remember this?.
.
well how about this?.
Yes LoveUni, envy is the right word since the Catholic Church even by its very name is the archetypal establishment religion.
The Watchtower in contrast is crippled in its worldly ambitions since it can only remain a doomsday cult falsely promising the end of Catholicism and all those who do not believe in the paranoid JW doctrine.
remember this?.
.
well how about this?.
Since the sign says MK Dons it must be the Milton Keynes Bowl in the English Midlands. I hope this is during the peak attendance of the public talk...
But yes the WT derides the Catholic Church but secretly admires its confident authority. It thinks: if only the brothers and sisters would slavishly follow and contribute like the Catholics do.
As for public exposure I think they should copy the papacy and parade around the assembly sites, all seven of them waving to the crowd in a pink Mr Whippy ice-cream van. The Pope after all manages to look like he is frozen in a block of ice.
short cliphttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faru4hjj7rc
What distorted values must exist in the Watchtower HQ to get one of the GB to speak such infantile rubbish? Surely they don't actually believe it?
It seems to me to indicate the emergence of a new attitude or bench mark that to succeed as a JW you have to publicly demonstrate how loyal you are to the "sacred WT doctrines"... however implausible they are and however ridiculous it makes you appear.
jan. 15, 1960 wt.
page 53.
"since the supreme judge never makes a mistakes, there is no need for him to take under.
Sorry chaps but there will be no resurrection taking place at any time...it's just a religious puff-ball dream.
So whereas a general bodily resurrection remains the most remotely improbable thing ever, it is absolutely impossible to literally resurrect mythical or literary figures who never lived in the first place such as Adam and Eve or Mickey Mouse and Minnie.
i know this question has popped up from time to time but i really would like to know how you guys, those that no longer believe, came to that conclusion?
was it the wts and all its crap?
was it something you read?
Tenacious, perhaps you cling to God as if there is some mystical paternalistic force that however bad things get... you will make it to safety?
Here
is the crunch point as every atheist knows; we have only our self to rely on. This
might be hurtful to contemplate for the first time having believed in God but ultimately...
and unlike children... we are all alone.
Realising this is the reason we could experience anxiety in letting go of our
deeply cherished notion. However a great freedom and expansion of our horizons
begins once we take control and responsibility for our own lives.
The concept of God is a primitive myth which answered every question asked back in those days at the cradle of humanity. Times have changed and we have mainly resorted to knowledge to guide us rather than superstition. For the individual this is the big leap; to become our own person, not superstitious, not dependent, determining our own will and discovering the practical and testable answers to those things we once thought were magical. If we believe in a god we are condemned to be forever children and beholden.
Like the Borg, it is certainly in the financial and power interests of religious bodies to gather individuals who remain infantilised and compliant in their fear and sense of obligation to an invisible and unprovable deity.
You asked how did we individually become godless? As for me it was as diogenesister suggests; reading philosophy. As a JW and pioneering I had realised that the figure of Satan was a crude theatrical device and later the idea of God began to appear shaky but it was reading Kierkegaard (a theist) and Nietzsche (an atheist) which rapidly dissolved my belief in a god. As a suggestion; do start with a primer in the subject should you be interested. For me one of the most useful and absorbing books ever written is Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy (long but easy to read!)
animals made rafts out of logs that were knocked down by the great flood, i'm not.
sure about the kangaroo it's possible his pouch could have filled up with water and he sinked and.
how the crossed the ocean, that's something i'm working on.. then we have "if you don't believe in god you don't know right from wrong".
I like the rafting kangaroos idea with inflated pouches steered by platypuses and loaded with koalas, wombats and every last and sundry other marsupial. Unfortunately there are teeny weeny problems with this.
Wombats are not noted for their open-sea navigation skills nor for that matter an ability to communicate with platypuses... and only female kangaroos have pouches. Never mind God must have only used pregnant kangaroo rafters with a special waterproof pouch seal and extra long gestation periods to give birth to males when finally back in oz. It must have been tough on the koalas getting used to the fish diet?
... just received!
london bethel: last year a couple in their fifties were laid off from bethel and made special pioneers.
in january they will be demoted to regular pioneers.
i asked this question of a jw that called on me yesterday: "if the universe requires a creator, why doesn't god?
if the universe must have a beginning, why doesn't god?
he claims to have an answer, but it must wait for next time he calls.. i'm hoping you guys can give me a heads-up as to what he will say.
boy oh boy did i feel paranoid at today's wt.
not only are we to watch our associations outside of the congregation, but also watch our associations 'within' the congregation.
this was emphasised by the wt study conductor.
the following is from: christian beginnings, geza vermes pages 91, 92, 98.
paul inherited from his predecessors a second great cult practice, the communal meal, referred to as the breaking of the bread as well as thanksgiving or eucharist in greek.
as in the case of baptism, paul supplied a new meaning to the community meal and turned it into an imitation and repetition of the lords supper.
When examining the "last supper" it is worth considering the ritual within the experience of Romans familiar with their favorite cult; that of the Great Shepherd and Saviour, Mithra.
Paul wrote in Antioch which at the time was a centre of Mithraism and in the first century with no Christian Bible available, Paul was in a position to dictate his personal vision and write it down. Posterity and the Roman Church deciding that his words would constitute the orthodox view.
Mithraism was a mystery cult in other words it was for initiates only, as in any such group the holy 'secrets' would have leaked out and the last supper of Mithras with its symbols for blood and body is a template for the Pauline version. This was part of the synchretising of dogma; the absorption of much of pagan belief and ritual culminating in the all embracing nature or "catholic" belief of the early church.
