(that is, doubts).
in margaret atwood's "the handmaid's tale", a futuristic story of life inside a repressive, abusive big brother-style society tightly controlled by religious fundamentalists, there's a passage in which the protagonist is alone with another woman at a state-controlled centre where prayers are generated -- then printed out and read out -- by a machine.
the other woman asks, in barely more than a whisper, "do you think god listens to these machines?
I read Atwood's Handmaiden's Tale and it's impossible not to make a parallel with the Watchtower.
Who to trust? I think you can only do what you did and sound fellow disbelievers out.
Imagine though how hard it is now for the governing body members who have begun to see the catastrophic error of their ways!
(Would any governing body members like to let us know how the penny dropped...we will be very sympathetic with you...)
l have observed the types of people attracted to the sect are many times unbalanced,unstable,emotionally insecure types.the jdubs seem to home in like vulchers circling the prey ,preying on the vulnerables.they tried it on me when my father who was an elder died.promising that if you become a dub you will one day see him again.l said how can you promise that when you keep making false misleading predictions.l was wondering if others have observed this phenomenon.
in many debates between believers and non believers (nb), the nb uses evolution as some sort of proof to support the non existence of god.. i agree that evolution is a fact, however i feel that evolution is proof of some sort of benevolent original cause.. if i were to create an a.i.
, i would program into it the ability to self-refactor and evolve.. i would also randomly inject viruses into the program (evil) where the a.i.
would be forced to stretch its current capabilities & modify it's operating functions in order to get through the random virus, and continue living.. with a steady flow of different viruses, the a.i.
Wire rider, the reason you are unaware of the evolutionary changes which took place in human evolution is because you have not been acquainted with the facts. If you were a Saharan nomad, you would not require fifty words to describe different types of snow.
The study of early man (paleoanthropology) could be a dry or obscure science to the outsider, partly because it is dependent on the understanding and integration of many other disciplines. To grasp the subject, firstly the concept of geological time and the pattern of climate changes including temperature, humidity, polar ice volumes and sea-level changes are keys to dating the hominin (early human) fossils which must be well understood. Secondly the geological markers including volcanic events and earth magnetic polarity reversals as well as the reading of the earth movements and sediment layers where the artefacts and or bones are found. Then there is the comparison of anatomical information to find the place within the evolutionary tree (phylogeny) built up from the record of thousands of skeletal finds from other sites. Dating the context and objects is yet another science involving radiometric analysis; the ratio of isotopes of a particular element to the standard atomic number. There are many scientific tests by different methods useful for different periods of pre-history and too technical to describe here. Other key markers of the date are the known animal, insect plant and pollen assemblages evidence of which are found in the context or matrix materials.
I think people living in North America are at a disadvantage in learning about these matters. for two reasons. one, a historically blind insistence on asserting that the Bible must be true and two, the absence of the Old World pre-history. American history is hard to discover before the Clovis culture around 12,000 BCE whereas In Europe the place is awash with paleolithic find sites. These include the Neanderthals and the early contemporaries of them Homo heidelburgensis and not forgetting the cave art of the Cro-magnons.
So to understand the history of early man you do have to wade through this sort of stuff to get there.
i carried out my monthly "cover" visit to the k.h.
tonight.
as previously discussed on this forum, the clam meeting is just a rehashed, recycled, reshuffled, & rebranded ministry school and service meeting.
"The apathy in the congregation (barely 50% in attendance) was palpable! "
"several looked as if they'd lost the will to live."
Searcher your post is a pleasure to read...
To try and find meaning in the Bible I suggest, is entirely the wrong approach. “Why was it written down?” is the question to ask.
The text attributed to Paul refers to the deep things of God, what was it?
Answer: Early Christianity was a superstition in a very long tradition of mystery cults. The outline myth being that the saviour (a demi-human Sun God) died and was sacrificed at Easter on behalf of humanity and went his way to his Sun-God father and they both shone radiantly and triumphantly their heavenly realm having conquered the darkness of winter...as the sun conspicuously does after the spring equinox.
All the ancient god-man mystery cults followed this myth. To become a communicant in the cult would originally have required you to go through an initiation process into the “sacred secrets”, to learn the “deep things of God.” It was usually performed in a long and complex ritual which involved passing through unlit subterranean chambers, stair wells and trap doors. The idea was to create intense fear in the novice and dependency on the spiritual leader. Over time and after enough rituals you too might make the grade of high priest. Incidentally in the Dionysian christ-cult one of the names the initiate took on was "Iasus". There were various levels of initiation, as retained (or imitated) in Free Masonry today, there were also levels of heaven to which the Bible writer Paul referred in his brand of mystery cult. (Funny how nobody picks up on this undiluted paganism?)
So the deep things of God were a reference to the exclusive things which only the cult hierarchy were privy to. It was for for the initiated only...(like those who believe in the sacred but unbiblical Watchtower mystery of 1919!)
Then why was it written down? To bamboozle the ignorant and poor so they reverence the “holy” mysteries and thereby become slaves under the control of the religious hierarchy.
Punky does this help at all?
years ago when i was attacked i had giant wings wrap around me in the midst of the chaos and i knew i everything was gonna be ok.all these years i assume d they were angel wings.then last night psalm 91:4 flashed across my tv and it made me wonder if it was jesus himself so i researched on my phone and came across this site.this is my 1st post feedback welcome and ty.post.
is it just me?
Theism may be about the "why" of things but is bears no factual evidence for its holy speculations.
If you wear a defender of the faith hat, evolution looks like an attack upon your person because it undermines your pride and joy in irrational belief.
If information comes to you having a receptive student mind, as an assessor of factual evidence; evolution is a tried and tested scientific theorum upon which we can build further insights into human health, medicine and longevity.
Medical science has already done so to the benefit of us all.
Since when did creationist belief help mankind in any way?
part 1 - protein functional redundancy...part 2 - dna functional redundancy...part 3 - ervs.
the rule in gene survival is "use it or lose it".. when a gene ceases to be useful, mutations are likely to accumulate as they are passed on down the generations.
these broken genes are called pseudogenes and they provide powerful clues to our evolutionary past.. compared with other animals our ability to detect odours is poor, but if evolution is correct there was a time in our distant past when we relied on our sense of smell much more than we do today.. our olfactory receptors are coded for by or genes.
hi one and all.. i've lurked for 3 years, about time i signed up.. i'm a still in ms due to family.. fully awake.. i look forward to getting to know all of you..
Welcome Grey Goose, well done for getting fully awake...it's a hard life for an awake JW to still attend the meetings.
I remember cringing at the stupid nonsense coming from the platform and shaking my head, eventually I had to just get up and walk out during a meeting and never return. It was very satisfying! I was the master of my own destiny.
But the GB make it difficult for you...the only validation for their existence is the number of people believing ...nothing else can give credence to a doomsday cult.
When the attendees do not believe they still count the numbers as if to validate their authority. That's why shunning is a political tool to keep the numbers up. I'm wondering if you can tell us how many you know are in your situation?
I know of a some JWs who attend, like you for family reasons. They don't believe but neither do they communicate together as they don't want to rock the congregation boat. Can you see a possibility of the awake ones rising up and influencing the others?
today has been a horrible day.
what began as a day of joy finding out that one of my lifelong friends had her baby, turned into a nightmare when her brother called me to let me know she had passed away after birth.
i was in shock and didn't ask how.
So sorry for your loss WasOnceBlind. As Divergent said this tragedy is made even worse by the fact that your friend was disfellowshipped but not 'awake'. People brought up with a JW mentality are victims of the twisted thinking until they make a serious attempt to eradicate it.
Who is responsible for this unnecessary loss of a life? It is the promoters of the ignorant teachings of the Watchtower, the JW governing body.
Perhaps you could contact a serious newspaper or media person who is interested in exposing cult behaviour.
