many interpret serpent in the garden of eden as the satan hence miss the whole point because satan himself does not exist.
he is a fictional character [for example, in the temptation account, satan is shown as reflecting the erroneous belief of ancient time that shape of earth is flat, thus taking jesus to the top of “a very high mountain” and showed him “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.” (mathew 4:8, 9) the fact that jesus did not correct the mistaken view of satan shows the account of temptation is allegorical.
further, jesus knew that satan was only a personification of evil (mathew 16:23; john 6:70) and categorically declared that “all evil thoughts proceed from one’s heart,” not from satan.
I can't see how any of these stories were ever meant to be taken as anything more than allegories. "Fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil"; how could that not be an allegory?
If you gave fundies a copy of Aesop's Fables, a few generations later you would have people who believed that lower animals could speak and reason. They would believe all the stories, while totally failing to grasp the morals behind them.
some people like to believe in something others believe in nothing; so in what location did the substance that expanded into the time/space universe exist before the big bang?
where did the energy that caused the big band come from?
how did the substance that became the big bang change from being inert and sterile and come to life to having the properties and drive that it does?
If something always existed then that something always had properties and drive. If nothing always existed then that nothing is really something.
I am NOT a credentialed physicist, so take everything I am about to say with a big mountain of salt, but this is my take on it:
'Nothing' is a very misleading word that I really wish physicists and cosmologists would stop using. What they really seem to be describing is not some ontological absence of anything at all, but a mathematical 'nothing' or zero. Despite what your teacher may have told you, zero is NOT nothing. In fact, zero is everything! Zero is the sum of infinity. If you add all the positive integers to all the negative ones what do you get? They cancel out to zero!
As for your other questions? I'm clueless. Some physicists have speculated that the impetus and substance came from another universe, but that is just an ad hoc hypothesis that pushes the question back ad infinitum.
To be honest, I'm one of those crackpots whose very skeptical of Big Bang cosmology. If the universe is expanding, I haven't seen it. All we have for it is the word of folks who get paid to come up with theories, form conjectures, and push numbers around all day. There are several rival theories, like Plasma Cosmology and Null Physics, which do their best to explain Hubble's Law in the context of either an eternal, beginingless cosmos or a much older one. When so many intelligent people disagree on this subject, it tells you how little evidence we truly have to go on.
ever since i came out of the witnesses, i've become very political.. i've heard lots of arguments back and forth for many things.. in the u.s. there is the argument that it is "racist" to want to deny entry to muslims.
while there is freedom of religion, there is also the very valid concern of maintaining democracy and a justice system that is based on modern values.we as exjw's constantly quote the pew center for statistics on jw's such as: they are last place in the us for members of a religion that go to university, and second-last for poverty levels of members of a religion.
we accept those statistics and mention them as proof of how damaging the jw's are.now, let's use the same center for some very scary statistics on islam:http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/22/muslims-and-islam-key-findings-in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world/.
ILoveTTATT2:You make an important point here. The ethics of the Koran are almost totally at odds with the ethics of Jesus. Liberal Christians have the sermon on the mount to fall back in while liberal Muslims have little else than a few of the softer verses of the Koran.
More importantly, IT HAS AN OUT. It doesn't HAVE to follow the Mosaic Law, which is absolutely horrible and at par with the Koran, or possibly worse. Islam doesn't have an "out", unless you consider the interpreters of the law, similar to Jews. Most interpreters of the Jews are extremely liberal, whereas the interpreters of the Muslims aren't.
Quranism could be the 'out' that liberal muslims need to support their ideology and coexist with secular western democracy.
ever since i came out of the witnesses, i've become very political.. i've heard lots of arguments back and forth for many things.. in the u.s. there is the argument that it is "racist" to want to deny entry to muslims.
while there is freedom of religion, there is also the very valid concern of maintaining democracy and a justice system that is based on modern values.we as exjw's constantly quote the pew center for statistics on jw's such as: they are last place in the us for members of a religion that go to university, and second-last for poverty levels of members of a religion.
we accept those statistics and mention them as proof of how damaging the jw's are.now, let's use the same center for some very scary statistics on islam:http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/22/muslims-and-islam-key-findings-in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world/.
Perry 3 hours ago
The founding fathers of the USA who were virtually all Christians
I'm glad that you used the qualifier "virtually", but I'd still like you to be more specific. Who of the founding fathers was Christian? I know that George Washington was an Anglican, but he was also a Freemason, which I think disqualifies him from being a Christian in all but name. It's true that many of them spoke of God and divine providence, but they could just as well have been speaking of a deist or spinozean God as a Christian one.
It seeks a state religion through Sharia Law. From its beginning, it spread by violent conquest. By contrast Christianity took down the most powerful military machine the world had ever known - Rome: without a single sword being drawn. The two systems couldn't be more different.
Islam spread largely by the sword - that's beyond dispute - but how can you say that the history of Christianity is different? I will grant that the founders of Christianity (Jesus and Paul) were paragons of nonviolence, as were the early Christians; but as soon as Emperor Constantine made it the official religion of the Roman empire, the Bible was replaced with the sword.
With the exception of Britain and Ireland, the Roman Church used a combination of war and economic embargoes to pound the population of Northern Europe into servitude. King Charlemagne alone 'converted' tens of thousands, killing anyone who preferred to worship the gods of their ancestors. Why did the vikings start carrying out raids against Britain and Ireland? Because the pope had forbidden Christians to trade with heathens!
I guess you could always argue that the Roman Church does not represent the true spirit of Christianity (and I would agree) but the fact is that the doctrines and policies of that church have influenced every denomination that came after it. Hell, even the Bible that every Protestant denomination uses was compiled and cannonized by the cardinals of Rome! Sola scriptura? If Luther was really serious about questioning church authority, he should have started with their right to determine which books are inspired and which are not.
ever since i came out of the witnesses, i've become very political.. i've heard lots of arguments back and forth for many things.. in the u.s. there is the argument that it is "racist" to want to deny entry to muslims.
while there is freedom of religion, there is also the very valid concern of maintaining democracy and a justice system that is based on modern values.we as exjw's constantly quote the pew center for statistics on jw's such as: they are last place in the us for members of a religion that go to university, and second-last for poverty levels of members of a religion.
we accept those statistics and mention them as proof of how damaging the jw's are.now, let's use the same center for some very scary statistics on islam:http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/22/muslims-and-islam-key-findings-in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world/.
I don't think there is any important difference between fundamentalist muslims and fundamentalist Christians. The only reason they seem different is because most of the nations in which Christianity is the dominant religion have separation of church and state, whereas most muslim countries (Turkey being the only exception I am aware of) are theocracies.
Also, the majority of Sunni muslims these days are either Wahabist or strongly influenced by that ideology. Wahabism was a movement founded in the early 18th century by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, an (in my opinion) mentally unbalanced fanatic who was probably a pawn of British intelligence, who used him and his insane ideology to destroy the islamic world. Wahabism proports to purify Islam of all 'innovations' that it acquired after Muhammad, but all it really does is strip islam of everything humane, everything beautiful, everything that makes it a tolerable way of life.
So yes, basically I agree that modern Islam is a serious threat to western enlightenment values like democracy, reason, science, and religious liberty.
But I think these values are equally threatened by fundamentalist Christianity. As far as I'm concerned there is no difference between radical muslims and Fundamentalists, except that the muslims are far more forthright in their declared goals and what methods they are willing to use in order to attain them.
so i was checking out the website to see what the february broadcast was all about before i watched it with my jw wife.. on the front page was this video.... https://tv.jw.org/#en/video/vodbible/pub-jwbai_201607_1_video.
i watched it and pretended i had never been a jw.. if you pretend you don't understand their particular language it makes for a interesting (if not vague) watch.. btw i've seen several of the actors before.
jw version of movie stars?
Fortunately you woke up in time. My mom didn't have me until she was 40 and I'm pretty sure it was an accident. I didn't really date in my teens, but I had female friends and was punished accordingly. Even after I turned 18 my mom forbade me to "bring home girlfriends" as ling as I lived under her roof. If I ever do fet married I will not invite her to the wedding, for she did everything in her power to prevent me from finding someone.
Bottom line is that the WT knows that it can gain more converts through proselytizing than it can through reproduction. Children are huge financial burden on parents and take a lot of time out of one's day... time and money that could be better spent in the door-to-door ministry.
Fortunately you woke up in time. My mom didn't have me until she was 40 and I'm pretty sure it was an accident. I didn't really date in my teens, but I had female friends and was punished accordingly (though not by my mother). Any girl who was seen even associating with a boy was labled a 'whore' in my school. Even after I turned 18, my mom forbade me to "bring home girlfriends" as long as I lived under her roof.
Bottom line is that the WT knows that it can gain more converts through proselytizing than it can through reproduction. Children are a huge financial burden on parents and take a lot of time out of one's day... time and money that could be better spent in the door-to-door ministry.
so i was checking out the website to see what the february broadcast was all about before i watched it with my jw wife.. on the front page was this video.... https://tv.jw.org/#en/video/vodbible/pub-jwbai_201607_1_video.
i watched it and pretended i had never been a jw.. if you pretend you don't understand their particular language it makes for a interesting (if not vague) watch.. btw i've seen several of the actors before.
jw version of movie stars?
i am interested in finding out on a small scale the extent of which shunning has impacted on you personally.. my own experience is that when i faded about 12 years ago.
the woman whose house the book study was held at (and who was virtually a neighbour) walked right past me in my own street.
i remember it so well.
Babygirl30:
AMEN!! Everything that my parents said I would FAIL at - I have succeeded in. EVERYTHING. And as stated above, my growth as an adult and how I've matured, the responsible lady I've become - all 'missed' because my parents believe shunning is the way to go! So much so that they have walked right by me and literally acted like I do not exist. It's really pathetic...
Congrats!
I wish I could say that. Basically everything I was warned would happen if I left the bOrg has come to pass—except for the hardcore drug use and multiple sex partners. Damn!
noas a current or past jehovah's witness, do you / or did you feel part of a spiritual paradise with full liberty in christ as the watchtower society/organisation describes?.
or do you / did you feel you were wearing a proverbial straitjacket in the sense you feel / felt restricted and controlled by the watchtower society / organisation?.
I felt anything but free. What could a JW concieivably be free from except independent thought?
I never had any spiritual experiences in the context of being a JW. The last thing the elders and GB want is for any JW to experience "Christ within" or "the kingdom of God" because this undermines their authority. Someone who feels that they have a personal relationship with God doesn't need a GB, pope, or priest to lead them around by the nose.
When I was being interrogated by the elders I mentioned that I sometimes felt the presence of God when I prayed and that I could not accept that a being of such pure and infinite love as I experienced God to be could possibly send plagues upon the Egyptians or order the genocide of the Cannanites. His reply is very telling of the whole JW mindset:
"Why you? Why would Jehovah choose to reveal himself to you of all people? What makes you think you are so special?"
I tried to explain to him that there was nothing special about me. That the only difference between us was that I was open to knowing God directly, while he relied upon a book and an organization. He then concluded that the only thing I was experiencing was demonic possession and the conversation ended there.
Fortunately I was already pretty well-read by then. Experiencing a warm, loving presence during prayer is a fairly common experience that cuts across denominational barriers. Madam Guyon, George Fox, and Saint Augustine all felt it even though their beliefs were very different.
straight from the off, i will say that i'm 100% atheist.
i have no faith.
however, it occurred to me while thinking back over my involvement with the jw religion and especially when i take into account personal and family situations where people have made life altering choices due to being jw's, just how crazy it really is.
I think that much of it is based on fear of being shunned should they accept a transfusion. How many people would choose to live if it meant never being able to see and speak to their friends or family ever again? And, considering that Armageddon is always just around the corner, why risk even the possibility of eternal life in paradise with everyone you have ever loved for the certainty of a few more lonely, miserable years or decades of life in this shitty world?
Don't get me wrong. I think the no blood policy is one of the worst things the GB has ever done; but I understand why most JWs choose to abide by it.
