cults tend to have a total explanation for everything- everything that ever happened, everything that is happening now, and everything that ever will happen.
that certainly fits watchtower.
they have a black-and-white perception of everything, they are never wrong, there are no gray areas.
Having learned about dangerous mind control, none of this surprises me.
But the hardest thing to deal with is the pity that JW loved ones have for us who leave the religion.
"Poor OTWO, he let pride get between him and 'the truth' (God)."
"OTWO is mentally diseased. He seems normal but we've been told otherwise."
it is time for christians to accept evolution, in my opinion.. there are many reasons why i think it is long overdue for all christians to finally accept what science says about evolution.
below i will show these reasons.. .
the bible tells people to pay attention to nature to see the glory of god (psalm 19; romans 1:19-20).
I find it ironic that atheists are strongly arguing that the Bible must be interpreted literally, even though it's been interpreted allegorically ever since church father Origen, probably before him even.
Atheists WANT the Bible to be interpreted literally so they can have something to attack.
Atheists do not need a literal Bible to attack. Fine, throw it out. We wish you would. Even throwing out the literalness is a fine start. So where do you draw the line? Was Jesus just a man? Was he born of a virgin like the myth borrowed from false religion? Did he perform actual miracles? Or was that all figurative of a smart guy just like the Buddha? What does the future hold for earth if the Bible is figurative? How do we interpret Revelation, or is that one that doesn't really belong? Why doesn't God just tell us?
Adam and Eve (and also Noah's Flood) can simply be a Parable for mankind falling deeply into the sins of murdering, enslaving, raping, stealing, plus greed and selfishness.
And Jesus came to liberate us and elevate from those evil things.
Then we don't need a redeemer from original sin. The men who wrote the Bible elevated Jesus to a status that doesn't represent what God wants. People really need to lift themselves up to become their own "Jesus" and we can close down all the churches. I assume that you feel that only Christians can avoid falling deeply into the sins of murdering, enslaving, raping, stealing, greed, and selfishness. WHY? And if you don't feel that way, then do all attempted paths of righteousness lead to God?
i think it is reasonable for every leader or head of any organization that has control of peoples thinking and actions should, by law, submit to a lie detector test.
the results would be accessible to any one who had an interest in the matter.this test would be required before appointment to any position and on a yearly basis.
questions could be submitted to a competent and unbiased committee for approval.
Do you wholeheartedly believe that Jehovah dispenses spiritual truth through the Governing Body?
Do you believe Jehovah uses the 2/3rds majority method?
Have you ever had premarital or extramarital sex with anyone?
Is Armageddon really imminent?
richard dawkins has said frequently if we don't agree with religious or spiritual people we need to "insult them!
" tell their their out of their "fucking gourds!
" and make sure you really show them how stupid they are for believing in something they can't prove!".
I don't see any point in arguing over how far we can go in disagreement over belief/nonbelief.
Hey, each one of us is free to go as far as we like. When a Christian mocks the unbelievers, I feel they often think they deserve a pass because it's in the name of God and any retaliatory remarks some of these Christians receive make them cry out "UNFAIR, HATRED!" The unbeliever and the Christian both think they are doing the other a service by "mocking" the other. So those who can't take the criticism should not dish it out.
And come on people. If an educated adult were to seriously believe the Santa Claus story, would we not mock him? Flying reindeer? All the houses around the world in one night? So if a person wants to come off as firm in their belief in some crazy things like the virgin birth or the worldwide flood of a few thousand years ago, they are taking on the burden of being criticized for that. Their opinion demands that they educate themselves about it before insisting upon such a view.
I tend to agree with those that think Dawkins' attitude is a bit extreme, but he makes a living out of that. I am for HIM doing what he does because people can seek him out or avoid him. I will mock extreme beliefs on this forum, but I won't necessarily mock sincere believers in person when they seem to be reasonable people otherwise. That's because I see this as an appropriate place for that.
But I also see times when the believer chooses to pick the fight in person- state their silly claim and insist that arguing with it is hatred or ignorance.
Now, having come from the Jehovah's Witnesses, if I have a conversation with a Christian and they go to church or express their general agreement with the words accredited to Jesus of the Bible, and they are all about love and peace and harmony and they think that their Christianity contributes to such, I see no need to attack or mock them for such thoughts....as long as they don't insist I see it their way or they don't belittle those that don't see it their way.
john hoyle--jws go knocking on strangers doors and try to get inside homes to preach.. wt rep--we are slowly moving away from that kind of preaching work, we do more preaching by using literature carts and personal telephone calls.. .
the above quote is from john hoyle's website:http://insidethewatchtower.com/doctrine/phone-calls-to-bethel-jw-org-email-and-contacts/.
it's interesting, isn't it?
I guess indigenous peoples are screwed then. I mean, how is the life saving message of Jehovah's Witnesses going to make it to the far reaches of the Earth like the Amazon rain forest? I doubt these people have an internet connection
I am sure some miracle will happen. Say, in one region, that an airplane carrying mail crashes with a bunch of non-JW's aboard (people who would die at Armageddon anyway) and inside that mail was some JW literature being sent to a prison in that region. Even if such literature were to cease being printed, it could be printed by someone on their home printer from the website. One of the jungle tribesman, trying to rescue any potential crash survivors, finds this literature and you have yourself a whole new story to tell at a regional convention.
it is time for christians to accept evolution, in my opinion.. there are many reasons why i think it is long overdue for all christians to finally accept what science says about evolution.
below i will show these reasons.. .
the bible tells people to pay attention to nature to see the glory of god (psalm 19; romans 1:19-20).
Science finds that the "prehistoric" world was violent and creatures were eating each other and were many were wiped out of existence. Genesis, even if figurative, gives us a wonderful world where man's disobedience to God led to the chaos we have. You cannot combine the two into one harmony.
The closest you might come is to read "Fill the earth and subdue it." This suggests something wasn't quite right and was out of control and man was to gain control over it. If God elevated one human pair from among all of the humans that science has shown to be present, and put them into a garden of sorts and said, "This is harmony, spread it earthwide, fill the earth, and subdue it," then are we reaping the punishment from that Adam and Eve even if we are the offspring of other humans and not them?
If humans had already been dying, and someone turned away from God at some point in time, say over 6000 years ago, how and why are all humans in need of a redeemer? If all humans fall short of the glory of God and that is defined as the sin, then we have angels falling away and all humans in sin. That means God didn't do so good creating beings. What a bastard.
it is time for christians to accept evolution, in my opinion.. there are many reasons why i think it is long overdue for all christians to finally accept what science says about evolution.
below i will show these reasons.. .
the bible tells people to pay attention to nature to see the glory of god (psalm 19; romans 1:19-20).
#1. The Bible tells people to...
Don't rely on the writings of sheep and goat herders from thousands of years ago when it comes to science. But also don't just assume that you are "defer[ing] to the experts on nature." It seems that there are always people with an agenda, so weigh out what they say and use your brain. Someone will say that the globe is not warming and that the earth is only 6 to 10 thousand years old. Be careful.
#2. There is no contradiction between...
Jonathan Drake covered that well. There is contradiction there.
#3. Christians are commanded by the New Testament...
See my thoughts on #1. Similarly, do not follow blindly. But even if you did, I know that in the United States, the government is loaded with people who claim they believe that God wrote the book by goat/sheep herders. They are not insisting that people embrace evolution.
#4. There is no contradiction between...
Stop, you make me laugh. The whole premise of the Bible is original sin and a redeemer. Without Adam and Eve and original sin, no need for a redeemer. I mean, did a neanderthal "sin" or was he just an animal? Don't let the book by goat/sheep herders of thousands of years ago define what is right and wrong for you and don't consider violating the rules from the goat/sheep herders to be a sin requiring sacrifice to the god of the sheep/goat herders. There are plenty of wrong things to do that hurt others. Develop a good set of morals without the book that treats women as a lower class and says it's okay to beat your slave just short of death. The law and your own conscience do a better job helping you here.
#5. Publicly opposing or condemning....
I kind of agree. But scoffing at the "miracles" of other beliefs and accepting the "miracles" of Christianity are doing that also- making Christians look ignorant.
#6. I wholeheartedly agree with this point from the opening post. I would add that knowledge and education solves all problems and children need to grow up to add to that knowledge to further dismiss the idea of following the book from the ancient goat/sheep herders.
"theism" here means "belief in a god" or "the worldview that an intelligent designer created the universe and life.
" ("god" here means a being with a mind who initiated and/or wound-up the universe, and designed life on earth)the most common claim that i see atheists making on twitter, is that "no evidence" exists in support of belief in a god.this post will remove any excuse atheists have for claiming "no evidence exists" in support of an initiator.
atheists can still reject this evidence as "weak," but they cannot truthfully say it does not exist.now, it is true that we do not have "observable, repeatable, falsifiable, empirical, scientific" evidence conclusively proving that an initiator exists, but we do have many lines of philisophical, experiential, and logical evidence.and... here... we... go:1:) many leading scientists, including stephen hawking, say that the space-time-matter universe had a beginning at the singularity/big bang.
This thread is on the 17th page, so my answer is probably already covered but I will trudge on just in case I make a point to you, Fusion.
You take the single simplified statement that "the space-time-matter universe had a beginning at the Singularity/Big Bang." The lecture that Hawking gave, where you derive this statement from, was simplified. It doesn't show the algebra on several chalkboards (maybe they use dry-erase boards now or tablets) to arrive at such a conclusion. Anyway, you just take the conclusion and run wild with it.
Time itself did not exist, and then it came into existence. Things can only naturally happen by cause-and-effect within time. So the very event of time itself coming into existence, is a "supernatural" event (something beyond or outside of the natural course of cause-and-effect).
Everything we know in science requires time. There is cause-and-effect in nature and in the universe because things happen in time. Nothing we have ever seen has happened without time. Thus, in order to be a natural event, time must exist.
So, any event occurring without time would be a "miracle," and especially the event of time itself coming into existence, without time existing previously, would be miraculous by anyone's definition. Either time created itself from nothing, before it existed, or something else outside of time created time.
I am sure you see it as an unavoidable set of logic to jump from that conclusion in a simplified lecture to "It's a miracle." But you cannot use the idea that it takes time to observe something happening to jump to "Time is supernatural." You cannot use that same idea compounded with your interjection to make such wild conclusions and then state that they are some kind of proof that some genius scientist demonstrated (unknowingly or knowingly).
And when someone objects, you cannot say that Hawking said the things you interject from what he actually did say.
You have to watch out for tricky ideas. You stated: "Either time created itself from nothing, before it existed, or something else outside of time created time."
You screwed up big time there and simplified further from simplified conclusions. Sure, you can say in a lecture, "before [time] existed" but we are not dealing with a simple concept, so to make grand conclusions beyond the simplified idea from a simplified conclusion is dangerous and leads to inaccuracy. There is no "before" time existed if time doesn't exist. Before you can jump to "It's a miracle," you would have to drag out those chalkboards (or tablets).
Time is not a "thing" like a baseball is a thing. You cannot simply arrive at conclusions by saying so. Put a baseball into what you say and it works: Before the big bang, baseballs did not exist. Baseballs would have had to create themselves from nothing or something outside of baseballs created baseballs.
That works great. Nobody would believe that baseballs were just "there" beyond the big bang. But time is completely different and you just cannot sum it all up in a couple of simplified statements made from simplified ideas given at a simplified lecture.
The rest of your ideas seem to build upon that, so I will not bother to comment on them.
in the early 1990s, i was in a meeting.
we were making some major changes to the main it system of the company i worked for.
during the meeting i said, 'what would happen if one of our major customers went belly up and shouldn't we build something into the system to cope with this?'.
I wondered occasionally if there were a coup in the works in the style of Joseph Rutherford.
The GB is so visible now, so whacky with their tight pants and "OBEY" speeches. If a coup were behind the shadows, it would have to be about seizing assets more than seizing everyone's attention. There's really no way we could know.
I think if that happened, these guys on the GB would try to maintain control and start grabbing new assets. So they would have to take their jw . tv away, but then they would travel to all the regional conventions to make their presence known.
Now, if the coup were at the C.O. level and was for the hearts and minds of the members, there would be chaos for awhile as different things were said at different locations. That would be rather exciting.
assuming you are still sitting there because of circumstances.
why do you still give/don't give talks?i ask this because i have to give talk no.
3: love and obedience bring happinessnwt p. 26 4-6 (5 min.
It's an all-volunteer organization. You do not have to be enrolled in the Theocratic Ministry School. I did a hard, rather quick fade, and one of the very first things I did as I resigned as an elder was to say I was not enrolled in the school. Sure, the elders knew, but I doubt a single other member noticed I wasn't giving talks.
To fade out, you have to make occasional noticeable moves. Blow off a few talks and then say you won't be able to give talks.
