Posts by Island Man

11

The Bible's huge implicit contradiction on the subject of love for God vs love for your fellow man.

by Island Man in

"if anyone makes the statement: i love god, and yet is hating his brother, he is a liar.

for he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot be loving god, whom he has not seen" - 1 john 4:20. here the bible implies that it is far easier to love a visible person than an invisible one.

therefore if one lacks love for a visible person, how much more so he must lack love for the invisible god.

Island Man

Another point is this: Christ's ancestress, Ruth, displayed an attitude that is contrary to Jesus' words at Matthew 10:37. Ruth's words reveal that she had greater love for Naomi than for God.

"And Ruth proceeded to say: “Do not plead with me to abandon you, to turn back from accompanying you; for where you go I shall go, and where you spend the night I shall spend the night. Your people will be my people, and your God my God." - Ruth 1:16

Uppermost on Ruth's mind was, not worshipping the correct God in the correct way, but maintaining her strong attachment to her mother-in-law. Her very strong unequivocal words demonstrate that she was a woman who was more devoted to her mother-in-law than anyone or anything else. What if Naomi had decided to go live with the Amalekites and worship their god(s)? What would Ruth have done then? "Where you go I shall go ... your people will be my people, and your God my God"!! Ruth only became a worshipper of God because her mother-in-law Naomi, was. Whichever God Naomi decided to worship, Ruth would have followed suit.

11

The Bible's huge implicit contradiction on the subject of love for God vs love for your fellow man.

by Island Man in

"if anyone makes the statement: i love god, and yet is hating his brother, he is a liar.

for he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot be loving god, whom he has not seen" - 1 john 4:20. here the bible implies that it is far easier to love a visible person than an invisible one.

therefore if one lacks love for a visible person, how much more so he must lack love for the invisible god.

Island Man

"In your first quote Christ is talking about loving God almighty, not himself. It therefore has no bearing on the second quote."

That technical detail about it being a reference to loving God and not loving Christ, is irrelevant. What is relevant - as brought out in the first quote - is contrasting the claimed love for an invisible person with lack of love for a visible person. Both God and Christ are invisible so the point of 1 John 4:20 holds equally true for anyone claiming to love the invisible Jesus while despising his visible brother.

70

Be nice to theists - they are victims of their genes

by cofty in

identical twin studies show there is a strong inheritable component to religiosity.

thomas bouchard studied identical and fraternal twins raised apart and tested them on religious attitudes.. the correlation for the former turned out to be 62% compared to just 2% for the latter.

his colleague.

Island Man

This should not be surprising. Certain personalities/mindsets are obviously more prone to religiosity than others. Consider, as an example, the fact that women tend to have a different mindset/personality than men and that this fact may largely be responsible for the disproportionately larger percentage of women than men in christian denominations.

And since our genes play a big part in determining our personality/mindset - of course, our environment and life experience also play a big part - it is to be expected that there will be some genetic correlation to religiosity. Only, I don't think the correlation is direct - as in there are specific genes directly related to religiosity. I think it's a case of genes influencing certain personality traits and those personality traits, in turn, making one more susceptible to religiosity, among other things.

11

The Bible's huge implicit contradiction on the subject of love for God vs love for your fellow man.

by Island Man in

"if anyone makes the statement: i love god, and yet is hating his brother, he is a liar.

for he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot be loving god, whom he has not seen" - 1 john 4:20. here the bible implies that it is far easier to love a visible person than an invisible one.

therefore if one lacks love for a visible person, how much more so he must lack love for the invisible god.

Island Man

"If anyone makes the statement: “I love God,” and yet is hating his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot be loving God, whom he has not seen" - 1 John 4:20

Here the Bible implies that it is far easier to love a visible person than an invisible one. Therefore if one lacks love for a visible person, how much more so he must lack love for the invisible God. Keeping this principle in mind note what Jesus says at Luke 14:26 and Matthew 10:37:

"“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own soul, he cannot be my disciple." - Luke 14:26
"He that has greater affection for father or mother than for me is not worthy of me; and he that has greater affection for son or daughter than for me is not worthy of me." - Matthew 10:37

But according to the logical principle implicit at 1 John 4:20 wouldn't it be impossible for a modern day disciple to hate his visible relatives and yet love the invisible Christ? Wouldn't it be impossible for modern disciples to love the invisible Jesus more than their visible relatives? And so Jesus' words at Luke 14:26 and Matthew 10:37 implicitly refutes the logic underpinning 1 John 4:20. For the words of 1 John 4:20 implies that it is impossible for someone to love their visible fellow human less and claim to love the invisible God more.

And by the way, what kind of loving God would require his worshippers to have greater love for him than for their family - to sacrifice their family relationships for him? Why should a loving God put a father through the emotional agony of having to sacrifice his son to Him? What practical purpose does such devotion serve? Is God afraid that humans having more love for each other than for him would mean that they're likely to conspire together and overthrow him? Does he need something from us that he can only get if we love him more than our own relatives? These can't be because God is almighty and is not in need of anything from us. It's nothing but petty jealousy and ego. For a God that is almighty and not in need of anything, the God of the Bible is obscenely egocentric and selfish - much like the dictatorial kings who reigned in the ancient times the Bible was written in. I'm willing to bet that that's exactly who the Bible writers modeled the personality of Bible God after.

8

Book study next week... was the Mosaic Law perfect?

by StarTrekAngel in

before i get the "no it was not, because god does not exist and this is a writing of man", i am directing this discussion to those that either still believe, or need as many tools as possible to talk to a family member still in.. the purpose of my posting is to discuss what i believe to be a mistake on this book or, in the other hand, be corrected if i am not getting the entire picture.. in the book, chapter 19 "god's wisdon in a sacred secret", paragraph 10, it reads.... 10 second, the law thoroughly demonstrated mankinds need for a ransom.

a perfect law, it exposed the inability of sinful humans to adhere to it fully.

compare this with hebrews 7:11-12. jesus a priest like melchizedek11now if perfection was through the levitical priesthood (for on the basis of it the people received the law), what further need was there for another priest to arise according to the order of melchizedek, and not be designated according to the order of aaron?

Island Man

The Law was not perfect. In fact, there is even a passage of scripture where the Law had to be amended because the original manner in which it was written debarred women from getting family property if they had no male relatives. (Numbers 27:1-11)

Also, the Law condoned slavery and treated women like second-class citizens, denying them many of the rights that were granted to men. For example, a man could bring his wife before the priest if he suspected her of adultery. But there is no provision in the Law for a women to do likewise if she suspected her husband of adultery.

39

At the meeting ... Ugh

by cappytan in

jw
friends

at least i have this forum.

is there a shorthand for referring to this website?

saying jehovahs-witness.com seems like a long winded way..

Island Man

Did you notice that the young JW in the middle, in the picture on page 69 of the 2014 year book, is wearing tight pants? lol

17

Search for GB Fan Name

by sparrowdown in

jw
friends

justin bieber has beliebers.

benedict cumberbatch has cumberbitches.

surely the ego-stroking gb worshipping fans deserve a name.. gbsters?

Island Man

~ The Faith-fooled slaves

~ The Grovelling bodies.

~ The Paragraph underliners (lol)

~ The Watchtower regurgitators.

~ The Watchtower sheep

30

Clever/snappy comeback for "you're an apostate"

by Dagney in

jw
friends

i'm looking for some clever comebacks.

i really don't care that i am an apostate, but would like to deliver a quick comeback or two to perhaps make the other person think.

any suggestions most welcome.

Island Man

~ "The hypocritical Jewish religious leaders also considered the apostle Paul to be an apostate. And I bet they also considered Jesus to be an apostate."

~ "Is that how you deal with the unpleasant fact that you can't refute what I'm saying - by resorting to childish name-calling?"

~ "An apostate is one who leaves true christianity - that would include one who despises what the bible actually says to follow a hierarchical man-made organization spreading falsehoods and lording it over the sheep."

~ "No I'm just following the advice of 2 Timothy 3:5 which helped me realize that I should turn away from hypocritical religious organizations."

34

RELIGION AND MENTAL ILLNESS!!!

by ADJUSTMENTS in

jw
friends

i have have come to realize most "rank and file" jw's are mentally unstable-to-ill and here is why.... http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/mental-issues.php.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/religious_delusion.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/religion_and_schizophrenia.

Island Man

I think that irrational, faith based religion is itself a form of mental illness - a form of induced mass delusion. Admittedly, it may not be mental illness is the way mental illness is conventionally thought of and defined. But that is only because the very pervasive nature of religion and its wielding of great political clout in recent history has prejudiced the medical community against calling the spade a spade, so to speak.

53

Need to vent: Wife just went in full cult mode, huge fight. she is so brainwashed

by goingthruthemotions in

jw
friends

out of the blue my wife started to ask me about my feeling about the borg.

i told her i didn't want to talk about it...she persisted.

she already knows how i feel, i told her that my biggest beef is that they use mind control, and yep she went in to how i was an apostate and how she doesn't want to be married to an apostate.

Island Man

Heisenburg: Jesus made whose name known?

When deciding what a christian should focus on in his preaching efforts, Jesus' direct instructions to his followers take precedence over what Jesus himself did. Jesus told his followers that they were to be witnesses of him and throughout the book of Acts and even the book of Revelation there are passages that highlight that early Christians were witnesses of Jesus. Not that christians aren't to also witness about God. The point is witnessing about Jesus should be prominent on the agenda quite unlike what the JWs are doing. Jesus direct instructions and the example of faithful 1st century christians recorded in the book of Acts speak volumes showing clearly that christians give prominence to witnessing about Jesus. When it comes to the prominence of Jesus in the message being preached, JWs are strangers to the first century christianity revealed in scripture.

Although christians are followers of christ, not everything Jesus did is to be done by his followers to the same extent and degree. Jesus' role in bearing witness about his father was a unique one because of Jesus unique position as one who had first hand information about God that no other human had. The same cannot be said about christians today. So you can't use the fact that Jesus made God's name known - i.e. God's true character and reputation - as a basis for claiming christians are to spend 99.9% of their time witnessing about God's literal name and 0.1% witnessing about Jesus. How ridiculous! Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead. Why aren't JWs doing that?

Also, Jesus didn't only preach about his Father. Jesus also preached a lot about himself, speaking about himself in the third person as "the Son of Man", "God's son", etc. Go read the gospels - really read them, with an open mind, free of Watchtower preconceptions - and see for yourself where Jesus often preached about himself telling people to come follow him, that he is the light of the world, etc. Even though he made his father's true character known, Jesus also preached about himself - to a greater degree than JWs today preach about him. JWs should be ashamed of themselves for their shoddy treatment of Jesus.