The Society DOES NOT officially teach that you won't get a resurrection if you die when disfellowshipped. The only exception is if you have committed the unforgiveable sin, and that area is so blurry and confusing in Watchtower theology that many JW's imagine that just the act of being disfellowshipped, especially for apostasy, is tantamount to having committed the unforgiveable sin, since you are only disfellowshipped if you are 'not repentant', which translates in the ignorant JW mind as 'wilful sinner hence unforgiveable sin'.
Must obey!
JoinedPosts by Must obey!
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Whenever you buy something new, do you take an extended warranty?
by JH ini hardly ever take an extended warranty.
call me cheap, but something new shouldn't break.
and if it does, the 1 year coverage should be enough to make sure i didn't buy a lemon.. many say that companies make their money with additional warranties, and that you're better off not taking it and paying for the repair if ever there is one to be made.. when i see a 27 tv at 250$ compared to 700$ 10 years ago, i won't pay for an additional warranty.
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Must obey!
Nah I never have after learning that the odds are so rare you'll ever need to use it. It's a bit of a scam just to make more money from you.
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I WASN'T SUPPOSED TO GROW UP IN THIS "SYSTEM"
by rache31 inoh, how many of us heard that we wouldn't make it to graduation or get married in this system?
i thought i wouldn't grow up.
no one talked about preparing for the future.
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The WTS deprogramming
by greendawn indoes anyone have any interesting and helpful details regarding what this deprogramming involves?
we always here one should deprogram but what exactly does it involve what could be some useful tips to facilitate this process?
i was reading recently in the psychological studies of jung about the concept of the shadow the part of our mind that contains all the repressed and rejected material, some of it was rightly repressed (eg the desire to steal from, or otherwise harm innocent people) and some not.
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The end is so close...
by sspo inreceived email from a friend- enjoy it- the end is always around the corner.
a man is in the mountains, it's night time, he wanders off the road and .
falls off a cliff.
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Questioning the question of God's existence
by DT ini don't know if there is a god.
if i knew for certain, this piece of knowledge could serve as a foundation for my world view.
some people are confident they know the answer (both theists and atheists) and their world view is based on this faith.
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Gopher, yes, I totally agree it is irrational and rather unreasonable to expect people to ingratiate and kowtow to a higher being who hasn't interacted with his creation for so long. That makes absolute sense to me too, hence why I am no longer interested in organised religion. But having said that, just because that being has not interacted for so long simply doesn't itself mean that this being doesn't exist. For all we know, this being does indeed have some good reason for not interacting and will do so again in the future, who knows when. Actually, a reasonable conclusion from seeing so many millennia of human suffering without any intervention from 'God' is that while he exists, he must be an uncaring, uncompassionate, being, for we cannot comprehend a justifiable reason for why an all-powerful being would tolerate so much suffering and wickedness for so very long.
For the simple reason alone that the alternative explanation, ie, blind chance and evolution is so incredibly mathematically improbable and unproveable and hence requires a leap of faith in the same way belief in 'God' does, logically we must therefore remain open to the possibility that such a being still exists, despite it's long-time aloofness. Thats if we are capable of being totally unbiased on the matter. An analogy might be: a child came upon an ancient castle that had existed for millennia but no one could ever remember who the maker or owner of the castle was & in the meantime the occupants for many centuries had engaged in all sorts of cruel and vile activities and no one was taking any responsibility to turf them out of the castle or intervene to control the occupants...all traces of ownership and responsibility for the castle were long lost in the mists of time...it would be absurd for the child to insist that the lack of visitation by anyone to take responsibility for it and sort the occupants out for their abuses for so many centuries must mean that the castle was never made or built by anyone in the first place. Similarly the universe and all life..we intuitively sense some great mystery behind it all and rather than arrogantly deny that there is any creator just because of all the abuse by earths occupants for so long, it seems more reasonable and objective to say that a better position seems to be that while there are good reasons for believing in a creative power behind it all, we throw our hands up in frustration, ignorance, and even anger as to why this creative force seems so distant and unknowable, and leave it at that.
Ciao.
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The Gift of Speaking in Tongues?
by Maddie inwith the increase in evangelical churches there seems to be a lot more emphasis on the practise of "speaking in tongues".
i quite like the way these churches conduct services, with live music and great singing.
it is so different to the kh meetings and like fresh air.
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Must obey!
Yes that is a good scripture and it does puzzle me why Jesus would allow the demons to deceive so many otherwise sincere and good Christians earnestly seeking him. It seems a pretty mean thing & totally out of character for Jesus (based on what we read of him in the gospels) to let the demons be so thoroughly deceiving, as it were, because once someone has had such an experience there is nothing in the world would convince them their religion is false. So I will backtrack a bit on my earlier comment and admit I'm not thoroughly convinced it is from the demons...just highly suspicious it might be.
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Questioning the question of God's existence
by DT ini don't know if there is a god.
if i knew for certain, this piece of knowledge could serve as a foundation for my world view.
some people are confident they know the answer (both theists and atheists) and their world view is based on this faith.
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Must obey!
Mmm...yeah but the analogy is still very weak because the Santa Claus myth today (the one who flies around in the sky on reindeer and puts pressies down ya chimney) has origins rooted in an actual historical figure. Perhaps an analogy with Zeus or some other ancient mythological god is better.
Whether its the Adonai, Allah, or Aliens doesn't matter to my way of thinking. What seems undeniable to me is that there is self-evidently some great intelligence, personality, mind, creative influence behind it all...an original cause. This requires a lot less faith to me than accepting it is all down to blind chance, random selection, basically nothing. Both require leaps of faith, it's just that deists see a lesser leap of faith than materialists. The fact that this mind or creative entity or whatever it is has not shown itself/themselves for aeons of time is entirely irrelevant really; I think this is where many atheists go wrong...they confuse the absence of a higher power for nonexistence.
Keep your mind open but not so open that everything falls out. Peace.
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Questioning the question of God's existence
by DT ini don't know if there is a god.
if i knew for certain, this piece of knowledge could serve as a foundation for my world view.
some people are confident they know the answer (both theists and atheists) and their world view is based on this faith.
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Must obey!
No problem Gopher. U're free to choose any definition you want. The analogy with Santa Claus is silly though. We know for a fact that Santa Claus is an entirely fictional character and does not exist. But of course some would debate otherwise, just as some assert the earth is still flat and that the holocaust did not happen. Whatever man...Peace.
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Questioning the question of God's existence
by DT ini don't know if there is a god.
if i knew for certain, this piece of knowledge could serve as a foundation for my world view.
some people are confident they know the answer (both theists and atheists) and their world view is based on this faith.
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Must obey!
5go it doesn't necessarily mean you are a deist at all. It can mean you believe that knowledge of whether God exists or not is not ascertainble, not necessarily that you already believe in a God but that knowledge of him is unknowable. There is a diff. Actually there are different meanings for agnosticism. Here's some:
- A word first used by Professor Huxley, to indicate one who believes nothing which cannot be demonstrated by the senses.
www.theosociety.org/pasadena/key/key-glos.htm - An Agnostic [1] [noun] [OW] embraces a worldview in which the existence of deity is unknown or unknowable. Derives from the Greek agnostos, a = without, gnostos = known or knowledge. ...
members.aol.com/porchnus/dict01.htm - One who holds the theory that God is unknown or unknowable
www.innvista.com/culture/religion/diction.htm - Someone who claims that they do not know or are unable to know whether God exists.
www.abdn.ac.uk/philosophy/guide/glossary.shtml - someone who is doubtful or noncommittal about something
- of or pertaining to an agnostic or agnosticism
- uncertain of all claims to knowledge
- a person who claims that they cannot have true knowledge about the existence of God (but does not deny that God might exist)
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn - Agnosticism (from the Greek a, meaning "without", and Gnosticism or gnosis, meaning knowledge) means unknowable, and is the philosophical view that the truth value of certain claims—particularly theological claims regarding metaphysics, afterlife or the existence of God, god(s), or deities ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic