TheWonderofYou

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Posts by TheWonderofYou

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  9

  A nurse describes a noblood death

  by OrphanCrow in

  1. watchtower
  2. medical

  the jehovah's witness protection program.

  my first clue that 'something was up' lay in the fact that it was 7 am in the intensive care unit and getting to my patient was a challenge for all of his visitors in his room.my second clue that 'something was up' lay in the fact that my patient was african-american and all of his visitors were white.now before we get all racially sensitive, i am very aware that many families are blended in many ways and many of us are close friends with people of all races.

  however, in the hospital where i work, it is an uncommon sight to see a room full of white people at the bedside of a black man at seven in the morning.

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  TheWonderofYou

  Reads as if a dying JW became a mere number in a protocoll of the JWPP.
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  12

  Pope Francis Orders Vatican Archives to Reveal God’s Name Ending Centuries of Secrecy

  by pleaseresearch in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  it's from 3 weeks ago.

  my mum told me about it.

  but is this real or fake?

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  TheWonderofYou

  My comment: at least people are talking about something
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  5

  Feb 2017 broadcast hypocrisy and manipulation!

  by stuckinarut2 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  oh wow!

  if you haven't yet watched the feb2017 broadcast, strap yourself in for a ride!!.

  ( perhaps watch john cedars review of it on his youtube channel as it is better than watching the official one.

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  TheWonderofYou

  That only a person that has the same faith and the same moral standards could be a "real true friend" was a value implanted in my mind, that I am even now thinking about it. It led to stopping meeting schoolmates privately and to undertake something together with them. Now I am really without any friend at all. They are all somehow strangers for me.
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  58

  No more official visits to disfellowshipped & disassociated ones

  by AverageJoe1 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  new letter today (please visit avoidjw.org for a copy of the official letter and yes, i also noticed they got the date wrong!).

  february 28, 2017. to all bodies of elders.

  re: visiting disfellowshipped or disassociated individuals.

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  TheWonderofYou

  If they would have something to offer that is really joyful , upbuilding , heartwarming for a Disassociated person they would not stop to visit at all but run after us any day.
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  210

  Morality Without Deity

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  one of the most persistent arguments for belief in god centres on the necessity of an ultimate law-giver and epitome of goodness.. a softer version is seen in the genuine concern that a loss of faith will result in a corresponding loss of a moral compass - a more strident argument links the existence of good and evil with proof of the reality of god.

  it is often asserted that without god, moral decisions degenerate to nothing more than personal preferences and the victory of "might is right".. i want to succinctly lay out my response as an atheist, and show that a supreme being is not required for objective morality.. it is helpful to distinguish between absolute morality, objective morality and subjective morality.

  christian apologists frequently conflate the first two, and secular debaters often fail to point out the difference.. theists who disagree on everything else, are unanimous that god is perfectly good.

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  TheWonderofYou

  Origin of Ethics - How man was morally

  From the 12-part series: "The Limits of the Allowed" (1)

  By Martin Hubert

  
  

  Babies want to satisfy their own needs as innocently as unrestrained. How then will moral beings, who distinguish between good and evil, think of the welfare of others, and have feelings of guilt? For a long time it was thought that the way to go there could only go through punishment and obedience: learn what is allowed! Meanwhile, psychologists believe that babies have a sense of morality. From an evolutionary biology point of view, morality arose because the early people realized that they were dependent on each other. But how far does this insight reach, how strong is the moral sense? Is it only for relatives, friends and their own group - or for strangers? How universal can moral values ​​be?

  Philosopher and philosopher have been bothering about it for centuries. In biology, one looks for the roots of morality in evolution. And developmental psychology tries to find out whether morality is innate or just a product of education and social pressure. To this end, one has constructed thought-making games, dilemmas, difficult to solve moral conflicts.

  

  In the "Heinz Dilemma", the four to seven-year-olds often said that Heinz was not allowed to steal because he would otherwise be punished.

  The "Heinz Dilemma"

  One example is the "Heinz Dilemma": The wife of Heinz is seriously ill, maybe she will die soon. There is an expensive drug that could help her. But the health insurance companies do not pay it and Heinz does not have enough money. Can he steal money to help his sick wife?

  The American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg used such tests in the 1970s and 1980s to find out how morality evolves. In the beginning, he argued in his influential theory, that there was no moral system but the fear of punishment and obedience to authorities. Young children, Kohlberg said, were only following rules because they were afraid of sanctions.

  In the Heinz dilemma, the four- to seven-year-olds often said that Heinz was not allowed to steal because he would otherwise be punished. Critics, however, argue against Kohlberg's approach that his view of morality was much too narrow. The Münsteran philosopher Kurt Bayertz, for example, thinks that early moral attitudes can not be tested only by over-pointed moral conflicts. For moral education is rarely something that happens separately.

  

  The moral competence of children is impressive, but also contradictory

  Babies want to help

  Studies show that babies experience social experiences through their facial expressions, gestures and sounds. How does the other respond to me? How can I bring others to specific actions? Babies and toddlers also show signs of compassion. They cry, for example, when others cry. Or comfort them. They also help.

  This is essential prerequisites for morality, says Monika Keller, psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Educational Research in Berlin. Babies who feel compassion and help are already orientated towards others.

  Monika Keller concludes from her test results: The moral competence of children is impressive, but also contradictory. From the beginning they have a moral sense and a moral knowledge about good and evil. But in many of them it has not yet become an inner personal need to evaluate the world morally urgently and act accordingly. They are torn between moral rule and personal interests. Not infrequently, they only revert to moral rules because they are afraid of being caught.

  

  Environmental Therapy

  The morality of hunters

  Moral is a complicated matter. Contrary to the pioneer of the moral theory of evolution Lawrence Kohlberg, people seem to have a sense of morality from an early age. But not everyone is acting morally. To this extent Kohlberg was right when he underlined the importance of sanctions. Can the history of evolution explain in more detail how such a fragile as morality could possibly arise and how far its influence reaches?

  Evolutionary biology is largely in agreement that a moral awareness has been created in the hunter-gathering companies about twenty to a hundred thousand years ago, some of which date back even further. In these manageable societies the group members went hunting together, gathered plants and shared the yield.

  Morality is not an end in itself, Darwinian, but serves the propagation success in a group. Man is not morally and cooperatively, on the basis of general rational considerations, but the interest in survival of his genes drives him. However, the human being can still make a difference to others even if they are not directly related to them.

  

  To this day, scientists are arguing about the extent to which a morality can develop which also includes strangers

  Morality against strangers

  Then the principle of reciprocity works: Like me, so I do to you. If someone can expect another to help him after he has helped him, he increases his chances of survival. On this basis a common trust and a common group moral can also develop among unrelated people.

  To this day, scientists are arguing about the extent to which a morality can develop which also includes strangers. We do not know them, do not know whether we can trust them and whether they accept the culture of our own group. How universally can moral norms and values ​​work, which originally developed within manageable communities?

  The psychologist Michael Tomasello, like many of his colleagues, is convinced that morality does not originate from noble ethical considerations. For the director of the Leipzig Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, the main task was to increase the reciprocal use of hunt and collecting societies in a very pragmatic manner.

  

  Handle so that you understand others and incorporate their perspectives and interests into your actions

  Moral as a brain exercise

  Michael Tomasello, however, also believes that the experiences of mutual aid had far-reaching consequences. For they led people to develop new spiritual abilities. They learned about getting better and more into each other and reading their thoughts. People began to see more and more from the perspective of others.

  According to Michael Tomasello, a spiritual scaffolding was created to accept general moral norms: Handle so that you understand others and incorporate their perspectives and interests into your actions. This brought a survival advantage for the group in hunting and collecting. From this, moral norms and values ​​developed for interpersonal intercourse.

  These underpinned this survival advantage by defining positive group behavior. The larger and more complex the societies became, the more these commandments were formulated and the more generally their validity became. Taboos, sanctions, institutions such as the right restricted immoral acts. And the great religions designed moral systems with a universal claim.

  

  Studies show that in the brain puberty processes are taking place which are indispensable for the moral development

  More brain in puberty

  What is common to these principles is that they force the individual to involve others' welfare. We strongly that is then implemented in reality is, as is known, another question. In everyday life, moral demands reach limits, compromise. This will sooner or later also adolescents.

  Studies show that in the brain puberty processes are taking place which are indispensable for the moral development. Just before puberty, the brain builds up additional gray mass. An excess of nerve connections is produced. The neuroscientist Peter Uhlhaas, working at the University of Glasgow, found out that these new nervous connections still cooperate quite uncoordinated among puberty.

  The excess and disordered nervous mass also allows the puberty to make new experiences with themselves and their environment. These experiences are then anchored in new nerve connections. The brain thus appears to be the prerequisite for what psychology defines as the main attraction of puberty: solve yourself from the world of your parents and create your own cosmos.

  Autonomy: The ability to free itself from the pressure of the environment and to withstand the contradiction between norms and reality. Only that makes people a truly reflective moral person. This leads to the fact that morality does not freeze and the limits of what is permitted do not crush human beings. Puberty is an important building block to achieve this moral autonomy.

  SWR2 Knowledge. By Martin Hubert. Internet connection: Ulrike Barwanietz & Ralf Kölbel

  Stand: April 30, 2015, 2:20 pm
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  210

  Morality Without Deity

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  one of the most persistent arguments for belief in god centres on the necessity of an ultimate law-giver and epitome of goodness.. a softer version is seen in the genuine concern that a loss of faith will result in a corresponding loss of a moral compass - a more strident argument links the existence of good and evil with proof of the reality of god.

  it is often asserted that without god, moral decisions degenerate to nothing more than personal preferences and the victory of "might is right".. i want to succinctly lay out my response as an atheist, and show that a supreme being is not required for objective morality.. it is helpful to distinguish between absolute morality, objective morality and subjective morality.

  christian apologists frequently conflate the first two, and secular debaters often fail to point out the difference.. theists who disagree on everything else, are unanimous that god is perfectly good.

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  TheWonderofYou

  Perhaps is Ayalas theory a help in this discussion.

  
  

  Francisco Ayala, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Irvine, has proposed a Darwin-inspired explanation of how human morality might have evolved in 2010.
  
  

  Read more at:

  https://phys.org/news/2010-05-professor-complex-evolution-human-morality.html#jCp

  
  “Many biologists, including sociobiologists, argue that morality is a biologically determined trait,” Ayala told PhysOrg.com. “Most philosophers and theologians see morality as a product of cultural evolution and/or religious faith. I distinguish between the ‘capacity for ethics,’ which is biologically determined as a result of biological evolution; and the ‘moral codes’ or ethical norms, which are largely outcomes of cultural evolution, including religious beliefs.

  Ayala further explains that the capacity for moral behavior is not adaptive in itself, but it is a consequence of a higher intellectual ability that is adaptive, being directly promoted through natural selection due to its ability to improve survival rates (such as by allowing us to construct tools, develop hunting strategies, etc.). Ayala identifies three necessary conditions for moral behavior that could have evolved with intelligence: the ability to anticipate the consequences of our actions, to evaluate such consequences, and to choose accordingly how to act. While overall intellectual capacities evolved gradually, he speculates that the three necessary conditions for moral behavior only came about after crossing an evolutionary threshold, as they require abilities such as the formation of abstract concepts. And only after humans possessed all three abilities could we possess a moral capacity.

  

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLgKC1snRLc

  Here a German articel about the same subject

  http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/ursprung-des-guten-die-moral-als-nebenprodukt-der-evolution-a-692653.html

  For me the best article about orgin of ethics is this

  http://www.swr.de/swr2/programm/sendungen/wissen/ra1-ursprung-der-ethik/-/id=660374/did=15253686/nid=660374/174ogtb/index.html

  with this comment about babies:

  "From the beginning they have a moral sense and a moral knowledge about good and evil. But in many of them it has not yet become an inner personal need to evaluate the world morally urgently and act accordingly."

  I attached a google translation from this article by M. Hubert.
  
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  44

  Thoughts on African Americans and Slavery

  by Simon in

  1. social
  2. current

  let's start by saying that slavery is of course a terrible thing, one of the worst crimes imaginable, and that "slavery" rarely implies good treatment, anything noble or defensible.

  nowadays, even god doesn't escape judgement from our enlightened views with passages about slavery in the bible usually glossed over because they are shameful.. but not all slavery was equal.. because of the media, movie industry, racial tensions in the us regularly shown on the news and our taught history, i think most people's knowledge and idea of slavery is that of the north atlantic slave trade where white people took africans to work in cotton fields.

  this idea is probably also re-enforced because the largest group of descendents of slaves we see today are african americans (usually in the us or places they subsequently migrated to).. but it's incomplete.. it's only when you look into it more that you discover that there was much more to the slave trade than that, otherwise it would have been just called "the slave trade" and not "the north atlantic slave trade".. some 12.5 million slaves were taken from africa to the us with just under 11 million surviving the trip so it obviously took a terrible toll immediately, even before any maltreatment once they landed in the americas where conditions and treatment were truly awful.

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  TheWonderofYou

  What makes me puzzling about slavery

  The EXODUS served as inspiration for many that lived in SLAVERY or were persecuted to fight for freedom and civil rights. Indeed the legend or founding myth of Israel - the exodus - bears the message that Israelites were DELIVERED FROM SLAVERY by God ... therefore they belong to God and there is a covenant,

  Freedom from slavery thats the legendary myth of Israel

  How could a people that hated slavery and was supposedly freed of SLAVERY - as in the hollywood films is shown very impressingly - after the exodus than support slavery further slavery in the law and not forbid it?

  "If you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve for only six years. Set him free in the seventh year, and he will owe you nothing for his freedom. Exodus

  "Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property." -- Leviticus 25:44-45
  

  Perhaps Moses was in reality the slave master in Egypt wand wanted to found a slave nation for himself,. because he was hated in Egypt?
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  20

  Paul did not belittle women

  by Doug Mason in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  i note the recent post that quoted 1 timothy 2:11-12 and colossians 1:23 which place women at a level that is lower to men.

  the poster accused paul of this mysoginy, but that is not correct.. 1 timothy, 2 timothy, titus, colossians, ephesians and hebrews were written after paul's death.. paul was not a mysoginist; he made full use of women in leadership roles.

  he wrote that in god's sight there is neither male nor female, for all are one in god's sight.. doug.

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  TheWonderofYou

  Already before the Apostel Paul a guy named Jesus did not change the social order, Paul and Jesus were brave Jews. No special policy against slavery and none against male dominance. The social world order was not subject of them.

  Christian-dom was more about bearing up the burdens and evils of the world and evil conditions than about changing it.

  Christian believe that change will come by ITSELF over the time through enduring the evil by humble and meek submissiveness of true followers who believe in peace.
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  44

  Thoughts on African Americans and Slavery

  by Simon in

  1. social
  2. current

  let's start by saying that slavery is of course a terrible thing, one of the worst crimes imaginable, and that "slavery" rarely implies good treatment, anything noble or defensible.

  nowadays, even god doesn't escape judgement from our enlightened views with passages about slavery in the bible usually glossed over because they are shameful.. but not all slavery was equal.. because of the media, movie industry, racial tensions in the us regularly shown on the news and our taught history, i think most people's knowledge and idea of slavery is that of the north atlantic slave trade where white people took africans to work in cotton fields.

  this idea is probably also re-enforced because the largest group of descendents of slaves we see today are african americans (usually in the us or places they subsequently migrated to).. but it's incomplete.. it's only when you look into it more that you discover that there was much more to the slave trade than that, otherwise it would have been just called "the slave trade" and not "the north atlantic slave trade".. some 12.5 million slaves were taken from africa to the us with just under 11 million surviving the trip so it obviously took a terrible toll immediately, even before any maltreatment once they landed in the americas where conditions and treatment were truly awful.

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  TheWonderofYou

  "Who then is the faithful and wise slave, whom his master has put in charge of his household, to give the other slaves their allowance of food at the proper time? Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives." -- Matthew 24:45-46.

  Christianity and Slavery

  http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Religion/slavery.htm
  
  
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  8

  Jesus is Lord...as in Jehovah god...in Reference NWT

  by NikL in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i wish i could say i found this but i saw it in a vid from watchtower examination.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk7ertncbsk.

  in it he points out that in the reference bible used by jws they admit that jesus and jehovah are the same thing.. so i looked it up online on jw.org.

  yep it's there.. 1 peter 3:15. but sanctify the christ as lord* in your hearts,+ always ready to make a defense+ before everyone that demands of you a reason for the hope in you, but doing so together with a mild temper+ and deep respect.*.

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  TheWonderofYou

  

  "second it seems more likely in context that Peter did not want to stress that Christ is Lord but that believers should set him apart and treat him as Lord."

  

  
  

  
  

  "Lord Jesus Christ" "Lord and Savior Jesus Christ"

  
  

  
  

  My comment: Christian were persecuted because of Jesus Christ and not because of using or pronouncing the tetragram as "Jehova".

  "Kyrios" was the word used for God in the greek world, which also replaced the jewish tetragram. Christian authors did not argue, that Christian bible writers should return to the Tetragram (Jewish name of god) and preach the tetragram worldwide as gospel, but they used Kyrios, Lord to replace the old jewish tetragram and preached Jesus as Lord.

  This was one of the reasons why Christians treated always Jesus as Lord in their hearts.

  Does the text argue Deity of Christ?

  

  

  ....

  From: The Gospel of Christ by Thomas Stegall page 691.

  https://books.google.at/books?id=uj9H4Jab9DMC&pg=PA691&dq=kyrios+yhwh+1+peter+3+15&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiEltiW983RAhWCQBoKHYlZDE8Q6AEIdDAJ#v=onepage&q=kyrios%20yhwh%201%20peter%203%2015&f=false