depends on how you define GOD....
if you say that a single conscious entity is all of reality as I believe, then GOD = fact as we are all proof that the whole of reality contains consciousness and is all there is.... Spinoza's God, Einstein's God, reality as GOD = pantheism.
I believe that we are the multiple personality disorder that resulted when God tried to commit suicide, which of course is the one thing that God cannot do (^_^) and so drove him nuts :))
even if all else looks bad, due to the fact that jw's preach the goodnews of the kingdom in harmony with matt 28, doesn't this make them the true religion since technically no other religion can make this claim?
I dont find any way to KNOW what THE TRUTH is...I only seem able to notice what SEEMS true for me now.
and I find people like JWs and most others trying to make me take a stand and LIE to them and myself and pretend to KNOW what I Only believe.
I find most people seem to be unable to seperate experiences from beliefs about them....
seems to me that all experiences are facts, but beliefs about them is where errors can creep in.... yet when I say this, most people ask me about the possiblity of the experience being false.... I try to explain to them the experience can never be false... but the belief about what they are and mean can be false.
many here have been reproved or disfellowshiped for asking questions about the bible and the jw interpretation of it.. after encouraging the asking of questions, one of the newest wt publications states: "others worry that asking questions could lead to shame or embarrassment.
and some decide that such questions are best left to religious leaders and teachers.
that quote is found in the first chapter of the new publication that all congregations will begin studying each week at their congregation book study.
while still a JW my moms words rang in my head--- what is good for the goose is good for the gander....
and told an elder, that we encourage others to question their faith, but we are not permitted to question ours?
he nearly turned white..... YOU ARE SKATING ON THIN ICE he angrily glared at me....
you KNOW you have THE TRUTH he said...
I said, NO, I BELIEVE I have the truth, I dont KNOW it....
I think I nearly gave him a stroke, he was turning shades of angry red.
ok, its happened again!
but not to me this time, my 12 year old son.. last night he fell asleep on the couch, so i left him there and went to bed.
he wolk up about 3 am, and walked upstairs to his bedroom.
Now I know he was awake, cause he walked upstairs, so he couldnt have been dreaming.
this is a common misunderstanding about the world we know.
we are always taking in data and making our own experienced world from it.... we are always dreaming
http://www.rzim.org/publications/jttran.php?seqid=52 .
"what cannot be doubted is that many new testament critics have approached the gospels with an utterly unjustified skepticism--a skepticism that wouldn't be considered justified in any other branch of ancient history.
new testament scholar r. t. france declares that "at the level of their literary and historical character we have good reason to treat the gospels as a source of information on the life and teachings of jesus, and thus on the historical origins of christianity.
from all I have read, both from believers skeptics, psychologists and others...the following seems to be what may have happened:
Paul, a pharisee but a sell out [as he was working for the high priest, a saducess] was tracking down the followers of THE WAY, who seem to be the dead sea scroll cult who preached a TEACHER OF RIGHTEOUSNESS [too bad 100 years older than Jesus], and the coming war of the children of light and darkness.... while in the desert he hallucinated a risen messiah who became the focus of his life after that point, as no one back then knew what an hallucination was and if he were a pagan he would surely have made a religion to whatever "god" had appeared to him...etc.
there was no fraud nor deception when he preached this new view that had litterally knocked him off his ass, so his being CON vi N c ED was very inspiring to those who wanted to be CON vi N c ED themselves. people tend to admire CON fident MEN and follow them because the want be CONfident themselves.... JWs Mormons Baptists, Muslims and others are perfect examples of people who are CON vi N c ED about their beliefs yet not one of them has see the source of their faith, only words have they accepted, yet that is enough for most of them to kill or die in the sure and certain knowledge of their CONvictions....
just like JWs have rumors and stories about marvelous and demonic occurances, peoples of the past no doubt had their own smurf stories. myth making is what the human mind does all the time and the more bizzarre a story the more emotions it can bring and the deeper the memory stains it makes and so it goes.
both the catholic and jehovah's witness anthropomorphisize yhwh, but in reality the word should be pronounced as yawa - or ya'wa'.. in ancient sanskrit, a short "a" is the default vowel.
this is not limited to sanskrit but is a universal and generic default vowel and the most common vowel sound in most languages.
the "h" simply means that the short vowel "a" is forcefully aspirated.
no its AM WAY
I remember Am Way's Way's witnesses
i am so hooked on this show!!
when i work til 8 i try to get out early!!
last nites show was great!
does anyone else get the feeling that they all really died on the flight crash?
in the old testament god revealed himself to his chosen people, the israelites as i am:.
ex 3:14-15 - god replied to moses, i am who i am.
this is what you are to say to the israelites: i am .
I find the attitude of Zen Ndist, to be hypocritical. He or she would be the first to complain of attempts at proselytizing by Christians, yet he seems to have no qualms about proselytizing for a secular humanistic gospel. Did you exchange the zealotry of the WT$ for the zealotry of secular humanism?Just curious. I do expect to be pilloried for making this observation, as I have found in my journey away from the Borg, that the most antagonistic and venomous proselytizers in public are the secular humanists.
since when is honesty and accuracy related to secular humanism? why would you make such a conclusion?
if anything I am an agnostic who is BARELY Zen (^_^) and I dont pretend to KNOW anything beyond my experiences and beliefs about them... I am entitled to my opinions and will back them up with the evidence I have and dont mind at all being shown wrong.
... that i've noticed, generated by wbts, include that:.
- everybody's living room has a view to the distant snow-capped mountains, uninhibited by the neighbour's ugly tudor that he knocked together at least forty five millennia ago and wouldn't you think he'd have painted the gables by now?.
- they all visit their friends walking over the unfenced meadows carrying baskets of fruit.
seems to me the greatest challenge for immortal beings is boredom.
in the old testament god revealed himself to his chosen people, the israelites as i am:.
ex 3:14-15 - god replied to moses, i am who i am.
this is what you are to say to the israelites: i am .
the first character we meet in line one as Elohim and his attributes are given as maker of heaven and earth. [and while plural, this need mean nothing special as Dagon is Elohim as is Asheroth] this one is revealed to us as El Shaddai, Jehovah [YHWH]Judges 16:23 Then the lords of the Philistines gathered them together for to offer a great sacrifice unto Dagon their god, and to rejoice: for they said, Our god hath delivered Samson our enemy into our hand. The Bible does NOT say the false gods of Philistines was the Creator. Genesis 14:5 And in the fourteenth year came Chedorlaomer, and the kings that were with him, and smote the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim, and the Zuzims in Ham, and the Emims in Shaveh Kiriathaim,?????????????????????????????????????? You can believe whatever but that's not in the Bible
typical trinitarian selective focus and selective narrow view.... you dont have the slightest idea what I was saying nor why, but you go off on totally irrelevant things first Dagon and Asheroth [female goddess, wife of YHWH according to some jewish myths] not Ashteroth, were both called ELOHIM just like YHWH was...and my point was that the hebrew word ELOHIM need not mean more than one person as some idiot trintiarians try to imply. your mental delusion gets you stuck on what is not important so you can selectively ignore what is important....
