i have been out for over 20 years now and sometimes i run into a young jws on the street and the language seems to be "greek" to me.
i have a hard time understanding what they are talking about.
when i was in(90s) they had 4 catergories for congregation discipline.
It's usually the Elder serving as Coordinator that delivers those anouncements. That's the reason for the change in Elders when such anouncement is made. Since normally the CC wasn't making the announcements, there was always the need for the brief change of speakers.
tim hooper, that procedure was an abomination. I don't think it was even according to organizational instructions. Sickening!
Eden
adamah brought up in another thread an issue i wasn't aware of, and i thought it merged well with something i've been pondering about.
it revolves around the deeper reasons why satan was successful in persuading eve to eat from the forbidden fruit.
why was eve persuaded to disobey god?.
prologos: If you account for the NEEDLESS suffering in nature/creation, and presuppose a loving God, he must have abrogated his duties and given creative powers to maligning spirit co-creators. Why would he do that?
Pain isn't needless. It's a much necessary mechanism of survival, actually. And the dynamics of predator/prey are an accepted part of the natural life. For the lion to survive, he must kill the gazelle. I can accept that without resorting to blame God for the "cruelty" in the natural world. If an atheist doesn't accept a God, who will he blame for nature's "cruelty"? He won't. He simply accepts that is the way things evolved. Why, then, in a theistic evolution scenario, blame God for being a "moral monster" because there is suffering in nature? I don't get that double standard, it's intellectually dishonest.
You pose an interesting question: Has God abrogated creative duties to malign spirits? Is that the reason for suffering in creation? Could a loving God produce a natural world where suffering does exist, not only among animals, but also among the most sophisticated animal of all, man?
That God abrogated creative duties to other spiritual being(s) can be seen in Proverbs 8:22-31; John 1:2, 3, 10; Colossians 1:16. What those duties consisted of, we don't know, but apparently they had to do with life on earth.
I think that , if life came about mainly by means of evolutionary processes, and those evolutionary processes aren't driven by emotions and affections, but rather, by fortunate random genetic accidents that happen to cause improvements in a species, causing it to become more sophisticated and more adapted to its environment, then one should not be suprised that 'nature' is cold and deprived of altruistic emotions, being mostly driven by need.
Eden
adamah brought up in another thread an issue i wasn't aware of, and i thought it merged well with something i've been pondering about.
it revolves around the deeper reasons why satan was successful in persuading eve to eat from the forbidden fruit.
why was eve persuaded to disobey god?.
Finkelstein: How could Eden Eve have sinned if she had no sin prior to eating the fruit, she was already perfect and sinless ?
Fixed it for you. And yet, I don't understand the meaning of your question. Perhaps you can rephrase it?
Why didn't she run away frighten for coming across a snake that could talk ?
My take on that - since animals can't talk - is that she probably realized that it wasn't really the serpent that was talking with her, rather a spiritual being using the serpent. Why a serpent? Because it was an animal that could be on the tree and therefore draw her attention into the tree. We don't run away from a "talking puppet" as long as we see the puppeteer. We just get intrigued at how does he do it. My take is that Eve realized that there was a spiritual entity talking with her through the serpent.
I would extend the thought even more to say that, as she listened to the spiritual being behind the serpent, Eve must have come to the realization that there was more to the spiritual world than just Jehovah. God wasn't alone in the spiritual realm as she probably imagined until then. There were other beings there. And now she was being offered the possibility to step into that invisible realm as well. To be one of "them", a divinity. That's why she didn't resist the challenge, the draw was just too strong.
Eden
adamah brought up in another thread an issue i wasn't aware of, and i thought it merged well with something i've been pondering about.
it revolves around the deeper reasons why satan was successful in persuading eve to eat from the forbidden fruit.
why was eve persuaded to disobey god?.
Also, regarding how man came to be a religiously inclined being even before the creation of Adam and Eve, I would speculate that other spiritual creatures interacted with humans for a good while, before God and Jesus took a personal interest in the Homo Sapiens. This would help explain mythological accounts of half-gods and spirits in the material world.
Also, one can imagine that, if God was absent from earthly affairs for millions of years, his creative efforts could have been active lsewhere in the universe. Based on this, I wouldn't be surprised if there was life to be found somewhere else in the universe.
Eden
adamah brought up in another thread an issue i wasn't aware of, and i thought it merged well with something i've been pondering about.
it revolves around the deeper reasons why satan was successful in persuading eve to eat from the forbidden fruit.
why was eve persuaded to disobey god?.
Good point, prologos. I would say that God rested from his creative efforts after creating Adam and Eve.
Eden
adamah brought up in another thread an issue i wasn't aware of, and i thought it merged well with something i've been pondering about.
it revolves around the deeper reasons why satan was successful in persuading eve to eat from the forbidden fruit.
why was eve persuaded to disobey god?.
Sorry, internet glitch and double post.
adamah brought up in another thread an issue i wasn't aware of, and i thought it merged well with something i've been pondering about.
it revolves around the deeper reasons why satan was successful in persuading eve to eat from the forbidden fruit.
why was eve persuaded to disobey god?.
Cofty: You worship a god who behaves like a child who forgets to feed his hamster.
In my hypothetical scenario, God personally "turned his attention" to this planet only a little more than 6.000 years ago when he made Adam and Eve as the first Homo Sapiens gifted with a spiritual sonship towards him. From that point on, he's been actively involved in the human affairs. Now, what's 6.000 years in the grand scheme of things, when we talk, for example, about how old is the universe, the duration of the geological eras, or how old is life on earth? That's really a drop in the ocean.
In this particular scenario, you're adopting an attitude similar to that of a needy child who gets annoyed because his father doesn't give him the attention he thinks he deserves.
Eden
adamah brought up in another thread an issue i wasn't aware of, and i thought it merged well with something i've been pondering about.
it revolves around the deeper reasons why satan was successful in persuading eve to eat from the forbidden fruit.
why was eve persuaded to disobey god?.
Cofty: If the scenario you desribe in your OP is correct it follows that your god passively observed the suffering of all living things for millions of years without offering help or hope. This tells us a lot about the character of such a god if he/she actually exists.
In my scenario, what makes you think that God was even paying attention to this tiny planet? In such a vast universe, why do you even presume that, during the millions of years while the evolution of life took place, God was even paying the slightest attention to us? Why do we feel that the universe is all about US?
Eden
adamah brought up in another thread an issue i wasn't aware of, and i thought it merged well with something i've been pondering about.
it revolves around the deeper reasons why satan was successful in persuading eve to eat from the forbidden fruit.
why was eve persuaded to disobey god?.
CO:
So, Eden... When did humans get souls? Did gawd inject Adam and Eve with souls right after he made them?
I don't pretend to know or even speculate how exactly that happened; only that I theorize that Adam and Eve were given a spiritual bonding of sonship with God, something that the other human beings that existed outside Eden didn't have. You may call that "soul", if you'd like.
Eden
adamah brought up in another thread an issue i wasn't aware of, and i thought it merged well with something i've been pondering about.
it revolves around the deeper reasons why satan was successful in persuading eve to eat from the forbidden fruit.
why was eve persuaded to disobey god?.
We don't actually know any such thing.
Yes, we actually do. As recently as three weeks ago, a study was published with Dogs, using MRI's, that the same areas of the dog's brain that are activated when the dog is subjected to pain, anguish or stress match the exact same brain areas as the human brain when subjected to the same stimulous. So yes, we know. If I had the time, i could look up the article for you, but I'm just too tired right now.
animal suffering is a powerful argument against a loving god.
No, but it's an argument in favor of a cold, random evolution for sure.
Still, where's your answer?
Eden
