Beautifully put Pale Emperor. Who wants an artificial family where the relationship is created by submission to mad beliefs instead of human closeness?
Enjoy the richness of the human world.
just wanted to update you guys of the amazing couple of weeks i've had in recovering from the cult.. i was attending the meetings still just so i could see my daughter in the kingdom hall and have her sit we me half the time.
i had no intention of ever becoming a jw again but was hoping to be re-instated and just not turn up ever again so i could at least see my family.
but then an elder said something to me that changed all that.
Beautifully put Pale Emperor. Who wants an artificial family where the relationship is created by submission to mad beliefs instead of human closeness?
Enjoy the richness of the human world.
i search this book in pdf, original version non revised.
and...?
what was the most fun ride you've ever had?.
my personal favorite was my ducati paso 750. it may have been before a few of your times, but it was an italian rocket that totally blew away anything from japan.. .
jk.
I bought a 1200cc Suzuki Bandit as a birthday present for myself when I escaped the Borg. 90 MPH in second gear and still plenty of acceleration left. I took it to full speed just a touch below 150mph just once but travelled many miles on deserted southern French roads at night at 120. Effortless power is a joy. I loved riding in storms and taking the bike to the limit of lean.
On a bike I often think of the line of GM Hopkins in his famous poem The Windhover, "as a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow bend: the hurl and gliding".
@ Finky, I always wanted an 850 Norton Commando and still think its a desirable bike.
surely the gb aren't naive enough to believe their own lies.what does it take for the majority of j dubs to wake up to themselves and finally realize that they are being robbed on all levels emotionally.financially,spiritually,intellectually and many other aspects of their day to day lives..
I suggest that the norm in governing any organisation requires the leadership to fulfil the job awarded them; that is the job of directing the people and the money and to make the business grow.
Historically there has always been a separation of the private beliefs and the public sentiments of leaders. People with responsibility are either trained in leadership or as in the case of the GB they are chosen for their fidelity to the org but whichever way a person arrives at the top of the tree, it is required of them to play a leadership role. The political forces for leadership demand a steely and often un Christ-like ruthlessness.
But also there are perks of the job... how about good old Pope Leo 10?
“At a lavish Good Friday banquet in the Vatican in 1514, and in the company of "seven intimates" Leo made an amazing announcement that the Church has since tried hard to invalidate. Raising a chalice of wine into the air, Pope Leo toasted: "How well we know what a profitable superstition this fable of Christ has been for us and our predecessors."”
As a JW I would never have thought this attitude was possible in Watchtower land but now having seen the dishonesty and lies of the organisation, I believe that it is possible to be in the GB and not be a true believer. Humans are very capable of duplicity and any doubting GB member has every incentive to continue the charade expected of him.
After all, this is now the pattern found in the congregations; many attending are just going through the motions but are no longer “true believers”.
The JW religion is fast becoming a hollow organisation.
two weeks ago while visiting a friend in north carolina, i agreed to go with him to the sunday public talk.
the public talk was about how the witnesses have the direction of angels while going in service.
the speaker told some real doozies and you could hear the "oohs and ahhs" from the audience.
Yes SG, JW talk is rooted in angel fantasy, it's garbage for the gullible.
gen.1:26 "and god went on to say "let us make man in our image according to our likeness.....etc,etc,.. the key words here are "us" and " our" ,he is including other life forms just like him in using plurals.. he did not say " i" will make man in "my" image ,using the singular vernacular.
the same is also noted in gen 3:22 "and jehovah god went on to say " here the man has become like one of " us".
again he is using the plural and not the singlar language clearly showing their were other life forms on an equal footing to him.. also satan via the serpent also knew the difference between good and bad before he tempted eve , showing he was on a par with jehovah god in knowing that fact along with the other gods in heaven.. another scripture that comes to mind is 1 cor.8:5 "........just as their are many gods and many lords,,,".
It comes as a shock to learn that during the latter part of the Jewish Bible writing time period, the acknowledgement was that the partisan god of Israel YHVH, was not monotheist at all but henotheist i.e. the one to be worshipped exclusively among the many gods. It was only too apparent there were "many gods and many lords"!
In Genesis however the perception of god was clearly polytheist. Even when henothism replaced it, the god of Israel YHVH, simultaneously took on the duties later attributed to Satan ...(Amos 3;6) which is what would have been expected from any god of the Canaanites or other contemporaries. The whimsical god who both destroyed your crop and killed your enemies... gods were like that in those days!
My own researches show as Doug Mason tells, that Yahweh's consort was Ashera who was also his father's consort. Ashera appears to have been misunderstood by the KJ version of the Bible which omitted her name by referring instead to the high places where her images were revered. She fulfilled the role of the Queen of Heaven in the Canaanite pantheon as a fertility goddess. The sanitized Christian story of Jewish monotheism is a whitewash. We even have the names of some of Yahweh's brothers in the Bible; Chemosh for example.
YHVH or Jehovah, as the stone reliefs found in Palestine show; was an ox-headed idol, presented in the Egyptian manner seated and with long crescent shaped horns, these usually refer to a Moon God.
How did this wooden idol YHVH made by superstitious goat herders, get to become the almighty creator? It makes you think!
guys i need a rebuttal in this.
cos this is what i plan to tell the elders when they come to me which i find inevitable.
due to general concession and confirmation from jw bible on page 1736. all the available christian greek scriptures manuscript today doesn't contain yhwh.
Sorry Splash, I should have said the WT emphasis on numbers of manuscripts is misleading.
Agreed Sir82 and Consciousguy, if Big J allowed corruption of the text and that is what the WT org has been working from...everyone including JWs are all at sea. By this JW reasoning, there is no absolute divine edict.
Perhaps the GB want this bit of slack to claim it to be their job to determine what truth is? The Watchtower "truth" nowadays is that the Bible is all about the JW governing body.
guys i need a rebuttal in this.
cos this is what i plan to tell the elders when they come to me which i find inevitable.
due to general concession and confirmation from jw bible on page 1736. all the available christian greek scriptures manuscript today doesn't contain yhwh.
It is imagined that miraculously Jesus and the Bible arrived in the first century.
Jesus, the wonder working, virgin-born, saviour son of God with twelve disciples... under different guises had already existed as a literary trope for a thousand years or so.
The early Christians had no Bible. The texts which were collected to form the 'approved' versions of christian teaching was not made until the fourth century and continued to be modified for centuries after.
Sorry Splash but your emphasis on the number of manuscripts is very misleading.
The proliferation of Bible texts began about the ninth century. There are only a handful of manuscripts in existence from each of the second to the eighth centuries. The Ryland fragment, which I saw recently, is a sorry scrap of paper and gives little evidence of the supposed vigour of early Christianity.
The key to understanding Christianity is the recognition that there were many messianic cults vying for supremacy and patronage in the early years of the common calendar. There were many christian manuscripts circulating among the cults at their temples but never mentioning Jesus nor for that matter Jehovah.The label Jesus was a late inclusion to appeal to messianic minded Jewish punters who had a precedent for using this name. The Jews by custom as already discussed, were never to voice the 'sacred' name of God.
There was no original Bible. Manuscripts i.e. handwritten documents are notoriously susceptible to alteration by copying, forging and editing. It was only through the agency of the Roman Catholic Church that certain texts in circulation were authorised, forming what we now know as the Bible... and an orthodox interpretation was established at the demand of Constantine, hence the word Catholic meaning universal.
From these two factors of the fourth century; the book and the doctrine, all further Christian sects have arisen including the Adventist and subsequently the Russellites, Bible Students, and JWs.
anyone else also hold this view or understand it at least, or do you feel the need to argue that both can in no way coexist?.
Half banana, as you might have noticed, the chain of evidence, involving the laws of information and DNA, disproves the "scientific theorum" of evolution. An advanced information system, e.g., DNA, cannot spontaneously generate and improve on itself all the time. Impossible. What you are is in your DNA? Spontaneous mutations in your DNA are likely to kill you rather than improve you. So has evolution stood the test of time? Not really.
Vidqun, this is an assemblage of non-sequiturs based on the idea that everyone else understands the laws of your private 'information' religion.
anyone else also hold this view or understand it at least, or do you feel the need to argue that both can in no way coexist?.
Look folks, the days of belief and faith are over.
We now have a solid method of determining realities... even if we don't have all the answers yet. It is the painstaking collecting of a chain of evidence within the framework of a scientific 'theorum'. (I prefer the lack of ambiguity with the word theorum). This rationale of science gives a coherent idea formed from the evidence available which provides an explanation which can be transferred to other related areas. When it fails to do so where it would be expected, the theorem is questioned or the application of it is. If disproved; the theorem is modified to fit all known facts. Evolution has stood the test of time and has never significantly failed in its predictability, it requires no miraculous intervention or divine origin in its support. So the theorum of evolution is a fact and is not in doubt. But the proposition is that God must have got the ball rolling.
So to say “I think God started it and left it to evolve” is by contrast to scientific evidence; meaningless within the present post mythic world, post Enlightenment thinking. There is no evidence for it.
It is like saying “I like warm clothing”... it has no consequence, no useful meaning to anyone else.
To say “God started it” is the betrayal of an existential insecurity within the religious psyche which demands that there must be a spirit controlling everything. It is the comfort sought from an idealised paternal force where the absence of which would make life feel insecure.
The assertion that “God must have done it” is a Stone Age superstition. Wake up people... most of us are living in a new age!