I just got off the phone talking about the new light with my mom. We talked about it yesterday but I read more about it with her. She is an ex-JW but her sister is still a die-hard JW. My mom is so amazed to hear about the new light, and I pointed out the logical inconsistencies, and she just had to say that she couldn't believe she had been a part of that religion. I know her sister will roll with it, no problem, she has been a faithful JW since the fifties. My mom is tempted to ask her about it, or see what she would think, but I can't see any good coming from that, other than opening a can of worms (they never talk about the fact that my mom 'fell away' from the 'truth'). I asked my mom, can you imagine changing what you believe at the drop of a hat just because what some people in Brooklyn say? I mean, I could consider the new idea, but I have my own brain and I can examine whether the new idea is better or more logical than the older one. My mom then told me her experience of when she was studying to be a JW, and that when she was a study she could freely question anything, and decide for herself if it is the truth, but after she was baptized, that no longer applied.
Leolaia
JoinedPosts by Leolaia
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31
Telling family about "new light"
by Billy the Ex-Bethelite inokay, now it's my turn to start a thread about the gb/fds "new light" now that it's been well covered by many threads.
i've noticed that a few have brought this subject up with dub family who accepted wt "new light" without objection, saying that it "made sense" for the fds to only be the gb.
so i have an idea of how to bring this up with my family in such a way that will highlight that this doesn't make sense... at all.. and the timing of this whole thing is incredibly convenient for me since it wasn't that long ago that this came up with my parents and i said that the wt interpretation of the fds in matthew was out-of-context and flawed.
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198
Rutherford's smear campaign (a must read)
by Leolaia inthere has been some interest recently about the moyle case, and how it may have set a precident in what became the society's disfellowshipping policy.
in july 1939, the chief legal counsel of the watchtower bible & tract society, olin r. moyle, resigned from his position in a protest over conditions at bethel and rutherford's mistreatment of workers.
he did not want to continue living under those conditions and he felt he could effect positive change for his brothers by taking such a stand.
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Leolaia
Then by direct order from Rutherford, Moyle was disfellowshipped from Milwaukee Company on March 9, 1940:
#59:
C. Hilton Ellison representing Milwaukee Company of JWs to Olin R. Moyle, 9 Mar. 1940: "The following is a quotation from a letter of March 5, 1940, from J. F. Rutherford, President of the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society. Quote: 'You have seen Moyle's assault upon the Society. He has never made an effort to apologize for his wrongful conduct, but on the contrary continues to send letters throughout the country upholding his wrongful position. Under such circumstances those who really love the Lord and are loyal to his Theocratic Government should not tolerate such nor permit them in the Company to answer questions or make comments but they should be ignored exactly as the apostle says'. The conductors of the Milwaukee company will be guided accordingly".In his testimony at the trial, Ellison gave his account of how he gave Moyle the news:
#60:
C. HILTON ELLISON
Q. Tell us what course of action did Mr. Moyle and his friends take in the congregation? A. I would say they came to the meetings but took no part in them; simply sat there during the meetings and then left. Q. Mr. Ellison, Mr. Moyle testified regarding certain notices you served upon him in the spring of 1940 .... [A]t the time you delivered either one of these notices, did you have any conversation with Mr. Moyle? A. When I handed him the later notice, I said, "Olin, I am sorry to hand this to you, but you are in bad with the Society, and until these things are cleared up, these instructions will stand"....Q. And did you desire to see him come back and associate himself loyally with the congregation? A. I was hoping that he would do so. Q. And did he ever repent from his course or evidence any desire to return? (Mr. Bruchhausen: I object to the form of the question) .... Q. Mr. Ellison, will you explain to the jury why it was that you served this last notice upon Mr. Moyle denying him the privileges of obtaining literature and preaching from house to house? A. The fact that Mr. Moyle had expressed thoughts that were contrary to our Scriptural understanding....Q. Are persons who are only one hundred per cent in harmony with the Society doctrines and policies permitted to act as its ministers from house to house, Mr. Ellison? A. Yes, sir..... Q. You said something at the time that you were handed this letter depriving Mr. Moyle of privileges, or one of the letters in March, that you were sorry to hand it to him? A. Yes, sir. Q. But you did it because of allegiance to God's agent? A. I did it for the good of the service. Q. Yes, because God's agent had requested you to do it — I withdraw that. God's agent asked you to deliver this letter to Mr. Moyle, didn't he? A. I was instructed from Brooklyn, yes, sir. Q. And that came from God's agent? A. It came from the Society. -
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Rutherford's smear campaign (a must read)
by Leolaia inthere has been some interest recently about the moyle case, and how it may have set a precident in what became the society's disfellowshipping policy.
in july 1939, the chief legal counsel of the watchtower bible & tract society, olin r. moyle, resigned from his position in a protest over conditions at bethel and rutherford's mistreatment of workers.
he did not want to continue living under those conditions and he felt he could effect positive change for his brothers by taking such a stand.
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Leolaia
The March 1st, 1940 Watchtower published another resolution:
#58:
Letter from the Bradley-Kankakee Company to the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society, published on 1 Mar. 1940: "We, the Bradley-Kankakee company of Jehovah's witnesses, of Illinois Zone No. 1, desire to express to Jehovah God our grateful appreciation of his loving-kindness manifested toward us by revealing to us, through the WATCH TOWER, his marvelous truths and also granting us the opportunity of telling these truths to others....We want you to know that we are with you in your courageous right for right and truth, and that we refuse to consider the malicious letters which some of the 'evil servant' class have been circulating amongst the brethren. We will not co-operate with such a class who oppose Jehovah's Theocratic government". -
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Proof that Satan is in control of the WT and THAT is why the new change will come.....
by EndofMysteries inif anybody ever read the two babylons book, it detailed how christianity became corrupt.
how over time, not on the spot, but slowly changes were implemented, it started with forbidding anybody to read or hold the bible, and only the leader/pope etc could teach, once there was full absolute power, then satan was able to put in anything he wanted to corrupt it all.
i am not going to list the articles and scriptures, everybody can find those, i'm just going to quickly show from the history to now how it's happened and the proof and what is happening now.
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Leolaia
Well, "evil" has an existence within a system of morality that is a fundamental part of human society and culture; evil is what we humans call violations of that moral order, whether at a more universal human level (e.g. violations of human rights), or within a more socially-dependent/constructed level (e.g. violations of specific laws). I don't think it means much outside that system. Nature is amoral and indifferent to moral concepts. But we humans view nature in moral terms, because it affects us. An earthquake-tsunami disaster is a great evil because it kills people and ruins lives. Theism often works nature into that moral order, e.g. God/the gods/Satan/etc. bring(s) destruction on a people on account of their sins (the Flood story being a classic example of this). But that is motivated by theodicean concerns; if there are supernatural beings who have power over nature, THEN there must be some moral context for how nature operates. I don't see a compelling reason to see nature that way. Nature just is. Black holes, colliding galaxies, asteriod impacts....the universe is a dangerous place and entropy is the universal drive leading from order to disorder; its mindless, its violent, its amoral. Humans are not mindless and we recognize value and worth and a whole host of other concepts (thanks to our intelligent brains) that accord meaning to things like good and evil. The Eden narrative is a pretty good fable illustrating this point. It takes knowledge to perceive good and evil. But if the sun explodes in a supernova and destroys our planet, that would be a horrible evil to us, perhaps the worst evil of all time. But the sun isn't evil; its a physical system that has both beneficial and detrimental effects and it could give life as well as destroy.
If you want to call what we evil a name, personify it and even better, hypostasize it as an entity called "Satan", then that's a well-worn theistic approach; I don't see that as much different from conceiving of a "god of evil". We can observe the sun but evidence that the sun exists isn't evidence that a sun god exists. Likewise about evil. My 5¢.
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Niave Realism
by frankiespeakin inhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/na%c3%afve_realism.
naive realism, also known as direct realism or common sense realism, is a philosophy of mindrooted in a theory of perception that claims that the senses provide us with direct awareness of the external world.
in contrast, some forms of idealism assert that no world exists apart from mind-dependent ideas and some forms of skepticism say we cannot trust our senses.
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Leolaia
I come from a more critical realist perspective, overall.
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The Section on Berossus in WT Oct. 1, 2011 "When Was Ancient Jerusalem Destroyed?"
by AnnOMaly inp. 29 - "was berossus really an accurate historian?.
berossus wrote that assyrian king sennacherib.
followed "the reign of [his] brother"; and.
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Leolaia
Josephus like all ancient historiographers was prone to error, particularly when he was not following his sources directly. In Contra Apionem he had Babylonian sources directly in front of him and thus represented the Neo-Babylonian period accurately. In Antiquitates he was clearly paraphrasing from memory and erred quite often: (1) he gives the name of Nebuchadnezzar's father as also Nebuchadnezzar (10.220) rather than Nabopolassar (as in Apionem 1.135, where he quotes Berossus), (2) he gives Amel-Marduk a reign of 18 years (10.231) rather than 2 (as in Apionem 1.147, again quoting his Babylonian source), (3) he refers to Neriglissar (as Eglisar....he didn't remember the name quite right) as the son of Amel-Marduk (10.231) rather than his brother-in-law (as in Apionem 1.147, again in his quoting of Berossus), (4) the reign is given as 40 years (10.231) rather than 4 (as in Apionem 1.148, within the same quote of Berossus), (5) he regards Nabonidus and Belshazzar as the same person (10.231) rather than father and son, etc. Josephus' use of Berossus is far less reliable in Antiquitates, and I see no reason to prefer his error-ridden account in Antiquitates over that in Contra Apionem, particularly since the figures in Antiquitates have no support from the extensive monumental and administrative records from the Neo-Babylonian period itself. And as it may be recalled, it is in Antiquitates where reference is made to a seventy years desolation, while Contra Apionem mentions only 50 years.
The two mistakes in reign lengths that the Watchtower table gives (40 for Neriglissar's 4 and 18 for Amel-Marduk's 2) are thus part of a larger pattern of faulty recall while paraphrasing. (If the numbers were written with letters they could also have become corrupted in MS transmission) It is misleading that the Society here prefers Antiquitates over Apionem; they also do not give full credit to the fact that Josephus was dependent on Berossus by listing him alongside the latter with equal standing.
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Proof that Satan is in control of the WT and THAT is why the new change will come.....
by EndofMysteries inif anybody ever read the two babylons book, it detailed how christianity became corrupt.
how over time, not on the spot, but slowly changes were implemented, it started with forbidding anybody to read or hold the bible, and only the leader/pope etc could teach, once there was full absolute power, then satan was able to put in anything he wanted to corrupt it all.
i am not going to list the articles and scriptures, everybody can find those, i'm just going to quickly show from the history to now how it's happened and the proof and what is happening now.
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Leolaia
i have a couple of problems with these comments...one...wether the god was Baal or shamash...wasn't it still sun worship?
The point isn't whether the ancients worshipped the sun. The point is Hislop's bad scholarship. Baal wasn't a sun god. The Canaanite sun goddess was Shapsh. The Babylonian sun god was Shamash, corresponding to the Sumerian god Utu.
Believe me, what Hislop says about ancient religion is wrong through-and-through. Part of that was because he was relying on late Classical sources instead of genuine ancient sources from the ANE (much of which were discovered after he wrote), part of it was because he had no respect for scholarship and freely associated things that had nothing to do with each other (including medieval artistic motifs), part of it was because he had an agenda and a conceptual framework he wanted to squeeze everything into. Bottom line, it's about as reliable as the Book of Mormon is about Pre-Columbian native American prehistory.
...another ...why is it so difficult to comprehend that Egypt adopted religious concepts from other nations? was Egypt the cradle of civilization?
There were many cradles of civilization, as there were many independent civilizations. Egyptian culture in the Pre-dynastic and OK eras had little contact with Mesopotamia. The cultures were clearly independent and the mythologies had little in common beyond expected achetypes. And Babylonian mythology in the 1st millennium BC was partly derivative of both older (3rd millennium BC) Akkadian polytheism and even older (4th-3rd millennium BC) Sumerian religion.
...and leolaia...have you ever trully attempted to confirm if Satan is real? or are you saying that satan is not real because until now i havent seen proof of it, but if proof was presented..thereby allowing the possibility that he COULD be real?
How would one confirm that Satan is real? What would count as proof?
BTW I didn't say that Satan isn't real. I said that Satan (as a figure in Jewish-Christian mythology) is an idea....that's a fact everyone can agree on, whether or not there is "a Devil behind the idea". To make things simple, I'll say that I don't believe in the ontological existence in any divinity from any mythology. And that is not to say that I am against the idea of mythology....I love mythology. But I don't accept the claims of any mythology as reflecting an outside reality beyond the culture and ideas that shape it, unless there is good empirical evidence to think otherwise.
Let me give an example. Jiljamish is a demon in Islam. This demon can be traced back to a Gilgamesh in Judaism, who is a giant and demon in the Enochic Book of Giants (third century BC). That demon, in turn, can be traced back to a demigod in Babylonian religion, Gilgamesh, the hero of the Gilgamesh Epic. Does that mythical figure rest on any sort of empirical reality? Yes! Gilgamesh was a king of Uruk in the 3rd millennium BC and there are ancient inscriptions that show that he was a historical figure. But nothing confirms that he was A) a god B) a demigod C) a giant and D) a demon. Rather it is more likely that Gilgamesh was a real king who then was deified and then became part of a mythology that then influenced Jewish mythology that then influenced Islamic mythology, with the figure of Gilgamesh evolving and changing through the centuries. I can do the same sort of analysis with Satan and show how the concept of Satan changed and evolved, but the idea originates from certain ANE polytheistic and later henotheistic ideas about the divine council ("the satan" was originally a prosecutor type figure in the council). Can it be shown that Satan is more than an idea? What would count as proof? I can prove the sun exists. I can make observations, take measurements, make predictions. That doesn't prove the existence of a sun god. But it does prove (setting aside nihilistic or idealist objections to positivism) that there is an object that has an ontological existence that we call "the sun". Can Satan be observed in any objective way that demonstrates that this idea from literature and mythology is based on a real "entity" or being? Or how about any other figure from world mythology?
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Proof that Satan is in control of the WT and THAT is why the new change will come.....
by EndofMysteries inif anybody ever read the two babylons book, it detailed how christianity became corrupt.
how over time, not on the spot, but slowly changes were implemented, it started with forbidding anybody to read or hold the bible, and only the leader/pope etc could teach, once there was full absolute power, then satan was able to put in anything he wanted to corrupt it all.
i am not going to list the articles and scriptures, everybody can find those, i'm just going to quickly show from the history to now how it's happened and the proof and what is happening now.
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Leolaia
He was even on Doctor Who briefly a few episodes ago, in fact.
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Proof that Satan is in control of the WT and THAT is why the new change will come.....
by EndofMysteries inif anybody ever read the two babylons book, it detailed how christianity became corrupt.
how over time, not on the spot, but slowly changes were implemented, it started with forbidding anybody to read or hold the bible, and only the leader/pope etc could teach, once there was full absolute power, then satan was able to put in anything he wanted to corrupt it all.
i am not going to list the articles and scriptures, everybody can find those, i'm just going to quickly show from the history to now how it's happened and the proof and what is happening now.
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Leolaia
Shocking I know, keyser. I mainly watch because I crush a little on Barry. (about 20%, I crush on Dan Riskin from Monsters Inside Me on Animal Planet about 60%, and I crush on Brian Cox from the Science Channel about 12,050%). I do have a friend who went to that Detroit pawn shop and says that YES THEY REALLY ARE ***HOLES IRL. So a germ of truth there.
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Ladies: A Purse Question
by Lady Lee inwhat makes a perfect purse for you?.
color?
size?interior or exterior pockets?zippered top or sections?long straps or short?material it is made from?
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Leolaia
In 1996 I saw a purse in a department store that I loved. It was like $350. I was struggling for every dollar I had and I just had to eye it enviously and move on. I never forgot it and thought, one day, I'm gonna get a purse just like that one if I ever see one like it. I've never gotten anything I really liked since. In college I used backpacks. After college, I just use well-made bags that my boyfriend gave me (that he got for free from doing business). My mom gave me a cute little purse once but the inside got ruined when ink leaked from a pen. I have a stack of old bags and purses in the closet, sometimes I change them around, but so far I really haven't had anything that is really "me", but I don't care really....I guess I go more for functionality than style.