ok so you got out of the watchtower society after discerning it was false.
what is amazing is how many have turned their back on the king or was it they had no faith in the first place and the spiritual food they received did not help them stand upon a rock.
jesus the christ your saviour is a living breathing being with emotions.
Hi Cassuk11,
Thanks for directly answering my questions, I appreciate that. The key difference between our views of course is I don't hold one source of written information in a special place above all others. However, as James said, "You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works" (James 2:18). Whatever our 'faith' might be, we want what we do, our 'works', to be good.
Good luck on your journey!
Cheers,
-Randy
i think that in our various discussions about life after the wt, we many times forget about the cornerstone of christian life - the resurrection.
the implications of the existence a man who holds the power of life and death is manifold.
it makes discussions about the existence of god obsolete.. for all of scientists' accomplishments they have never been able to make even one amobea come alive from non-life.
Hi Vanderhoven7,
"The fact that some of the Gentiles in Corinth did not subscribe to the (general) resurrection of the body does not reflect upon the actual testimony of the apostles or the 500 who attested to having witnessed Christ's post-resurrection appearances in and around Jerusalem. . . . But, like Hymenaeus and Philetus, their error reflects only on themselves."
Unfortunately Paul does not elaborate in 1 Cor 15 who the "some" were. Perhaps, they were Christian leaders in Corinth who preached an anti-resurrection message. Certainly we know Paul talked about "super-fine apostles" he disagreed with elsewhere. To be exact, we can't say we have the testimony of " more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters " (verse 2). Instead what we must say is the author of Corinthians, who we generally agree was Paul, was making this claim.
Eyewitness testimony itself can be problematic. The shocking and sudden demise of Jesus could have had a profound impact on the community of believers. A small assembly of 500 listening to someone speak of Jesus message could over time easily has transformed into a story of him really being there. Certainly we know religious folks with sufficient motivation give questionable testimony -- otherwise we would be compelled to conclude people near Joseph Smith really saw and handled the gold plates.
Nonetheless, I do give some weight to this aspect of Paul's argument. But from there he goes downhill rather quickly...
" If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. " (1 Cor 15:13, 14)
Here Paul is basically arguing that resurrection of Christ happened, because such is required for their preaching and faith. Such circular reasoning weakens his argument. Finally Paul concludes with these words...
Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.” [ e ] 34 Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God—I say this to your shame. (1 Cor 15:33, 34)
This is not the sign of good argument! To suggest belief depends, not on evidence, but rather avoding "bad company" and tied up in "sin" and "shame" is not impressive.
These are my views of course, and you likely would put weight on different aspects of the account. That's the personal challenge to parse through this material and various viewpoints in an effort to reach a reasonable conclusion.
Cheers,
-Randy
ok so you got out of the watchtower society after discerning it was false.
what is amazing is how many have turned their back on the king or was it they had no faith in the first place and the spiritual food they received did not help them stand upon a rock.
jesus the christ your saviour is a living breathing being with emotions.
Hi Cassuk11,
"I would encourage you to ente rinto the spitiual arrangement not made by human hands.In there you will see your saviour he will reveal himself to you"
Fair enough. However, your language here is highly abstract. You need to be more specific for this invitation to make any sense to me. Likewise, I would need to know how the "saviour" would "reveal himself" to judge what this means.
Without being too personal, can you help me understand a bit more about yourself. You seem to be a believer in Jesus as a living personal saviour, yet against organized religion, is that correct? Do you associate with any group then? Are you a former member of Jehovah's Witnesses? What is your view of the Bible, that is the widely circulated Protestant canon from Genesis to Revelation? What view do you hold on Genesis creation account? What is your view of the theory of evolution? How do you feel about scientific method? And finally... not to ask too many things, Occam's Razor?
Knowing your views on these items will help me better address your invitation above.
Cheers,
-Randy
ps. You may have already answered some of these question -- I must confess that I have not read each post in this thread.
pps. My answer to the question above are: (a) I am not a member of any religious organization, (b) I am a member of PAMG (Phoenix Atheist Meetup Group), but don't meet with them that often. I am the organizer of the Chandler, Ex-JW meetup group. (c) I was one of Jehovah's Witnesses most of my life, baptized in 1981, left the faith in 2007. (d) I view the Bible as a remarkable book, continue to regularily read it, but don't believe it has non-human origins. (e) I see the creation account of Genesis as remarkably uninformed about the history of life on earth. (f) I accept the theory of evolution as the best explanation of how life on earth changes over time and is all related. (g) I see the scientific method as one of the most remarkable breakthrough tools in the discovery of objective truth. (h) I think Occam's Razor has proven a great tool in selecting the correct choice when faced with two or more explanations.
i think that in our various discussions about life after the wt, we many times forget about the cornerstone of christian life - the resurrection.
the implications of the existence a man who holds the power of life and death is manifold.
it makes discussions about the existence of god obsolete.. for all of scientists' accomplishments they have never been able to make even one amobea come alive from non-life.
Hi Perry,
"A large crowd of more than 500 eyewitnesses saw the risen Jesus Christ at the same time. The Apostle Paul records this event in 1 Corinthians 15:6 . He states that most of these men and women were still alive when he wrote this letter, about 55 A.D."
Since leaving the faith, I see 1 Cor 15 in almost the exact opposite way a believer does. At verse 12, Paul says this:
" But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? "
Isn't that odd? If the resurrection of Jesus was so well known and such a cornerstone of Christian faith, why would "some" say there is no resurrection? Paul is addressing, not oppossers but, believer in Corinth. There is no question, Paul punches hard on the point in this chapter, but it now strikes me as he doth protest too much.
Cheers,
-Randy
ok so you got out of the watchtower society after discerning it was false.
what is amazing is how many have turned their back on the king or was it they had no faith in the first place and the spiritual food they received did not help them stand upon a rock.
jesus the christ your saviour is a living breathing being with emotions.
Hi Xanthippe,
"I loved God and Jesus and I sacrificed my life to pioneer but when I realised that way of life was rubbish where were THEY?"
Thanks for post this! My skeptisim built over many years, 1995 until I left in 2007[1]. Your post reminded me that many in the faith take it seriously and have the kind of faith Cassuk11 describes. One would also think it would be reasonable that Jesus would reward such faith, even if was mistaken, once a person left. Alas, for many, such as yourself it doesn't work out that way.
Cheers,
-Randy
[1] I did love the faith and was deeply involved along with my family. Although I often aux-pioneerd I never was a pioneer. I do think now I subconsciously limited my mental engagement and did things (saved for retirement, stressed the need for post-secondary education for my girls, never stressed the big A, etc) that limited the burn when we did eventually leave.
ok so you got out of the watchtower society after discerning it was false.
what is amazing is how many have turned their back on the king or was it they had no faith in the first place and the spiritual food they received did not help them stand upon a rock.
jesus the christ your saviour is a living breathing being with emotions.
Hi Jam,
"For the life of me I can't understand why intelligent people believe the stories in the bible. How can theologians who knows the bible and have read it several times still believe it to be 100% truth. What is it that I am missing."
As per the theory of evolution our brains are adapted not so much as truth detectors, but instead for our survival. Since humans survive in groups and are very social there is a great deal pressure to accept what the group believes as true. In this regard I find how science attempts to uncover objective truth very telling. For example, the very idea that hypothesis can be considered "scientific" only if there is some way it can be clearly proven wrong. Then the hypothesis only attains the elevated status of a theory only after rigorous attempts to kill the hypothesis have failed.
Thus it genuinely can be difficult to parse truth from complete nonsense when articulate adult leaders of a community insist the nonsense is real.
What I now find interesting about the Bible in addtion to the direct things you mention (the Adam and Eve story, the Jonan story, the Baalam story, etc), but a some of the more subtle patterns. One pattern in particular strikes me rather strongly, and that is the scope of the stories involving miracles changes over time. The story of Noah is world wide. The story of Moses involves all of Egypt. By the time of Jesus all the miracles shrink in scope and involve only a few people in the area directly around Jesus.
There is a simple and obvious reason for this -- to make unbelievable stories, beliavable, setting is important and a key is making the setting just out of reach. The bigger the story the more remote and distant the setting must be. Thus, Star Wars, opens with "A long time ago and in galaxy far far away..."
Cheers,
-Randy
ok so you got out of the watchtower society after discerning it was false.
what is amazing is how many have turned their back on the king or was it they had no faith in the first place and the spiritual food they received did not help them stand upon a rock.
jesus the christ your saviour is a living breathing being with emotions.
Hi Cassuk11,
"Ok so you got out of The Watchtower Society after discerning it was false."
Much depends on what one finds is false. For me it was a couple things, the first being the impossibility of the flood account in the Bible being literally true. The second was the dishonest way the theory of evolution was treated in the publications.
"What is amazing is how many have turned their back on the King or was it they had no faith in the first place and the spiritual food they received did not help them stand upon a rock."
There is little question Jehovah's Witnesses miss the essence of Christianity -- namely the focus on Jesus as the Christ. How many Witnesses even know that "Jehovah" never appeared in NT writing? So, I can see how one who leaves the Witness faith could do so once discovering this disconnect between what is presented as Christianity in NT vs Jehovah's Witnesses focus on -- "Jehovah" and obedience to an organization.
"Jesus the Christ your saviour is a living breathing being with emotions. He want usto ge tto know him ,to follow him, to call upon him in days of trouble, .He want us to be part of the true churhc, a one not made by human handes."
I simply don't see any evidence such incredible claims are true. Rather Jesus, like all other humans of his day, are now dead. The presentation of his death on a cross at the hands of the Romans could very well be true. That Christainity, growing up outside the middle of Jewish system, from which it sprang and not being very connected to physical things like a temple, I can easily see how such a belief system would focus on the spirtual, i.e. things, "not made with human hands."
"Peace and Love"
Amen! I believe the healthiest forms of faith stress peace and love and are ones that are personal. They don't focus on an organization, especially where one is not to question the leader. Without a doubt, your love of Jesus and his message comes across. I am sure it can be frustrating to think, Ex-Witnesses, who are now atheists such as myself, have somehow been ruined by our former faith, or as you suggest, never had faith to begin with. However, I don't think that is the correct way to think about it. For me, leaving the faith, was turning my back, not on Jesus, but on falsehood.
Cheers,
-Randy
dear friends,.
my mother in law said, that bloodless medicine works in all situations.. .
i don't have a lot of medical experience.
Hi TD,
Thank you for those posts! It is sometimes incredible what modern medicine can accomplish!
Cheers,
-Randy
dear friends,.
my mother in law said, that bloodless medicine works in all situations.. .
i don't have a lot of medical experience.
Hi Daniel1555,
"My mother in law said, that bloodless medicine works in all situations."
Twice in my life I faced the issue of blood transfusions and both times refused. The first time was in Canada in the 1980s when I was in the hospital for a bleeding ulcer. My blood count dropped to 5.0. Since then I have moved to the USA. However while on vacation in 2001 in Canada I fell out of tree and seriously injured myself. The doctors in Prince George, BC, performed emergency surgery to remove my spleen and did so without blood.
Thus, I had a fairly positive view of my Witness-inspired view of blood and medicine. In fact, even after leaving the faith, I continued to carry my medical directive (no blood) card for about a year.
Eventually, a couple things started to make me think about this issue more deeply. One was my wife's refusal of an epidural blood patch as an option is something should go wrong during the birth of our last daughter. My wife refused believing that once blood had left the bood it should not be returned. Only later on did we realize that epidural blood patch had been designated as acceptable by the faith. Perhaps even more shocking was plasmapheresis had also in recent years been given the green light -- even though blood completely leaves the body.
In Canada I was very aware of the tainted blood scandal, wherein Canada was slow to start testing for HIV. You can bet that made me pretty glad to have avoided that first transfusion. If you Google Horace Krever you can read about this.
Eventually, though I asked myself this question: What expertise do I have on this issue? Frankly most things I knew about the issue had come from Watchtower publications.
My conclusion was this: I am not a medical expert, so really I have no basis to really comment on how effective blood or blood components might be in any given situation. In general though I know thousands upon thousands of procedures involving blood products are done every day. In one case I did write to the University for the source of a Awake! quote that was negative about blood. The provocative title of news article Awake quote was "Banked Blood Could Do More Harm Than Good." When I followed up the source, it was very clear the researchers involved were tackling the issue of how blood is stored after collection and how that can be improved. At the very top of the article it cited references to the effectiveness of blood transfusions. In any regards, why would these researchers even be trying to find a more effective way to store blood, if blood transfusions did "harm" -- the impression Awake! left with its readers.
Finally, I must say, I was impressed with Greg Stafford (Christian Witnesses of Jah & Elihu Books) letter to the Governing Body on the subject of how blood is presented in the Bible. I'm an atheist and don't agree with Greg's religious views in general, but I do credit him for helping me see it is more consistent to see blood in the Bible as sacred and life-sustaining and therefore should not be consumed as food. Indeed medical use of blood, does not involve consuming it as food.
Cheers,
-Randy
how many of us have had to deal with a version of that retort?!
it's hurtful and i suspect - for some - that's partly because of the nagging feeling that our families may have a point.. but do they?.
i was 15 when i got baptised, is it reasonable that as the 50 year old man i'll be on my next birthday i continue to be held to a decision i made as a schoolboy?.
Hi Nic,
Randy, I'm struggling to pin down my reasons but your post really pissed me off.
Please don't read my post as if I'm suggesting it applies to you or anyone else. It is how I personally processed my decision. In other words, I knew beforehand what the consequences would be and for me I could have easily avoided them. Simply by either remaining in the faith, or after leaving deciding not to openly celebrate Christmas. Is the thrust of the "you knew the consequences" a blame the victim approach? Absolutely! That is what the Witness is trying to do, and it is the Witness that I'm addressing, not you or anyone else who is the victim of shunning.
Once *I* am willing to accept the consequence -- lets just say, even simply for the sake of the argument -- *then* where does the reasoning go? And that is the point I'm trying to make. Our Witnesses friends aren't really making the rest of the journey. As if to say, that we *should* have chosen to avoid the consequences and everything would be okay? No it wouldn't! We would, after knowning what we know, be found living an immoral life, by giving tacit support to an organization we now know is bringing harm to people. That is intolerable and as a consequence, we had to leave. That's my point. I appolgise if it doesn't always come across as well as I would like.
Take care,
-Randy
