NeonMadman

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Posts by NeonMadman

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  13

  Watchtower Meetings: Catholicism and Collapse?

  by metatron in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  if you are an old timer (with a good memory), you can clearly see the downward trend within witness meetings.. for example: at one time, the theocratic ministry school had a written review that was turned in and graded and handed back like any exam!

  now, i observe the school talks done at the last minute by people grabbed to fill in - and the talks themselves require little or no effort , at that.. who comments?

  kids with one word answers.

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  NeonMadman

  I guess there might be even more dumbing down in the years ahead.

  I haven't been to a meeting in 10 years, but from what I read on this forum, I'm not sure how much dumber they could get.
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  8

  Would you call this a double standard on God's part?

  by sabastious in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  exodus 20: 13 - you shall not murder.. vs. exodus 12: 29 - at midnight the lord struck down all the firstborn in egypt, from the firstborn of pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well.. i believe this is a classic case of "do what i say, not as i do.".

  -sab.

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  NeonMadman

  One objection to murder is that it involves taking to oneself a prerogative (i.e., the ending of a human life) that only belongs to God. One could hardly accuse God of doing wrong by taking to himself a prerogative that belongs only to him, could one?
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  35

  Anyone take depression/anxiety meds?

  by tresdecu in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  just wondering if any ex or current "concious class" dubbers out there take anything; and if it works!

  my family is still in and with everything else going on in my life, sometimes i consider asking my doc about zolft / prosac.. thanks for any replies!.

  i should just ask 85% of my congregation-mates ... lol.

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  NeonMadman

  Haven't needed them since I left the org - I was on antidepressants my last 15 years in.
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  28

  Suggest a JW year text for 2011

  by JimmyPage in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  how about this one?

  : "we are of all men most to be pitied.

  " -1 cor.

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  NeonMadman

  Eze 34:10 This is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah has said, 'Here I am against the shepherds, and I shall certainly ask back my sheep from their hand and make them cease from feeding [my] sheep, and the shepherds will no longer feed themselves; and I will deliver my sheep out of their mouth, and they will not become food for them.'"
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  12

  'OKM_October_2010_for_Britain_OCRd.pdf'

  by fokyc in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  by popular request,.

  http://www.box.net/shared/zhhrff8yp5.

  remember this file is available for preview and/or downloading as you wish,.

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  NeonMadman

  I don't think I've ever seen an OKM before that admitted there had been no "new peaks" in a given month. Usually that's all the Theocratic News column consisted of - new peak, new peak, new peak...
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  57

  Let us discuss HOLY

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  ever searched for nostalgia items, collectibles or antiques on ebay, craig's list or some such venue?.

  a lot of junk has become valuable with the passage of time.. yes, junk.. gradually it seemed to gather a mysterious inflation of valuation.. the items themselves receive wear and tear but they way they are regarded takes on an almost awesome patina of wonderful.. .

  i'll give you an example.. i loved to play cowboy when i was a young kid; especially gunslinger/fast draw style.. my favorite guns were made by stallion.

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  NeonMadman

  OK, I'm back. Sort of. Things are busy between the new job and various dental issues, but here I am...

  I believe you have mischaracterized my statement. By restating it inside a strawman of hyperbole, I might add.

  It's possible that I was engaging in a bit of deliberate sarcasm there.

  With Jesus gone whatever things he said and did were circulated as opinions, accounts, stories, exaggerations, mythologised history depending on WHO was doing the telling.

  Even apart from any allowance for the supernatural, it seems to me that we should be able to expect a reasonable degree of accuracy from accounts that were circulated by the people who were taught by Jesus and walked with him for three years. It's not like the only source of information was some sort of rumor mill. People were alive who knew Jesus well, and they were the primary ones who reported on his life. If such first-hand sources are to be dismissed as unreliable, we have very little basis for the study of history at all.

  How do we know this? Paul had to face off with the guardians (eyewitnesses and fellow travelers with Jesus, mind you!) and CORRECT THEM in their UNDERSTANDING of what this NEW religion (Christianity) was and what it wasn't.

  Jesus didn't teach everything about everything to his followers. He acknowledged that the Holy Spirit, whom he would send, would lead them into "all truth." It isn't surprising that there would be misunderstandings about doctrine among his followers after his death, and the conflict that arose was evidence of that. Paul was the primary one who formulated doctrine in the early years of the church - the first systematic theologian, if you will.

  What Saul/Paul had was a MYSTERIOUS MYSTICAL ENCOUNTER with a vision he identified (how?) as Jesus. About this same time other divergent branches of Messianic Christianity were blossoming as GNOSTICISM!

  Just as today there are "divergent branches" of Christianity like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons. The existence of such groups need not be given equal status with orthodoxy. The apostles and their successors opposed Gnosticism as a heresy, right from the beginning. Your linking of Paul with Marcion sounds as if you are accusing Paul of being a Gnostic; I find no evidence for that in his writings. Paul was a Jew and a Pharisee; he was not a Greek thinker (though he was obviously well educated in contemporary philosophies).

  MY POINT with Paul's letters is that they WEREN'T holy to anybody or they would have been enshrined, preserved and guarded to the death. Instead, parts were copied and handed around and the originals allowed to rot.

  And so we return to your original, absurd (imho) contention that the ones who received the writings of the NT somehow held them in low enough esteem to "let them rot," but were somhow impressed enough by them to make copies and circulate them widely. Those two concepts seem inherently contradictory to me. They didn't have copiers, fax machines or "Forward" buttons on their e-mail back then. It was a lot of work to sit down and make a copy of a document. Surely they would not have seen fit to make such an effort for documents that were fit to be allowed to rot.

  The point is that many Christians throughout history have, in fact, guarded the Scriptures "to the death." We know of major persecutions that happened in the early years of the church. It seems very likely that whoever possessed the autographs may well have guarded them to the death, but that the Romans acquired and destroyed them in hopes of wiping out Christianity. You intimated in an earlier post that the Roman army might have been effective enough to destroy any literature across the breadth of the Empire that was seen as "heretical," yet you refuse to acknowledge that the autographs of the NT might have met the same fate. I find it far easier to believe that the Romans could have located and destroyed single documents (such as the NT autographs) than that they could somehow have gathered up every single copy of disapproved literature across the Empire so as to wipe it from existence.

  The SYNOPTIC gospels harmonize because they reference the same sources: Q and Mark.

  WHAT HAPPENED TO Q? Q wasn't Holy enough to be a concern for preservation. It was only important enough to be plagarized! Then, discarded and allowed to rot.

  Q is a hypothetical document. Nobody has ever proven that Q existed. It is assumed that because Matthew and Luke report similar material that does not appear in Mark (the earlier source) that there "must have" been a particular document that contained that material, but that has passed from existence. Another possible explanation is that Matthew, Mark and Luke are all reporting events as they actually happened. Of course, that explanation can't be admitted as a possibility by one who denies the supernatural a priori.

  Even if a Q document did exist (and I'm not completely disallowing the possibility), it's entirely possible that it met the same fate during periods of persecution that the other autographs did; its absence does not prove that it was regarded of low value. Again, if it was seen as of little worth, why would Matthew and Luke see fit to include its material in their own writings?

  Once the Gospels and Paul's letters became enough of a stimulus to encourage rabid Christianity to flourish and become a PAIN IN THE ASS for Roman overlords--the crackdown on Christian foolishenss (persecution) targeted their writings.

  Which is pretty much what I've been saying all along, isn't it?

  Like family photos and letters that are in a flood or fire---suddenly families who let them gather dust in a closet are beating their chests and squirting tears for the IRREPLACEABLE heirlooms and family treasures!!

  Right - because they ARE irreplaceable heirlooms and family treasures. Their worth is never questioned. I only have a few pictures of certain members of my family who are no longer living. I don't pull them out and look at them every day. I keep them in a box or a drawer and I know where they are. They are precious to me; I have no qualms about the value I assign them. If someone tried to destroy them or steal them, I would strive very hard to prevent that from happening.

  I have another example that might be even more germane: I had a friend when I was young who was a musician, and who is no longer living. At some point during our friendship, he made me two tapes of his music performances. I loved his music, and still sing and play some of his songs whenever I take my guitar out. One of the tapes has disappeared; I suspect it was lost one of the times I moved. I keep hoping I'll find it one of these days, but I've looked everywhere I can think of. I still have the other tape. I keep it in my drawer. One time recently, I took it out and played it so that I could record it to digital files and add it to my iPod. Now, to a certain extent this is just keeping up with the technology, but in another sense, I am preserving the original tape because it is very valuable to me, and still enjoying the music from the "copies" on the iPod.

  It may have been something like that with the autographs. It isn't that they were not seen as valuable at all, rather, because of their value, they were not circulated, but were used as the basis for copies. The copies were then circulated and read precisely so that the sacred originals could be preserved. Unfortunately, the Roman persecutions resulted in their destruction nonetheless. That scenario makes a lot more sense to me than the originals being perceived as of little value, yet being copied and circulated by the thousands.

  The rest is history (or speculation called: history.)

  As long as you know that what you are doing is speculating and calling it history...
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  16

  Do People in Cults Really Want Freedom?

  by Dogpatch in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the concept of freedom has always been important to me, and i cannot bear the thought of being like a trapped animal.... hurt, abused , mocked and then killed.. deep down inside there is as strong primal instinct in me that says, survive at all costs.

  when it comes down to the line, i will do whatever it takes to protect myself.

  i learned that at an early age.. as a teenager i grew up with a wide variety and culture of kids, and learned that i liked to hang with those who felt the same way.

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  NeonMadman

  People rarely desire what they think they already have. JW's are convinced by their leadership that they arecompletely free; that they are not being controlled, that they are freely choosing to slavishly obey every word that comes from the organization. They think that it is their own personal, uninfluenced decision to allow their children to die for lack of blood transfusions. This is why they don't feel the least bit hypocritical when they say things like, "nobody is forced to remain in the organization if they don't want to," when they know full well the loss of family and friends that will occur should they depart. They may indeed be happy with their choice to be JW's, no matter how miserable and depressed they are overall, since they have been taught to blame their misery on everything other than its true source. It's not the excessive demands of the organization or the constantly-inflicted guilt over their own imperfection making them unhappy, it's Satan, it's the world, it's their job, etc. etc.

  I think it's important in the vast majority of cases where possible to restore them to a rational type of thinking and to break through the mind control, even if they claim to be happy that they have chosen to be JW's (the same could be said of members of most any cult). Like the denizens of Plato's cave, they are trapped in a substandard world. If they were released - after the initial culture shock inherent in the change - they would see that the real world is so much superior to the shadows on the cavern walls.
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  57

  Let us discuss HOLY

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  ever searched for nostalgia items, collectibles or antiques on ebay, craig's list or some such venue?.

  a lot of junk has become valuable with the passage of time.. yes, junk.. gradually it seemed to gather a mysterious inflation of valuation.. the items themselves receive wear and tear but they way they are regarded takes on an almost awesome patina of wonderful.. .

  i'll give you an example.. i loved to play cowboy when i was a young kid; especially gunslinger/fast draw style.. my favorite guns were made by stallion.

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  NeonMadman

  I'm glad that you responded as you did, since you've finally at least laid out your scenario in a way that I can follow. Up till now, I was having trouble weaving all the bits and pieces into a coherent picture.

  Now, that doesn't mean that I agree with all you have written, and I do intend to respond. However, I have a business dinner tonight and a meeting all morning tomorrow, after which I'll be driving back home to New Jersey from North Carolina, where I've been holed up with work over the last two weeks. I'm hoping to find some time to address this over the weekend, but I make no guarantees at this point. I'll get back to it as soon as I can. I do have some thoughts about several of your statements that I'd like to offer, but I need to flesh them out a bit before I write.
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  86

  What is the most secularly acclaimed Bible translation?

  by sabastious in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i want to start reading the bible more but i do not want to use the nwt.

  the fact that the nwt took so many liberties makes me a little gunshy about other translations, which one would you recommend?.

  -sab.

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  NeonMadman

  The New American Standard Bible (NASB) is a good, literal translation that isn't always easy to read. The New International Version (NIV) is a more fluid translation, but tends to translate thought-for-thought rather than word-for-word. It is, however, highly readable and flows very smoothly. I haven't interacted much yet with the English Standard Version (ESV), but I'm hearing very good things about it - supposedly it is quite faithful to the original words yet manages to be easily understandable to the reader of English. If you want a Bible for study, the NASB would be good; if you just want to read and get the broad strokes, go for the NIV. The ESV may combine the best of both worlds.
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  57

  Let us discuss HOLY

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  ever searched for nostalgia items, collectibles or antiques on ebay, craig's list or some such venue?.

  a lot of junk has become valuable with the passage of time.. yes, junk.. gradually it seemed to gather a mysterious inflation of valuation.. the items themselves receive wear and tear but they way they are regarded takes on an almost awesome patina of wonderful.. .

  i'll give you an example.. i loved to play cowboy when i was a young kid; especially gunslinger/fast draw style.. my favorite guns were made by stallion.

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  NeonMadman

  Thousands of writings existed. Some of those were successfully hidden, some were destroyed. Of the ones destroyed, some were quoted. The ones NOT quoted is what you find impossible to allow into existence.

  I never said that it was impossible that some "heretical" manuscripts existed at one time but were destroyed, just as undoubtedly some "orthodox" manuscripts existed, but were destroyed. In fact, I specifically said above, " I have no doubt that there may have been SOME "heretical" documents that failed to survive, even as there were very likely SOME "orthodox" documents that failed to survive." Allowing for their existence is one thing. Presuming to know their contents and use them to bolster an argument is quite another. The question we are discussing does not concern hypothetical non-canonical documents, anyway - it concerns the canonical documents and the way they were viewed at the time of their initial circulation, not centuries later in the time of Constantine.

  Are you aware that Constantine was a pagan member of the cult of Sol Invictus? His predisposition to THINK in terms of Greek characterization thus paganizing christian theology is NOT A STRETCH!

  No, I suppose it's not. So what? Whatever happened in the time of Constantine has nothing to do with your original premise, which was that the canonical Scriptures were seen as nothing special by the people who originally received the autographs, centuries earlier. Those people, you claimed, saw them as of little value and presumably used the autographs to wrap lunches, line birdcages and the like, even though they made and circulated thousands of copies before doing so. Whatever happened in that regard was long finished before Constantine was a gleam in his father's eye. Did Constantine contribute to some "paganization" of Christianity? Possibly so in some areas. But that's an entirely different topic than the one we started out talking about. If what you are trying to imply is that Constantine sat around with a bunch of potentially canonical books and selected the one he liked and destroyed the others, I've seen no support for that theory - or for that matter that Constantine had anything to do with establishing the canon, which was pretty much in place before his time - outside of popular fiction.