Posts by Nika Bee

63

marrying younger spouses

by ssn587 in

jw
friends

my wife passed away 2 years ago we had been married over 30 years, i have since remarried and my new wife is younger than 3 of my children from my first marriage.

i just wondering if there are any more like me out there.

i stay in excellent shape for my age, work out almost daily eat good and have absolutely no medical problems or at least none i can do anything about, bad knees, but my vitals are excellent, and i am known as the teenage because of them when i have my yearly medical checkup.. so was wondering if there are others out there like me, and what some may think about it, just for the record i am extremely happy once again, and we have a 18 month boy who delights me, have a whole new outlook on fatherhood and child raising.

Nika Bee

I think society should be much les judgemental. How can we allow ourselves to judge about a situation we don't know completely?

I think it is good, if one starts a relationship or gets married, to openly discuss possible issues together, look into the future, be honest to oneself and to the partner. But this holds for EVERY relationship. Every situation is different. Age might be an indicator about experience, but not necessarily of emotional/intellectual/... maturity.

In any case, I think one should never say something is gross or disgusting just because it doesn't fit the norm. If an older man is together with a younger woman (or the other way round!) who are we to judge their situation?

47

If there is such a thing as ORIGINAL SIN what does that do to "morality"?

by Terry in

"it is the concept of original sin that negates morality.. if man is guilty by nature, he has no choice about it.. if he has no choice, the issue does not belong in the field of morality.

morality pertains only to the sphere of man's free will -- only to those actions which are open to his choice.. to consider man guilty by nature is a contradiction in terms.".

augustine had the mistaken view that many metaphysicians had at that time: all humans were "nested" inside of adam like those russian dolls that fit inside each other.

Nika Bee

Yes that helps.

So, do we get to the following argumentation: Morality reqires free will.

But we only have REAL free will with regard to things that are not subject to our nature. (If at all, but doesn't this come suspiciously close to determinism?)

If we want to "disprove" the concept of original sin or maybe better, derive a contradictin between the concept of original sin and the concept of morality:

Assume the story is true as told. Then before the sin, man didn't know the difference between good and bad (because they were promised to become like god knowing good and bad). Therefore they lacked the knowledge to make moral choices.

On the other hand, after the sin their nature in the sense above was altered and thus the area of subjects where they could exercise free will had decreased. In particular it was so small now, that it didn't include moral choices.

In both cases we derived a contradiction.

Does this make sense?

47

If there is such a thing as ORIGINAL SIN what does that do to "morality"?

by Terry in

"it is the concept of original sin that negates morality.. if man is guilty by nature, he has no choice about it.. if he has no choice, the issue does not belong in the field of morality.

morality pertains only to the sphere of man's free will -- only to those actions which are open to his choice.. to consider man guilty by nature is a contradiction in terms.".

augustine had the mistaken view that many metaphysicians had at that time: all humans were "nested" inside of adam like those russian dolls that fit inside each other.

Nika Bee

This is interesting. I am just trying to wrap my mind around this (and not really succesfull) so my thoughts are a little scattered.

For the moment I jsut want to ask somehting about your last post Terry. Maybe later I will come back to somehting else.

I understand, what you mean by it is in someone's nature or not to do something.

An example, that has not really to do with morality: I am doing gymnastics. When I learned a new skill on beam, I did it first on a low beam, and could do it perfectly, but on high beam, I couldn't get myself to do it. It was not in my nature. If I would try I would fall off and get hurt. But my coach was a good coach. She helped me to work on my mind. After a few weeks, i could do it on high beam. Suddenly it was in my nature to do so.

Something that has more to do with morality: For a long time I thought it was really bad to say something good about yourself. Once I went to a therapist (for some other issues). She told me to say: I am a good person. (Or somehting similar.) I couldn't. I couldn't get the words out of my mouth. But at the end of the session, I could say it!

Weren't there experiments, to make people do things, that they wouldn't have thought they could ever do (or were in their nature), good and bad?

So what does this do to the concept of choices? If we can "change our mind", or someone can make us do so, regarding things that we originally felt, are not in our nature, do we in the end have choices?

Just some thoughts. Sorry if this is off topic. This belongs to one of the things that bug me from time to time.

42

just arrived here...

by sylvlef in

hi all.. i'm a newbie from paris, france.

so please forgive my english grammar, it might be some times...improper.

27, got baptised at 16 (for a girl...i never had).

Nika Bee

Oui, je suis étudiante en maths. J'étais à Paris dans le cadre du programme ERASMUS. Je n'ai plus de contacte avec les témoins là-bas, d'autant plus que je suis disassociée depuis un ans. Maintant, je suis en doctorat et j'étais invitée à l'ENS de Lyon pendant le dernier semestre en tant que chercheur.

Tu as raison, Lyon est une très belle ville, un peu plus calme que Paris, je trouve.

J'espère que ça va aller pour toi et ta femme. Ça va être dur de temps en temps, prend le chemin doucement.

Pour, moi c'était plus facile, comme ma famille est loin et je ne suis pas mariée.

(Sorry for posting in French, here in the US I just miss speaking German or French.

Yes, I am a math student. I was in Paris with the ERASMUS program. I don't have any contact to the JW there anymore, as I am disassociated for a year. I am doing my PhD now and was invited to Lyon as a researcher. You are right, Lyon is a very nice city, quieter than Paris, I think. I hope things will work out for you and your wive. It will be hard from time to time, take one step at a time. For me it was easier, as my family lives far away, and I am not married. )

42

just arrived here...

by sylvlef in

hi all.. i'm a newbie from paris, france.

so please forgive my english grammar, it might be some times...improper.

27, got baptised at 16 (for a girl...i never had).

Nika Bee

Bienvenu!

Je suis allemande, mais j'ai vécu à Paris pour un an en 2006/07. J'étais dans la congrégation Paris Port-Royal si ça te dit quelque chose. J'habite aux Etats-Unis maintenant, mais j'ai passé le dernier semestre à Lyon.

(For the sake of posting guide lines: Welcome, I am German, but I lived in Paris for a year in 2006/07. I was in the congregation Paris Port-Royal, if you know that. I live in the US now, but I spent the last semester in Lyon.)

54

WT Society Changes Definitions of Words to Control JW's for Their Agenda

by flipper in

jw
friends

my wife and i were discussing this and thought of a few examples of words that the wt society changes meanings on in order to accomplish their own self serving agenda .

the term - generation - definition in webster's new world dictionary : " generation - a single stage or degree in the succession of natural descent ( father, son, and grandson are three generations ) .

the average period ( about thirty years ) between the birth of one generation and that of the next .

Nika Bee

In German they seem to make the following distinction, I am not sure if it is similar in English.

On the one hand:

Christentum (=christendom?): true followers of Christ, the only true religion, first century christians and now only JW

in the dictionary: a world religion based on the teachings of Jesus of Nazaret, starting of from Judaism

On the other hand:

Christenheit (=christianity?): all the others who claim to follow Jesus, who in their definition therefore are only pretenders, fals religion, especially Catholics.

in the dictionary: seems to bee the same as "Christentum", maybe a little more emphasis on the collective.

45

Death

by punkofnice in

jw
friends

when i was a dub i was petrified of displeasing the trademark imaginary god that the wbt$ had invented.

i feared that kind of death.. the thought of being unconscious totally forevermore seems so weird.. now that i know the wbt$ was lying (as usual), and i realise there can't possibly be a god as described in religion i am now faced with the reality that i'll be dead and gone with nothing to carry me on after in a conscious way.

just because i don't want this to happen doesn't mean it won't.. oh, darn!

Nika Bee

Off topic:

In the current model that we have of the universe, there cannot be zero movement through time. It can converge to zero though. It depends on the curvature. What we like to think of as the "beginning" of our universe, is in reality (or rather in this model of the universe) a singularity, infinite dense.

It doesn't make sense to say "time before space".

But again, this is just a model. It is the best available model at the moment, and replaced many models before it, like the Newton model. But who knows, what we will come up next with.

I can't agree, that death is the end of movement through time. The particles, that form my body are still there. If you mean the "spirit", there is no concept to incorporate it into a physical theory (yet?). If one really wants to go the metaphysical way, one could attempt it to describe it as "energy". But then it still remains inside the universe. But in the universe energy doesn't simply disappear unless it falls into a singularity (for example a black whole). It can transform into matter or the other way round.

But this so far is just pseudo science.

45

Death

by punkofnice in

jw
friends

when i was a dub i was petrified of displeasing the trademark imaginary god that the wbt$ had invented.

i feared that kind of death.. the thought of being unconscious totally forevermore seems so weird.. now that i know the wbt$ was lying (as usual), and i realise there can't possibly be a god as described in religion i am now faced with the reality that i'll be dead and gone with nothing to carry me on after in a conscious way.

just because i don't want this to happen doesn't mean it won't.. oh, darn!

Nika Bee

A teacher of mine in secondary school said once, that the fact, that humans have only such a short time and are aware of it, builds a creative dynamic. It fosters creative and innovative ideas and brings humanity forward. At that time I didn't understnad, what he meant of course, but I certainly never forgot his words and pondered them often.

Of course, this doesn't help a single individual, but humanity as a whole.

But it helped me, to understnad, that things come and go, develope, take shapes rise and go down. Panta rei. It's like this in the universe, in some sense probably even outside of it (time and spacewise), in the nature, in science. I am just a little piece of it. Just as everything else, the thing that I call me, is just passing. It's just part of a big picture, of the whole flow. Was it already there in a different form, or will it be there? Noone knows, but who cares? I am not important enough to worry about this. Maybe I bring science a little further, maybe I find a new math formula. But if not someone else will find it. Panta rei.

In the meanwhile, I enjoy that I am here, that "me" exists. And that everything goes on.

44

Differences Between JWs in the US and Europe

by BU2B in

jw
friends

there are many cultural differences between the general population of the us and europe, what about jws?

i have heard about such things as beards being allowed, movies that a jw cant watch in the us or would be frowned upon watching being ok, same with tv shows, and even the way they dress in public.

seems more laid back over there if this is true.. any truth to this?

Nika Bee

Where I am from (Southern Germany, close to the Austrian border), it seems to be more laid back nowadays than in the US, from what I have been told from the older generations, this is a relatively "recent" trend - loosiening up during the last 30 year maybe?

When I went to secondary school it was still fairly unusual, to send your children to the type of school, that would eventually allow a university entrance exam. Now it is a bit more common, although I know only one other JW who went to university eventually.

The beard question really depends on the congregation.

On some things thex seem to be stricter though. For example, when one sister reported from a relative in the US, who counted the driving to the field service to the reported hours, this was a big NO for us.

When I left Germany to live in the US, I was told to be careful because cases were known, where someone went over there, and "found it too strict and then left". -- Well in a sense they were right, at least, this was one of the things that started me thinking.

22

The bible is a letter to the 144,000

by sosoconfused in

jw
friends

i don't really remember where i heard this... either at a public talk or a district convention or c.o.

visit or something.. .

my question is, has anyone else in there time with the org heard that said?

Nika Bee

I remember, when I was about 8 years old, we "studied" the revelation book in the book study.

At some point, I don't remember the context, the conducor said something like: " See this is directed at the 14400, they are in the covenant and take part in the fullfilling. This is what it's all about. What comes out for us (not anointed) on the other hand is more like a byproduct. And we can be lucky, because we don't deserve it."

I remember as a child, I felt so hurt and worthless, and also disappointed. I didn't dare to pray for a while, until I managed to shut this thought away somewhere in my mind.