTH were still within my mind. when a person acheives full out of body, they are actually acheiving the creation of a new body icon or symbol with a different point of view within their own mind...they are able to see the contents of their mind from the point of view what seems to be someone outside their body.

everything we KNOW is actually activity in a mapping that our mind makes... when we sleep that activation of parts of this very same map compared to no activity areas is perceived as real... when awake the apparent sensory activated portions of the map make the "thought" portions seems unreal BY COMPARISON....but if you meditate or take hallucinagenic drugs, you alter the levels of the map activations and you confuse the thought with the "presumed real" and even may think the thought is the real and the real is the thought.

but in all cases it is just mental images and symbols we KNOW, dreams...none of them ARE real, but may [note carefully] represent reality... but may not.

if all of us...all the minds that exist...all the waves upon the one ocean... are sharing a common STORY, a shared hallucination, there would be no way to tell it from anything we think of as reality...because what is it that we think of as real anyway? the most obvious factors are consistancy, and the ability to share it with others.... but these factors ASSUME that others exist in the first place and that consistancy might not be acheiveable by another means such as simply a constant story being told to us on a sub-conscious level...hypnosis.

I put it to you that the flesh is nothing because the flesh is just mental invention, not reality...spirit, not substance...thought perhaps nothing more...after all who do you KNOW who can go outside his own perceptions, his own mind and see its true source?

the movies like THE MATRIX and THE 13TH FLOOR are based on this notion that reality as we perceive it is not from the "real" world, but another hidden source.... much of religious mysticism is based on the notion that another more real world exists and is hidden from us.