Posts by corpusdei

18

Got some Street Encounter Questions for JWs?

by Vanderhoven7 in

jw
friends

corpusdei

I personally enjoy trotting out some of the more entertaining atrocities in the Old Testament and trying to get them to reconcile those actions with their idea of the "loving heavenly father".

Scriptures like Numbers 31:7-18, in which Moses orders the slaughter of children (with the potential of child molestation with the verse "And preserve alive for yourselves all the little ones among the women who have not known the act of lying with a male"), or Hosea 13:16 in which it's promised that the children of Samaria "will be dashed to pieces, and their pregnant women themselves will be ripped up" can be very effective in making the Witnesses uncomfortable.

Bonus points are awarded if you can get them to outright state that the slaughtering of children and pregnant women is morally justified because they were pagan unbelievers.

30

Do you blame Judas.

by mankkeli in

jw
friends

how could judas be blamed, for an action pre-planned by god.

wasn't he destined?, what are your views on the matter?.

corpusdei

I actually explored this idea fairly in-depth (here), and the only conclusion that I can see that fits scripture is that, while Judas himself wasn't necessarily predestined to be the betrayer, a betrayal was a matter of divine prophecy and therefore inevitable. Essentially, someone was going to have to take the fall. Because my personal morality includes the belief that no man sins by an act they cannot avoid, I don't believe that Judas holds any culpability or blame. He was simply the wrong guy in the wrong place and got caught up in the Divine Manipulation. My reasoning on that goes somewhat further (but I'll skip it as it tends to be ... unpopular)

All alone in the night

by corpusdei in

jw
friends

humanity is a very lonely species.

we aren't unique in our ability to experience loneliness, by any means, there are many animals the world over that form and depend on groups for security and community.

what sets us apart, the fundamental irony that makes us so alone is the scope of our capacity for loneliness.

corpusdei

Humanity is a very lonely species. We aren't unique in our ability to experience loneliness, by any means, there are many animals the world over that form and depend on groups for security and community. What sets us apart, the fundamental irony that makes us so alone is the scope of our capacity for loneliness. Throughout our history, we have searched the earth and skies and stars looking for someone, something, anything else that we can talk to and finally be reassured that we are not the solitary figure on this vast cosmic stage.

Our history is a testament to that loneliness.

As our understanding of what a small place in the universe we really stand in has grown, through century after painful, slow century of tiny achievements, our desire for someone else out there to talk to has been constant. In antiquity, the mysteries and magics of the world around us were not explained as vast, unknowable forces but as the actions of gods and goddesses, powerful beings who not only caused the lightning to fall, volcanoes to rise, and seasons to pass but who actively engaged in dealings with humanity. They were there, we could talk to them and they talked to us through the signs and portents of the natural world. Men could look to the sky and see the storm and know that their Father, Zeus, was alive and at work.

Science has since pulled the curtains back, ever so slightly, and we're beginning to understand those natural mysteries - that a natural process of cloud movement and electrical fields , not a wrathful Zeus, produces lightning. Once again, when faced with that and the chance that we do, in fact, stand solitary and alone we cannot give up that need, that search for someone else. Our gods have changed, we call them Allah or Jehovah or Brahman, but we still see their actions in the world around us, we talk to them through our prayers, hopes, dreams and fears. The world keeps turning, though, implacable and silent as we hurtle through space at more than 66,000 miles per hour. Even science, where there is so little room for gods and religion, looks to the sky with hope. The sky calls to us, we launch probes into the vast emptiness of space, shouting out to someone, anyone, anything that we are here, we want to talk, we want to know that we're not alone. We peer through telescopes at other planets, carefully test for some evidence of other life looking for proof, even microbial and microscopic, that something else might be there.

With silence from the gods and no response from the sky, we've even turned our attention to the animal world. We grasp at evidence that animals communicate and we try to learn what they're saying. We try to teach them to talk as well, or for us to learn their language. We say it's to learn more about the world around us, it's to pull back that curtain of magic and mystery a little further, but under it all, we're still searching for someone else to talk to, a voice to come back out of the darkness and tell us that it's OK, they're standing just out of sight, and that finally, after so many generations of searching, we're not alone.

100

Need Opinions -- Engaged to a JW!!

by junebug_11 in

ok, quick run down of my situation.. .

1. i am not religious.

my now-fiance was raised jw but left the religion about 10 years ago.. 2. we started dating last march, i got pregnant within two weeks.

corpusdei

I think it's summed up neatly by this passage from the 10/1/95 Watchtower, in which the WTBTS states that a follower of God "must love family members lessthan they love God". Of course, this means loving God only through the proxy of the Watchtower Society.

I don't know about you, but I'm not comfortable with a religion that specifically tells me that love and loyalty in the family is less important than the religion.

3

Ancient Israel was such a co-dependant nation

by corpusdei in

psalms 78:30-34:.

30 they had not turned aside from their desire,.

while their food was yet in their mouth,.

corpusdei

Psalms 78:30-34:

30 They had not turned aside from their desire,
While their food was yet in their mouth,
31 When God’s wrath itself ascended against them.
And He went killing among their stout ones;
And the young men of Israel he made collapse.
32 Despite all this they sinned some more
And did not put faith in his wonderful works.
33 So he brought their days to an end as if a mere exhalation,
And their years by the disturbance.
34 As often as he killed them, they also inquired for him,
And they returned and looked for God.

But it's OK, because He promised that things would get better.

63

Idle question about Abraham and Human Sacrifice

by corpusdei in

i don't have my usual resources in front of me, so i can't fact check this, but there's been something bothering me.

one of the things mentioned quite often as evidence of the wickedness and evil practices of the false religion that surrounded ancient israel is the practice of child sacrifice (baal and molech being the frontrunners as i recall).

but ...... didn't god tell abraham to kill his own son isaac as a human sacrifice?

corpusdei

Wow. I go off to cook dinner and watch True Blood and come back to several pages of really interesting debate. I wonder if it's too late to change my username to "Ogad Nattagin" which, in the language of my people, means "Dances on Hornets Nest".

Sulla>>

I would suggest that the thing to take away from the story is precisely that human sacrifice is not how YHWH expects things to work.

My difficulty with that is that it's takes a viewpoint that's very end-justifies-the-means (though to be fair, that viewpoint can be applied to the majority of the bible). Even though Jehovah may never have intended Abraham to kill Isaac, he still required the choice to be made. He made Abraham choose between love for his God and love for his family (a morally destitute choice that Jesus would echo his support of many years later). The ritual loses viability if Abraham knows it's a test, or that Isaac would be resurrected some time later (which removes any actual sense of sacrifice, and thus significance, from the act) which means that, as far as Abraham and especially Isaac were concerned, God has just ordered the ritual murder of a faithful follower by another faithful follower. Anyway I cut that, it points to nothing more to take away than the danger of faith at the cost of morality.

It's a shocking story, of course, but it is shocking to us mostly because we are so far removed from explicit human sacrifice.

I take issue with the fact that religion has hijacked morality as completely as it has. Not so very long after this event, Jehovah had his chosen people running around engaged in wholesale slaughters, killing men and murdering children (not virgin girls, though, they make good ... um.... slaves. Yea.) and one of the rationalizations was because they engaged in worship of other deities which involved filicide. Even barring that, the very significance of the sacrifice underscores the depth of the cut here - if the sacrifice of Isaac were not shocking and painful and hard, it's difficult to call it sacrifice.

Larsinger58>>

So what Abraham did to Isaac counterparts what Jehovah did to Jesus Christ at one point. If anything, it underscores the enormity of the price paid to save YOU/US.

I will vehemently disagree with you here. Abraham had no capability to resurrect Isaac. Jehovah's omnipotence and Jesus immortality detracts from, not advances, the significance of Christ's death. Christ dies and is restored to an immortal spiritual presence, as he was before he went slumming on Earth. All in all, what did he have to lose, really? (lightning bolt in 3 ... 2 .... 1 ....)

DOES THE CREATOR HAVE THE LEGAL RIGHT TO LIMIT THE LIFESPAN OF HIS CREATURES?

Does the mother have the legal right to abort her fetus? The same logic applies, but there have been bombs in abortion clinics that would disagree.

tec>>

Perhaps it is as with Job, we only see part... not in full, and so do not understand.

Job. Wonderful account. Our loving heavenly Father stands to one side and allows Satan to rip away a faithful mans health and murder all his children in one fell swoop. When this man, who has been through more suffering and pain and agony than most of us can ever imagine, essentially asks why this happened, why this pain occurred to him, this God of Loving Kindness follows that by berating Job, browbeating him with the evidence of creation all the while dodging the question (read the account, God never answers to the issue of suffering). "Can you make the horse leap like a locust, can you hang the stars in the firmament?" He asks. The answer is not why pain exists, the answer is "Who are you to dare ask me that?". Not a divinity I care to bend my knee to.

*ahem* Sorry, tender subject.

NewChapter>>

I know I've posted this before, but it makes me laugh everytime.

May ... well, whoever ... bless Tim Minchen. My personal favorite is "Anger (Feet)"

--------

There are others that I'd like to comment on, but the time is late and my glass of five times distilled calm is nearly empty, so I'll regretfully have to pass. I will say, though, that this account more than any other convinces me that the only watertight theodicy is the duality of God, that He is perfect goodness and love and evil and malignance rolled into one. The Alpha and Omega in a whole new light, as it were. That God, as unsettling as a divine schizopherenic might be, is the only way that I can rationally balance the evidence of the Old Testament, the New, and the world we see around us.

Even that, though, pales in the single understanding that makes more sense than everything. God did not make man in His image, we made Him in ours. He is a crutch to shift our pain and responsibility onto to avoid carrying them ourselves, we can point and say "The Devil made me do it" and feel a razors edge better. Isaac laid on an alter, if he ever existed (because I take the writings of a bunch of nomadic tribesmen, written centuries before the invention of paper and a working sewage system, with a modest pinch of salt) and watched that knife because his father believed that he had to kill his son to appease his God, and he believed it as wholeheartedly as did the followers of Baal or Molech. Worshiping Baal or Molech didn't make a child any less a child, nor did it make the act of killing that child any easier or more difficult. God doesn't put the knife in our hands, but He does give us ample excuses to use it.

63

Idle question about Abraham and Human Sacrifice

by corpusdei in

i don't have my usual resources in front of me, so i can't fact check this, but there's been something bothering me.

one of the things mentioned quite often as evidence of the wickedness and evil practices of the false religion that surrounded ancient israel is the practice of child sacrifice (baal and molech being the frontrunners as i recall).

but ...... didn't god tell abraham to kill his own son isaac as a human sacrifice?

corpusdei

I don't have my usual resources in front of me, so I can't fact check this, but there's been something bothering me. One of the things mentioned quite often as evidence of the wickedness and evil practices of the false religion that surrounded ancient Israel is the practice of child sacrifice (Baal and Molech being the frontrunners as I recall).

But .....

Didn't God tell Abraham to kill his own son Isaac as a human sacrifice? It was a test of Abraham's faith, of course, but Abraham didn't know that. If Abraham doesn't commit the murder and human sacrifice of his son, he disobeys a direct order from God and proves his lack of faith. If he does, well, he's just committed the murder and human sacrifice of his son. The stone cold truth of the matter is that Abraham was fully prepared, ready and willing to open his own childs throat in worship to Jehovah, the Great and Terrible. How is the fact that God was just joking, fooled you there (tehehe), make it OK that he not only just asked Abraham to kill his child, but fully expected Abraham to go through with it to prove his faith?

Am I wrong here?

I'll have to add this to my list of questions to ask the next Witness unfortunate enough to knock on my door.

14

Hypocricy of JW stance on shunning those disfellowshipped from the congregation?

by corpusdei in

i was doing some research on an tangentally related topic when i came across this gem, from the 7/1/1986 watchtower, in a paragraph discussing the cost of integrity:.

certainly when a person becomes a christian witness of jehovah, he suddenly finds out who are his true friends.

some will perhaps shun or boycott him because he has abandoned his former religion, even though they themselves do not practice any religion properly.

corpusdei

I was doing some research on an tangentally related topic when I came across this gem, from the 7/1/1986 Watchtower, in a paragraph discussing the cost of integrity:

Certainly when a person becomes a Christian witness of Jehovah, he suddenly finds out who are his true friends. Some will perhaps shun or boycott him because he has abandoned his former religion, even though they themselves do not practice any religion properly. But Jesus promised that there would be a compensation for any such loss, saying: “No one has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for my sake and for the sake of the good news who will not get a hundredfold now in this period of time . . . and in the coming system of things everlasting life.”—Mark 10:29, 30. In some cases the course of dedication and integrity may mean a loss of esteem in other people’s eyes. (1 Corinthians 4:12, 13)

Contrast that with the counsel in the Watchtower 4/15/1991:

Former friends and relatives might hope that a disfellowshipped one would return; yet out of respect for the command at 1 Corinthians 5:11, they do not associate with an expelled person. They leave it to the appointed shepherds to take the initiative to see if such a one is interested in returning. It would not be fitting even for elders to take the initiative toward certain expelled ones, such as apostates, who ‘speak twisted things to draw away the disciples after themselves.’ These are ‘false teachers who are trying to bring in destructive sects and to exploit the congregation with counterfeit words.’

Strange how the first passage holds just as true with one tiny change:

Certainly when a person becomes a disfellowshipped Christian witness of Jehovah, he suddenly finds out who are his true friends. Some will perhaps shun or boycott him because he has abandoned his former religion, even though they themselves do not practice any religion properly. But Jesus promised that there would be a compensation for any such loss, saying: “No one has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for my sake and for the sake of the good news who will not get a hundredfold now in this period of time . . . and in the coming system of things everlasting life.”—Mark 10:29, 30. In some cases the course of dedication and integrity may mean a loss of esteem in other people’s eyes. (1 Corinthians 4:12, 13)

22

I am disassociating! I need a template for the letter ASAP!!!

by scooterspank in

i'm done with this crap.

i have a wonderful life but the last few months have been hell.

i need the formality of a disassociation letter to my old cong.

corpusdei

It's been awhile so my memory is a little fuzzy, but this was the gist of mine

corpusdei
9999 Where-ever Lane
Bible Belt County, GA 31145
6/21/2011

To: Elders of the Bible Belt County Congregation, Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York
RE: Voluntary Disassociation

I have been a member of this congregation for 12 years, having served in the capacity of both a ministerial servent and auxillary pioneer. As I have grown in both age and understanding, I have worked dilligently to both spread the message of the Jehovah's Witnesses to others, as well as come to a greater understanding of that message myself as counseled in 1 Tim 4:15. Through a careful consideration of scripture and much prayer, as well as dilligent research into the information and understanding of those scriptures as presented by the Watchtower society, I have come to a decision that I must make you aware of.

Remaining a member of the Jehovah Witnesses requires a level of self-delusion and hypocricy of which I am no longer capable, and I wish to disassociate myself from all aspects of that religion and the teachings of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.

The facts that have gone into this decision are too numerous to detail here, but I do want to make it clear that I do not make this decision lightly and it is not one that I have any desire to reconsider. Please consider this letter to be a formal request that no contact with me be initiated by the body of Elders or any other member of the congregation locally or member of the Watchtower society at large.

-corpusdei

23

Who is your hero?

by HintOfLime in

personally, as a computer programmer, my hero is a bit odd perhaps - gordon ramsey.

i think gordon ramsey is awesome.

no nonsense - he tells boring, lazy, mediocre people that they are mediocre, and passionately tells them what they are doing wrong... because he wants them to do better.

corpusdei

I can only really speak for myself, but when I've been the interviewer for a specialized or general technical position I absolutely look for some sort of evidence of a skillset or technical competency - whether that's a degree or a technical certification. I personally put more weight on a technical certification that the person got on their own through self-sudy vs. a degree or certification that came through a formal class. I consider that stronger evidence of personal motivation, organization and dedication. With that in mind, though, I did end up hiring one fellow even though he had no formal education, certification, or relevant job experience. What he did have was a fairly impressive home server network that he had built himself, mainly just to learn how. We ended up hiring him because even without relevant professional experience, he had the basic technical skillset and a proven drive to improve it.

There's always exceptions, but I think that in the technical field the skills and ability to learn are more important than the degree itself. What the degree does prove is that a person should have the skills, and they've shown the discipline to earn it, but if they can't demonstrate that to a prospective employer, it's very likely that the job might go to the person without a degree who can.

Just my two cents.