I studied forensics, graphic design, and writing. I also took minor courses in Biblical studies and liturgy because they were offered and I wanted to see if I had learned anything real among the JWs. I hadn't.
David_Jay
JoinedPosts by David_Jay
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10
Evolution, Critical Thinking, and Other Things the JWs Never Told Me
by David_Jay inafter reading several threads on the topics of evolution and theism, i thought i would share what happens to you when you go to college and get a real education on things: you learn that some of the arguments and stands of jehovah's witnesses are moot to begin with.
i never double-checked the "modus operandi" about many things, and boy, did i have some real learning to do.. for instance, why are jehovah's witnesses so against evolution?
it only proves their point.
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10
Evolution, Critical Thinking, and Other Things the JWs Never Told Me
by David_Jay inafter reading several threads on the topics of evolution and theism, i thought i would share what happens to you when you go to college and get a real education on things: you learn that some of the arguments and stands of jehovah's witnesses are moot to begin with.
i never double-checked the "modus operandi" about many things, and boy, did i have some real learning to do.. for instance, why are jehovah's witnesses so against evolution?
it only proves their point.
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David_Jay
You are right, DD.
In fact, another thing I learned from "evil higher education" was that Galileo (simililar to Copernicus) was not persecuted by the Catholic Church because he taught that the earth revolved around the sun.
Instead, Galileo was imprisoned for granting a revised edition of his work an "imprimatur" of sorts by claiming the current pope approved of his theories as doctrinal. Galileo did this after he was warned by the pope (a close friend) not to advertise his work as "approved doctrine" by the Church. The pope made the mistake of telling the very proud Galileo that he agreed with his new theories, even though a wave of conservative thinking was gaining political power over Christendom at the time.
Unfortunately Galileo could not keep quiet regarding the pope's personal views, advertising them in the latest edition of his work as if this made his theory dogma.
Folding in to cowardice in the face of his political enemies in the church, the pope imprisoned Galileo for the self-proclaimed ecclesiastical approval. The pope even allowed other voices in the church to later force Galileo to not only recant the claim to approval from the Holy See but apparently regarding the value of his entire work in exchange for his freedom.
An imprimatur is an official statement that a published work is free of doctrinal error in the Catholic world. A dogma is doctrine that the pope has declared infallible and a requisite to salvation (there have only been two such formal infallible statements by popes over the past 2000 years). While what Galileo did was serious, Pope John Paul II would later teach that the Church had been incorrect in its response and abusive treatment of Galileo.
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10
Evolution, Critical Thinking, and Other Things the JWs Never Told Me
by David_Jay inafter reading several threads on the topics of evolution and theism, i thought i would share what happens to you when you go to college and get a real education on things: you learn that some of the arguments and stands of jehovah's witnesses are moot to begin with.
i never double-checked the "modus operandi" about many things, and boy, did i have some real learning to do.. for instance, why are jehovah's witnesses so against evolution?
it only proves their point.
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David_Jay
After reading several threads on the topics of evolution and theism, I thought I would share what happens to you when you go to college and get a real education on things: you learn that some of the arguments and stands of Jehovah's Witnesses are moot to begin with. I never double-checked the "modus operandi" about many things, and boy, did I have some real learning to do.
For instance, why are Jehovah's Witnesses so against evolution? It only proves their point. It really does.
Don't believe me?
The following is a list of things that shocked me once I got myself an education after leaving the JW world (where such things are "frowned upon," as we are quite aware). What I once was frightened of, thought of as taboo, never considered, all that disappeared as soon as I merely opened myself to some good old-fashioned school learning (and I mean college, not just public schooling up to the 8th or 12th grade).
1. Charles Darwin's tomb is in Westminster Abbey because Christians view his evolutionary model as one of the greatest contributions to Christian theology.
Look it up if you don't believe me. I was shocked because I was always taught that Darwin was an atheist and that the evolution theory taught that there was no God. In reality Darwin died an agnostic, and the evolution model merely explains the process of life on earth, not its origins. In fact the model is not anti-God or pro-atheist. It actually says nothing about those subjects. Yes, though Christians originally saw Darwin's theories as a threat, by the time of his death evolution was viewed as "evidence" of an intelligence behind life and the process that brought it about.
Yes, I am aware that some atheists will say otherwise. But as our professors explained that is just the uneducated view. The reality is that most people for or against the theory have never formerly studied it, never read Darwin's work, and are unaware of where he is buried. In fact, except for Fundamentalist Christians and a minority of others in the religious world, the evolution model stands side-by-side with most theology and doctrine.
Why are JWs so against something most religious people have no problem embracing?
2. Critical thinking is a method that comes from a religion.
The inventor of critical thinking was a man named Siddhathra Gautama, more commonly known as the Buddha. The Buddha taught that real spirituality relied upon observation and analysis, even at the cost of rejecting religious tradition. Truth, at all costs, was an invention of religion, though not of the Judeo-Christian brand.
Witnesses, however, taught me that critical thinking was the invention of the godless, those who did not believe in the spiritual, those against religion. The truth is quite the opposite.
I know, Buddhism is often referred to by the Jehovah's Witnesses as a "godless" religion. While Siddhathra Gautama did not himself believe in a god, Buddhism itself does teach that divinities exist. And while some Buddhists do not believe in a god, some do. The Buddha is often viewed as the great and supreme teacher of all who can be considered gods.
Why did I grow up learning that critical thinking was something to be feared and would leave me empty of all spirituality if I learned it and used it?
3. It is a pagan practice to utter the name of a deity.
Gentiles believed that the constant utterance of something made it holy. Hebrews thought otherwise.
"Make it and have it, but don't touch it or use it." That sums up Jewish theology on "holiness." The word for "holy" in their language means "separate" as in separate from normal or regular use.
This is why the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was not to be used as food, not even touched. (Note Eve's words at Genesis 3:3 for example.) The Ten Commandments written by the hand of God were to be placed in the decorative golden Ark which itself was neither to be seen or touched. The Ark was to be placed in a room, an inner most chamber of the Tabernacle/Temple which was accessible only by one person (the High Priest) and then only once a year. On the Sabbath no work is to be done. On Hanukkah the light from the candles may not be used for any purpose like reading or how the light of a normal candle can be used; they may only be viewed and adored. This is how holy things are "used" in the Hebrew world or most precisely not used.
The Name of God is the same, written but not to be used because it was different from common names and the names of deities.
4. Matthew says a "generation" is the length of time from a father to son.
While there are some missing names from the list (critical analysis of Scripture teaches it is meant to be abbreviated because it is a tableau or narrative device), note that the definition of a "generation" in Matthew beginning in chapter 1 is counted from father to son. Each time a father begets a son, this Matthew calls a "generation."--Matthew 1:1-17.
The very same usage occurs in Matthew chapter 23:34-36 where Jesus teaches that the present generation of the first century will have judgment visited upon them for their sins (which according to Christian tradition occurred about 40 years later when the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 C.E.).
The exact same phrase, just one chapter over, appears in Matthew 24:34. Both 23:26 and 24:34 use the same term, "this generation," referring not to a future period but the generation that was then alive in the first century. The "generation" of first century Jews would see all that Jesus had prophesied about the destruction of the Temple as this was one reason for the Eschatological Discourse.
40 years is an average age from father to son. 40 years is also the length of time the Old Testament said it took for the unfaithful Hebrews who left Egypt under Moses to die off and be replaced by a younger "generation," their children. 40 years was also the time Charles T. Russell believed was all that was left for the "last days," which he believed began in 1874 and would culminate with the breakout of Armageddon in 1914 at the end of that "generation."
The current "overlapping" definition is not Biblical, neither was the one before about those old enough to see the year 1914, etc.
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Is the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses really an inferior form of Christianity?
by nicolaou inseems to be quite a few posters recently pulling down the beliefs of jw's as not biblical or truly christian.
maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong, i really don't care.. in some important ways though mainstream christians often behave better than jehovah's witnesses; most don't practice shunning or impose lethal medical prohibitions on their members.
many are far more tolerant of the lgbt community and a few even make the awkward attempt to square the fact of evolution with their faith.. please note that i'm saying some, not all.. so i suppose it's fair to say that differing forms of christianity can be better or worse for individuals, families and the wider community.
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David_Jay
You were the one who said they weren't a faith group and you, Slimboyfat, were the one who said they were only persecuted by the Nazis as a race.
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Is the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses really an inferior form of Christianity?
by nicolaou inseems to be quite a few posters recently pulling down the beliefs of jw's as not biblical or truly christian.
maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong, i really don't care.. in some important ways though mainstream christians often behave better than jehovah's witnesses; most don't practice shunning or impose lethal medical prohibitions on their members.
many are far more tolerant of the lgbt community and a few even make the awkward attempt to square the fact of evolution with their faith.. please note that i'm saying some, not all.. so i suppose it's fair to say that differing forms of christianity can be better or worse for individuals, families and the wider community.
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David_Jay
Slimboyfat,
If it was just about doing away with a race, why did synagogues, Jewish artifacts, and even Jewish celebrations come under attack by the Nazis? If it was just about race, then what about Gentile converts to Judaism during the Third Reich? Were they allowed to go about their lives as Jews since they were not "racially" Jewish?
Aish.com, a Jewish site, in its article "Was the Holocaust A War Against the Jews?" has this to say about this issue:
The Nazi war against the Jews was both racial and spiritual. Their enmity to all that Judaism represented had its roots in history, in the ancient struggle to prevent the dissemination of Divinity in man's world. This unique aspect of Nazi Germany's war on the Jews was expressed eloquently in the Agudath Israel's underground newspaper in the Warsaw ghetto:
"Amalek (an Edomite people who attacked the Jews immediately upon their Exodus from Egypt) is concerned not so much with the Jews as with Judaism: the Jewish outlook, the Jewish worldview, the Jewish sense of honesty, the Jewish sense of justice, the Jewish attitude toward the indigent and the deprived… All of these are diametrically opposed to Amalekism… Amalek and Haman are targeting the Jews less as a people than as a Divine people."3
Hitler himself said:
“Providence has ordained that I should be the greatest liberator of humanity. I am freeing man from the restraints of an intelligence that has taken charge, from the dirty and degrading self-mortifications of a false vision called conscience and morality, and from the demands of a freedom and personal independence which only a very few can bear.”4
The author Esther Farbstein observes:
The Holocaust was an unprecedented occurrence that combined a war on Judaism with a war on the Jews. The elements of the war against the Jewish spirit (e.g., abuse of rabbis, violence on Jewish holidays, desecration of synagogues and sacred objects, destruction of religious books) were not only a means of spiritual oppression. They were an end just as the killing was an end.
This unique aspect was rooted in anti-Semitic ideology and especially in Nazi beliefs. For the first time in history, biological race was linked with the human spirit, culture, and morality. The "Jewish germ" was not only the blood that had intermingled with that of the other nations, but the principles of morality, the spirit of liberalism, and the civilization that Judaism had introduced to Europe – everything that represented the antithesis of Nazism. Hitler, as the successor to the nineteenth-century anti-Semites, preached against Judaism no less than again the Jew.
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Is the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses really an inferior form of Christianity?
by nicolaou inseems to be quite a few posters recently pulling down the beliefs of jw's as not biblical or truly christian.
maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong, i really don't care.. in some important ways though mainstream christians often behave better than jehovah's witnesses; most don't practice shunning or impose lethal medical prohibitions on their members.
many are far more tolerant of the lgbt community and a few even make the awkward attempt to square the fact of evolution with their faith.. please note that i'm saying some, not all.. so i suppose it's fair to say that differing forms of christianity can be better or worse for individuals, families and the wider community.
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David_Jay
Let me put it another way...
This all started when you said that the only people of faith who were in the concentration camps of the Holocaust were the Jehovah's Witnesses and a handful of other groups. I mentioned that the majority of people, the Jews, also were a faith group. You said no.
What if I said that the only reason this debate between us is going on was due to the fact that you were not intelligent enough to understand the issues being discussed, that your ethnic background or race made you somehow incapable of seeing facts.
I am sure you would strongly agree. I have no idea of your ethnic background or race. I don't even know your age or gender.
But what if I said that did not matter? What if I insisted that my definition of you is the only right one and that you have to accept the label I give you and nothing else?
My saying you were not worthy or capable or had not the right to declare for yourself what you are and choose to be is hateful. It would stem from my not seeing you as a complete person or somehow sub-human when compared to myself. "I have the right to decide what you can be called but you, yourself don't." Why do I get to decide for you? What makes me say you don't have that right? Hate for others is often the reason.
That is what Mr. Campos meant. Non-Jews have a sad history of telling Jews what they are and what the can or should be. This has often resulted in religions like Christianity persecuting the Jews in the Spanish Inquisition, the pogroms, and eventually the Holocaust.
Regardless of what JWs say, the Holocaust was about the Jews mainly. It was not Satan's attack against the JWs, as they like to view it. It was all due to the Nazi hatred for the Jews who declared to them "you are a race that must be exterminated."
Jews are more than a race, Mr. Campos was saying. They are a people made up and bound together by so much more.
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Is the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses really an inferior form of Christianity?
by nicolaou inseems to be quite a few posters recently pulling down the beliefs of jw's as not biblical or truly christian.
maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong, i really don't care.. in some important ways though mainstream christians often behave better than jehovah's witnesses; most don't practice shunning or impose lethal medical prohibitions on their members.
many are far more tolerant of the lgbt community and a few even make the awkward attempt to square the fact of evolution with their faith.. please note that i'm saying some, not all.. so i suppose it's fair to say that differing forms of christianity can be better or worse for individuals, families and the wider community.
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David_Jay
Slimboy,
The point Mr. Campos made was that Jews have the right to define themselves and tell others, "no, I will not be defined by you" if they so choose.
Mr. Campos stated that it is an injustice for people to decide how to label people, the way JWs label others, for example, as good or evil. Jews see themselves as a people tied not by race but by a common "ethnoreligious" foundation, to borrow his word. To tell Jews, "no you can't say you are a faith," or " no, I decide if you are a race or not," is what Mr. Campos meant by an act of hatred.
You say they are not a faith group, but you are not a Jew. Mr. Campos, a Jew, says, "yes, we are," but you still disagree. Whose definition of a Jew is correct? Yours? Or the view of the Jews themselves?
Would you like it if others stated that everything you claimed to be was wrong, and that you had to accept their definition about you? Don't you and others have the right to self-identification? Why is your definition better than that of Mr. Campos? What places you in a better position than a Jew to tell a Jew who and what they are or what they may or may not be?
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Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
by rebel8 inanyone here watching this on netflix?.
it's funny, kind of silly at times, but somewhat relatable.. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ellie-kemper-kimmy-schmidt-character-798166.
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David_Jay
I saw it. Perfect show to watch if you've been in a cult. Hilarious and brilliant.
New season begins this Spring.
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We are living in the 21st Century , When , Are We Going to Bury Religious Superstition ? Once and for all ?
by smiddy inthe christian bible / cannon is different , depending on what religion you profess ,around the world.. russian orthodox ,greek orthodox ,christian gnostics ,roman catholics , polish national catholics ,c.of e , etc,etc,.
the very many christian bible translations that exist today differ according to different interpretations of the translators.. the jewish translators of the hebrew scriptures add a whole new concept to the traditional interpretation by christian translators of the old testament... throw in the mix all of the fundamentalist religions that have sprung up these past couple of centuries including the j.w.`s , s.d.a.`s , mormons , t.v.
evangelists , etc, etc,.
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David_Jay
I hear where you are coming from, Smiddy.
But obviously you are looking at everything from a bit of a closed prospective. Only Christianity deals in "faith." Other religions don't use the concept, at least not in the same manner.
Buddhism doesn't require any type of faith or belief in a deity.
Judaism sees faith or belief in concepts and creeds as irrelevant to their theology.
Shinto is about ritual, not much else.
Only Christianity makes a big deal about what one mentally accepts or mentally acknowledges, making faith a requisite to membership or acceptance. That is why Christian religions have a hierarchy and others often don't have a central authority (the three I mentioned don't have such a thing or an official set of beliefs). Christian leaders keep the membership in check based on claimants to a creed of some sort, and those that don't make such a claim get the boot.
Other religions are not like that. Many Christians and former Christians have had little to no exposure to non-Christian thought and make broad judgments that are neither accurate nor show any critical thinking based on study or evidence of other religious movements.
Forms of Buddhism and Reform Judaism, for instance, do not allow for people to make religious choices on the basis of credulity, superstition, or against reason and science. And since faith does not play a role in these theologies, it is hard to apply some of your views universally to all religions.
This is not to say you don't have a good point. Those movements where faith replaces reason or logic show how many people are willing to jump to conclusions without first fully studying all the options and ensuring their conclusions are accurate, and that is indeed sad.
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96
Is the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses really an inferior form of Christianity?
by nicolaou inseems to be quite a few posters recently pulling down the beliefs of jw's as not biblical or truly christian.
maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong, i really don't care.. in some important ways though mainstream christians often behave better than jehovah's witnesses; most don't practice shunning or impose lethal medical prohibitions on their members.
many are far more tolerant of the lgbt community and a few even make the awkward attempt to square the fact of evolution with their faith.. please note that i'm saying some, not all.. so i suppose it's fair to say that differing forms of christianity can be better or worse for individuals, families and the wider community.
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David_Jay
Paul,
Mr. Campos had a lot more in his email to say, but I shortened it. He mentioned, however, the anti-Jewish proselytizing that the JWs have been doing among his people.
It was rather lengthy, and we discussed that the part should probably be cut for brevity, but reading your comment makes me think I should have included it.
What you are likely unaware of is that Witnesses demand Jews who show interest to leave behind their culture, dress, and customs in exchange for the western-Gentile ones. None of the Jewish customs are pagan, and the first century Jewish Christians like the apostle Paul observed Jewish traditions and law. (Acts 21.17-26) JWs do not transcend cultural barriers but demand people's to abandon anything and everything that is not Watchtower, telling people that their own customs are evil. What you call transcending is actually destruction.