Posts by Cold Steel

20

Why are people beholden to ancient superstitions?

by Doug Mason in

how is it that in a world that is so technological, scientific, fact-based, evidence-based, and so on, that many people are superstitious - even more so, the superstitions of ancient cultures?.

doug.

Cold Steel

If I found out that there was no God tomorrow, no, I wouldn't go into a murderous rage and begin shooting people. But if I did, and got away with it in this world, I would have nothing to worry about. I could be a veritable Red John and not have to worry about it because only my sense of morality is valid. Everyone else is completely at my disposal, and whether I choose to be benevolent or malicious is wholly my choice.

But if there is a God, then every man is born, to some degree, with the light of Christ. And because of the fall they would know good from evil. How? Not because of Greek or Latin philosophy. Not because of the wisdom of the ancients, but because you're born with it. No one needs to tell you that murdering innocents is evil; that's why no one can excuse themselves at the last day by claiming they were ignorant.

One theologian put it this way:

The ability to have an unsettled conscience is a gift of God to help you succeed in this mortal life. It results principally from the influence of the Light of Christ on your mind and heart. The Light of Christ is that divine power or influence that emanates from God through Jesus Christ. It gives light and life to all things. It prompts all rational individuals throughout the earth to distinguish truth from error, right from wrong. It activates your conscience. Its influence can be weakened through transgression and addiction and restored through proper repentance. The Light of Christ is not a person. It is a power and influence that comes from God and when followed can lead a person to qualify for the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Ghost.

The above reflects my belief. Again, Darwin says survival is hard wired into us to ensure the preservation of the species. But the knowledge of good and evil cannot be hard wired into us except by an outside intelligence.

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23

As far as the Watchtower goes, how should an adulteress be punished?

by I_love_Jeff in

should we use jesus' advice john 8:7 or god's advice .

leviticus 20:10?

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Cold Steel

Yes, the Bible was thought up by men who hated women, committed genocide and was bloodthirsty and capricious. It’s easy to write it off if you believe everything you read on atheistic websites. I don’t see many people who have thoroughly studied the law of Moses (which contains principles which are contained in the foundations of Greek democracy, Roman law and even our own republican form of government) who complain that it was too harsh. No system of rule is perfect, but the law of Moses was what the people needed at the time, was incredibly just and is easily misunderstood by people who take it superficially. As one professor put it, it’s not an eye for an eye, but the threat of an eye for an eye. Yes, parents had legal rights that included the threat of the death penalty for recalcitrant and rebellious children, but there’s not one record of a parent who actually had a child killed, and there was enough judicial oversight to make it virtually impossible. But the Lord wanted the threat there.

At the time the law was given, the Israelites were a fallen people who had lost much of their culture in Egypt. After the Egyptians enslaved them, they were quickly assimilated into that culture which, in the eyes of God, were profligate and degenerate, and they spent the next 40 years proving it. Even after they witnessed the miracles and saw the presence of God on the mount, when Moses gave them the opportunity to see God in all his glory, the people were terrified. They said, essentially, no, you and Aaron go. We’ll do what God tells you to! And this was after the rebellion and after the Lord had divided the people into those for and those against him. Then Moses ordered the Levites to slay the rebellious, even if they were personal friends or family members. Was this just? Well, I can’t see what was in their hearts so I can’t judge, but Yahweh always dealt justly with his people only to have them later turn him over to the Romans for crucifixion. When Moses went up the mountain, they rebelled. When he returned they threatened to kill him and Aaron but were themselves killed. Later, they allowed themselves to be seduced by the women of their enemies and take part in their degenerate worship of other gods in which they openly defied Moses and God. When one of the princes took one of these women into his tent, an Israelite priest rushed in and impaled them both. The Lord subsequently told Moses that that action prevented a punitive action by the Lord against the whole people, so it was a constant struggle.

The law itself was made to be lenient when the people were righteous. At night you could kill an intruder, but during the day you had to have a good reason or face the judges. Crops had to be left open so people who were hungry and had no money could take what they needed; and provisions were made to protect only some fig trees against birds so that birds could share the figs when they were hungry. There were limits on how much debt a person could go into and automatic celebrations in which the debt was forgiven. The people were also forbidden to deny a debt for fear that a coming celebration would cancel the debt; so it left a lot to the people to make it work, and the law made it clear that the Lord wanted compassion shown to one’s fellow man and to animals.

The law could be hard nosed at times, especially from a modern Western cultural standpoint, but some of the harsher penalties in the law were established because of the seriousness of the crimes in relationship to how easy they were to avoid. They also were rarely carried out over the years and, of course, weren’t applied to Bathsheba, who committed adultery with King David and later became the mother of Solomon.

In Jesus’ time, the law also had become corrupted in its application by countless rabbinical commentators who sought its application as a means of gaining power and thus to controlling the populace. Hence, these commentators and their teachers attracted the ire of the Son of God, who complained of its corruption.

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23

As far as the Watchtower goes, how should an adulteress be punished?

by I_love_Jeff in

should we use jesus' advice john 8:7 or god's advice .

leviticus 20:10?

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Cold Steel

It's like Clint Eastwood said, "There's nothin' wrong with stoning
someone...as long as it's the right person who gets stoned."
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53

Who wants to live forever?

by Doug Mason in

what will living be like after 5 billion years?.

doug.

Cold Steel

Yes, yes, what to do...what to do. Unfortunately, the JWs don't really offer much of a view of what happens after the resurrection and what the purpose of living in a garden forever is. What would God want with a planet full of adults? Pets? Entertainment, like an ant farm? Unlike Adam and Eve, the new world would be populated by beings who know good from evil. And why did God not want Adam and Eve to know the difference between good and evil, but not mind if the new people know the difference?

I am assuming, of course, that there won't be any children in the new world. You'll have a bunch of perfect male and female people in the prime of life (forever), walking along beaches, frolicking in the sun...and no romantic thoughts. All they have to do is remember those angels who got carried away in lust and their minds will turn to petting lions and jogging in the surf.

In a righteous society, though, laws and governance aren't needed. People will govern themselves. So what is the purpose of the 144,000? To govern a people who neither need nor want governing?

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20

Why are people beholden to ancient superstitions?

by Doug Mason in

how is it that in a world that is so technological, scientific, fact-based, evidence-based, and so on, that many people are superstitious - even more so, the superstitions of ancient cultures?.

doug.

Cold Steel

Ismael: Excuse: Attempt to lessen the blame attaching to (a fault or offense); seek to defend or justify. A reason put forward to defend or justify a fault or offense.

Explanation: A set of statements constructed to describe a set of FACTS which clarifies the causes, context, and consequences of those FACTS. This description may establish rules or laws, and may clarify the existing ones in relation to any objects, or phenomena examined. The components of an explanation can be implicit, and be interwoven with one another. Guess [which] one you just gave.

Call it what you wish, sir. We’re discussing subjective concepts of what is right and what is wrong. Who are you, or I, to decide what is good or what is evil? Is slavery worse, or better, than abortion? If there is no God, then the discussion is immaterial because evil only exists in YOUR mind and MY mind, and our concepts of it may differ. The same thing is true of measurements. If there is no standard, then do you get to decide what a meter is or do I? Or if we have competing standards, which is morally correct, your standard or mine?

Well, neither is morally correct; it’s a matter of which falls into popular use. Human bondage has been a part of human history since the beginning. Slavery in the old South of the U.S. has been greatly publicized and analyzed, but in the Old West and throughout highly rural areas, it wasn’t uncommon for travelers to be captured and pressed into labor by men with guns. In some cases they were disarmed and forced to wear their unloaded guns, so passersby wouldn’t be suspicious. This sort of thing happened throughout history and in all parts of the world. Jesus knew he couldn’t prevent slavery and, besides, abolishing it was not his mission. His Kingdom was not of this world. His mission was to free people spiritually from Death, which otherwise would have eternal consequences. Thus, not able to abolish it and trying to do so would have crippled his cause, he taught people that if they had to be slaves, then be the best they could be. And many slaves were baptized and became Christians.

Ismael: ...what I understand by “standards of right or wrong” is a socio-cultural evolution that changes in time within humanity. And you are mistaken; moralities are sets of self-perpetuating and ideologically-driven behaviors which encourage human cooperation.

You can believe that if you wish, but if there are no consequences, or punishment, there is no such thing as “sin” or evil. If I’m hitchhiking and you pick me up, and down the road I pull a gun on you, take your money, the keys to your home and your fine car, then murder you and throw you off the side of the road, then go ransack your house for whatever I want, unless I’m caught, there are no consequences. We both go down to death and both inherit the same: the cold and silent grave. There is no morality in the grave — no judgment. The saint and sinner receive the same reward, which is none at all. Who cares how society judges us? In a few hundred years, what difference will it make?

Thus, only God can set standards. And yes, he can, as our eternal judge, commit “genocide” if he wishes. That is, he can remove us from this world and place us in a penalty box, where we can, for an allotted time, reflect on the evils we did in life and pay the “utmost farthing” for those evils. When he visits destruction on a people, he doesn’t cause them to cease to exist. And if there is no God, there’s no evil in committing genocide, because (again) all will eventually die anyway.

21

Why remove John 8:1-11 in the NWT if these verses speak highly of Jesus

by I_love_Jeff in

i understand these verses were removed in the nwt as well as some other bibles because they were added later & considered uninspired.

jesus protected an adultress so why remove it?

it fits in nicely with his teachings, does it not?

Cold Steel

Why wouldn't the GB just put the quotations in question in italics or with a notation? If scholars could prove that another book not currently in the Bible was accepted as part of the New Testament scriptures (there was no such thing as a canon); would the GB be willing to accept it as part of the Bible?

The book of Revelation contains a passage about not adding to or deleting from the words of that book. For years many Christians thought that meant the Bible. Don't add or delete anything from the Bible! But of all the books of the New Testament, it was the book of Revelation that came closest to being rejected as part of the Bible. And what of the book of Isaiah? Many scholars think there were multiple authors of that work, and they've identified which parts were added later. So why doesn't the GB delete the portions of Isaiah that are highly suspect?

Who gets to make these decisions? Will future NWTs contain a book of Enoch or Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, which we know the ancient apostles owned and used? The GB shys away from the term "revelation" and prefers the term "new light." But if the GB is writing articles under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wouldn't they be considered scripture, too? If it's the same Holy Spirit that penetrates their noggins, travels down their necks, into their shoulders, down their arms and through their fingers as they type at their keyboards, how is that different from the inspiration that the apostles and prophets used in writing scripture? In other words, either they're prophets or they're not; there's no in-between. As I interpret it, they're saying, "Well, we're more inspired than most people in the Kingdom Halls, but not quite up to the standards of the ancient apostles and prophets."

In Revelation 11, John writes that in the last days, God will call two "witnesses," who are also referred to by John as "prophets." The Society proudly calls itself "Jehovah's Witnesses." But what are witnesses? And how are JWs "witnesses" of Jehovah? As defined, we read that a "witness" is defined as:

So in what ways are the WTBTS "witnesses" of Jehovah? Are members able to provide "firsthand" accounts of something seen, heard or experienced? Or do they furnish evidence instead of hearsay? Have any of them actually seen Jehovah as the seventy elders of Israel did in the days of Moses? (See Exodus 28) If not, how can they be his witnesses? According to both definitions, above, does the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses more accurately described as "witnesses" or "prophets"?

If you want to hear from some real Jehovah's Witnesses, wouldn't you want
to talk to someone who'd actually seen him?

Now when they delete passages like John 8:1-11 from scripture, is it something a witness would do, or a prophet? Why don't they remove the Song of Solomon, which is a joke? It's nothing but an erotic account that has absolutely NOTHING to do with "Jesus' love for the church" and all the other ridiculous garbage that has been written about it. There are also some good reasons to eliminate portions of the book of Ecclesiastes, often used to prove that the dead "sleep" at death. Although the book purports to be written by King Solomon, it's doubtful. And even so, Solomon was, at the end of his life, a bitter old man who had taken to himself political wives outside of the worship of Yahweh. They enticed him to build altars to their heathen gods and, left to himself, his wisdom soon failed, giving way to forgetfulness, guilt and a piss poor attitude. Some scholars believe the work to be from the third century B.C. It was not a prophetic or eschatological work, but a philosophical book, and neither the Old Testament or New Testament Jews believed that man's existence ended at death. Yet without Ecclesiastes, the Adventist doctrine of soul sleeping would collapse like a cheap folding chair. They also seldom quote the scripture in Ecclesiastes: "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it." (12:7) In this case they translate the word for "spirit" as "breath" (it can mean both).

20

Why are people beholden to ancient superstitions?

by Doug Mason in

how is it that in a world that is so technological, scientific, fact-based, evidence-based, and so on, that many people are superstitious - even more so, the superstitions of ancient cultures?.

doug.

Cold Steel

Design: Religious people invest a lot of themsleves in their beliefs and it shatters one's world to give them up without a new and better explanation of reality.

Yes, and then there's the question of if there is a new and better explanation. Many of the science priestcraft are now so impressed with their own credentials that they've been willing to toss God overboard since the days man first peered into the heavens. Why? Because of a narrow-minded and bigoted church. But since then, science has battled itself as avidly as it battled religion. One hundred and fifty years ago, Ignaz Semmelweis argued that it would be a good idea if surgeons and other medical staff wash their hands. He was immediately attacked by his overzealous colleagues. As Harvard MD John Long Wilson noted: “His doctrine was opposed by powerful members of the academic hierarchy. … The damning evidence that they were themselves the remorseless messengers of death was a scarcely veiled threat to their pride and eminence.” Tied to that was the notion that germs couldn’t cause disease and death, that tobacco could cure cancer, and then there was Fritz Zwicky, who conceived of “dark matter” in the 1930s and was a laughing stock for more than 40 years. Alfred Wegener, in 1912, was ridiculed for his advocacy of continental drift and for decades the idea that scurvy could be relieved by citrus or that pellagra was a vitamin B deficiency.

So until science can tell us for a fact that there is no God and that the order in the creation and operation of the universe, and the complexity in even the simplest of flowers and soaring intelligence of man can be random occurrences, then there will be religion. I’m sixty years old and can’t recall the number of news stories about how this and that discovery will rewrite textbooks — but I wish I had saved them. I would need a fairly large box!

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MadGiant: Sorry, not just JW or Christianity, but none of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Islam and the Bahá'í Faith) will reflect the wisdom, love or intelligence of your deity because [there] isn't any. And yes, for a deity, he/she/it is mean, vindictive and specially bloodthirsty.

And by whose standards? Yours? If there is no God, neither you nor anyone else has any right to establish any standards of right or wrong. And how was God ever mean, vindictive or bloodthirsty? Because of his destruction of cultures you know nothing about and under conditions in which you are entirely ignorant? How can man, with only a tiny modicum of knowledge, hope to judge a being of omnipotent power and omniscient knowledge and wisdom? Do you know what happens after death? And the people the Lord destroys — do you know what is in their hearts or what their deeds are? Do you know how they receive strangers or whether they throw their children in furnaces while drummers drum to keep the people from hearing the screams of the infants as they perish in the flames? Or whether they engage in profligate sexual fertility rites?

That’s the problem. I read all these atheistic websites that rave about how brutal, bloodthirsty, jealous, mean, barbaric and sadistic God is. The problem lies in their own quickness in judgment, which is why the Lord decrees He is the ultimate Judge of mankind. He knows all the facts going in and where the people will go when they pass through the veil. And He assures us His judgment will be just and true.

Why not believe that?

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21

Why remove John 8:1-11 in the NWT if these verses speak highly of Jesus

by I_love_Jeff in

i understand these verses were removed in the nwt as well as some other bibles because they were added later & considered uninspired.

jesus protected an adultress so why remove it?

it fits in nicely with his teachings, does it not?

Cold Steel

The question is, was this an addition to the scripture? Did it actually happen? Both John and Moses warned against adding or deleting things from the words of their books. Making those determinations, however, is always risky unless one has all of the originals. Was this story purposely deleted in earlier accounts, or purposely added in later accounts? Was the addition taken from one account and incorporated into another? It sounds genuine. And though most scholars reject the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, many acknowledge that it most likely contains some of the actual words of Jesus. But where did they come from and how did they get into a Gnostic gospel account?

The passages in question in the Gospel of John account may have been in the original, purged for some reasons, then restored to later accounts. Or they may have come from an account John or one of the other writers wrote and which were removed when some factions argued over the rest of the content. We've lost a great deal of what the ancient Christians thought and believed, and some of these were later recorded as heresies. Some early authorities may have been uncomfortable with Jesus essentially nullifying one of Moses' laws from God, then where does one draw the line? If one must be free from sin to cast the first stone, then no one would be stoning anyone, and this might be misconstrued as being against the Law of Moses; therefore, for political reasons, the story had to be redacted so as to mollify the Jews or constrain justice. The possibilities are endless. But if one believes that the salient points of the scriptures were passed down as a matter of Providence, the best policy, as I see it, are to leave it alone. We can't always conclude that the earliest versions of anything are the most accurate, as some of the Bible's stories (like the story of the great flood) are found in Babylonian texts that are older than any version of the Torah known to date. Yet I believe the biblical story of Noah and discount the accounts of Gilgamesh. If the JWs feel compelled to remove John 8:1-11, they also should remove the story of Noah and add the account of Gilgamesh.

20

Why are people beholden to ancient superstitions?

by Doug Mason in

how is it that in a world that is so technological, scientific, fact-based, evidence-based, and so on, that many people are superstitious - even more so, the superstitions of ancient cultures?.

doug.

Cold Steel

By “ancient superstition” do you mean religion?

If ancient religion didn’t write the book on what’s good and what’s evil, then what did? If there’s such a thing as nobility, who defined it? I think it’s cynical to believe that science can explain the phenomenal organization and beauty in the universe. True, the JW version of Jehovah is silly at times, and certainly doesn’t reflect the wisdom, love or intelligence of the God of Israel, but it’s the shallow reflection of God as they see him. But it’s also equally shallow to think of God as a mean, vindictive, bloodthirsty deity.

We Mormons were criticized back in the 1830s for believing in angels in a day of locomotives (as if locomotives defined the pinnacle of man’s ingenuity). But science and technology have fallen far short in being able to fill man’s spiritual needs. But weren’t we to expect that? Ever learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.

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....................http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEmcL6M0S4s

19

Pecking Order in the Millennium

by Cold Steel in

okay, the smoke has cleared.

everyone's dead who had it coming and the remainder find that their bodies have been changed.

no more disease, no more aging, no more human weaknesses and the weather is perfect.

Cold Steel

Many Christians celebrated when Israel became a state in 1948. Not only had Ezekiel and Jesus prophesied about the gathering of Israel, Isaiah did as well. In chapter 11, Isaiah begins by explaining the peace that would come to the earth during the Millennium and the reign of the "stem of jesse," who is the Christ. Then Isaiah talks about a "root of Jesse" who would facilitate not only the return of the Judah to its homelands, but who would stand as an ensign to the gentiles:

And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.

Since the assembly of Israel has already commenced, the root of Jesse should have already manifested himself -- the one to whom the Gentiles would seek. So who was he? And what does he have to do with the Gentiles that they would seek him? Was it Charles Taze Russell? Joseph Rutherford? Or is the root of Jesse the combined Governing Body of the Jehovah's Witnesses? The GB was clueless that the gathering of Israel was even taking place, so how could they be the root of Jesse?

Armageddon can only come once Judah reestablishes itself. In Matthew 24, the abomination of desolation is often taken to point to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans; however, the ancient Jews would have understood those passages to refer to the last great incursion against the holy city -- the one in which their Messiah would come to their rescue. The Jews withstood the Romans for a time because they thought their Messiah would come. But they were wrong. Next time, however, I suspect it will happen.