Good ol' David Reed. He put the nail in my JW coffin back in high school. I tell ya, witnessing to them highschool classmates is dangerous business - you can't exactly just refuse any literature they offer, since you have to be with them all the time, unless you truly desire to be considered unfair, or a moron. Therefore, the Society's law about not accepting literature from people the JW places with doesn't totally work in school, especially if they run into someone on their toes. Anyway, Reed confirmed and solidified many suspicions, but alas, all the knowledge and certainty in the world is not powerful enough to overcome the lonliness threatened by the propaganda that all outside the KH walls is a living hell where parents dine upon their children, where drugs and sexually transmitted desease are the unavoidable Scylla and Charybdis.
Teirce
JoinedPosts by Teirce
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Skeptics Annotated Bible - JW section!
by Sunchild insome of you might know the site already:.
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/.
but it looks like something's been added since the last time i dropped by: an entire section that deals exclusively with jw beliefs!
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Is atheism genetic?
by Teirce inenough authorities say that homosexuality is.
or in other words, what causes atheism?
does the wts cause it?
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Teirce
Abaddon, sorry for any misleading order of my questions. What you guessed I might be leading into is the farthest thing from my mind. So if I may deconstruct your guess of my meaning, "people don't believe in god because they are bitter about the WTBTS", I would say that the everyday humans of this world are perfectly capable of arriving at the logic for the non-existence of god without having witnessed the performance and/or hypocrisy of the WTS. However, I do stand by my general wonderment that many persons can remain religious after having been in the WTS, if it were not in fact caused by some form of genetic predisposition.
But here I depart from the physical and concrete: There is in every person a marvelous arrangement of brain chemistry whereby in certain moments, we can feel like God, we can see forever, we can live forever. I think it would be rather premature to assign this to the modern symptom of chemical imbalance. [Even if it still falls under genetic heritage.]
So, there are certain scriptures, yes, even in the New World Translation, that have a ring of truth. (This is besides the fact that most of the Proverbs are basic common sense, and that some of Paul's statements are ripped off of Socrates and Plato. Beware that human wisdom folks, true genius is the hiding of sources.) One such scripture that comes to mind for this subject is, "He has put eternity into their hearts." Surely, I hope that everyone, at least once in their life, is in a situation where their brain chemistry and endorphins are emotionally overpowering, to such a degree that some have found it to be evidence that we are connected on a higher plain with an unseen existence or benefactor. Lucas' statement "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter", resonates with most everyone, because he is getting at the core of the matter, that the human mind has capacities beyond the apparent roles that we 'were evolved' to fulfill. Because of this sensory capacity, I do think it's premature of anyone to completely disparage those who express a faith.
But your thought on this is new to me, and rings well. Perhaps religion is the magnetic alignment of these various genetic ionic cognative capacities, thoughts that cannot bind to anything concrete or of this physical world. So perhaps religion is caused only when there is a powerful enough attractor to form a Pole towards which all these myriad maelstroms are pulled. And thus religion stretches one, as on a medeival rack, because the maliable credence of this genetic membership of mankind is by their thirst for an ideal pulled towards the impossible ideal, while that which is normal and animal remains anchored precisely where physical reality placed it, ie, nothing ideal whatsoever.
But, and this I profess, not all that is initially only the raw material of religion is doomed to that fate. And by this, I mean that the inherent divinty of man, that suite of sensations which he can label God, happiness, ecstacy, euphoria, eucharist, epiphany, do not necessarily have to have been a harmful thing of themselves. It is only their alignment by evil genius that breeds evil by factors.
And yet, religion cannot breed itself out anytime soon because sexual relations are the uneducated, the poor and the third world's most affordable recreation. The obverse, for those who are religious And wealthy, is not that they eschew having children, but rather that they have them not because it is the sole means of affordable recreation, but as the enviable perogative of perpetuating their estates.
Back to alignments. I was reading Thomas Carlyle lately (may have been Hume) and one of his arguments was that primitive man, if confronted by some natural wonder such as lightning, could not but sprout up from among their number someone who had a degree of storytelling acumen to explain its terrifying mystery. This is the inverse of the argument "No news is good news", where one knows of a state of affairs and desires them to remain unchanged: For those ancestors who met the complete unknown, all life could stop until they had some accounting for it, flimsy as might be acknowledgeable, but at least they had a label, a handle with which to cognatively manaeuver it.
Synthesizing with your thought, a group of persons with the most talented storyteller, who is across the generations intentionally associating himself with the power of the natural wonders, because of the power he accrues, will be able to weild a larger and larger tribe, since he can align them on this one instance, despite the fact that they are otherwise as disputative over limited resources as typical primates would be.
So we can surmise that the religious gene is selected for reproduction because of the safety in numbers, and (I'm surmising and/or guessing) that tribes so influenced grow great in direct proportion to the imagination of their religious visionaries. Which is to say, those ancestors which did not have a "belief gene" may not have cooperated as well because they had less deferred expectation of reward for job well done. It seems to me here, that the "belief gene" is basically the basis for our cognative RAM, that which allows us to think big, to hypothesize, to maneuver and coordinate large unweildy, slippery objects in the mind. Ergo, there would be no Stephen Hawking were it not for the initial "belief gene".
Great civilizations depend on great religious imaginations? If so, I wouldn't limit them to militarily conquered empires like Greece, who had a sculpted mythologic hero tradition, or Rome, who studiously borrowed everything that was practical, including a religious system that could serve as opium for the masses. The writers of the Old Testament were clearly persons of high imagination for the time, taking myriad natural events and transforming them into compelling moral tales. (I do wonder why they didn't grow into a large empire if they were so successful under God's tutilage, but, that would make them one of the seven world powers, now wouldn't it.
But I'd also posit that religiously-caused prosperity is the exact antidote to that condition called religious belief. The higher up a religious heirarchy one goes, the less beholden one is to cooperation, the more personal wants are met, more time is available for purely cognitive function. By this, the Protestant vigilance with which Brittain enslaved a quarter of the globe became its own financial antidote, same with the Puritan vigilance with which the Founding Fathers of America appropriated the wealth of natives (we still have puritan conservatism in government, but church attendance is the Neilsons).
But what of the story-teller himself? Does he need to possess a concept and capacity for the divine to craft such religious vision? Or, can he succeed in such enterprise while harboring the fact that he is an atheist and only pulls it out of his ass as the need arises?
My apologies if I sound like I'm speaking to hear myself. I'm really sounding for other perspectives on the relationship between belief and non-belief, and whether or not they are complementary in any fashion.
Anyone want to comment on a premise that the ability to believe, to hold an object in the mind, is the foundation for intelligence? Can animals count? If they can't, is it because they can be presented with two groups of objects, and not believe, or have capacity, or virtual storage, to mentally compute their sum? I wonder if belief is that hole in space into which we throw sand and play.
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Is atheism genetic?
by Teirce inenough authorities say that homosexuality is.
or in other words, what causes atheism?
does the wts cause it?
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Teirce
Enough authorities say that homosexuality is. Or in other words, what causes atheism? Does the WTS cause it?
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Deicide
by BATHORY ing'day pixel people !.
deicide the heavy metal band's lead singer ( or grunter ), glen benton is as some here would know a self proclaimed satanist.
i have followed his carrer since the change from amon ( previous band ) till now, seen countless interviews and read many also.
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Teirce
The WTS creates this sort of person. They don't believe in Satan so much as they believe as conceivably diametrically opposed to the WTS teachings of some beneficient sky castle. Satan is a convenient default for thermodynamics, which is "human wisdom". After they have created such a person, who they name 'radical', the WTS proceeds to use them for all they're worth, and reinforce the cycle of 'this might happen to you'. Relative, indeed.
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Do ~~they~~ do it for the money?
by LDH inwhat never ceases to amaze me is why people ask this question about the gb.. why do they do it?
they don't get paid.
they're not getting rich!.
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Teirce
"What never ceases to amaze me is why people ask this question about the GB."
I think the operative assumption when this question is asked is, "Do they do it for the money if they are also abiding by the same high moral standards that they espouse?"
Some people just have difficulty conceiving of a group who craves power for power's sake alone, and not for the carnal, basic, normal advantages it provides. That would be like having fabulous wealth and being shut inside a glass cage in a mall. Ie, if possessing this degree of power came at the cost of practicing what you preach to acquire it, then not *everyone* would jump at the chance. So, it's not *just* about the power.
Now obviously anyone can regale the 95 Theses on Brooklyn's door; I was just making a clarification on behalf of those who *have* wondered whether they do it for the money, since they don't appear to be enjoying the wealth that is associated with the decadent lifestyle of other religious leaders. If it was demonstrated that the GB got hookers, all would be well, and no one would ask yay or nay.
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Post-JW education?
by rebelledat12 ini was interested in how many of you took up higher education after leaving the jws, and how old you were etc.
i started college at age 23 (still enrolled at 24), my mother got her ged at 35 - disfellowshipped and started college at 40 - and will graduate at 45 from the university of florida in june.
my inactive sister is a freshman in college, right on time.. my jw brother has two kids and washes windows.
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Teirce
Persuing English major, here. Cicero's treatise 'On Old Age' was encouraging in this respect, that the wealth of golden years is built on the industry of youth. The WTS robbed 2 decades from many of us, but those don't have to have been our best. We have more, and we can make them better: feed the mind every day. There's a chance we will shuffle off having become a better person *because* of the WTS' lessons, than we would have otherwise. This excuses absolutely nothing, but it is still something to ponder.
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Which came first, man or woman?
by sleepy inif men were created in the image of god , and women created for men , then why do all foetuses start off female?.
according to the bible eve was created out of adam.. well i can't speak for adam but the basic body structure of a human it seams starts off as female , men branching off at a certain point of developement due to man making hormones.it doen't get rid of our nipples though.. if men came first or are in some way superior in gods eyes then why the need to develope as a female first , shouldn't it be the other way round?.
so shouldn't have god made eve first?
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Teirce
Natalie Angier wrote a NYTimes bestseller "Woman" that dealt with this.
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Dissension
by teejay inbeginning over a hundred years ago with the sincerely misguided (albeit egotistical) pastor russell on down to todays corporate incarnation of jehovahs mouthpiece otherwise known as the governing body of jehovah's witnesses, all of the leaderships crimes can be traced to a single kernel of untruth that lies at the very heart of this ungodly organization.
a typical expression of this single but immense seed of falsehood is clearly seen in the following quote, typical of thousands made in the watchtower over the years:... if we fall into the habit of ... ignoring counsel from jehovah through .
his faithful slave class, it will not be long before our hearts become callous, .
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Teirce
Try Hume's Inquiry if you suffer a dearth of wrath at moibus truths.
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State of the WTS?
by gsx1138 ini know it's in ny.
i've been out of the loop for awhile, thank god.
last time i was in we got a talk about how 2/3 of the young people were leaving the "truth".
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Teirce
I tend to think that a constant percentage of world population is mentally damaged and/or unformed enough to buy into it. That constant will never alter. The WTS just has to keep drilling. It has some likeness to the case of prospecting for oil. There are untapped world endowment (50 years of petroleum left on this planet), there are reserves which are pockets that have been speculated and marked, there are the methods of drilling and the methods of refining. All the reserves of surface oil are gradually drying up, but there are vast amounts of oil in dangerous areas (undersea) that will require a significant increase of technology to extract economically. Unless that technology emerges, that oil may remain there for some time, pushing everyone towards electrocars, et al, the sooner.
The WTS has to find new technologies for extracting equal resource from increasingly unwealthy and uneducated populations. Or, they must cut back their requirements and overhead. They do appear now to be playing the part of the desert succulent, which gorges on water in favorable season, and withdraws in unfavorable. It's hard to see where the next surge of economic moisture will come from, but there's always the energetic tug of politics which by shear odds always have a chance of happening in such a way that they can retroactively pronounce that it was forseen just so, and send even the wealthy western foxhole seat-warmers for their wallets. (I think, I may be wrong.)
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The Watchtower's Achilles Heel
by metatron inrecent events strongly suggest that the watchtower has a. severe, if not fatal, weakness.. lack of education - and intelligent management.. over the past several years, the governing body has emphasized.
a program of 'simplification' - a plain response to the demands.
of an international organization that lacks enough money and.
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Teirce
They also have that delightful overhead of interrupting perfectly productive momentums to go wash up for mealtimes. They could save a few cents just piping in all the spiritual spew to the various worksites so the workers could eat cheaply-produced boxlunches/grabbags. Maybe only have the hot meals at breakfast and dinner. Hear that, guys? Just an idear.