It's been nice to hear some of you guys' childhood experiences. I thought I was alone in being a frightened child, but now I wonder how many of JW youths were in the same boat! Now once more unto the breach. I won't continue my devil's advocacy past this point, as I sense that I have annoyed you, sd-7, and that was not my intention; perhaps you're not a big fan of Bro. Olson. I was only attempting to have a level-headed dialectical exchange, since none of your points would be convincing to a long-time Witness, and I wanted to help.
I don't think it would be better for us if we merely stopped questioning the existence of God or something. I mean, history has a long stretch where mankind was ignorant of things--many things that were, wow, supposedly God's creations--that had they known them, a lot of lives could have been saved and the quality of life could have improved for everyone. Instead, people were getting burned at the stake because faith was more important than asking hard questions.
That's actually a false dichotomy, "science or God". It's difficult to find instances of science being hindered by a belief in God, much less scientists being burned at the stake. Regardless of whether he believes in the supernatural, man has always been driven by curiosity to learn more about his environment. Nearly all the scientists who are credited with getting the whole "science" thing started in the Age of Reason believed in God, including Newton. At no time did they think, "Well, since God made it, why do I need to understand it?" Nor does a decline in belief in God demonstrably lead to a more rational world. The average person is no more satisfied with the explanation that his tweets are conveyed through a distributed network of computers, optic fiber, copper wiring, radio transmissions and LCD crystals than if he believed the messages were carried on little slips of paper through the sky by bluebirds -- or by angels.
You might be thinking of the supposed religious persecution of scientists like Galileo, who blasphemously proposed that the Earth goes around the Sun, but that is largely a sort of urban myth. I encourage you to read Wikipedia's article on the conflict thesis. Galileo did get in trouble over heliocentrism, but it was largely a politically-motivated trial. The details are here.
We know the universe is much larger than Earth and heaven. There's as much reason to think he could go and screw up some other part of the divine plan a million parsecs from here. There's a huge vacuum of information to go on, so it leads to the assumption that somehow man is so important to the being that created an entire universe that his archenemy just has to be here to interfere.
Yes, the universe is large, but how many planets have life? We know of none besides this one. Even if Jehovah created many worlds with life, this is the one on which Satan staked his claim against God's sovereignty. If there are other planets whose Adams and Eves chose to serve God, they would naturally be protected from satanic interference.
They have me right where they want me? And you would know this, how, exactly? Based on assumptions of your own about them that you wouldn't even have had you never read the Bible.
They're not assumptions of mine at all; I'm merely telling you what has been written in the literature . Surely this isn't new information to you? The Society has been using this line of reasoning for years.
If they did show themselves to me, I'd still know that the JWs don't have the truth, and I'd be on my own, same as I truthfully was at the beginning and just didn't know it.
(I have to break character here to say that this is a much better line of reasoning. It's much easier to argue against doctrine than against spirit activity.)
you incorrectly stated that God does not protect his servants individually
You mean to say that JWs incorrectly stated this, as I was merely repeating their viewpoint for the sake of argument, since it is not my viewpoint.
Actually, I was trying to correct you on the "Witness viewpoint". Witnesses often refer to the likelihood that we do benefit from individual, physical angelic protection. It's not uncommon to hear a half-joke that elderly Brother Careener must have an angel assigned to his car full-time to explain why he hasn't been in a wreck yet. But think about the Watchtower's accounts of angels blinding persecutors so they could not see the contraband WT literature they were searching for. See here and here for some recent general application from the Society.
I'm not even going to get into the Adam and Eve stuff. There's not even any indication they had any idea of the issues going on there, all they did was eat some fruit, man.
Did not God tell them that they were not to eat from the tree or they would die? What more did they need to know? Yet when Satan told them they would not die, but would in fact become godlike, they ate the fruit. The "issues" were clearly communicated here: God said, "Accept my authority by not doing this", and Adam and Eve said, "We choose to be our own authority."
Neither of them wants to disrupt the test, so neither says anything--it's got to be a test! So their existence is proven by their absence of communication. And their absence of communication somehow provides some proof as to what they're thinking.
The best argument I can give you is that they do communicate indirectly with us all the time, as long as we let the Bible inform our understanding of the world. (But this is a better line of reasoning to at least introduce some doubt into the equation.)
As I said above, my goal was to try to hone your argument so it stands up to a JW who knows their stuff (these seem to be getting rarer these days...). If you are simply venting in a safe place, for catharsis' sake, I apologize. But you did suggest that you might have overlooked something and asked for responses.... I'll let it rest here, even if you give a response, unless you want me to continue.
P.S.: I wonder how long before the Society prevents links originating from JWN from working in their Library!
