Posts by zen nudist

65

Questions

by 2evil in

jw
friends

ok, this is my first post.

i'm 30 years old.

raised in "the truth" my whole life.

zen nudist

JWs among others are masters as false questions and binary logic....

the belief that every question is either yes or no can lead a merry chase.

do you beat your wife often? yes or no? just answer the question..... some questions cannot be yes or no, but that does not stop many from posing them....

JWs posit two possiblities for many things...either there is a god or there isn't... they never can show you which is which, but they realise that enough will side with yes for them to proceed.... this god is either loving or not... again, no answer given by any evidences other than more yes or no type questions... after a while you are so entangled in their web of affirmatives that you barely realize that they have not provided a single proof for anything they have proported to demonstrate.... you find it difficult to doubt many things because they set it up that you had to answer yes to most of the questions they invented... but that is the key, they invented the questions and now you are playing by THEIR rules and the house always has the advantage.

if the premise is false the whole ball of wax is built on sand.... what is good and evil? every single one of us has an idea of what is good for us and evil for us based purely on pain and pleasure...but somehow we dont notice that slowly and surely religion turns this upside down and makes us feel guilt for anything pleasant unless its done strictly by their rules....

is there a god? have you met one? or have you merely attributed some odd and perhaps unexplainable occurances to a god someone told you about? is there a need for a god? can the argument that design requires a designer work when the designer who is supposed to be so much more complex does not need one?.. self contradictions do not bother believers much... faith is believing in what defies reason and experiences...because you trust the source... but who is the source? can you trust Moses, a war criminal who had defenseless women and children murdered because he feared his own people's weakness [numbers 31]. or can you trust Paul who admits the only Jesus he met was a vision on a desert road?

as for Jesus, did he even exist? www.jesusneverexisted.com shows that unbelievers make a pretty strong case that he was just a reworked myth and why were we not ever told these things?

it seems that everyone around us believes Jesus existed, but only because everyone around them basically believes Jesus existed... there is hardly anything that shows he was more than a character in a book and not one fact that shows he was more.

21

Babylon the Great 2005 theory

by CYRUS THE GREAT 2004 in

september 8

september 19

september 21

zen nudist

the amazing thing is how so many fall for this 7 times deal in the first place.

1st, Daniel explains what the prophecy means and does not even hit at a grander fulfillment

2nd, the babylonians and jews were not stupid enough to think a year had 360 days, they all had corrections to make it work out

3rd. its seems obvious that CT Russell cooked the books because his first date of Jersulem's fall was 606bce because he didnt realize the missing 0 year and he was trying to make the whole thing line up with his 40 years from 1874, when Jesus returned....and his grand pyramid scheme....[the only part of his work that JWs still employ if you catch my drift]

89

CAPITALISM: Do you know what it is? What is your opinion?

by Terry in

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i'll just let the question stand before i spout off.. i hear alot of people speak disparagingly about capitalism.. i'd like to hear your opinion before i give mine.. terry.

zen nudist

The Divine Right Of Capital : Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy

By Marjorie Kelly

To judge by the current arrangement in corporate America, one might suppose capital creates wealth ? which is odd, because a pile of capital sitting there creates nothing. Yet capital-providers (stockholders) lay claim to most wealth corporations generate. Corporations are believed to exist to maximize returns to shareholders. This is the law of the land ? much as the divine right of kings was once the law of the land. In the dominant paradigm of business, it is not in the least controversial. Though it should be.

To justify the allegiance stockholders receive, we?re told they take risk, putting their money on the line so companies can grow. Stockholders are said to provide capital for company use.

Buying stock is no longer about investing in companies but about buying the right to extract from them. This right is justified by saying stockholders "own" corporations. Yet the same justification was used for the monarchy. The king was considered sovereign over the nation because he owned it. With imperialism, India was considered a "possession" of the British Crown. The same was true of America before the Revolution. Since property ownership was linked to sovereignty; the landed class ruled Britain, while Britain ruled America. What Thomas Paine said of this governance arrangement might be said anew about stockholder governance: "There was a time when it was proper, and there is a proper time for it to cease."

The oddity of it all is veiled by the incantation of a single, magical word: ownership. Because we say stockholders own corporations, they are permitted to contribute very little, and take quite a lot.

This wealth concentration is a direct result of the system design. We can change that design, democratizing economic institutions as we once democratized political institutions. This may involve new forms of citizenship in corporate governance, broadened fiduciary duties that reach beyond shareholders, and supplemental financial statements focusing on stakeholder impact rather than stockholder gain.

39

John 10:10

by Dawn in

john 10:10the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; i have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

a friend of mine quoted this and applied it to life "right now" - her application was that jesus meant for people to enjoy life now - not always putting off for the future - but to have joy, peace, etc in this life.

this life is a gift in itself.

zen nudist

Personally I despise the "prosperity gospel" (that states that being a Christian will cause your every whim of prayer to be answered, regarding health, wealth and bodily comfort), but I also believe that some Christians bring undue trouble on themselves by being arrogant, rude, and generally obnoxious.

the hebrew bible has nothing but the prosperity gospel, look around it, there is no hope for heaven or immortality given to anyone in the law of moses, it is strictly if you obey me you will have this that and the other now....if you dont then you will shat upon...

most misery and suffering for westerners at least, arises because they reject the concept that reality is simply what it is and demand it to be what it is not.

25

The end of this system in 2005?

by Brigido in

hey everybody, check this story out.

i got a call from an inactive friend of mine today.

while we were just shooting the breeze, she happened to bring up something she heard at the hall from others.

zen nudist

This whole Generation BS [belief system] is based on a false reading of what Jesus said....

Jesus, in matthew 24 was addressing his own disciples and looking them straight in the temporal eye told THEM that THIS GENERATION will not pass away.... a phrase found 9 other times and in each time Jesus was always contrasting those ALIVE seeing him then and there with those from other ages who did not get the chance to see him.

Jesus told them that ALL these things which were centered around the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem, would happen in THEIR life time....

that it did not is not our fault, but the fact that believers cannot accept that Jesus was not who they wrote him up to be, if he existed he and actually spoke those words he was a false prophet...more likely he never existed at all and was just a mythical being whos mythical pronouncements are still being mythologized as applying to what they likely were never intended to apply to.

86

Proof of Jesus existance

by Jew in

.

to all christians, or others, is there any proof of the promised messiah being jesus of nazareth and if so, how can you be sure if he existed?

.

zen nudist

Yes, and most historians (including non-Christians, Jews, agnostics, etc.) believe that Jesus existed and was crucified. (though they don't all believe in the miracles etc.).

most is not all, and popularity is not a basis for producing facts... a million believers in a lie do not make it a fact.

Numerous, diverse historical evidence supports that Jesus was not a myth.

Numerous diverse historical references show that people heard of the Jesus story, which has absolutely nothing to do with it being based on a real person or a myth, numerous persons in modern times have heard the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and there you have it? real? apparently not. or what about golden plates of the book of mormon, numerous historical references show that people have heard of them...but do you believe they really existed? I dont.

Paul and other ealry Christians taught that Jesus was a real person crucified under Pilate, who lived during the time of and interacted with other historical persons (ie: John the Baptist, Caiphas, etc.).

what do you have beyond written legends, rumors and myths to support this ascersion?

Furthermore Paul believed in a historcal Jesus before his vision (He persectued the already existing Church before his vision). The apostles spent years with Jesus before the resurrection, and there were apostles before Paul.

Paul was persecuting the followers of THE WAY, which may have existed for a hundred or more years prior to this time period and have nothing to do with a real Jesus as the dead sea scrolls show... the teacher of righteousness was a myth already a 100 years old by the time of Paul.. the name Jesus or yah-shua[YAH-DELIVERS/SAVES] is like many fictious names given to story book characters because of their role in the story.

There were apostles and followers of Jesus before Paul (so the idea that Paul was the initaiator of Christianity is false).

as to the 12 apostles, if they were real people why do we have such an odd history where Paul seems to be next to peter, the only real preachers of the gospel, what happened to the other 11 [counting Mathias replacing Judas]... it seems they never really existed in history at all other than vague later church legends of their accomplishments.

bottom line, I was a JW for 10+ years and accepted many of these MYTHS as fact only because I had never been shown there was any alternative views, when I left and started exploring what others like humanists, atheists and agnostics were saying about the bible, I was shocked. I had no idea about the parallels of a dozen older divine born godmen who made disciples and taught the mysteries and then rose from the dead after being brutally murdered... or that buddhist had schools in egypt in the first cent. and a half dozen or so of Jesus parables are nearly word for word translations.

my understanding of what is real and what is not real is not very clear as it is, but it is certainly a lot more believeable to see the Jesus story as another in a long line of merchant trade route myth making, of which the Masons to today seem to be the most accurate and direct descendants...then to believe in the irrational beliefs of christianity having any resemblance to reality.

we all agree Jesus is a character in a story, but unless there is some hard evidence showing he was more, I am quite content to accept that he never existed as more than a fable.

17

People Imitate the God that they Worship--Good vs. Evil

by Undaunted Danny in

[ proverbs 6 .

warnings against folly

12 a scoundrel and villain, .

zen nudist

Yes, it is - that truly is the crime of jwism - it's such a dis-ease - to not even trust your own kind - your own kin.
I used to trust just about everybody (never having been a jw) - always giving the benefit of the doubt - then I met some jws, and, as it was said above, "I have come to the conclusion that evil must exist".
So then I trusted no one bar those in close circles - and no one at all with that neat whiteman look - I've come here to try and wipe some of the dust from my feet.

I think that is way to harsh on JWs. you cannot blame your being naive about human nature on them.... humans, by nature are liars, not because we want to be, but because it is a biological stradegy far older than humanity... deception in nature is everywhere and to a degree it works, its not something you can make JWs the fall guys for pointing it out...only they got it wrong. deception is no indication that evil is real, it is only a stradegy, it is not good nor evil until you compare it to some fantasy ideal which is not real, as they do.

Evil is a judgement of something apparently real compared to something imagined to be superior... but going by humanities track record, trusting imagination over reality is not wise.

24

Is All of the Universe Everywhere

by Satanus in

jw
friends

or, is it reflected in everything?

while waiting for my laundry at the mat, i noticed the reflections in the glasses in all the machine doors.

looking at different ones, i could see different areas of the place reflected.

zen nudist

a light source supposedly produces photons which stream at all objects which then absorb some, reflect some, and re-emit some which then travel to our eyes where they stimulate rods and cones in the back of our eye which then causes electrical impulses to activate a series of chambers within nerve fibers that in turn causes those electrical pulses to spawn others in sequence down the nerve fiber to a synapse where those pulses trigger the release of neuro-transmitter chemicals which flow across a tiny gap to a neuron and when enough of the different sorts of chemistry trigger the neuron, it fires and sends chemicals to other neurons and thus it goes....

and from all this firing something weaves a map of the world and a virtual realm and a symbol of ourself within it-- located where all the info from all the senses tells us we should be....and that is how science says we know anything at all...but their theories are based on certain fundamental assumptions which have not been demonstrated as facts but generally assumed by most anyway...

assumptions:

1. there is an objective reality which roughly corrosponds to our virtual world.

2. other people actually exist independently of each other

3. what two or more people can identify and measure together, exists

4. what only one can notice and not share is likely not real but imaginary.

This thread began with reflections, and the hindus have something I recall as Indra's web made of many mirror like pearls which comprise the real basis of reality as each one of those pearls represents a consciousness reflecting info to other consciousnesses.

around the world, there have always been objections to the 4 assumptions above and many may chalk them up to ignorance superstition, reilgious make believe, but I personally cannot dismiss the possibility that everything I know is nothing more than a dream, perhaps shared by many minds, perhaps made up entirely by my own....the only thing I am relatively sure about is that what I experience is my own minds invention and I cannot verify that it is anything more at this time.

18

Palm reading and what not

by Tim Horton in

jw
friends

first a bit of background about this poster... married, 2kids, 12 year old and 15 month old, wife and i inactive for about 4 years and spotty at meetings at best for various reasons.i've had doubts ever since 95 and the generation thing, and my wife, well she's always had some resentment from the truf being drilled into her when she was growing up.

however i put off deciding what to do about the future of my own spirituality (and my family's) till recently when i got tired of feeling guilty about not following an outline for the only way to be a good person.

also my wifey wanted to know what the hell we were doing so she wouldn't feel like a fence sitter.

zen nudist

the future is a distorted mirror, not a window.

what seems to be ahead of you is only in your mind as a distorted reflection of what is behind you... hopes, dreams, goals, anticipations, fear, etc... you seem to be aiming at something when in fact you are being driven by something.

humans are very poor guessers about the future in particulars, but not bad in gross generalities, and very good at making excuses as to why their predictions failed, mostly blaming anyone and everyone rather than admitting to being ignorant.

we are all sharing the universal poker game, we are all being dealt cards by the true nature of reality as the game progresses... you can notice what seem to be patterns and trends and sometimes your gamble pays off...sometimes it dont... just the way the game plays out.

The paradox about seeking to know the future by psychic means is that no one really wants to KNOW THE FUTURE but instead wants some advance info to ALTER the future in their own favor.

33

Murder is wrong because...

by logansrun in

jw
friends

[your answer here].

bradley.

ps...my english class debated this subject for an hour today without a consensus!

zen nudist

murder is when you kill someone and the government will not protect you from vengence...thus it is a hinderance to your long term goals.