i read with great interest that some believe in christ but notnecessarily the authenticity of the bible... could you please elaborate on that?
i have to admit i am very interested in where people have ended up after leaving the wt.
i am on that road and enjoy seeing where people have followed it.
C'mon, folks. I'm not making these things up. And some of you can see from my understanding of other things, I'm really NOT that "bright." They are NOT my own... but what I receive from my Lord.
Shelby,I just think it's funny that God and Jesus got beat to the stylus by over 2000 years by false idol worshipping Babylonians.
BTW, what was the scripture is Jermiah that talks about false scribes. Beer makes me too lazy to look it up.
it seems you discontinued the wrong meeting.. 1. reinstate the "book study" at private homes - (and go back to the original name, because changing the name to "congregation bible study" isn't fooling anyone).
2. add a real bible study/discussion to the in-home meetings.. 3. discontinue the other four meetings and sell the kingdom halls ... or turn them into homeless shelters, that would be a christian thing to do.
4. stop printing magazines for the ministry, tracts work just fine.
I got the onloy suggestion they will need....
pondering over this dilemma:.
lets just say, for arguments sake, the report in genesis about the first humans is not an allegory, but a true event:.
watchtower teaches, that adam sinned, because he used his free will to disobey.. god grants free will to his human creation, because he wants them to serve him out of love.. ok, good, but i give an example: i meet a girl, tell her, she is free to love me, but if not, i kill her.. would you call this free will ?.
Well, I thought the sumerian link was interesting until I got to this line, "The Sumerian Epic of Creation and Genesis both have the interesting feature of being scientifically accurate in terms of what was created first"
Creation != science
i read with great interest that some believe in christ but notnecessarily the authenticity of the bible... could you please elaborate on that?
i have to admit i am very interested in where people have ended up after leaving the wt.
i am on that road and enjoy seeing where people have followed it.
That is kind of the point though Donny, was it God that killed/ordered those killings? or was it just ancient man trying to justify what they did? what they though God condoned based on their limited understanding? maybe both?
Good point. Did Jesus really say that stuff about love and forgiveness, were those ideas in any way original or did they pre-date Jesus by at LEAST 2000 years in Babylonian texts?
pondering over this dilemma:.
lets just say, for arguments sake, the report in genesis about the first humans is not an allegory, but a true event:.
watchtower teaches, that adam sinned, because he used his free will to disobey.. god grants free will to his human creation, because he wants them to serve him out of love.. ok, good, but i give an example: i meet a girl, tell her, she is free to love me, but if not, i kill her.. would you call this free will ?.
Look at what the early Christians did, they took passages from the OT and applied them to Jesus as the Messiah, passages that were applicable to God were now applied to Jesus because THEY interpreted them in a new way, the way Jesus taught them too, the way the HS taught them too.
Depending the particular theology, they taught that Jesus WAS god literally haven taken human form. Or not. But some disagreed with that and taught against the trinity. My point is that their interpretation varied just like today. They were making up a whole new eschtatology, just like the Jews were thousands of years before them.
Of course the literalists of their time were not that happy about it either.
Or people that interpreted it differently, or used a different version that had different "facts" :)
pondering over this dilemma:.
lets just say, for arguments sake, the report in genesis about the first humans is not an allegory, but a true event:.
watchtower teaches, that adam sinned, because he used his free will to disobey.. god grants free will to his human creation, because he wants them to serve him out of love.. ok, good, but i give an example: i meet a girl, tell her, she is free to love me, but if not, i kill her.. would you call this free will ?.
Interpretation is what we should do, it is what we have always done.
Where does the bible say that? Warnings of falshoods and testing what you are taught != "Thou shalt interpret my word"
Hence "all the land" was understood to mean "all the local land" ( fas as the eye could see kind of thing).
I dunno. That's not in the bible... (although I agree with you about the flood).
Nowadays, looking back 1000's of years it gets a bit tricky yes, but we can still do it, we just need to remember WHo wrote it, WHen and WHY.
It was written, re-written, added to and taken away from as needed. So, who? Lots of people. When? I would have to ask which time. Why? Depends on who was doing the redacting and re-writing.
pondering over this dilemma:.
lets just say, for arguments sake, the report in genesis about the first humans is not an allegory, but a true event:.
watchtower teaches, that adam sinned, because he used his free will to disobey.. god grants free will to his human creation, because he wants them to serve him out of love.. ok, good, but i give an example: i meet a girl, tell her, she is free to love me, but if not, i kill her.. would you call this free will ?.
I don't agree with NVL literal interpretation and He doesn't agree with mine, that's cool.
Indeed it is. But hell, I don't believe the literal interpretation either, my man. I beleive that, for those that choose to believe the Bible, once you start moving away from a literal interpretation and start picking and choosing what's literal, what's symbolic and what's metaphorical, you can make it say anything.
This one is an oldie, but a classic: http://www.theonion.com/articles/god-angrily-clarifies-dont-kill-rule,222/
is it possible that when we (as a people) make an advancement in science and learn new facts that they sometimes disprove what was once considered fact?
unless you test something for yourself you are taking the word of someone else.
or do you trust that things are certain?
"Inventions" are the product of ingenuity applied to natural materials that were always right there under our feet. We invented the cotton GIN, not cotton.
Not always, and even if they were, so? They were used to valid ideas that, prior to the validation, were considered by many to be inconceivable. Gallileo, for instance.
Einstein invented an entire new branch of physics that basically said "everything you know is wrong".
Same with cartoons. Ingenuity applied creatively to things that appear in nature. Leela from Futurama - nothing new. There have been one-eyed creatures since the beginning of time, just nowhere near as sexy.
Exactly. Creativity applied to things you see. "We ignorant sheepherders and desert people don't know why the mountains shake and spew forth fire and smoke. There must be someone living in there."
Or, you know, later we could discover the earth isn't as solid as it seems.
Everything that's ever existed, illusion or not, is a shadow of something else casting the shadow. Infinite regress is unavoidable no matter which train you jump on.
So if you think god existed and you think everything came from something else, where did God come from?
The point is, no use belittling people for believing in something you acknowledge is unquantifiable, so long as it does not harm others. Matter of fact, if it ultimately benefits yourself, and possibly others, better off believing it!
The problem with an argument like that is that it cuts both ways. Be careful how you wield it :)
pondering over this dilemma:.
lets just say, for arguments sake, the report in genesis about the first humans is not an allegory, but a true event:.
watchtower teaches, that adam sinned, because he used his free will to disobey.. god grants free will to his human creation, because he wants them to serve him out of love.. ok, good, but i give an example: i meet a girl, tell her, she is free to love me, but if not, i kill her.. would you call this free will ?.
I see, ok, that is a valid reply and I respect that.
I apolgise if It asked something that was none of my business.
No worries man, I was smiling a little when I wrote that. No offense given, none taken.
I respect everyones position on what they believe, just as I ask that they respect mine, they don't have to believe or even agree, just respect.
Bingo.
that was the question being asked on right wing radio - things are getting strange out there.
sammieswife.
wednesday, september 1st, 2010 -- 6:32 pm.
