Indeed, full-throttle CULT MODE. Sad.
Eden
EdenOne
JoinedPosts by EdenOne
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75
My Parents have gone FULL CULT MODE! Having a job is SATANIC!
by BU2B into give a little background, my parents are in their late 50s.
around a year ago, my elder dad got laid off from his job.
he worked as a auto mechanic making ok money.
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JW FAMOUS CLICHE SAYINGS
by strymeckirules inwhat saying made it all around the country?.
the ones that were passed around, word of mouth.. for example.
"donations basis proves jehovah is behind the work!".
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EdenOne
I'm glad they don't venerate cult leaders! (He said with bitter irony).
Amen to THAT!
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JW FAMOUS CLICHE SAYINGS
by strymeckirules inwhat saying made it all around the country?.
the ones that were passed around, word of mouth.. for example.
"donations basis proves jehovah is behind the work!".
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EdenOne
"God is exercising patience".
"Aren't you glad that God has been exercising patience? If God had brought Armaggedon in [insert any year before your baptism], would YOU be saved?"
"This one's a 'goat', for sure"
"The number of earthquakes has raised dramatically since 1914"
"The end is so near - it's so obvious! How can YOU question it?"
"We must trust in the 'faithful and discreete slave', now more than ever"
"The Slave has been teaching us that [insert the most banal concept that can be found in any wordly literature]. This is Godly wisdom".
"The work is accelerating. The "slave" knows the end is imminent".
Eden
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Who Was Jesus and what it means to Believe.
by objectivetruth in"truth is one, paths are many.
" - gandhi.
gandhi also said, "i like your christ.
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EdenOne
By "unbiased research" I mean study the bible (or the NT) from a non-devotional point of view; study it from a historical, sociological, point of view. The results are shattering, but if you value the truth as an absolute ethical value - as I do - you owe yourself that endeavour. Follow the evidence, not your heart.
Eden
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Who Was Jesus and what it means to Believe.
by objectivetruth in"truth is one, paths are many.
" - gandhi.
gandhi also said, "i like your christ.
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EdenOne
The problem, objectivetruth, is that what the gospels supposedly portray Jesus saying can hardly be confirmed. These gospels were:
a) Written much time after the facts; the earliest, Mark, nearly four decades after Jesus' death - at least.
b) None of them were written by eye-witnesses, none of them even by palestinian jews;
c) They are - at best - fourth-hand accounts (and I'm being VERY generous conceding this, because it was certainly much more);
d) They were written with a political agenda in mind and an axe to grind: blame the jews, make the romans look good, so that Christianism is more pallatable to the Hellenistic-Roman world;
e) They were witten to suit the apostle Paul's interpretation of whatever he imagined the Christ to be. It was Paul's own visionary gospel, not the gospel of the twelve eye-witness apostles of Jesus. " I did not receive it [the gospel] from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ." (Galatians 1:12)
f) They reveal a great degree of contradictions when you start looking at the fine details, many of those are impossible to reconcile. And, even when you attempt to reconcile some of the discrepancies, you're in fact constructing a fifth gospel.
g) The real historical Jesus was part of a jewish messianic apocalyptical movement that stood against many things that the very gospels attempt to portray about him, and definetively very opposed to the version of the Christ that Paul concocted resorting to jewish mysticism and greek neoplatonism.
h) The 'Jesus movement' failed first when John the Baptist and then Jesus himself were killed by the Jewish establishment in alliance with the Herodian-Roman establishment; after this, the momevent alleged that Jesus had resurrected to heaven, and would return soon; now led by the apostle James, then his brother Simon, this renewed movement utterly failed in getting their expectations right about the imminent establishment of God's Kingdom led by the "Son of Man" that would overthrow the foreign Roman-Herodian domination of Palestine and purify the temple, and restore a Davidian kingship and an Aaronic-Phinean-Zadockean priesthood in Jerusalem's temple. Likewise, Paul's expectations proved unfounded also.
i) In an attempt to explain away the utter embarassment of why God's Kingdom didn't come as expected (2 Peter 3:3,4) but rather, Israel's earthly temple was destroyed and Jerusalem transformed into an heathen metropolis and the Jews scattered into a diaspora, the Christian movement, especially that of Pauline persuasion aimed at the gentiles, started to resort to supernatural idealizations about the nature of Jesus, the Christ, and his "not-of-this-world, heavenly" Kingdom. In turn, in later periods of time, re-interpretations of Jesus' alleged utterances generated new apocalyptical expectations of a "return" of Jesus in his kingship power, the latest of which are the Millerite, and their heirs, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses. But there have been many others during the last 1900 years.
j) It was in THIS context that the four bible gospels were produced, each one with its own flavor, but all agreeing with the Pauline vision. In this process, the real, historical Jesus was reshaped, morphed, changed, in fact, FORGED, into something that he never meant to be.
Once you realize this process, what is left from Christianity to take away? Inspirational quotes? Wisdom? I agree that there is wisdom and inspiration to be drawn from the gospels, but nowadays I struggle to see what's the point of devoting your life to follow a myth.
I was once like you, believing that the Bible was the inspired Word of God, and essentially error-free; that whatever was written there, give or take a glitch or two, was the truth of the matter, for God would surely ensure that it would get to our hands essentially intact. However, I thought that BEFORE I made any serious research about history and how the Bible canon came to be, and how these texts were written, by whom and why. At the end of the day, the Bible is a very human anthology of texts. God had NOTHING to to with the production of these texts, and certainly even less to do with their preservation and transmission. If anything, the writers had Gor in mind when they wrote them, and if that's enough to call it "inspiration", then fine. But that's not the kind of "inspiration" that I find worthy change my life for. If I change my life and devote it to someone, it better be God himself or His son. But unfortunately, that's NOT what you find when you put the Bible through a stress test.
Do yourself a favor and make some serious, unbiased research. See where that leads you.
Eden
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EdenOne
Perhaps to Tony hetero arousement is "standard", but gay arousement is satanic.
Eden
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EdenOne
How about being interviewed by Howard Stern?
Eden
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EdenOne
Eden
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UK LGBT press responds to Jehovah's Witness Governing Body member Anthony Morris
by Balaamsass2 inhttp://www.pinknews.co.uk/2014/11/10/jehovahs-witnesses-boss-dont-wear-tight-trousers-theyre-designed-by-homosexuals/.
get the latest lgbt headlines straight to your inbox with our free daily newsletter.
advertise.
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EdenOne
Eden
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Religion without revelation - any examples from the past?
by EdenOne ini'm researching on the common trait of mostly every religion coming from pre-humanist times, and that would be, the notion of "revelation", that is, that at the beginning of every [i say this with caution because i'm admitting to exceptions] religion there is some sort of "revelation" from supernatural being(s) of some sort.. my question is: do you know of any example of religions from the past that you can confidently say that were exempt from "revelation"?
this is not the same as asking if there were religions without gods, or religions of nature.
i'm not even considering what i understand as philosophical-ethical systems, such as confucionism or platonism my purpose is to find out if, at the starting point of all religions of the past, there is a "revelation", or merely "observation / contemplation".
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EdenOne
Ruby,
you need to clarify what you mean by "observation / contemplation"
mmmm, I think what I really mean is "non-revelation dependant", "non-dependant on a mystical connection with the supernaural", "non-dependant on enlightenment from a supernatural entity". Strictly speaking, this doesn't necessarily narrows it down to empiricism, although would be a substantial part of it. There are other ways to knowledge beyond sensory experience, such as imagination, mathematical logic, methaphysics ... In a sense, Descartes would say that our senses may trick and deceive us, so they're not entirely reliable. Let's say that "revelation" is prone to deception - voluntary or involuntary.
So, a religion which, at its core, doesn't need to resort to the supernatural in order to satisfy the human drive for "spirituality" or explain the world around us. To be sure, those movements do exist, but, to my knowledge, they are all post-rationalism. I'm interested in realizing if there are any such BEFORE rationalism era.
Eden
