People can believe in exactly what they like.
However the worst thing to believe in is "Belief".
i mean this with all due respect, i would like to hear from genuine people who think jw have it wrong and then what is the truth?.
im not talking about silly little quibbles here and there.. is jehovah real?
the the bible is word?
People can believe in exactly what they like.
However the worst thing to believe in is "Belief".
hi everyone, i have been lurking for some time now and decided to open the box (hence pandora).
about a year ago i became aware of child abuse within the org, out of curiosity (just like pandora) i opened the box and the evils have been pouring out ever since regarding the org.
anyway, this came to a head last summer with the arc.
yes friends it is too late for most of you to return to jehovah's org.
based on the new garlic bread parable in this month's broadcast with the illustration using loaves of bread.
it is obvious that the doors of the arc has been closed shut by jehovah's hand for some of us.. according to the new parable that can be found on jw tv.
The unforgivable sin I would say is that dangerous ignorance decreed by the GB that obedience to them is more important than life. Jehovah's Witnesses have re-introduced what effectively is human sacrifice through their no-blood teaching.
How many suicides have there been among JWs because of their doctrines, especially on homosexuality?
Do they care about the welfare of the flock? Not at all! As the Royal Commission in Australia found out, they are only interested in their good name...forget the emotional needs of the abused.
This is what sin is.
there are two sorts of islands.
one sort provides powerful evidence of evolution at a species level.. firstly there are continental islands.
these were once part of larger land masses but they were cut off by rising water levels or the movement of tectonic plates.
Excellent information and defense of reality in the attack made by those who who falsely reason that "God must be true".
You also have covered the territory often called "convergent" evolution. I think that expression is misleading because the principle of evolution by selection cannot literally converge, radiation is better and describes the developmental element in evolution. (Also useful is the word 'exaptation' by implying how it happened?) Variations of organs are induced in one isolated species which happen to echo the role and forms of other species as your illustration shows. Why? For survival.
If as a species you haven't got the proper biological kit...you die.
If God created everything six thousand or even a million years ago, why have all the original species died out or everything developed into something else (as geology proves)?
Creation is a belief for those desperate for a supernatural explanation when all along evolution has the tried and tested reason for how life is today.
one of the biggest gulfs that life has had to cross was the transition from sea to dry land.. fish have conical shaped heads, reptiles have flat heads.
fish have no necks; their heads are attached to their shoulders by a series of bony plates.
land-dwelling animals all have necks; their heads can move independently of their shoulders.
Love Uni, the saying was that all of the pre-human fossils could all be put into a paper bag. That idea went back to the nineteen twenties or early thirties. Nevertheless it was dishonestly quoted by the willfully ignorant WTBTS into the sixties or later, I think it was repeated in their Evolution book.
Today there are thousands of parts of skeletons of hominins, in some caves up to seventeen almost complete specimens as in the Pit of Bones Cave in Spain. These are unusually small Neanderthal-like humans dated to 430,000 years before present.
last night, during our "christian life and ministry" meeting, we had a session on local needs.
elder opened the talk with a disclaimer saying that this was a reminder (cited psalms about how david loved jehovahs reminders).
he reminded us of how bless we are of having our own local assembly hall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wabsbzzt7xw
Brokeback , thank you very much for your compilation.
But in the interests of fairness and balance I am presenting a video recording all of the epic successes of the Watchtower Organisation which clearly demonstrate that God is behind it: ________________
for years adventist sects, including the jws, have believed that the dead sleep at death and remain non-existent until the resurrection.
its strongest argument seems to be text in the non-escchatological book of ecclesiastes in the old testament.
although a part of the canon of scripture, the book is not written by a prophet, nor is there any prophecy or recognizable doctrine contained therein.
Jeffro...an important consideration:
"Theological claims are a subset of paranormal claims."
Mephis I agree with your perspective as an accurate assessment of the state of “proto orthodoxy”. Early Christianity has to be divorced from the modern reading of the past on the basis of conventional expectations. First century Roman christianity was characterised by a loose association of mainly poor and illiterate hopefuls who believed not only in various doctrines but also different christs. (The few rich members notably contributing “love feasts” which made the idea of the FDS a plausible backdrop for the all too familiar illustration).
By the end of the fourth/ early fifth century, Christianity became orthodox or “catholic” by virtue of Roman decree and it was eventually enforced by punishment for those who refused to believe the state determined doctrines. Along with this codifying of the religion, (albeit still evolving, including the Bible canon) came denunciation of all the pagan teachings and destruction of proto-orthodox and pagan ‘heresy’ which had gone before it which were the ingredients of the blend of ideas which made the Roman Church in the first place.
The life of the soul after death (in this case borrowed most directly from Mithraism and hence from Persia and India) became the key "Catholic" propaganda weapon to keep the flock loyal.
I went to a lecture by Karen Armstrong recently in which she mentioned the importance of the city of Alexandria on the Nile Delta after the time of Alexander the Great in the third century BCE. In historical terms this was a significant and vibrant melting pot of Egyptian, Greek and Jewish beliefs within the Classical world.
Reading up on the subject I realised this is a critical period and location for the fusing of the three strands of culture. Surprisingly up to half of the population of Alexandria was Jewish, and as cosmopolitans, they adopted the Greek and 'pagan' culture of the leading lights of the city, a distinct divergence from the sanitized retrospective view of Jewish orthodoxy. Egypt possibly contributing the immortal soul idea to the religious matrix since the significant Greek perspective was the story of Hades; the gloomy abode of the dead. What is certain is that Classical Greek culture crept into the late Jewish ideas which later were diffused into the Christian cults of the first and second centuries.
I wonder if “sprit” was a Hebrew convention conflated with the Egyptian “soul” perhaps in 3rd cent. BCE at Alexandria?
one of the biggest gulfs that life has had to cross was the transition from sea to dry land.. fish have conical shaped heads, reptiles have flat heads.
fish have no necks; their heads are attached to their shoulders by a series of bony plates.
land-dwelling animals all have necks; their heads can move independently of their shoulders.
Some folks still sport vestigial gill " holes" behind their ears - what more do you want!!
To hold my breath for half an hour and dive down to 300 meters...