Half banana

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Posts by Half banana

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  20

  Again: Where is Jesus?

  by Wonderment in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the watchtower of december 2015 reports the following reaction of a family with four teenagers in the country of rwanda with the publication of the nwt, and how grateful they were for it.

  the wt magazine said: .

  things changed when the new world translation in their language became available.

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  Half banana

  Forget Jesus and Jerhoover, let's just worship the GB directly and do their sacred work.........
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  19

  "You wouldn't want to bring reproach on Jehovah's name, would you?"

  by Esse quam videri in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  what would be your reply?.

  my reply: jehovah is big enough to take care of himself.. yours?.

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  Half banana

  Jehovah, a name drawn from an ancient Canaanite idol, is a total irrelevance.

  Unless that is, you believe that dumb idols have power...and if you do; there is little hope for you... and you deserve to have your life stifled and ruined by the modern priests of Jehovah! (HQ in NY should you be interested)
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  32

  Apathy trolley chat

  by punkofnice in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i was in a different city this weekend so i decided to natter to 2 bored jws on the apathy trolley.i just nattered, nothing thought provoking or anti witness.

  i was waiting for someone so hard time to spare.what struck me was, that no matter how many times i said that i don't believe in god, they spoke to me as if i did.

  they kept asking me how god would feel about stuff.

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  Half banana

  Come on, we were all robotic drones.

  Just get the WTBTS message over to the worldly punters. Don't listen to what they say after all they are mere worldly ideas; trample on their well considered thoughts, just blast out the kingdom hope.

  We had taken leave of our senses because it was jolly good fun to preach alongside our fellow zombies "death to the world and we're all going to paradise". La la la I can't hear you...we're all going to paradise.

  The insanity of it all...................... oh! the shame................
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  21

  Thoughts during the meeting today

  by stephanie61092 in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  while i'm politely sitting during the meeting today, restraining myself from rolling my eyes as the brother drones on about how "having an independent spirit is devilish in nature" and "independence from gods organization only results in pain and strife", i only have one thought going through my mind over and over.

  "what would happen if i pulled out a gun and blew my brains out in this kingdom hall?".

  would anyone notice or care?

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  Half banana

  Stephanie 6, there is nothing worthwhile which the JW org offers. It only uses delusion and deception to keep the members staying and paying for their pathetic cult. So please don't turn and harm yourself because of their stupidity---you are more valuable than their promises.

  I presume you have social reasons for wanting to stay but I suggest you find good like-minded friends outside of that uncaring organisation, people who will accept you for yourself not for what you believe.

  Having said that the org uses the loyalty of family and friends as a lure and a threat; this makes it so difficult for the departing JW.

  You have no reason to be polite to such a heartless bunch of zombies...enjoy your right to a fulfilling life without them.
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  63

  How the Watchtower Screws Up Your View of Scripture

  by CalebInFloroda in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  while i do not argue the stand of atheism (because as a jew i find it totally logical and acceptable), i have noticed that there are odd carryover preconceptions about scripture that some hold as axiomatic about the bible (at least the hebrew texts), misconceptions that have nothing to do with the jewish scriptures themselves.. so regardless of what you may think of scripture, whether you believe it is of g-d or not, i thought some of you might enjoy a reference to see how much the watchtower teaching on scripture might still be influencing the conclusions you are making today...at least about the tanakh.

  jews read their texts acknowledging the following:.

  1. no scriptural concept of original sin.

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  Half banana

  You're so right Freeandclear, and the upside is that religion is not necessary in the first place...what a relief!
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  75

  Evolution and Atheism - please help

  by Fernando in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  not being familiar with either, my question is:.

  what is the relationship between evolution and atheism?.

  i'd love to hear from anyone and everyone, and also from any perspective.. without limiting the conversation in any way, i would of course also appreciate comments that are simple, clear, direct and correct (as i don't have the capacity to do a phd in evolution or atheism)..

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  Half banana

  The relationship of evolution and atheism can best be seen in the historical context.

  When Darwin launched his Origin of the Species in 1859, it caused a shock wave in British and American society because it contradicted the Biblical account of divine creation. The stability and governance of both cultures were predicated on the rightness to rule by divine mandate (superior authorities) as the good book said. The Bible was believed to be inerrant; Darwin gave very good reason to believe otherwise.

  If the Bible was wrong then the right to power was not divine. Shock horror! The forces of delinquency would be unleashed and the world order destabilized. Those allying themselves with the scientific theorem of Darwin would be castigated as atheists, a perjorative term with political and anti-religious overtones rather than a simple description of a person who does not recognize a god.

  As already mentioned the reality has been that many who acknowledge the scientific soundness of evolution are not necessarily atheists but the reverse; to believe in creation and not in a god is an impossibility.
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  15

  A question on natural selection

  by The Rebel in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  last friday my boy of ten was very late back from school, so i called the school, they called the police, and to cut a long horrible exsperience short he had been helping a younger boy fly his kite.. but what has occurred to me is that when orlando was 5 years old he was totally dependent on mummy and daddy, whilst horses, cats, birds and other animals are born and are independent within days.. so my question on natural selection is, how are we humuns still here?.

  the rebel..

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  Half banana

  One of the penalties of walking on two feet as opposed to the usual mammalian four is the size of the pelvis.

  With body weight and locomotion focused in the middle of the body the birth canal tended to be reduced. An alternative was that Homo sapiens developed a duck-like waddle as did earlier hominins such as Australopithecus. Humans want to be elegant. The gorillas took the Soviet tank approach and Homo sapiens in order to avoid being cat-food, reckoned that being fleet of foot was a good thing as well as standing upright to observe and avoid danger on the savannah.

  By contrast Homo heidleburgensis, an immediate forerunner of H sapiens was tall and built very robustly both in jaw and muscle attachments hence a real tough guy.

  But back to the point; with the small pelvis, giving birth was not easy for the more graceful human ape. Remembering that natural selection filters out the losers in evolutionary change the only successful breeding mothers were those favoured with giving birth to immature young. The consequence was that humans require infinitely more assistance to be nurtured from a state of complete helplessness and still require help to survive for the first ten or so years.

  The upshot of these compromises including large brain and less brawn and the need to be born small was that H sapiens used intelligence to hunt for meat and kept out of danger whilst the mothers bonded emotionally with their helpless offspring for an extended period, allowing for a family and social sense to develop in the child.

  Behold: the modern human! Being so recent however, around only two hundred thousand years, it seems to me we still have a long way to sort out the nature of the human animal and put aggression behind us.

  Why are we still here? Because we have flexible thinking which employs imagination to project a future so we can make strategies. Our imagination makes us human but also subjects us to the weakness of assuming our imagination represents truth.
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  84

  Why I'm not agnostic

  by Coded Logic in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i think the time to be agnostic is when you have evidence on both sides of a claim.

  for example, i'm agnostic about the existence of a historical jesus.

  i think a reasonable case can be made that jesus was a man who was turned into a legend over a period of a couple of decades.

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  Half banana

  Theology, whether apophatic or otherwise, has about the same value as unicornology.

  Both ideas relate to a time in human development when flights of imagination ruled the day where no scientific assessment was possible.

  Theology must be one of the most profligate distractions from reality that humans have ever contrived to date but in fairness our forebears did not practice belief based on evidence followed up with critical reasoning.

  Theism historically had been mandatory as a pivotal concept and the entrenched habit was carried down the generations by thoughtless inculcation of offspring until our time. Were cultural ideas to begin now and on the basis of evidence and common sense; it can hardly be imagined that something beyond the senses such as an almighty spirit would arise as the answer to everything.

  Nevertheless it seems that the human brain is wired to crave for the miraculous, a weakness which is readily exploited by religious organisations.
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  25

  Is a piano inevitable?

  by slimboyfat in

  1. social
  2. current

  i was at a concert last night and the presence and stature of the piano struck me.

  and i thought: if the piano wasn't invented when it was, would it have been invented by someone else instead?

  or if there was a world the same as our, except with a different history, would it have pianos now too or would it be modern world, similar in many respects, only without pianos?

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  Half banana

  Answer: clavier cembolo
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  45

  Rejecting something due to unscriptural or pagan origins.....?

  by stuckinarut2 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  so witnesses reject many practices or holidays due to their "unscriptural or pagan" origins.. for example, birthday celebrations, mothers or father's day, christmas etc..... most people in the world will say "but the origin doesn't matter anymore, we follow this custom now because it's a joyful occasion that creates happy times and brings the family together".

  it is still firmly rejected.. so, if the wrong origin is so important, and should result in rejecting something, why isn't the same principle applied to the actual jehovah's witness faith itself!?.

  after all, the very foundation of the organisation was based on wrong understandings of the bible, far fetched teachings and doctrines, links to false religious backgrounds, pyramidology, false predictions, inaccurate beliefs etc...... using their reasoning, it doesn't matter how good something is now, if the origin was faulty to begin with?

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  Half banana

  Almost the entirety of Bible is pagan in origin.

  It was the Roman church in the fifth century which methodically destroyed all the links to its origins to cover its pagan traces which had led up to the unification of all significant prevailing religious beliefs. This is after all what "catholic" means; "all embracing," they never concealed the fact of absorbing the older faiths. What they did however was to distance the newly sanctified Roman Catholic church from the rustic folk stories which had given rise to Christianity in the first place. the Romans maintained control over the plebs by display and status. Paganism of course being rural, equaled low status.

  This synchretising or fusing of belief gave the Roman State the political control over all the former pagan temple following and various christ sects, and brought them under the wing of state sponsored religion. For the prestige of the newly fused Catholic church and its own selection of texts which formed the Bible, the state endowed it with wealth and grand architecture to identify it as divinely ordained. They continued using all the old pagan offices such as Pontiff (from Pontifex Maximus the great bridge maker. The pontiff was, and still is also called Papa from the Mithraic pope, Pater patris meaning Father's father.) Yet to suggest the state worship had anything to do with the peasants beliefs simply was not on. It was a state managed denial of paganism.

  Just goes to show what money and propaganda can do...