designs, you do realise you're arguing with a brick wall, don't you?
Nickolas
JoinedPosts by Nickolas
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46
The Watchtower, Christianity and Cultism
by Nickolas inif you want to upset a jehovah's witness, refer to the watchtower as a sect.
if you really want to upset a jehovah's witness, refer to the watchtower as a cult.
that's pretty much a conversation stopper.. the watchtower denigrates the rest of christianity.
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Funerals of past WTBTS presidents -
by james_woods inok, i thought of this last night because i remembered there have been numerous threads about how mysterious j.f.rutherfords funeral arrangements were - only four people or so did the ceremony (sort of in secrecy) and nobody to this day knows what happened to the body or where he is buried.. but it occurred to me that i was an active witness when knorr died, and just left shortly before franz died - and i know nothing about the funeral of either of them.... have no idea what they did for jaracz, or even for russell as well.
well, edit to say that i have seen the russell gravestone and pyramid shrine when i was in pittsburg pa for congregation servant's school in 1970.. does anybody know the inside information on these - where they took place, was it by invitation only, what did they do, etc.
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Nickolas
To borrow heavily on an old yarn my Irish grandfather might have said, I'd be very pleased to honour the memory of these gentlemen by pouring a bottle of Jameson over their graves, so long as I can pass it through me kidneys first.
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46
The Watchtower, Christianity and Cultism
by Nickolas inif you want to upset a jehovah's witness, refer to the watchtower as a sect.
if you really want to upset a jehovah's witness, refer to the watchtower as a cult.
that's pretty much a conversation stopper.. the watchtower denigrates the rest of christianity.
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Nickolas
I've read your post, AK-Jeff, and can only guess that you are responding to posts made by godsrulz. I've stopped reading them, myself. They just have the effect of increasing my blood pressure (your's too, by the looks of things) and I want to look after my health, so what else can I do?
I would agree that ANY group that seeks to exercise control over the thoughts of people is a cult, yes.
That could include political groups, I assume. Stalin's regime is very good example. Hitler's, too. And Pot and all those others. Even your government and mine (actually, they're the same one) seek to have a major influence on our thinking. It's the way it is, one of the tools to maintain law and order in an otherwise free society. So, if not to be under the influence of cultism is to be truly free to think as you wish and not as others wish you to think, where does it begin and end? It really comes down to some sort of line in the sand. The line maybe as simple as doing no harm to anyone.
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46
The Watchtower, Christianity and Cultism
by Nickolas inif you want to upset a jehovah's witness, refer to the watchtower as a sect.
if you really want to upset a jehovah's witness, refer to the watchtower as a cult.
that's pretty much a conversation stopper.. the watchtower denigrates the rest of christianity.
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Nickolas
I might then submit, Paul, that there are degrees of cultism. It goes to the question whether or not anything that is organised (in this case, any formal religion) that exhibits at least some of the defining characterists of cultism are cults. Any belief system, that has as its foundation exclusivity of truth and holds that simply to believe otherwise is to be excluded from spiritual reward, seeks to exercise control over the thoughts of its adherents, and to me that spells cult.
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46
The Watchtower, Christianity and Cultism
by Nickolas inif you want to upset a jehovah's witness, refer to the watchtower as a sect.
if you really want to upset a jehovah's witness, refer to the watchtower as a cult.
that's pretty much a conversation stopper.. the watchtower denigrates the rest of christianity.
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Nickolas
As per option#3, atheisim can be a cult as can someones excessive admiration for Dawkins ;)
Glad you put that winking smilie at the end of that sentence, Paul. In many ways I agree with you. Those who embrace atheism because they are told to or because they were brought up to be atheists and otherwise because they haven't thought things through are no better than theists who are theists for the same reasons. One might think, for example, of the Red Army hoard of the second world war, many if not most of whom were brutish, ignorant, violent men who escewed the notion of god because the state required it of them. Theirs was as much a cult as was Jim Jones'. However, theirs was a cult of politics and personality, not of science. As to Richard Dawkins, I have enormous respect for the man but I draw the line at admiration. I don't admire him at all. He seems to be a bit of an apologist for pedophilia, for example, saying almost that "it aint so bad as people make it out to be". On that score, I very much disagree with him.
As far as Jesus goes, whatever we find about him in the bible does not indicate the use of one of the mind-control techniques, so in my opinion, christianity in general is not a cult.
I was raised Roman Catholic, Hoffnung. It was my Irish mother's upbringing and my atheist father deferred to her (or, more likely, her firey Irish temperment. Filling my head with theist nonsense was not to him a hill to die for). The church did, indeed, exercise mind control. If you have never heard of "Catholic guilt complex" you might want to look it up. It is very real, and even in my aged, enlightened state, I am still affected by it. As to Jesus and his first century followers, a recent conversation I had in here with a couple of very bright and affable Christians about how the genealogies of Christ as reported by Matthew and Luke legitimise the questionable accounts of Genesis brought to light (to me, at least) something that indicates that they, too, sought to control how their adherents thought. Reference was made to Paul's admonition to Timothy:
1Timothy 1:3-4 "...Stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. These promote controversies rather than God's work - which is by faith."
which to me is saying, "yeah, those genealogies fall into the same categories as false doctrines and myths, but don't get bogged down in the details. Put on the blinders, check your brain at the door, and just accept all this on the basis of faith."
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46
The Watchtower, Christianity and Cultism
by Nickolas inif you want to upset a jehovah's witness, refer to the watchtower as a sect.
if you really want to upset a jehovah's witness, refer to the watchtower as a cult.
that's pretty much a conversation stopper.. the watchtower denigrates the rest of christianity.
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Nickolas
The difference between science and cult is science constantly strives to prove itself wrong in search of new discoveries or greater understanding of what it holds to be true. When it finds those new things it rejoices and it changes its beliefs. Cults, on the other hand, strive only to maintain what they hold to be true and ignore anything to the contrary. Here's an example, provided by everyone's favourite atheist, Richard Dawkins. He uses the word "fundamentalists" but it's pretty much synonymous with "cultist".
"Fundamentalists know they are right because they have read the truth in a holy book and they know, in advance, that nothing will budge them from their belief. The truth of the holy book is an axiom, not the end product of a process of reasoning. The book is true, and if the evidence seems to contradict it, it is the evidence that must be thrown out, not the book. By contrast, what I, as a scientist, believe (for example, evolution) I believe not because of reading a holy book but because I have studied the evidence. It really is a very different matter. Books about evolution are believed not because they are holy. They are believed because they present overwhelming quantities of mutually buttressed evidence. In principle, any reader can go and check that evidence. When a science book is wrong, somebody eventually discovers the mistake and it is corrected in subsequent books. That conspicuously doesn't happen with holy books."
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46
The Watchtower, Christianity and Cultism
by Nickolas inif you want to upset a jehovah's witness, refer to the watchtower as a sect.
if you really want to upset a jehovah's witness, refer to the watchtower as a cult.
that's pretty much a conversation stopper.. the watchtower denigrates the rest of christianity.
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Nickolas
I am proud to belong to the cult of Christianity.
Another yes vote. A very honest one. Thank you for your thoughtful post, BotR.
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46
The Watchtower, Christianity and Cultism
by Nickolas inif you want to upset a jehovah's witness, refer to the watchtower as a sect.
if you really want to upset a jehovah's witness, refer to the watchtower as a cult.
that's pretty much a conversation stopper.. the watchtower denigrates the rest of christianity.
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Nickolas
Yes, OUTLAW, that would take the thing up a notch or two to be sure.
You know, RayPublisher, it's just a simple, unemotional question. Neither hate nor ridicule involved, and how does one make fun of something that has caused so much misery in the world? No, I don't think it's funny at all. One of the things about being in a cult is not knowing or believing that you're in a cult and it is invariably those who are in a cult who are its greatest apologists. My avatar? Just an acknowledgement of the lowly place from which I come, and how insignificant and unimportant I really am.
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Why do Americans still dislike atheists?
by behemot inby gregory paul and phil zuckerman (washington post).
long after blacks and jews have made great strides, and even as homosexuals gain respect, acceptance and new rights, there is still a group that lots of americans just dont like much: atheists.
those who dont believe in god are widely considered to be immoral, wicked and angry.
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Nickolas
Christians who accept evolution is an entirely different subject. Dawkins uses it as an example in the above quote. Any closely held belief for which the individual is unable or unwilling to consider evidence to the contrary is a fundamental belief, and that includes belief in Christ.
From my perspective, a Christian who accepts evolution as fact has acquiesced intellectually to the overwhelming evidence of evolution but who at the same time perhaps has not had the intellectual honesty or courage to challenge his belief in Christ. Belief in Christ is a sacred cow. Off limits.
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91
Why do Americans still dislike atheists?
by behemot inby gregory paul and phil zuckerman (washington post).
long after blacks and jews have made great strides, and even as homosexuals gain respect, acceptance and new rights, there is still a group that lots of americans just dont like much: atheists.
those who dont believe in god are widely considered to be immoral, wicked and angry.
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Nickolas
You do realise the flip side of that coin works for the believer VS the atheist right?
The believer can view the atheist as ignorant of the reality that the believer has seen and has been proven, to the believer, to be true.
Since we were discussing Dawkins it seems apropos to quote him here. He's speaking in terms of fundamental belief, but it's still relevant on the basis that a belief closely held for which no evidence to the contrary, regardless of how convincing it may be, will be honestly considered is a fundamental belief.
"I might retort that such hostility as I or other atheists occasionally voice towards religion is limited to words. I am not going to bomb anybody, behead them, stone them, burn them at the stake, crucify them, or fly planes into their skyscrapers, just because of a theological disagreement. But my interlocutor usually doesn't leave it at that. He may go on to say something like this: 'Doesn't your hostility mark you out as a fundamentalist atheist, just as fundamentalist in your own way as the wingnuts of the Bible Belt in theirs?' I need to dispose of this accusation of fundamentalism, for it is distressingly common.
Fundamentalists know they are right because they have read the truth in a holy book and they know, in advance, that nothing will budge them from their belief. The truth of the holy book is an axiom, not the end product of a process of reasoning. The book is true, and if the evidence seems to contradict it, it is the evidence that must be thrown out, not the book. By contrast, what I, as a scientist, believe (for example, evolution) I believe not because of reading a holy book but because I have studied the evidence. It really is a very different matter. Books about evolution are believed not because they are holy. They are believed because they present overwhelming quantities of mutually buttressed evidence. In principle, any reader can go and check that evidence. When a science book is wrong, somebody eventually discovers the mistake and it is corrected in subsequent books. That conspicuously doesn't happen with holy books.
Philosophers, especially amateurs with a little philosophical learning, and even more especially those infected with 'cultural relativism', may raise a tiresome red herring at this point: a scientist's belief in evidence is itself a matter of fundamentalist faith. I have dealt with this elsewhere, and will only briefly repeat myself here. All of us believe in evidence in our own lives, whatever we may profess with our amateur philosophical hats on. If I am accused of murder, and prosecuting counsel sternly asks me whether it is true that I was in Chicago on the night of the crime, I cannot get away with a philosophical evasion: 'It depends what you mean by "true".' Nor with an anthropological, relativist plea: 'It is only in your Western scientific sense of "in" that I was in Chicago. The Bongolese have a completely different concept of "in", according to which you are only truly "in" a place if you are an anointed elder entitled to take snuff from the dried scrotum of a goat.' Maybe scientists are fundamentalist when it comes to defining in some abstract way what is meant by 'truth'. But so is everybody else. I am no more fundamentalist when I say evolution is true than when I say it is true that New Zealand is in the southern hemisphere. We believe in evolution because the evidence supports it, and we would abandon it overnight if new evidence arose to disprove it. No real fundamentalist would ever say anything like that.
It is all too easy to confuse fundamentalism with passion. I may well appear passionate when I defend evolution against a fundamentalist creationist, but this is not because of a rival fundamentalism of my own. It is because the evidence for evolution is overwhelmingly strong and I am passionately distressed that my opponent can't see it - or, more usually, refuses to look at it because it contradicts his holy book. My passion is increased when I think about how much the poor fundamentalists, and those whom they influence, are missing. The truths of evolution, along with many other scientific truths, are so engrossingly fascinating and beautiful; how truly tragic to die having missed out on all that! Of course that
makes me passionate. How could it not? But my belief in evolution is not fundamentalism, and it is not faith, because I know what it would take to change my mind, and I would gladly do so if the necessary evidence were forthcoming."