when did you guys start to doubt your faith in god?'.
what made you doubt your faith in god?.
thanks !.
If all believers had displayed genuine love, no atheists would have been born on earth. Hence hypocritical religionists created atheists. That means religion is the wrong path to come to a conclusion about the existence of God which would be like a blind man asserting there is no light.
Many have understood how unreliable religion is. For example, Paul Davies understood “science offers a surer path to God than religion” (The Mind of God, a physicist’s view of God’s existence)
when did you guys start to doubt your faith in god?'.
what made you doubt your faith in god?.
thanks !.
in my school days, I was an atheist. But everything changed when I read the works of great scientists such as Francis S Collins, Sir Fred Hoyale, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, Wernher von Braun ....etc
present that bit of information to a jws and what would you expect from them in reply ?
but in reality its true and you can support that statement by even using the bible.. the wts/jws is just one of many organizations of anti biblical charlatanism endeavored around literature proliferation.
the jws organization self identifies itself as the most righteous and faithfully adherent to the bible, yet when one examines the bible carefully particularly the words and teachings of jesus christ, there are obvious discrepancies and apostasy .. the operating leaders of the wts going back to the late 1800's were not pressed to gain support and confirmation from outside sources for their own acquired theology as in pyramidology teachings etc.. they were more pressed to make up their own teachings which in expectation were appealing to the general public at large , such as " christ has return a new world order to come ".. great statements to make or position on the front cover of a magazine as it were but not faithfully adherent to the bible or the instruction laid out by jesus in preaching his new kingdom to come.. for most of the history of the wts/jws it was an organization that presented and preached a tainted false commercialized gospel influenced more upon literature proliferation then scriptural accuracy and adherence.
When I observed them closely I found that people with a particular tendency (taking delight in seeing the negative side of others) are sticking together which means they have an organization they deserved.
it's been a very long time since i read any of the watchtower literature.
because of something i came across, i decided to see how things have changed (yet still the same).
anyways the article i read on the jw org site, and this article was dealing with teens.
Never thought in this angle, but makes sense.
i know it sounds kinda stupid and dramatic, but lately there’s been a lot of suggestive content about not watching tv.
the broadcast was telling people that watching tv snares you into getting an attachment to characters, (the one where the crazy sister prayed for a tv character).
and today this watchtower telling people that the only news that should be watching, or even interested in watching is the broadcast or on jw.org news room.
It is possible because my friend who attended DC and watched video on Jonah says: 'It was mentioned in the DC that time for preaching the good news is over. Now it is time for preparing to watch the destruction." Imhplied truth is that they must avoid all engagements that waste their precious time.
moses formulated his own image of god (in violation of the very essence of exodus 20:4) thus believed god is like humans who feel love is ‘you must do what i want’ [rather than giving others the space in which ‘they can do what they want and still i love them’] and conveyed into the readers this weak image of god who takes revenge/laments for not being loved.
thus ot image of god is someone who is actively involved in the responses of people on earth.. however, jesus conveyed the truth about god when he said god makes provisions for life’s enjoyment equally for all types of people alike (mathew 5:44-47) as he wishes good for all people [benevolence for its own sake] and renews the same in case they are depleted/destroyed (mathew 19:28) with no intervention whatsoever in between.
thus jesus presented an image of god who is not actively involved in the responses of people on earth because there is a guiding mechanism already in place—externally and internally.. external: people can easily choose their course of action looking at the results available in plenty because anyone can see the chain of action in anyone’s case: destiny is the result of habit, and habit is the result of tendency, and tendency is the result of repeated action, and action is the result of thinking and thinking is the result of belief system, and belief system is the result of family, religion, country … into which one is born.
smiddy3,
When I pondered over stellar nucleosynthesis, I too felt, like Sir Fred Hoyle, struck by the unlikelihood of carbon’s existence and was convinced that any carbon [a key component of all known life on Earth] forming in a star would soon disappear to form oxygen which means there must be an unknown process responsible for the universe’s carbon. In other words, universe is anthropic (the properties of the universe must support the conscious life that has evolved to observe it.) Somebody was guiding as in the case of a caricature being drawn.
This is what Jesus implied in Mathew 5:44-47 where he simply used the layman’s language. That is the beauty of him. A great person can say things only great people can understand. But it takes a genius to say great truth in simple terms which could equally be understood by both—ordinary and great people alike.
moses formulated his own image of god (in violation of the very essence of exodus 20:4) thus believed god is like humans who feel love is ‘you must do what i want’ [rather than giving others the space in which ‘they can do what they want and still i love them’] and conveyed into the readers this weak image of god who takes revenge/laments for not being loved.
thus ot image of god is someone who is actively involved in the responses of people on earth.. however, jesus conveyed the truth about god when he said god makes provisions for life’s enjoyment equally for all types of people alike (mathew 5:44-47) as he wishes good for all people [benevolence for its own sake] and renews the same in case they are depleted/destroyed (mathew 19:28) with no intervention whatsoever in between.
thus jesus presented an image of god who is not actively involved in the responses of people on earth because there is a guiding mechanism already in place—externally and internally.. external: people can easily choose their course of action looking at the results available in plenty because anyone can see the chain of action in anyone’s case: destiny is the result of habit, and habit is the result of tendency, and tendency is the result of repeated action, and action is the result of thinking and thinking is the result of belief system, and belief system is the result of family, religion, country … into which one is born.
Moses formulated his own image of God (in violation of the very essence of Exodus 20:4) thus believed God is like humans who feel love is ‘you must do what I want’ [rather than giving others the space in which ‘they can do what they want and still I love them’] and conveyed into the readers this weak image of God who takes revenge/laments for not being loved. Thus OT image of God is someone who is actively involved in the responses of people on earth.
However, Jesus conveyed the truth about God when he said God makes provisions for life’s enjoyment equally for all types of people alike (Mathew 5:44-47) as He wishes good for all people [benevolence for its own sake] and renews the same in case they are depleted/destroyed (Mathew 19:28) with no intervention whatsoever in between. Thus Jesus presented an image of God who is not actively involved in the responses of people on earth because there is a guiding mechanism already in place—externally and internally.
Nine benedictions Jesus spoke in the sermon on the mount are something anyone can attain if he chooses to do so. No wonder Bible says “put off new personality” as something that can be done as easily as one changes his cloths. Thus OT concept of God is of no use as Jesus spoke truth about God and about us.
it was announced in this year’s annual meeting that they believe that the king of the north is russia and the king of the south is us/britain.
for me this is the first time hearing from the society actually identifying the identity of the king of the north.
very interesting times!
Russia is not old Russia now to fit JW interpretation of imaginary "North King" of Daniel prophecy. Russia has in its arsenal dreaded things such as EMP, Poseidon, and S-400 air and missile defense system which make it virtually invincible, hence can't be applied to "North King" with an ill-fated move towards the "South King."
By making Russia the "North" King, it is JW interpretation that is going to have a crash-landing.
throughout the world there seems to be a resurgence of faith, probably less observable in europe where i live, but still evident.. russia is now orthodox, even the kgb (different initials now i know) has its own church !
even in india, a secular state in theory, the hindu influence is stronger than ever.
islam continues to get stronger, making its presence felt, and demanding special freedoms, even in secular france.. god/faith, whatever you want to call it, is making a comeback, despite rationalism being adopted by many.. will jw org benefit from this resurgence ?
Yes, change is happening everywhere. Resurgence is happening even among scientists:
“According to growing numbers of scientists, the laws and constants of nature are so "finely-tuned," and so many "coincidences" have occurred to allow for the possibility of life, the universe must have come into existence through intentional planning and intelligence. In fact, this "fine-tuning" is so pronounced, and the "coincidences" are so numerous, many scientists have come to espouse "The Anthropic Principle," which contends that the universe was brought into existence intentionally for the sake of producing mankind. Even those who do not accept The Anthropic Principle admit to the "fine-tuning" and conclude that the universe is "too contrived" to be a chance event.
When the late Sir Fred Hoyle was researching how carbon came to be created in the "blast-furnaces" of the stars, his calculations indicated that it is very difficult to explain how the stars generated the necessary quantity of carbon upon which life on earth depends. Hoyle found that there were numerous "fortunate" one-time occurrences which seemed to indicate that purposeful "adjustments" had been made in the laws of physics and chemistry in order to produce the necessary carbon.
Hoyle summed up his findings as follows:
A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintendent has monkeyed with the physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. I do not believe that any physicist who examined the evidence could fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce within stars.
The August '97 issue of "Science" featured an article entitled "Science and God: A Warming Trend?" in which it stated:
The fact that the universe exhibits many features that foster organic life - such as precisely those physical constants that result in planets and long- lived stars - also has led some scientists to speculate that some divine influence may be present."
though many things in the bible do not make sense to me, there is something in it that makes my life easy.. this is how i arrived at it.
bible defines god as the servant of his children because he makes provisions for the enjoyment of life in abundance (mathew 5:44-47) and ‘renews’ them if need arises (mathew 19:28) with no intervention whatsoever in between which means he is not interested in gratitude/worship from his children.
yet history shows that people forget him in happiness and remember him only in distress which means he is not given love (though he is the giver of love), and he is not bothered of it.
Interestingly, Bible itself asks us to 'cherry pick' (1 Thess 5:21) because Bible contains more of foreign bodies than truth. (Act 20:29; Mathew 13:24:30)
Even if my conclusion is based on some story, acceptance helps me as it makes my life relaxed. In acceptance, you don’t resist, hence saves lots of energy. Contrast this with expectation and its attendant worries. Worrying about what might happen (future), when the moment has not yet come for it to happen, takes away from us the necessary energy to deal with it when it finally arrives. Living in memories drains our energy; the past already happened and no longer exists, except in our memory. We feed memories, not realizing that emerging the memory in our mind distracts us from the present and weakens us. We lose our energy when we relive an experience that already happened, and in the end we feel disappointed, feeling a mental and emotional waste.
