Hi Chipster
I'd like to welcome you. But I'm only a newbie too and know my place. So if you like I'll just hold your coat and wallet while the master members cast lots over who gets to wash your feet.
Good to be alive ain't it? I...think.
philo
Posts by philo
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7hello from a newbie....
by chipster inhello everyone from a newbie...my ex-fiance( i still love her dearly) turned me on to this site...what a great place!!.
i was dfd a year ago and decided not to come back....and ya know what???
there is life after dfing....wow... hope you guys will have me here for a while......... love and peace to all!
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17
How openminded are you now?
by DannyBear injudgemental and closeminded were exact descriptions of my former jw self.. recently on another forum, someone posted a cartoon depicting the character urinating on the bible.
i had an immediate revulsion and concluded this was not appropriate, letting the poster know my thoughts.
other's on the forum did not see it as i did.
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philo
There is a scripture that says something bad about "argueing about words". Well, I don't like that verse to be taken literally.
So I just wanted to say I find the term openminded is virtually useless. It comes to mean just about anything.
philo
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65
The Poor JW Children
by larc inthe children.
there are many things that could be changed, and even though i would never go back, i think there are some very basic changes they could make in their child rearing practices, simple changes that would make a big difference in their society.. 1. don't force small children to sit for two hours in a chair.. this was discussed at length on the thread about slapping children at the kingdom hall.. 2. don't bring children to meetings where the subject has to do with adult sexual practices.. 3. don't tell teenagers that they can't ask someone out for a date unless marriage is on their mind.. 4. don't tell them that they are not special, that they have to humble themselves and be like everyone else.. 5. don't tell them they have to get good grades through high school as a reflection of what jehovah has given them and then tell them they can't go to college when they graduate from high school at the top of their class.. 6. don't tell your wordly neighbors that you give your children presents all through the year, but not on their birthday, when they have never seen a special gift wrapped present in their life.. 7. don't expect a shy child to enjoy going from door to door and don't expect an extroverted, lively child to sit still at meetings.. 8. don't tell an inquiring child not to ask questions and don't tell them not to read interesting books.. 9. don't surprised if you don't change your ways that your children will leave you, even though they love you.
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philo
Hey Iarc!
That's really sound thinking. You're not an..an..A post..er. You know someone who criticises the WT, are you. I just can't seem to get the word out.
philo
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17
How openminded are you now?
by DannyBear injudgemental and closeminded were exact descriptions of my former jw self.. recently on another forum, someone posted a cartoon depicting the character urinating on the bible.
i had an immediate revulsion and concluded this was not appropriate, letting the poster know my thoughts.
other's on the forum did not see it as i did.
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philo
Englishman
Hiya dude. I would agree with what you said about witness tendencies if you said judgementalism rather than criticism. It seems nit-picky, but I feel the witnesses judge anyone among them who excersies their critical faculties. They seem to feel that only the writers of the WT may criticise. Everyone else must learn to make sense of life by reading the WT. There is a blissful lack of criticism in dubdom.
I was often called a 'criticial' type as a JW, not often was I called judgemental. People were saying (without realising) that I had failed to subordinate my thinking ability entirely to the organisation.
philo
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6
would exist love without the existence of sex?
by andrespvcl inwould exist love without the existence of sex?
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philo
Just relax and tell me how long have you felt this way?
No but didn't someone say
"after a talk on sex and civics,
I wondered about the fall"He was an odd fish..must have been. Not much throbbing there. I think the most powerful influence in the world is a friendly sort of "mind your own business, idiot" kind of emotion.
philo
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44
How do you feel about smacking at K Hall?
by Latte inpersonally, it upsets me very much.
or are there any other parents that found better, alternative ways of getting young children 'trained'?.
i am not anti -smacking by the way,(except at the kh) but it is always the very last resort.. latte
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philo
TW
:In all of this there is no understanding of individual differences and how to let each individual make his or her own contribution. Everyone has to fit into the mold, no matter what their nature.
You're not wrong. Individuals don't matter, only classes do. There's so much in common with communism. And the witnesses were so indignant when African dictators (probably educated at Oxford or Harvard) would ban their door-door publishing because they appeared to be communist sympathisers.philo
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Another Strange JW View On Things
by eyes_opened ini remember a few years back this one poor sister telling my about how several years earlier she has had a baby who'd only lived for several hours after he was born.
she went on to state how relieved she was as of late because the society had in recent articles stated that, if a child has breathed the breath of life it would be resurrected.
so here this poor woman thought in the interim that she would never see her child again!
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philo
EO,
We lost an elder to because of this exact issue. I think to this day most people thought he was right when he disagreed with the society. He progressed onward to become a thorough-going apostate (and good for him).
What a bunch of idiots the GB are for taking a position on that issue.
I think they got bored and decided to tinker about with their theology. "Hey we can't make it any worse, right?"philo
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20
GOOD AFTERNOON, JEHOVAH!
by Englishman inisn`t it strange that jw`s have such a problem with ex`s?
try as they might to hang their watchtower labels onto me, i just don`t seem to be the person that they think that i should be!.
i think that i`ve become far more honest than the average jw.
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philo
Hello E
This isn't the WT study is it? OK. So I don't feel obliged to give an answer to your thread. But I want to. However the only thing I can add is that I was a cossack dancer in 'fiddler on the roof' in our school musical. You should have seen us, crouched, arms crossed kicking out our heels. Yaba daba yaba dadb da...all day long I'd yaba daba doo if I were a wealthy... and so on.
Happy days. I was pretty good at shoplifting back then. Something the witnesses cured me of permanently. Thankyou WTS.
philo
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Literal genesis creation?... NOT
by philo inthirdson's post about snake's limbs prompted me to repost my contribution to h2o from a few months back.
there i was corrected in a few facts which i had erred in, so this is the second edition.. philo.
genesis creation as an allegory.. i have attempted to make some sense of the adam and eve story.
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philo
To All,
Thirdson's post about snake's limbs prompted me to repost my contribution to H2O from a few months back. There I was corrected in a few facts which I had erred in, so this is the second edition.
philo
Genesis’ creation as an allegory.
I have attempted to make some sense of the Adam and Eve story. I take it as an allegory. If one accepts that there are parts of the bible which are allegorical, (having a truth or meaning, which is in the narrative, rather than in the facts) then it seems to me the early genesis stands out to be viewed this way. There are fundamental believers who insist on its literal truth. Possibly some are doing so out of concern to keep the first pages of the bible 'safe'. That is, if the first story were taken as allegorical, where would this end? The whole canon would slide down this 'slippery slope' away from the fundamentals to become part of 'wishy-washy' individualistic interpretation. However every reasonable person will admit, there is not much evidence with which to assert that the story is literally true, although perhaps faith is what is needed. At the same time, early genesis bears strong characteristics of allegorical writing. So here's one attempt at an interpretation.
I think you can fit many pieces of the story into a framework depicting the development of humans from animals, and the early developments of human culture. I am not saying that the 'science' as presented in this part of the bible is necessarily true, or that it was inspired by God for our amazement today, although that is possible. Rather, I am proposing that the author(s) of ‘Adam/Eve Creation’ had ideas about nature, which are not dissimilar to current ideas today. I don’t want to play down the obvious ascendance of man, or to propose that I have hit upon the main 'message' being conveyed. Clearly man rules on earth, at least until the fall, and the story puts people centre-stage in a moral situation. They are shown talking to each other, and talking with God. And clearly the story/stories carry other themes than the one I am suggesting.
Before describing this framework let me make one parallel from “the beginning”.
Genesis gives us a creator as the source of life, an entity, a cause. We know nothing about Him (1*) except that he makes things. To this extend, God has no personality yet, and is more like a concept. Similarly, the Big Bang theory has an impersonal powerful event, a bang, as the cause of all matter and motion. Then, so far as the first few verses of Genesis goes, the scientific and the biblical ideas are at least comparable.
The order of creative acts can be deduced by observation from nature, rather needing to be a matter of guesswork or divine inspiration, as some claim. So note that by placing, for instance, the creation of light before that of vegetation, the story is demonstrating observed knowledge of the world, not common sense, luck, or necessarily inspiration. Furthermore, making human beings the last creation fits in with a developing-life viewpoint in which man is the most sophisticated animal. So we have less developed life in the early creative ‘days’ like vegetation, and later on the fish, birds, land animals and finally man. It is true that birds are out of position on this scale, but still the broad development of life seems to be a subtext of the story so far. I stress, this is not an evolutionary picture in any up-to-date sense, but rather depicts the idea of development.
Another piece of the jigsaw is the knowledge of the constitution of the human body, which is seen here in God’s words to Adam, “for dust you are, and to dust you will return”. This is again showing accurate observation of nature. But by showing that all life is subject to the same decay at death. Highlighting that Adam is made of earth's elements implies similarity of man to animals, and all earthly life, rather than man’s distinctiveness. So this fits in with ‘man as animal form’ which is another evolutionary concept.
One can infer that disobedience was the only possible cause of Adam's death, that had he and Eve not eaten the forbidden fruit, they would never have died. But this inference is only built upon these words or warning, "In the day you eat [the fruit] you will die". There seems to be no strong reason to assert that Adam and Eve were therefore immortals, and could not have died through mischance or natural causes. To illustrate, if I said to my child, "don't put your hand on the fire or you'll get hurt", it would not mean that so long as he/she obeyed me they would never get hurt.
An animal to receive particular attention in the story is the serpent, which as its punishment from God (for incitement of the rebellion), loses its legs. Is this an absurd mythical embellishment? I don't think so. There are vestigial limbs in a number of snake species today, so this seems to be another representation of life's development based on accurate observations of nature.
In the Garden man’s food source was ‘fruit’ from ‘trees’. The evolutionary connection is clear enough. I believe there is a consensus of scientific opinion about humans descending from tree monkeys. Our colour vision, for instance, is not considered essential for hunting (2*) and can be explained as a remnant of our more distant past. The explanation goes that it was necessary for fruit feeders in dense rainforest to be able to see their food quickly and easily. This is much more easily achieved by having colour vision since foliage obscures and disguises a fruit's shape, whereas even a tiny chink of colour against a green background makes for easy recognition. According to Genesis this food source was plentiful and easy to collect in the Garden of Eden.
Disobedience brings about man’s ejection from the Garden of Eden. He has to live in the open either as a farmer or as a hunter. At this time Adam and Eve are given clothes to cover their shame. The idea that man was once unclothed like all the animals seems obvious to anyone with an evolutionary viewpoint, but I find it amazing that people have had this same idea for thousands of years.
Walking erect has big advantages for humans, but there are some disadvantages too, to do with sex and aggression. A moment of realisation is portrayed in the story, “Then their eyes were opened, and they began to realise that they were naked”. Among primates, (and many other animals) to display ones genitals all the time is more than indiscreet, it invites both aggression from competitors and perhaps unwanted sexual attention as well. So to cover ones 'nakedness' (with clothes) can be seen as a way to regulate behaviour within groups. Is this part of the story a mythical explanation for the beginning of culture?
There are other problems with walking upright. The tilting of the pelvis, which this posture has brought about, has narrowed the birth canal increasing birth pains enormously for human females compared to other mammals. As God says to Eve, “I shall greatly increase the pain of your pregnancy”.
In summary, the 'creative' Genesis stories attempt to integrate quite accurate observations of nature with notions of man’s biological and cultural development, and to roll them into a theology. It explains both, that humans came from the animals, and why humans are so distinct from them.
Footnotes
1* Genesis 1:27 "in God's image he created him [Adam]". This was the sixth creative 'day' at the end of the creation period. It is the first mention of God having a gender.
2*Hunting carnivores see movement acutely but their colour vision is often limited or non-existent, hence the widespread escape strategies: to freeze or run. -
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Did Snakes have Legs? Yes/No
by Thirdson ini managed to find a piece i wrote last year and subsequently lost.
thanks to the archiving efforts of a very good person i have managed to get it back.
thinking about some posts here recently regarding the genesis account of the fall of man, i recalled a conversation with a friend a few years back.
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philo
Hey Thirdson
:The WTS problem is that Genesis 3, "the apple and fall of man" play an integral role in the big two sided issue of who's in control of the universe. What then is the way out for them?
I don't agree that 'the fall' taken as literally true is, or needs to be, integral to WT dogma. Although changing it would need a big fanfare.
I understand (from a comment in a talk of James Penton's) that this 'judicial' worldview came in with 'Judge' Rutherford, so a return to some of Russell's views would be possible (except without the literal Adam). Also, christian guilt and human imperfection are not difficult ideas to teach, they don't need a historically farcical 'account' of Adam and Eve understood literally, to believe in their guilt. I do not think 'Jewish guilt' always refer back to a human source, neither always does 'christian guilt'.
It seems to me that many people find they need little justification for feeling guilty. And the other side of the coin, vindictiveness, (a way to manage guilt perhaps) was another fine quality Da Judge had in spades.
If there is any integral WT teaching, it is: "The Watchtower is The Truth". Everything else is perfectly flexible.
I posted something about the Adam Eve/creation allegory on H2O a few months back in which I vaguely mentioned vestigial limbs in snakes. It's not researched at all, more of a 'thinking out loud' piece, but as allegories I find the stories interesting. I'll re-post it here.
philo