Terry

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Posts by Terry

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  12

  A very short short story

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i wanted to see how short i could make a story and it still would be effective.

  you be the judge.

  did i succeed?.

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  Terry

  Ha! Thank you. A writer learns nothing from praise--only from the reader.

  I appreciate the feedback. I do.
• 
  66

  What's the point?

  by punkofnice in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i mean, i don't want to be miserable or anything, but what's the bloody point of it all?.

  since i left the watchtower cult, i have come to realise that god cannot possibly exist...and if a god exists...god is indifferent to humankind as the least.. in 100 years time i'll be gone.

  kaput.

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• 

  Terry

  If I do anything good for the benefit of those that come after me, they'll die too. Eventually, I see the human race as becoming extinct one way or another.

  Since leaving the watchtower (and I'll never go back), I am living hand to mouth, day to day with nothing to hope for.

  ______________

  Why wash your hands? They'll just get dirty again.

  Why brush your teeth? You'll just get old and die.

  This is despair talking--not a healthy intelligent human being born in the age of technology.

  Despair is a natural result of sudden self-awareness; especially when you've been spoon fed myths about somebody who loves you being in charge of the Universe.

  Now, He is not there.

  Oops!

  Mourn the loss, certainly. After a good sniffle and a few curses, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and take inventory.

  1. You have eyes. So use them to look at beautiful things. Why? It feels wonderful. Look at beautiful women. (Naked ones if you like :)

  2. You have ears. So use them to listen to beautiful music or to hear the song of leaves rustling on a summers day and the whisper and sigh as it flows through the grasses on its way toward a poet's heart.

  3. You have a sense of touch. Grab something wonderful and hold on to it; perhaps a lover's flesh and rejoice in the sensations of being alive! Feel the tickle of a beloved pet's tongue as it kisses you or the gentle weight of a butterfly on your fingertip.

  4. You have a sense of smell. Learn to cook--sniff the fresh-baked bread, walk through fields of flowers and lift your heart with the delight of honeysuckle and lilac. Visit the ocean and sniff the brine as you long for the faraway shores of distant and mysterious land you can visit.

  5. You have a sense of taste for succulence and spices and sweet chocolates and lemonade and---well, you get the idea. Take a wine-tasting class. Learn something.

  You see, this is YOUR LIFE. You can build it into a palace or squat in it like it's a horrid hovel of cardboard. It is up to you.

  You can learn and you can teach. Be a mentor or a musician or an artist or just a helluva fun fellow who makes other people see the exciting possibilities in life.

  It is all up to you. This Life is no longer SOMEBODY ELSE'S game with you as a mere token moved about against your will.
  Your brain builds your sense of things.

  Will you waste it on cynical bitterness?

  Or will you pull your shit together and laugh out loud that your prison wardens screwed the pooch and let you out where you can live and love and laugh as you please?

  IT IS so SIMPLE: One step follows another.

  Take it slow. Be confident you'll find your way.

  Good luck!
• 
  98

  OKAY, GAME OVER! The number one reason the New Testament amounts to bunk

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  for me, the dead giveaway is this.

  jesus wrote nothing.. stop and think about that.. if jesus were the authentic messiah, his ministry would not simply be local.. his instructions, his mission, the details of his teachings would be too precious to risk leaving it in the hands of "men unlettered (illiterate) and ordinary (blue-collar yokels).".

  jesus, were he the one and only hope of mankind, would be absolutely certain to write down with great simplicity and specificity the exact owner's manual necessary to rescue mankind.. never happened!.

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  Terry

  island Manan hour ago

  What are you talking about, Jesus did leave writings - they just weren't included in the heavily cherry-picked NT cannon. Do you seriously believe that there aren't any actual books purportedly written by Christ?
  ____________________________________
  
  

  I see no reason to speculate upon the existence of further books when the ones we have are problematic already.

  I take the same position on books written by Jesus as I do on UFO Alien kidnapping. I need more than conjecture.

  Jesus was probably illiterate in all likelihood.
  __________________________________________

  http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/08/01/was-jesus-illiterate-author-reza-aslan-thinks-so/
  ________________________________________
  
  

  Was Jesus Illiterate? Author Reza Aslan Thinks So

  "Author Reza Aslan believes that Jesus probably lacked the education to read a book like the Bible. Or the Torah, or any other written text for that matter, no matter the language.

  Aslan’s new book “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” is a revisionist take on the life of Jesus, arguing that his message of love was aimed more at a Jewish audience than a global one, that his attitude toward violence was “far more complex” than is generally thought, and that he was “very likely” illiterate.

  All of these claims appear to be directly contradicted by passages in the New Testament, but Aslan argues those lines are mistaken, misinterpreted, or deliberately misleading.

  Aslan, the author of the bestselling book “No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam,” was born in Iran and grew up a Muslim before converting to Christianity and then returning to Islam. His background has prompted some critics to focus on Aslan’s personal history instead of directly grappling with the historical and theological points raised in his work.

  “Zealot” has landed with a splash, sparking debates on television, and rocketing up the book charts. Speakeasy talked with Aslan about some of the claims in his book. Here’s one excerpt from that longer interview.

  You’ve said that you were obsessed with Jesus. Why?

  Reza Aslan: I converted to evangelical Christianity. I began preaching the gospel to everyone I met. I was told [Jesus] was fully God and fully man. Well I became more interested in the man part. The illiterate, uneducated, poor peasant from the backwoods of Galilee, who in the name of the poor and the dispossessed and the outcast, took on the religious and political powers of his time and became far more real and far more accessible to me than the Christ of the evangelical church was. And so although I left Christianity, ironically, I became more interested and more devoted to finding out who Jesus really was.

  In the book you say that Jesus was “very likely” illiterate, and there’s “no reason to think” he could read or write. But a lot of Biblical scholars disagree. In Luke 4:16, we see Jesus reading. [“And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read.”] So where do you get that from, saying Jesus is illiterate when in the Bible he is seen reading?

  Well, first of all, it may sound shocking to some people, but just because the gospels say something doesn’t mean it’s actually factual. The Gospel of Luke was written 60-70 years after Jesus had died, when Christianity was quintessentially a Roman religion and no longer a Jewish religion and the gospel writers were very interested in making Jesus someone who would appeal to a non-Jewish audience. But the facts of history speak for themselves. And I would say the vast majority of Biblical scholars would agree that the illiteracy rates in Jesus’s world were somewhere around 98 percent. 98 percent of Jesus’s fellow Jews could neither read nor write. The notion that a tekton, as Jesus is referred to in the Bible, a woodworker, which would make him the second-lowest rung on the social ladder in his time just above the slave and the indigent and the beggar, the notion that he would have had any sort of formal education, let alone the kind of education necessary to debate theological points with the scribes and the Pharisees, is difficult to reconcile with what we know of the history of the time.

  But examining the broad sweep of historical trends of a particular time doesn’t necessarily tell you anything about an individual person.

  It tells you everything about an individual.

  It doesn’t necessarily tell you anything about an individual person. More than 99.999 percent of human beings can’t run as fast as Usain Bolt. You might conclude, given those trends, we couldn’t have a Usain Bolt. And yet we do.

  What you are asking me is, is it conceivable that as a poor peasant from the backwoods of Galilee, who grew up a woodworker, a day laborer really, an artisan, in a village that was so small and so poor that it didn’t have any roads, or bathhouses or synagogues, and its name did not appear on any maps, could he have nevertheless been so well educated that he could not only read and write but debate the scriptures, is that possible? Sure. But is it likely? No. It’s the job of the historian to talk about what is most likely."

  
  
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  98

  OKAY, GAME OVER! The number one reason the New Testament amounts to bunk

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  for me, the dead giveaway is this.

  jesus wrote nothing.. stop and think about that.. if jesus were the authentic messiah, his ministry would not simply be local.. his instructions, his mission, the details of his teachings would be too precious to risk leaving it in the hands of "men unlettered (illiterate) and ordinary (blue-collar yokels).".

  jesus, were he the one and only hope of mankind, would be absolutely certain to write down with great simplicity and specificity the exact owner's manual necessary to rescue mankind.. never happened!.

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  Terry

  ttdtt3 hours ago

  How about that Slavery is never condemned by jesus or any of his "disciples" nor are women talked about as being equal to men.

  I wonder if a few words from the son of god on those issues may have had any impact on the future suffering of billions of people?

  __________________

  If Jesus had carefully written about GERMS and BACTERIA in such a (divine) way any person could understand it---think how many lives would have been saved through personal hygiene--how many children would not have died.

  After all Folks, Jesus built this old house and knew ever nail and timber, right? :)

  Slavery and women's rights and a host of practical social remedies never would enter the head of an itinerant Jew would-be Messiah UNLESS that man really came from heaven and possessed the secrets of the Universe.

  Nope. Not buying it. Sorry.
• 
  98

  OKAY, GAME OVER! The number one reason the New Testament amounts to bunk

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  for me, the dead giveaway is this.

  jesus wrote nothing.. stop and think about that.. if jesus were the authentic messiah, his ministry would not simply be local.. his instructions, his mission, the details of his teachings would be too precious to risk leaving it in the hands of "men unlettered (illiterate) and ordinary (blue-collar yokels).".

  jesus, were he the one and only hope of mankind, would be absolutely certain to write down with great simplicity and specificity the exact owner's manual necessary to rescue mankind.. never happened!.

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  Terry

  I agree entirely with your conclusions, but a trifle heavy on "would's"

  
  

  Like Hansel and Gretel, sometimes I too get lost in the "would's" :)
• 
  98

  OKAY, GAME OVER! The number one reason the New Testament amounts to bunk

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  for me, the dead giveaway is this.

  jesus wrote nothing.. stop and think about that.. if jesus were the authentic messiah, his ministry would not simply be local.. his instructions, his mission, the details of his teachings would be too precious to risk leaving it in the hands of "men unlettered (illiterate) and ordinary (blue-collar yokels).".

  jesus, were he the one and only hope of mankind, would be absolutely certain to write down with great simplicity and specificity the exact owner's manual necessary to rescue mankind.. never happened!.

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• 

  Terry

  if Jesus wrote the book of Jesus people would complain of circular logic as if it was important only because it said so itself. Instead, there were three separate accounts.

  
  

  _____________

  As Bart Ehrman once remarked, if we look at the 3 separate accounts of Jesus as witnesses testifying in a trial, and then compare (side by side) each and every detail, we don't find corroboration so much as we find irreconcilable variation. This is explicable as wear and tear on oral transmission, but it makes discovery of any "true" account painfully troubling and problematic unnecessarily.

  However, is the object to pass a bucket of water from generation to generation with a drop or two remaining? Should we flash a grin full of "gosh" and be happy we have anything at all? Or have we a right to demand the King of Heaven be a little bit more scrupulous in planning and carrying out of a task so easily accomplished by having the Son of God Himself do the writing?
• 
  98

  OKAY, GAME OVER! The number one reason the New Testament amounts to bunk

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  for me, the dead giveaway is this.

  jesus wrote nothing.. stop and think about that.. if jesus were the authentic messiah, his ministry would not simply be local.. his instructions, his mission, the details of his teachings would be too precious to risk leaving it in the hands of "men unlettered (illiterate) and ordinary (blue-collar yokels).".

  jesus, were he the one and only hope of mankind, would be absolutely certain to write down with great simplicity and specificity the exact owner's manual necessary to rescue mankind.. never happened!.

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• 

  Terry

  The barrier to objectivity in looking at all-thing-Bible is the fact that we have been steeping in total acceptance by family and peers and society all of our lives.

  The Bible, at least in the West, is a "given." It isn't up for grabs. Only deplorable, lost people would dream of being skeptical.

  So, where is the incentive to pull the rug out from under ourselves?

  There isn't one.
  And then one day. . .

  you suddenly find yourself standing in just the right spot to where the sun hits the dark side of the moon. . .
  Once you gain an objective vantage point you CAN QUESTION the validity of Bible lore and it all quickly falls apart.
• 
  98

  OKAY, GAME OVER! The number one reason the New Testament amounts to bunk

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  for me, the dead giveaway is this.

  jesus wrote nothing.. stop and think about that.. if jesus were the authentic messiah, his ministry would not simply be local.. his instructions, his mission, the details of his teachings would be too precious to risk leaving it in the hands of "men unlettered (illiterate) and ordinary (blue-collar yokels).".

  jesus, were he the one and only hope of mankind, would be absolutely certain to write down with great simplicity and specificity the exact owner's manual necessary to rescue mankind.. never happened!.

  1. 
  2. 
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• 

  Terry

  For me, the dead giveaway is this. Jesus wrote nothing.

  Stop and think about that.

  If Jesus were the authentic messiah, his ministry would not simply be local.

  His instructions, his mission, the details of his teachings would be too precious to risk leaving it in the hands of "men unlettered (illiterate) and ordinary (blue-collar yokels)."

  Jesus, were he the one and only hope of mankind, would be absolutely certain to write down with great simplicity and specificity the exact Owner's Manual necessary to rescue mankind.

  NEVER HAPPENED!

  Jesus was not the Great Physician who confided the lifesaving prescription to knuckleheads and sailed off heavenward while the rest of us end up swallowing placebo pills and slow poison.

  For me, this drives a stake in the heart of the New Testament.

  Salvation is so mishandled, inept and loosey-goosey, it can't be taken for fact.

  Sorry folks. Game Over.

  Almighty God would be an idiot to jeopardize the rescue of humanity.

  ______________

  "But Terry," I can hear somebody shouting from the back of the room, "God was testing our faith."

  Oh Ple-e-e-ease!

  Stop and think. Why does anybody TEST anything?

  Isn't it because there is ignorance of outcome which must be satisfied by running tests for the purposes of discovery? YES, of course it is.

  Is God ignorant?

  Let us not make excuses.

  Jesus did not write anything. His method was entrusted to the LEAST RELIABLE of all methods of data transmission: oral tradition.

  Like I said before: Game Over.

  
  
• 
  12

  A very short short story

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i wanted to see how short i could make a story and it still would be effective.

  you be the judge.

  did i succeed?.

  1. 
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• 

  Terry

  Vidiot--that is THE classic example of an effective short story without doubt.
  
  This May 16, 1910 article from The Spokane Press recounts an earlier advertisement which struck the author as particularly tragic.
  

  
  
• 
  2

  2-LEGGED GOD and 1-LEGGED MAN: A look at Divine Justice

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  1. god is perfect and righteous and just.. 2. god demands perfection, righteousness and justice.. 3. god creates man inferior to himself yet demands performance at his superior level.. .

  what is wrong with this picture?.

  isn't this like creating a man with one leg and demanding he doesn't hop?.

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  Terry

  __________________________________

  1. God is perfect and righteous and just.

  2. God demands perfection, righteousness and justice.

  3. God creates man inferior to himself yet demands performance at His superior level.

  
  

  What is wrong with this picture?

  Isn't this like creating a man with one leg and demanding he doesn't hop?
  
  

  For thousands of years, humans try not to hop but can't help but do so. They all die.
  
  4. God makes a Legal provision: each time you hop on one leg you pay a fine. You still die, but because you paid the fine, God forgives you.

  5. God appoints Priests to accept the fines paid by the Nation of Israel's hoppers.

  6. Everybody still hops with or without the law and the fines.

  
  

  What's wrong with this picture?

  All that hopping is due to having been created one-legged in a world which requires a minimum of 2 legs!
  
  Paying or not paying a fine for hopping doesn't address the core problem of one-leggedness.

  
  

  7. God decides he's had enough! He sends his 2 legged son into the world to show everybody how it's done, but this annoys the hell out of the one-legged Priests.

  8. Jesus teaches everybody to be as nice as a 2-legged Jesus, but he's executed for having more legs than the Emperor.

  9. God, his dad, brings him back to life. Jesus tells his best buddies he'll come back and get them real soon and they'll all live 2-legged in heaven, but in the meantime, they should tell others about how great it is to live like 2-legged people. If they just say aloud the magic words: "2-LEGGED JESUS," God will love them and ignore from now on all that 1-leggedness.

  
  

  What's wrong with this picture?

  Jesus did NOT return and take his buddies with him to heaven. 2,000+ years pass and 1-legged folks who say the magic words, "2-legged Jesus" consider themselves as forgiven for their 1-leggedness for the simple reason: God sees them as though they are 2-legged.
  God loves them!
  How does this make any sense?
  
  All the above problems would have been solved before they began if God had simply not created inferior humans with 1-leg and demanded they act as though they had 2-legs.

  
  

  ________

  Epilogue

  God's nature is above man's only because God created man inferior.

  That's the REAL problem!