Posts by David

54

Survey: Are you Agnostic or Atheist or Christian?

by Iamallcool in

jw
friends

i am agnostic.

i will count how many agnostics, atheists and christians that are reading this forum regularly.

please answer my question.

David_Jay

None of the above. I am Jewish.

We invent the montheistic God concept, but get ignored when the God question comes up. Typical. Who else here was missed? Any Buddhists or Muslims, maybe something different or without a label?

37

Despite their false predictions aren't the JWs right? Won't the world eventually end & Paradise come?

by deegee in

aren't there christian denominations who do not make false end of the world predictions but who nevertheless believe that the world will eventually end and paradise (whether in heaven or on earth) will come?.

it seems the watchtower was just jumping the gun when they made false end of the world predictions but they are nevertheless the right: the world will eventually end and paradise will come..

David_Jay

"Despite the false predictions, JWs are essentially right because they generally believe in the same things most other religious eschatological doctrines asknowledge, namely an end to the current world and A blessed world to come." Hmm.

A good way to examine whether or not an argument holds weight is to change variables within it. To illustrate:

Judaism and Catholicism/Orthodoxy share generally the same eschatological paradigm as acknowledged by the Jehovah's Witnesses. In fact, though I recall far too many times when JWs claimed their "paradise earth" hope was a unique earmark of the "one true religion," in reality it was Jews and the oldest Christian denominations that hold the claim to this doctrine first. The fact that most JWs don't know this only demonstrates their lack of education regarding religion in general.

But, let us assume that the OP is indeed offering an axiom. Despite the mistakes regarding their predictions, aren't they right since traditionally this is what the oldest Judeo-Christian teachers also speak of?

That would create a paradox for the JWs: if holding to the general belief of an end of world/paradise scenario makes the JWs right, then the other religions are right too.

Therefore if having the general picture of things makes a religion "correct" (that is to say that the world's end/paradise paradigm is valid), this makes the Jehovah's Witnesses wrong in their judging other religions as false.

So despite differing views as to whether the world will end, whether there is or isn't going to be a paradise earth to come, the argument only further proves the JWs wrong when you test the OP's logic.

50

Why Finding the One True Religion is Impossible

by Simon in

jws like to think they have found the one true religion.

but like so many other religious people, it's usually the religion they were born into, the only religion they know because it's the first one they found or, at the most, one of two or three (typically the second one after they left their first / born-in faith).. the trouble is, there simply isn't enough time to explore and investigate each and everyone of the many thousands of belief systems, religions and sects around the world.. think of it this way: which is the best neighbourhood to live in where you would be most happy and most successful?

not just in the city or even the country you are in, but the entire world.. how would you ever know?

David_Jay

I don't think there is such a thing as a true religion or that God is an exclusive experience to theists or even only to those who believe in God.

My parents were not particularly religious. They gave us kids a great Christmas and Easter once or twice when I was in elementary school but never observed Passover or celebrated Chanukah. We walked a few times into a church, but was only briefly told about our connection to Israel when I was 16 (we did eat kosher though, but I think it was only out of habit and familiarity.) And that was it--end of my sporadic religious upbringing by age 9.

The only time I was exposed to the idea that there was a "true feligion" or that one needed to find "the Truth" regarding life was when I was introduced to the Jehovah's Witnesses by my aunt who took over raising me as a boy by age 17. I never heard of such a "one truth" concept from anyone else I knew before or hear it from anyone in my circles today (except from some Mormons who came to my door a few times and a few Catholic friends who were influenced by growing up in the Bible belt of the U.S.).

From my experience as a regular pioneer when I was a JW and comparing it to my 20 years of life since, very few religious people believe theirs is the true religion or that only one true religion or one truth exists. It is an earmark of NRMs, some Fundamentalist Christian movements, a few disconnected others from just about any other walk of life maybe, but I can't say from my personal experience that it is a common trait to anyone else, religious or otherwise.

However after watching several documentaries on life in North Korea, reading about the way people there view their rulers (and how the rulers have practically made deities of themselves), I think the idea of "having the only truth" or being a member of the "best" or putting all of one's figurative eggs in one "basket" makes certain religious movements and their adherents the zombie-like Kool-Aid drinkers that they are. The formula, as North Korea demonstrates, is not exclusive to any religious experience.

As the secular North Korean paradigm demonstrates, you can take religion totally out of the picture and still get the same type of propaganda-drunk followers. Sometimes people are forced to believe these things, other times they are free to do so, but it is naive to think that religion itself is a necessary ingredient if you want to make mindless sheep.

As a hypothesis I put forward the possibility that it's the idea that there is only one way, one "truth" that causes people to act as they do in these situations. Whether it be the Watchtower, New Age crytals, the secular regime of a dictator that outlaws religion, or a group that promotes loving Jesus but hating everyone else, the common denominator is that these people convince themselves that only their view is correct and that of others isn't.

It seems to be that it is the "one-truth-only, and-I-have-it-but-you-don't" concept that may be the real poison, and not religion or any particular secular philosophy that causes this.

7

Jehovah's Witnesses May Have to Look for a New Whipping Boy Due to New Evidence About Catholic Church

by David_Jay in

“the bbc is right to recognise that the libel that catholics said and did nothing against nazism is precisely that, a collective libel.

i am grateful to them for doing so.”--lord alton of liverpool.. so reported the catholic herald (uk) on friday, 9th of december 2016 after the bbc admitted it greatly underestimated the catholic church's opposition to hitler during the shoah.. the bbc’s internal watchdog has found that a programme wrongly accused the catholic church of “silence” about the holocaust.. after pope francis’s visit to auschwitz in july, bbc one’s 6pm news bulletin carried a report which stated: “silence was the response of the catholic church when nazi germany demonised jewish people and then attempted to eradicate jews from europe.”.

in response, the cross-bench peer lord alton of liverpool and fr leo chamberlain, the former headmaster of ampleforth, made an official complaint.. nearly six months later, the bbc’s editorial complaints unit has now concluded that the item was unfair.

David_Jay

I happen to be a Sephardic Jew myself. All ancestral lines of my family were greatly persecuted during the Spanish Inquisition and subsequently the Mexican Inquisition (when after the Alhambra Decree we came to the new world and founded Monterrey).

While exact numbers of victims are not yet readily available to the public as the Catholic Church just began releasing documentation to Sephardic families at the close of the 20th century, it has been hard for members of the Church to come to grips with the extent of the persecution.

Despite this, we Jews for the most part have chosen active dialogue over grudges (again "for the most part," though not universally). Unlike the Jehovah's Witnesses and similar groups who keep regurgitating the injustices against my people as an excuse for their prejudices against Catholicism, we are in active, formal cooperation with the Roman Catholic Church today. Not only in dialogue but in humanitarian efforts do Jews and Christians work together today (a union led by the efforts of the Holy See, I might add). For our part we recognize that we Jews as a people have not always been free from prejudice, bigtory, intolerance, and sometimes worse in our own past dealings with Christians. In order to prevent further problems, both sides have decided that it is impossible to remain faithful to our respective convictions without being active partners in creating a lasting solution.

If Jews can get past the past, nobody else has a right to blame current Catholics or their current organization with yesterday's sins committed by the worst among them. If they are changing things and we are working with them, then groups like the JWs who teach the public to still judge today's Catholics by yesterday's errors are not only hypocrites (considering their recent excuses regarding their "not inspired" and 'fallible' Governing Body), they are angry over incidents that never involved them in the first place!

So if you are angry about the sins of the Catholic Church's past, O dear Jehovah's Witnesses (and those who think like them), why not stop kvetching and get involved in the solution by being part of the Jewish-Christian dialogue? The world is what we make of it. If it's bad and you're doing nothing more than judging and complaining, you have only yourself to blame if it doesn't get better.

7

Jehovah's Witnesses May Have to Look for a New Whipping Boy Due to New Evidence About Catholic Church

by David_Jay in

“the bbc is right to recognise that the libel that catholics said and did nothing against nazism is precisely that, a collective libel.

i am grateful to them for doing so.”--lord alton of liverpool.. so reported the catholic herald (uk) on friday, 9th of december 2016 after the bbc admitted it greatly underestimated the catholic church's opposition to hitler during the shoah.. the bbc’s internal watchdog has found that a programme wrongly accused the catholic church of “silence” about the holocaust.. after pope francis’s visit to auschwitz in july, bbc one’s 6pm news bulletin carried a report which stated: “silence was the response of the catholic church when nazi germany demonised jewish people and then attempted to eradicate jews from europe.”.

in response, the cross-bench peer lord alton of liverpool and fr leo chamberlain, the former headmaster of ampleforth, made an official complaint.. nearly six months later, the bbc’s editorial complaints unit has now concluded that the item was unfair.

David_Jay

“The BBC is right to recognise that the libel that Catholics said and did nothing against Nazism is precisely that, a collective libel. I am grateful to them for doing so.”--Lord Alton of Liverpool.

So reported the Catholic Herald (UK) on Friday, 9th of December 2016 after the BBC admitted it greatly underestimated the Catholic Church's opposition to Hitler during the Shoah.

The BBC’s internal watchdog has found that a programme wrongly accused the Catholic Church of “silence” about the Holocaust.
After Pope Francis’s visit to Auschwitz in July, BBC One’s 6pm news bulletin carried a report which stated: “Silence was the response of the Catholic Church when Nazi Germany demonised Jewish people and then attempted to eradicate Jews from Europe.”
In response, the cross-bench peer Lord Alton of Liverpool and Fr Leo Chamberlain, the former headmaster of Ampleforth, made an official complaint.
Nearly six months later, the BBC’s editorial complaints unit has now concluded that the item was unfair. According to the unit, the BBC reporter “did not give due weight to public statements by successive popes or the efforts made on the instructions of Pius XII to rescue Jews from Nazi persecution, and perpetuated a view which is at odds with the balance of evidence.”

For more, go to: http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2016/12/09/bbc-admits-it-underestimated-the-churchs-opposition-to-hitler/

This is not an isolated incident. It seems that history was not only unfair toward the Jews leading up to the Shoah, it has been the same toward the Catholic Church ever since the Holocaust ended. While some of this started with Jews who demanded to know where the Church's call for justice and peace was during the years that Hitler's extermination machine was in operation, the answers and subsequent good relations that have followed since between the Jews and the Catholic Church have met with deaf ears by many in the secular world.

In some instances, anti-Semitism became replaced by anti-Catholicism, and as the Church released details about what it had done during the years of the Holocaust (albeit too slowly even for many Jews who are participants in the current Jewish-Catholic dialogue process), the evidence was too often met with unfounded skepticism by some.

Jehovah's Witnesses have been all too eager to repeat the unfounded skepticism as fact in its publications, from its platforms, and from the mouths of its door-to-door preachers who regularly use the Catholic Church as a figurative "whipping boy" for all that is evil and Satanic.

While joint efforts between Judaism and the Catholic Church have revealed that the Church's response to the Shoah was indeed inconsistent, it was definitely not non-existent. Despite the evidence that suggests more could have been done or that what was done could have been handled far differently, it is also acknowledged today that much did indeed happen as the Church attempted to come to grips and deal with an unthinkable and volatile situation.

While the response of the Church during the Shoah may have definitely been a mixed-bag of sorts, it was far from silent and complicit. As a Jew I am not clearing the Church of all past sins, so to speak, but on the other hand sometimes all it takes to be a party to a lie is to avoid telling a detail that could change a claim commonly made. The BBC, like others, has made the effort to not be a party to a lie.

Though stranger things have happened, it is not likely that the Governing Body or the average Jehovah's Witness will follow the same path and change their song about their favorite whipping boy. The problem for them now, however, is that even more people will see through their disparaging comments about Catholics and likely feel even less inclined to accept other things they teach as truth.

7

Revelation already fulfilled

by stockholm_Syndrome in

it appears to me revelation was 'fulfilled' 1st century and we are fooling ourselves to think it applies to present times .

let's start with the opening statement:.

a revelation by jesus christ, which god gave him,+ to show his slaves+ the things that must shortly take place.. hmm-- shortly take place ?

David_Jay

If I am not mistaken, Christians do indeed have a school of ecclesiastical thought called "preterism" in reference to the book of Revelation.

In Judaism we recognize a form of literary composition or genre that has come to be called "apocalyptic." Basically it is a way for either a religious or political writer (in the case of Judaism it was often a mixture of both) to comment on the intrigue of the day without getting in trouble for it (kings and despots of the ancient world were not appreciative of criticism).

Works like the book of Daniel are not viewed by Jews as prophecy, but this type of writing is where a critic of political intrigue commented on present and past world events as events that HAD BEEN foreseen, where enemies of Israel will get/got their just dues for their "evil deeds." The resulting march of nations was a tableu or paradigm where trust in Providence (and sometimes clever innuendo reflecting distaste for a certain dynasty) was presented under the guise of a series of visions of the future. The interpretation was strictly preterist.

The book of Revelation is viewed by some Christian exegetes as preterist, but groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses (who view Daniel as a prophecy) read Scripture literally. Therefore if the author was also composing the same type of genre, the JWs feel obliged by their literalist approach to read all references to visions of the future as literal prophecy.

18

OT - Pork was unclean... NT Now it's not?

by pleaseresearch in

this always baffled me.

either pork is unclean and wrong to eat forever, or it was a load of bull to begin with..

David_Jay

Actually, the claim by the Jehovah's Witnesses that the prohibitions of kashrut (Jewish Law regarding kosher food) were changed is not supported by Scripture.

The JW misunderstanding your are referring to has to do with their interpretation of Mark 7:19 where, in a discussion about the ritual washing of hands as practiced by the Pharisees, Jesus "declares all foods clean." Thus, say Jehovah's Witnesses (and some other Christians as well), Jesus lifted the kosher prohibitions demanded of people by the Mosaic Law.

There are several outstanding problems with this claim. The first is that kashrut (Mosaic kosher laws) applied only to Jews. So it cannot be said that Jesus freed humanity in general from observing food laws that were never demanded of them.

And if Mark 7:19 is where Jesus ends the prohibitions of kashrut, somebody forgot to tell Peter--and reportedly he is the one who told Mark what to include in his gospel!

You see, for even some time after Jesus' death and resurrection, and even some time after Pentecost, Peter, a Jewish Christian, is still eating kosher. We know this from three Biblical accounts. The first is in Acts 10, where Peter is given a vision of all types of animals forbidden to be eaten by kashrut. When instructed in the vision to slaughter the animals and eat them, Peter replies: "Certainly not, sir. For never have I eaten anything profane and unclean." (Acts 10:9-14) By the calculations of some, several years have passed since the Resurrection. Yet still, years after the events of Mark 7:19 (which traditionally Peter narrated to Mark), Saint Peter himself is still eating kosher.

The second is Galatians 2:11-14. Written by the apostle Paul circa 55 CE, Paul talks about an incident in which he argues about how Peter acted when around Gentiles regarding eating. Around 20 years have passed since the death and resurrection of Jesus, and Peter is still described as eating kosher!

What is often not discussed about Galatians is that though Paul mentions telling Peter to his face about how wrong he thinks Peter is, the abrupt way the story ends without telling what happens seems to imply that Paul didn't win the debate. Paul is describing an event that occurred in the past, before he wrote the letter to the Galatians. Paul's view was obviously changed by apostolic decree from what we read at Acts 21:15-26.

According to some calculations this visit of Paul to Jeruslaem likely happened as a result of the face-off described in Galatians (though some date the argument as happening later, but still shortly before Galatians was written, circa 49 CE). As Acts 21:20-21 demonstrates, Jewish Christians as a whole still saw themselves as under the Mosaic Law and lived their lives as Torah observant.

Years would pass after these events, and Paul would soften his view in Galatians for by 58 CE Paul would write in his letter to the Romans that Gentile Christians should not condemn Jewish Christians due to what food they ate or avoided. (Romans 14:1-23) The Gospel of Mark would be written shortly after these statements of Paul.

Thus the first century Christians never understood any of Jesus' words uttered by him as proclaiming an end to kashrut laws. Jewish Christians still ate kosher, and while Paul taught Gentile Christians that the kosher prohibitions did not apply to them, the Church as a whole still favored kashrut observance by Jewish Christians.

So what did Jesus' words in Mark mean? Obviously if Jesus had declared that kosher regulations had been lifted then none of the incidents reported in Acts or Galatians or the allowances in Romans would have happened and been written about.

Also, Jesus would likely have been stoned for saying something like that. Obviously people are reading something into Mark that Jesus never meant, especially in light of Jesus' words at Matthew 5:17-19.

Mark 7 describes a discussion about "ritual" hand washing as practiced by the Pharisees. The first few verses explain that they were not advocating hygienic behavior but ritual and moral cleanliness. We understand this because Jesus, in verses 21-23, states that people are made "unclean" by evil thoughts and evil actions. The Pharisees were claiming that eating food without undergoing a series of ritual baptisms beforehand made one just as impure.

Were the Pharisees going to marketplaces run by Gentiles and getting their food from pagans and heathens who themselves ritually sacrificed their animals beforehand to their pagan gods? Or course not! Was the food under discussion by the Pharisees kosher or not kosher? No Jew would be eating food that wasn't kosher, as Peter had exc!aimed in his conversation with Heaven. So the foods the Pharisees were claiming were unclean were kosher foods.

Thus Mark's statement that Jesus "declared all foods clean" meant that Jesus declared all kosher foods as ritually pure enough as they were, regardless if one ate them with washed or unwashed hands. Only much later would people, like the Jehovah's Witnesses read Mark's statements differently.

So the prohibitions you mentioned regarding pork and other non-kosher foods were never lifted.

11

"I'm firm in my beliefs": Hypocrisy and Delusion

by schnell in

jw
friends

i have a friend who said he'll have to stop listening to me after i told him about yahweh's origins in canaanite religion, because he's firm in his beliefs.. i have a mother who said she goes to the meetings even if it's wrong, and i should too.

she is also firm in her beliefs.. i have talked to an elder about evolution, and as i made the case for it and against creationism, he said that at some point i have to decide that there is a creator.

he too is firm in his beliefs.. all of these people will also talk about going out in service.

David_Jay

Evilapostate,

It's okay to disagree and have your own views on the matter. And I was not saying that I personally don't accept the "EL is YAHWEH" argument or that it had no merit.

No, my statement was that people stick to their beliefs regardless if they are religious or not, whether there is evidence of not, and as "wrongology" suggests that this is a universal reaction of all humans.

I merely used the issue to prove the point: whether the issue is a religious one or not, that all people don't easily let go of conclusions they've adopted as personal convictions. It's normal behavior regardless if the convictions are religious or secular.

As to the EL=Yahweh argument, there IS merit in some of what is proposed. Only the deity is not EL of Canaan that was adopted but YHVH of the Midianites, or so archeology and the history of the Jews suggest.

The problems with the EL arguments is that they are built from a view linking the Hebrew Scriptures to the names of deties. This is based on the Christian view that Jews get their doctrine from Scripture, which is incorrect. Scripture is based on the Jewish religion and came afterwards. For the EL arguments to work without question would require that they match the Jewish secular history and tradition with the archeological record. The Scriptures are too new (a product of the Second Temple era) and can't be fully trusted to give an accurate picture of patriarchal history. Genesis itself is written mainly in the form of dramatic narrative, and as such is understood by Jews and academics as a gloss of tradition and not direct history.

Since it isn't directly historical (at least to Jews and critical analysis), one cannot say it precisely offers dependable data to reconstruct history. So you have to look at the Jewish secular history and tradition, such as the Mishnah, and compare that to the empirical archeological record.

In short, taking into account the above, scholars theorize that Abraham learned about the monotheistic concept from the people east and south of Canaan, the same people that Moses' father-in-law served as a religious priest for. By the time of Moses, Abraham's descendants had to be reintroduced to this monotheistic concept, thus the dramatic narrative of Exodus in retelling the story of the Great Theophany.

We Hebrews are likely a mix of the people who left Egypt and those who lived in Canaan, at the root is a lineage of Abraham but as a whole a mixture of the peoples who settled in the Fertile Crescent. Some of these people were worshipers of El and other deities, but under the Davidic dynasty all of these were outlawed as the new rule made worship of the Midian God the state religion. The people never fully abandoned all the practices connected with the Canaan cults (and this is where some of the information fits in that shows some of the data about El is not totally off base), but the Davidic dynasty's state religion appears to be the older concept. The exile to Babylon was interpreted as being caused by not fully abandoning the Canaan concepts for the YHVH of David, Moses, the Midianites and Abraham. Academia recognizes the rebuilding of the Temple, the center of the Davidic dynasty's state religion, as the Midianites' God concept winning out, with the Hasmonean's Chanukah re-dedication of the Temple a means of legitimizing its dynasty as a replacement for David's, adopting his God in the process.

Scripture is written and finalized during this Second-Temple period, making it impossible to use it as a link to the Canaan cults with any accuracy. But the archeological finds do back up the above as the current theory. Judaism itself tends to lean towards this view even in Orthodox circles.

11

"I'm firm in my beliefs": Hypocrisy and Delusion

by schnell in

jw
friends

i have a friend who said he'll have to stop listening to me after i told him about yahweh's origins in canaanite religion, because he's firm in his beliefs.. i have a mother who said she goes to the meetings even if it's wrong, and i should too.

she is also firm in her beliefs.. i have talked to an elder about evolution, and as i made the case for it and against creationism, he said that at some point i have to decide that there is a creator.

he too is firm in his beliefs.. all of these people will also talk about going out in service.

David_Jay

It is not merely religious people that can be stubbornly stuck in their beliefs. Facts, figures, and even empirical evidence can sometimes be dismissed by the most critical of thinkers due to everyone's distaste for being wrong.

Kathryn Schulz, a journalist who is often noted as starting the new field of study dubbed "wrongology," has pointed out that humans will do just about anything to avoid being proven wrong. We are taught from childhood onward that being incorrect, being wrong makes us a "failure." Mix that with religions that teach that doctrines must be accepted with faith-like credulity, these religious adherents will equate being "wrong" with being "bad," being "unfaithful to God." No one who believes in a deity that they've chosen to worship wants to think of themselves as "unfaithful" to their god.

Again, this isn't limited to the religious. Anyone can suffer from what wrongologists call "error blindness." This is the denial that one is wrong or can even be wrong. Scientists have been known to ignore evidence and even sabotage the work of other scientists who may be disproving their own views or see another's work as challenging their own theories. People tend not to embrace the idea that being mistaken is human. We rend to forget that we are always capable of being in error at any time about anything.

To demonstrate that this can happen to even unreligious people, though the above information linking the Canaanite deity El to the Jewish God is popular on the Internet, it is also not very correct. I'm Jewish, an instructor on critical Hebrew philology, and I see this mistake all the time.

The link between the the Canaanite El and the Jewish God appears to work on the surface, but is an etymological anachronism. Both deities were worshipped during the same periods, and it was common for Semitic language to share words, using EL or forms thereof to refer to deities and grand storms. For instance, another word that was commonly shared by Semitic communities for deities was BA'AL, and not only is the Hebrew God referred to as BA'AL in Scripture, the Hebrews named their children employing this name of God as in Jerubbaal, Ishbaal, and Meribaal.

Aramaic, Phoenician, Ugartic, Hebrew, Syriac, etc., shared similar words for deities much as Latin, French, Spanish and Italian share similar words for similar things. The connections between the deities, however, can't be made from this shared vocabulary. The Canaanite El, for instance, was a rival to El of the Hebrews as they were worshipped around the same time in the same area.

Also, the concept of God shared by my people the Jews is quite the opposite of what most non-Jewish readers of Scripture understand. For Jews, "God" is actually not a god. In very basic terms, the concept of "God" for us Hebrews is that there is no such thing as gods, that all deities are false and subsequently all religions are a waste of time. As Jewish tradition, the Mishnah, and the Talmud state, "God" is the great "Cause" of all that we witness in the physical universe. "God" may actually be the universe, or greater than the universe, some Jews hold. Above all, Jews for millennia have seen "God" are transcendent of understanding, mysterious beyond our learning, incapable of conceptualizing, escaping definition. The ancient story of Abraham destroying his father's collection of idol gods upon realizing this concept of the "Great Cause" has led one Jewish teacher I know to refer to God as the "un-God."

This is why some Jews are atheists, others agnostics, some humanists, and others even Buddhist (which has no god at its center). These Jewish "atheists" will still observe Shabbat and pray the Shema, celebrate Chanukah, and observe Passover, leading the prayer and chanting during the Seder. Belief in a god or deities is not required of Jews because of this unique monotheism we possess in our culture.

Despite the etymological and philological evidence for this (which can be found by going to Jewish resources), most proponents of the "EL is YAHWEH" argument have not only failed to dip into Jewish studies on the subject, most have never asked a Jew (or believe them) when the subject arises.

I am not the only one who has attempted to discuss this with persons who hold this "EL is YAHWEH" view as "truth," and I am surely not to be the last, but many of these have "error blindness," not seeing what a mistake it is not to apply the scientific method rule of having your conclusions verified by several disinterested parties. A lot still fall into the old Watchtower trap of singing the old "I did the research myself, and now I know the truth" song, and can be quite nasty when you try to demonstrate that just failing to go to Jewish sources or walk into their local synagogue or temple and ask someone about this is quite a mistake.

Wrongology teaches that it is "error blindness" to believe that there are "beliefs" that cause people to be "mentally lazy, dishonest, cowards and foolish." In reality, we need to face the fact that we are all prone to acting the same when it comes to acknowledging we might be in error. It isn't intelligence that is lacking when people get "error blindness." It's often the understanding that we are all prone to be in error, and that it is not only human to err, it is also human to claim we haven't.

24

The Bible or God? - A Message to Formerbrother

by David_Jay in

“i still can not find any other option that comes as close to all the bible as jws do.”-- from the profile of formerbrother.. this is lengthy, but it should help you, formerbrother.

the problem is not in your search for this "option" but that you are searching according the criteria set out by the jehovah’s witnesses (and likely following the reasoning set out by their claims).. before proceeding, understand clearly (as there will always be someone reading this that will skip this point that i make) that i am not writing to advance any particular religious view.

though raised and baptized as a jehovah’s witness in my late teen years, i am jewish.

David_Jay

I would love to stay and chat some more but I am off on holiday for the Holidays until some time after Chanukah.

Thanks for reading all my chatter. I have been off work with a broken ankle, but it is good now and I will be back to my regular schedule after the Holidays. I will check in some time in January 2017, but probably can't be as involved as I was for the past few days.

But till then, Happy Holidays folks, whatever you believe.

Keep the HAN Solo in CHANukah.

Remember the following spellings are all acceptable for this upcoming Jewish holiday: Chanukah, Hanukkah, Festivus.

Also "Chanukah--the ORIGINAL reason for the season! Let me hear you CHALLAH!"

Oh, and as for Brother D____ who said that if I light a menorah I am doing something as pagan as any Christmas tradition because the Law has been removed by Christ (I have a suspicion that he visits this site so I hope he reads this): First off, its called a "chanukiah," not a "menorah." A menorah has seven branches and a chanukiah has eight with an additional space for a ninth lighter flame called the "shamash." It's not pagan but a Jewish invention. And Chanukah is not commanded in the Law because it celebrates an event in Jewish history that occurred after our return from Babylon! Put that in your "Watchtower" and "read" it! (Not the actual words in that last sentence.)

Shalom!

David_Jay

Posts by David_Jay