Caleb in F: critical reasoning demanding evidence and based on evidence
Paradisebeauty: conventional assertions without any evidence
Half banana
JoinedPosts by Half banana
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45
Who or What is the Holy Spirit?
by FusionTheism intradition within christianity has long been that any time the phrases holy spirit, holy ghost, or spirit of godare used in the bible (especially in the new testament), it always refers to the mysterious third divine person of the trinity, who is fully god, co-equal to the father and son, yet somehow distinct.. i want to present a simplified alternative view: let the context determine the meaning!.
(one thing to keep in mind is that the meaning of the bible words used for spirit basically is unseen force or invisible presence.).
the holy spirit as the mind and personality of god.
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34
Blurring of genders
by Saltheart Foamfollower inas sometimes happens at elders meetings with the co, he has a letter from the branch to read out.
this rarely is made available later so any policies have to be acted on from memory.
this visit a letter was read about blurring of the genders and in particular brothers dressing in a metrosexual style - tight clothing was mentioned again.
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Half banana
If they are so concerned with the unequivocal determination of the sexes, why not make beards compulsory for men?
And what about persecuting elder's wives who have moustaches?
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That's it! The Jesus stories are most reasonably explained as myth. History makes this obvious.
by Island Man ina careful examination of the historical pagan religious context existing at the time of the genesis of christianity leads any reasonable person to conclude that jesus is just another one of several similar myths.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn7teoa9ark.
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Half banana
Island Man, are you asking Perry about Christus or Chrestus? The meaning of the the words are different, The 'anointed' versus the 'good' one, see my explanation above. The savior god-men heroes traditionally were Chrestus (the good one) but is got conflated with Christus (anointed one) perhaps for the reason I suggest; to create the illusion that the new first and second century Jesus myth was to fulfill Jewish prophecy to satisfy the messianic hopes of Jewry. -
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That's it! The Jesus stories are most reasonably explained as myth. History makes this obvious.
by Island Man ina careful examination of the historical pagan religious context existing at the time of the genesis of christianity leads any reasonable person to conclude that jesus is just another one of several similar myths.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn7teoa9ark.
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Half banana
We cannot in good conscience treat as true all the handwritten texts about Jesus, the temptation to slap the name Jesus on the ancient God-man saviour story, was an irresistable urge of the literate clerics at a later time to further their own interests. The illiterate and gullible would never know, they thought...and they still don't.
The Greek word 'chrestus' does not mean Christ as asserted in Perry's extracts. It is the normal title of the God-men such as Dionysus and Orpheus and means simply 'good'. This tradition was later subtly altered by Jesus-cult apologists to the more elevated and familiar word 'christ' probably to assume fulfillment of Hebrew texts.
This getting the words right leads me to a most important point that modern Christianity interprets the past in the light of a glorious divine epiphany in the first century and that any mention of "christian" means a follower of Jesus. This is simply not true.
In the first century the Bible writers hardly knew the name Jesus, and Christianity whatever Paul said, existed for centuries before the idea of Jesus. Christians or Crestians (good men) were very well known to the Roman authorities as a nuisance but these sects and messiahs had nothing to do with later Roman Jesus Christianity which is the channel from which modern Christianity has arisen. So the references to "christians" or "crestus" are not about the imagined sacred and pure origins of the first Jesus cult but the long tradition of pagan holy God-men, some of them threatening the peace in the Roman market place...(as depicted in Life of Brian).
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Just had a former elder friend tell me, “This Overlapping generation is crap.
by John Aquila inlast night i ran into a former elder friend, he is in his late 70s.
he asked how i was doing and i asked how he was doing.
then out of the blue he tells me; .
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Half banana
Vinman, that was a stonking post!
I wonder how many are waking up to the realisation that the WT have no answer to the fact that they simply were wrong about their cherished dogma of the 1914 generation?
The fall-out from this error is enormous.
Firstly, their trade mark god either does not exist or he does not care about the WTBTS. (I can see no further option). Secondly, they have hideously mislead millions and millions of loyal followers up the proverbial garden path. The accumulative mental suffering and wasting one's life on a religious scam is hard to calculate.
The GB must understand and feel the catastrophe that they were completely and utterly wrong about 1914.
Instead of apologising they got the most benign and trustworthy member John (Jack) Barr to announce their hopelessly inadequate new doctrine of "evidently" overlapping. The poor man died not long after, I'm sure he must have known it came out of the rear end of a male bovine...but he was loyal.
It has to be said the real test of a Jehovah's Witness is not knowledge or humility or dogged determination or hours in service or anything other than blind loyalty to the governing body's demands which counts. To do this is beyond reason. There must be some masochism involved in such slavish obedience because the JWs instinct is to cling on to their hope whether right or wrong.
So here is my point: Why would Jehovah mislead "his own people" for a hundred years?.......................... Are you listening Brooklyn?
My hope is that lurking in the hearts of some of the GB there exists some reason and compassion trying to burst out and admit they are not guided by God and shut up shop for good. Some hope hey!
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Faulty Reasoning to Promote God's "Name"
by Dissonant15 inas i am newly awoken, i am daily having epiphanies & revelations now.
i've been casually wondering to myself since the propagandist broadcast about the name "jehovah" if it would be more proper to call him "yahweh" to myself.
well tonight the answer suddenly came to me: it doesn't matter.
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Half banana
Hi Dissonant, well done for waking up! The time comes when we realise that everything that we were taught from the JW org is entirely irrelevant for a real and free life outside the cult. I was going to say "almost everything" but no, everything, because all that the JW org says or teaches is only to have control over flock.
When you find out that Yahweh began as an ox-headed idol with a human body shape placed in the upright sitting position just like all the Egyptian gods... and that he was the son of a greater god called El...and that he had a female consort called Ashera...the religious enthusiasm drains right away!
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Sept, 17 text; "Jehovah protects his people"-- from Jehovah.
by prologos inthe danger for the families?
to have their firstborn killed by jehovah, ---but teach them they will be protected by following jehovah's (gb's) instructions, even seemingly irrational.. if you do the daily text, don't pass over this opportunity.
of the irrational passover.
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Half banana
Jerhoover the great killing machine...but you'll be ok if you keep up your protection payments to the WTBTS -
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After Death Communications in the JW community
by jack2312 inmy name is jack and i'm looking for after death communications from the jehovah witness community.
an after death communication (or adc) is when a loved one sends a kind of message to this side of life after their death.
it can be a dream or smell (like perfume or roses that would be attached to them in memory) or a feeling of their presence.
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Half banana
Wrong community possibly? Try spiritualists. -
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That's it! The Jesus stories are most reasonably explained as myth. History makes this obvious.
by Island Man ina careful examination of the historical pagan religious context existing at the time of the genesis of christianity leads any reasonable person to conclude that jesus is just another one of several similar myths.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn7teoa9ark.
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Half banana
Calebin F, your argument from a Jewish perspective for Jesus as a real human is: Why would Responsa (formalised rabbinic replies) develop antithetically to a non-existent person? Superficially a fair point but not necessarily valid. I suggest that the body of sacred Jewish writings, however revered, is itself inherently the product of politico-religious and nationalistic bluster and myth in the first place. In other words a system of beliefs not founded on fact but from mainly non-existing i.e. fictional characters such as Moses and the twelve sons of Israel. (All have precedents in earlier exotic tales mainly from Egypt). Therefore the credibility of Jewish pronouncements on other heroic figures is suspect. It is easier to diminish the importance of an individual than it is to suppress a myth. All religion, since it is mostly devoid of testable evidence; is just propaganda. Religious argument therefore, to put it crudely, it is a case of “My myth is better than your myth.” If human evolution is true but not readily observable, then the evolution of ideas and mythology is more readily accessible to the textual scholar. To disentangle deeply entrenched and strongly felt beliefs, require research into the facts and not just repeating suppositions...as you are well aware.
The God-men tales of the near East and western Asia was the template for the “christ stories” of which Jesus was the last one of note. The reason for his prominence being that this character was promoted by the Roman state and through the agency of its Catholic Church; left a legacy of dominant small O orthodoxy of ‘Christ belief’ right up until today. However prior to the fourth century we have a string of heroic messianic celebrities supplying the answer to the greatest existential problem facing humanity; how to overcome death. It was a preponderantly illiterate world, the transmission of belief outside of the temples and synagogues would have been for millennia; through passion plays. They still exist today, even in my nearest village in civilised and literate England, the nativity is re-enacted on Christmas Eve every year. Joseph and a Mary (played by the last couple to be married at the local church) travel round the village with Mary riding a donkey, and knocking on doors looking for a place to stay, rejected, they stay at a barn at the manor house replete with oxen and a baby Jesus in a straw filled manger.
A mordant is the chemistry which fixes colour in the process of dying cloth... for the illiterate throughout history; the nativity play or any such play as the Passion of Christ would surely be the ‘mordant’ to fix a “belief” into the cultural fabric. (It is also a strong clue as to the how and why, many of the Bible stories came to be recorded... they are transcripts of folk plays).
So if you believe that Jesus existed as a breathing human, why not believe the pedigree of his literary forebears: the fictional crucified Dionysus who had the same history attributed to him, why not the mythical Osiris, born of a virgin (Meri) whose step father was Sep, born in a cave with oxen, who had twelve disciples, walked on water, preached, healed the sick, cured leprosy and resurrected his friend Lazarus (El Osiris)... a thousand years before Jesus?
The character or role of the God-man and its story-line was well established in the peasant consciousness. This belief was retained without critical thought, with minimum education other than a religious tradition, and maximum gullibility. The God-man hero existed independently of a personal name of the lead character; it had already done the rounds for many centuries before the first century. He was the son of the Sun God he was the saviour of mankind, the Christ. The Jewish authorities would have needed to challenge the belief adopted by some of its number in joining a Christ –cult. They would not investigate whether he existed, since the unbelievably exciting message of the magic belief was that “the word had been made flesh” and many Jews had declared this as it was the founding cry of Jesus- Christianity and axiomatically held to be true. The Jews would have fought against the belief and the implication of losing power to the new cult and not the facts of the case.
So I suggest that the Jewish stance was to decry the Christ cults with a mythical founder who had a Jewish sounding name called “Jesus”. A man unknown to any credible historical source although conflated with other Jesuses over time. We are in the territory of folk myth, gullibility and messianic hope...not reality.
Osiris was not real neither was Dionysus: why should anyone else sharing the same fictional characteristics attributed to him have been a live person? That he could have existed is not germane to the foregoing and is a misleading sentiment.
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Lurker trying to gain clarity
by questioningmyfaith inhello all, i would like to first say that i am basically questioning my faith in god.
i am not negative towards the wt at all.
so honestly i am to concerned with more ad hominem attacks towards the wt because i still love the organization and the people in it.
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Half banana
Questioningmyfaith, a warm welcome to the site and thanks for posting. The fact that you have come here and explained your situation shows that unlike most JWs, you are prepared to think for yourself, a very good quality!
As one who experiences shunning and worse from my JW family, I think that the JW religion has proved in my case to have caused more pain and suffering than any other thing in my life. That might be just my private misfortune but I’m sure I’m not alone. However since leaving the org, my life, freedom and happiness has improved immensely. In my case it has come about by finding out how the world works and by a sceptical analysis of things.
Doc has already said that he felt like you at your stage in waking up...we understand here! The notion that not all is well in JW land is usually very confusing and unsettling. You are justified in objecting to the criticism of the brothers, most of them are decent people... after all we are talking about ourselves!
The missing link which is never alluded to in its raw state is that the JW world can only exist because of its ruthless power structure. It is autocratic, it is authoritarian, it uses the emotions and stories found in the Bible as tools to control its subservient followers. The gospel now appears to be the Watchtower itself and the mediators between men and God are the GB... Any lie as Hitler knew, can be made to stick if it is repeated enough.
The innocent believers are god-fearing and often with poor education; they enjoy being led and especially with the prospect of paradise ahead. (Funny how the paradise carrot is attached ever ahead of the WT donkey as it moves forward in an attempt to reach it)... The WTBTS power play may not be the picture you have seen or imagined regarding the GB but believe me, if you left the org it would become starkly apparent and then you would understand the reason for the animosity held amongst many ex-JWs. We were lied to. Can you trust people who lie to you?