now that i'm free to bet, i figured it would be neat to start a pool on when the watchtower is going to change light bulbs on the prophecy about the united nations turning on worldwide religion.
there is no doubt in my mind that this prediction will be dropped.
not only is this the longest-running unchanged prediction in the wt's history (1925 and 1975 had much shorter gestations) it's the last detailed concrete prediction the society has left in its bag of tricks.
The one thing the GB fear in their paranoid bunker is for a government to attempt to extinguish them. If they saw this beginning to happen they could declare it was prophesied. The drones would all respond appropriately and cough up more cash.
It is in their interest to keep this cheap prediction available on tap.
i find it curious why so many here on this site, in the face of factual evidence for things such as evolution and the impossibility for anyone to make a coherent interpretation for the bible, would still prefer faith to knowledge?.
can any believer attempt a defence of this position?.
@Dog gone, of course I am begging the question but I sincerely hope for an insight into faith nevertheless! Even as a JW I didn’t have much faith, just a stupid trust in what others were believing to be true. “Brand loyalty” I think described it better than faith.
Your comparison with the popular story narrative is interesting because it reflects a particular aspect of the human psyche; the wish for “love” to triumph. No decent human would deny the sentiment. Humans want love... and religion can supply a simulacrum of it.
To relocate the idea and place human love for a sprit father and son, is an abstraction of familial love and yet historically it has been socially accepted as honourable and desirable. I suggest this is the very mistake which needs to be understood. We are capable of falling “in love” which is very healthy in most families but to apply the same psychological triggers to an invisible putative “saviour” and be loved in return; is a delusion. By this I mean there is no evidence outside our mind (or collective minds) that we are loving or are being loved by a spirit being. We may be talking love with our fellow believers and we might feel it very strongly and enjoy the feeling. But whatever you do don’t bring reason or logic to the party as the drug will soon wear off.
The time has come to put away these childish things as one writer said.
@David Jay, yes belief and worship has been whittled down to an expedient called “faith” since the texts as you say, don’t encourage blind faith as a religious act.
You also give an example of the faith which Abraham had without scripture. This is another example of the utter incoherence of the Bible since religion in patriarchal times had an entirely different and polytheistic approach whereby a man might acceptably talk and argue with a god. If such a man was a patriarch or culture hero, it would be an object lesson for the listeners to the story.
So you are saying that whereas faith is not the goal scripturally speaking; it has taken on a life of its own and become perhaps the identifier for modern Christianity?
@Perry science only means knowledge, it is nothing special and human knowledge as yet cannot describe with the needed evidence the precise origin of life. This by no means invalidates scientific methods, it simply exemplifies our present limits. Scientific methods are only four hundred years old after all. This is no argument here which says that faith is superior to science.
A good question Luther b, but as Bertie Russell said; philosophy lies somewhere between science and religion. Do you have a good reply to your own question?
i find it curious why so many here on this site, in the face of factual evidence for things such as evolution and the impossibility for anyone to make a coherent interpretation for the bible, would still prefer faith to knowledge?.
can any believer attempt a defence of this position?.
I find it curious why so many here on this site, in the face of factual evidence for things such as evolution and the impossibility for anyone to make a coherent interpretation for the Bible, would still prefer faith to knowledge?
Can any believer attempt a defence of this position?
i have been reading about the early history of russelites/jws and in the beginning, it seems the organization was formed and headed by quite a few educated people.
lawyers, doctors, businessman.
you could buy voting rights within the organization for $1000, which by today's standard would be somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000, something most of us do not have on hand, unless you are highly educated and/or wealthy.
Absolutely right Kaik...since when was ignorance an advantage? (only in religious cults!)
How interesting that the social changes of the late 19th century USA involved both the growth of religious observance and simultaneously the import from Europe; evolution, and the notion of textual criticism of the Bible which was opposed to the historical assumptions for unthinking “faith”.
Russell’s suspicion of “higher criticism” was understandable, as an uneducated man himself with a large financial interest in the Faith business anything which smacked of serious evaluation of man’s real origins or looking too closely at where the Bible came from was taboo. That same attitude has been an inherited meme which remains with the truth-denying, obscurantist GB today.
They have everything to lose if people turned to education instead of listening to their paranoid propaganda.
we have several examples in the forum showing that president knorr was not a loving and caring person; one that impressed me was the one about the elderly bethelite that was put out on the streets until his death due to a disagreement with knorr.
i bring to your attention an incident that happened in the country of honduras back in the 50s, it has to do with immoral conduct by a branch overseer and his subsequent disfellowshiping.
i am not critical of the end result of his conduct but rather the salacious and detailed report of this matter putting in the open the details for the whole world to see.
Thanks for that Athanasius, I have recently bought BGH's book and not had time to read it yet.
I remember Knorr at an assembly at Twickenham west London (Twickers). 1969? He was wearing a raincoat and looked completely miserable. I recall he pushed into a lunch queue without the social grace of smiling and saying "Would you mind?" to the person he was pushing in front of. I was new then... why didn't I realize at that moment that JWs were just another God and Jesus business?
My other recollection from that time was that he was a boring speaker lacking human warmth. I saw then that rank within the hierarchy was all. He had the right to make rambling unstructured talks because the drones were programmed to clap at everything utterance of his as if from heaven.
born in 1769, william "strata" smith was the eldest of five children of a oxfordshire blacksmith.
he had only a basic education but became fascinated by local fossils when he began work on his uncle's farm.
his flair for geometry inspired him to learn surveying which led to his career.. by 1794 he was supervising the building of the somerset coal canal, and was travelling around the country to visit other canal sites.
How many geologists or paleontologists are creationists?
Don't you think it would be a good idea if all schoolchildren were taught the geological column as a matter of course? It would put an end to a lot of creationist nonsense.
( jw governing body members are invited to respond) .
however professional and glossy their pr makeover is, as seen on jw tv and the jw org logo... the bottom line is that 19th century religious adventist claims are no longer sexy..
to outsiders the jw org now has all the allure of a donkey wearing lipstick..
Yes force is a very good word...it means they are rich and JWs are powerless.
But what about their right to claim the exclusive attention of the creator of the universe? The legitimacy of the JW org?
If there is a creator why would he choose this bunch of non-entities in 1919 when the beliefs they held in those days, today would be condemned...in fact to hold those beliefs now would get you disfellowshipped!
What sort of God is this whose name must be proclaimed? I will tell you.
Jehovah is the modern English form of a Latin translation of "Yahweh." Yahweh was the name of one of the gods in the Canaanite pantheon, He was one of the seventy sons of the 'almighty' God El. (Why don't JWs worship him instead?) Yahweh was represented as a seated ox-headed idol in the manner of Egyptian gods, bearing grand curving horns and he sat alongside his female consort Ashera.
These supremely pagan ideas were borrowed by the Israelites from their more illustrious sea-faring neighbours the Phoenicians BACK IN THE BRONZE AGE.
JW defenders...Why not wake up now and realize you have been duped?
( jw governing body members are invited to respond) .
however professional and glossy their pr makeover is, as seen on jw tv and the jw org logo... the bottom line is that 19th century religious adventist claims are no longer sexy..
to outsiders the jw org now has all the allure of a donkey wearing lipstick..
Mr Acty person, you make a valid reason for denying the JW response summarised by SBF, that is; it is a selective list made to serve as a touchstone which appears to serve their own practices. The JW org is only interested in promoting its own selective point of view, it is never objective...after all that is what cults do.
However when attempting to get to the bottom of a problem (the legitimacy of the GB's authority) it is necessary to broaden out their claim to test the validity of their foundation material.
For this they are claiming to be the exclusive preachers of the invisible kingdom of God established in the heavens back in 1914. The fact is that there is no good reason to believe this. The scriptures in Daniel on which the date is based is a fraud (like much of the Bible), the date is calculated on wrong assumptions, Jesus said the kingdom would come in his day. The whole mixture of asumption, probability and lies is as nutty as a fruit-cake.
In other words anyone can make out that they are the chosen one to tell the world by using their own selection of words from the Bible.
Was a violin made to play only one tune?
So I'm suggesting that the authority for the WTBTS gb is invalid because:
A they have failed in their imagined divine mandate and reason for their existence: to proclaim Armageddon for the generation of 1914
B that the Bible on which they base their claims is being exposed as a dying superstition.
( jw governing body members are invited to respond) .
however professional and glossy their pr makeover is, as seen on jw tv and the jw org logo... the bottom line is that 19th century religious adventist claims are no longer sexy..
to outsiders the jw org now has all the allure of a donkey wearing lipstick..
Pbrow--- lol!
Donkeys asside, with the WTBTS having failed totally on their principal claim and raison d'etre of being Gods watchmen what legitimacy have they got left?
Isn’t the failure alone the reason for disqualification?
( jw governing body members are invited to respond) .
however professional and glossy their pr makeover is, as seen on jw tv and the jw org logo... the bottom line is that 19th century religious adventist claims are no longer sexy..
to outsiders the jw org now has all the allure of a donkey wearing lipstick..
But their total failure in the prophecy department makes these cosy claims null and void. Such failure is dramatic evidence of not having God's guidance or blessing.
