Posts by Rose Mary

124

Does your Theology Align with Reality?

by cofty in

thesits are fond of reminding us that science cannot prove there is no god, and in this they are correct.

however, science should not be dismissed so lightly by anybody who values a faith that is more than a mere fantasy.. theologians like john shelby spong have shown the intellectual honesty to embrace the truths that science has discovered and adapted their religious beliefs to take account of reality.

sadly many theists lack the courage to do likewise.

Rose Mary

Yet, there is some problem!

Here is the link:

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/HarderProblem.pdf

41

The Bizarre Free Will

by John_Mann in

two years before i left jw world i came to a strange conclusion about the jw cosmology and the free will doctrine.. basically i came to conclusion that satan is right about the universal sovereign issue.

and i came with that just only using jws premises, no outside apostasy.

i just told to my sister what she thought about it, and she said to me: dont tell anyone about this!.

Rose Mary

There is no universal issue--it is the inventon of WT. First creation account found in Genesis chapter 1 says all humans were created IN GOD'S IMAGE, male and female SIMULTANEOUSLY. Chapter 2 and 3 are just a story borrowed and refined from other cultures.

And God's sovereignty can never be challenged, as Has put in place principle of causation--every one has to learn from the experiences, from the results. The wise will learn from others' experience. The rest will learn from their own experiences!

183

Article: It's Time to Outlaw Extreme Shunning in Modern Society

by AndersonsInfo in

http://gilmermirror.com/bookmark/23272594/article-extreme%20shunning#.ufwjurllscm.facebook.

extreme shunningthe gilmer mirror.

its time to outlaw extreme shunning in modern society by: richard e. kelly .

Rose Mary

gma-tired2

I agree with gma-tired2. This is practical. Because one day, I was taking Bible study to a Medical Practitioner. He was very much interested in the "truth." Whole family was attending the study. Six month went by. One day after the study, in our informal chat during tea session, somehow I inadvertently mentioned about disfellowshipping arragement! That was the end of Bible study with that family.

This shows giving publicity to their public shunning is the only solution. Let those who are already JWs be there as they deserve to be there. At least new ones can be made aware of.

40

JW attitudes to women

by Frazzled UBM in

i would be very interested to hear from you ladies on this one.

i know that the society keeps women in subjugation through the headship cr@p but didn't ahve any sense about hoew prehistoric the attitudes are until the other day when we were driving out of the supermarket car park and my wife spotted a woman dressed in tight shorts (it has been very hot here) and she commented 'they say that women who dress like that dserve to be raped'.

i did a wtf and overreacted 'how can you blame the victim like that - such attitudes give men a lciense to commit rape and make women feel they are to balme if they get raped which in turn means that rape doesn't get reported and it gopes on with impunity.

Rose Mary

Bible is mixed on the issue. Genesis chapter 1 says He created humans in His image—male and female SIMULTANEOUSLY; hence God presents men and women as equal. Then you have an interpolated portion Genesis Chapter 2 and 3 where woman is shown as inferior and cause of mankind’s suffering.

Another sample is from NT. John the Baptist is killed by Herod for political reason, reports Josephus, the famous historian. Yet the Bible interpolates account of two women as the cause of this holy man’s death. WT is mostly based on interpolated verses in the Bible, hence they are strongly patriarchal. While being inside JWs, women cannot obey the God’s first command “be fruitful” which obviously means to unfold yourself, bringing out your full potential. (Genesis 1:28) For this to happen, you have to come out and behave like Joyce Mayer!

I did that!

153

Shocking talk from 2013 District Convention urges parents to shun disfellowshipped children

by cedars in

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yldwe_6jsu.

.

cedars.

Rose Mary

It is time to take the matter into the Highest Court of the country, and get this WT organisation banned! How many youngsters lost their higher education because of their proddings! Now urging the parents to shun them also! WT should be treated like any other terrorists organisation in the world. It only does harm to humanity!

15

The context of Genesis 3:15

by pixel in

i just want to share my thoughts on genesis 3:15.. we all know the position of the wt/gb/fds on this, that the woman represents heavenly organization (with annointeds, of course), the serpent satan and everybody that is bad.. but to me, the context says other thing.. god is cursing the man, the woman, and the serpent.. first, he starts with the serpent, and give it a pretty mundane curse: you are going to crawl.

and will have hostility with woman's offspring.. then the woman: you will feel pain when giving birth.. then the man: you are going to work hard.. from this curses, you can read they were pretty mundane.

simple put, they were curses.

Rose Mary

MP,

The parallel creation account that starts in Genesis chapter 2 says woman is created out of man, and contradicts the science which teaches heliocentrism where sun is at the center, not the earth as implied in Genesis 2:4 “ God made the earth and the heavens.” [why the earth is put first? Because for the writer earth seems to be the center, which he thought as the truth! It was everybody's experience for 1000s of years, but was not truth.

But Genesis 1:1 has got it correctly. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth .” Here earth is put as part of the universe, which is correct!

Yet you don’t coment on “God having ego-problem as inplied in Genesis 3:22-24!

15

The context of Genesis 3:15

by pixel in

i just want to share my thoughts on genesis 3:15.. we all know the position of the wt/gb/fds on this, that the woman represents heavenly organization (with annointeds, of course), the serpent satan and everybody that is bad.. but to me, the context says other thing.. god is cursing the man, the woman, and the serpent.. first, he starts with the serpent, and give it a pretty mundane curse: you are going to crawl.

and will have hostility with woman's offspring.. then the woman: you will feel pain when giving birth.. then the man: you are going to work hard.. from this curses, you can read they were pretty mundane.

simple put, they were curses.

Rose Mary

If earth is the center of universe,

and if God has ego-problem;

then you can bother about Genesis 3:15.

Because Genesis 3:15 lies in the middle of the story of Adam and Eve, which starts claiming earth is the center of the universe (Genesis 2:4); and ends with showing God is having ego-problem (Genesis 3:22-24). Correct creation account is in Genesis Chapter 1 where it says mankind was created MALE & FEMALE simultaneously, in His image—something which Jesus confirms in Mathew 23:9

17

Is there an Almighty Dog ?

by Phizzy in

i am not dyslexic, though it is in the family, and i am kinda referring to the joke about the agnostic dyslexic wondering if there really is a dog.. my question is sincere though.

there are kind of "top" dogs, some are bigger than others, some are stronger, and yet really they are all dogs, and there is not really an almighty dog, a canine supreme being.. so, there may be other beings in the physical universe, superior or inferior to us, or just differnt, who knows.. but let us assume there is a "spirit world" not part of the physical universe, and it is peopled by "beings".. is it philosophically necessary that there be a supreme being ?.

Rose Mary

All of us in one way or another, are in search of God without our knowing it. On our journey towards a better life, some of us consciously search for truth, others for love, and still others for beauty. If these three aspects - love, truth and beauty - were offered as those, which most summarize God's qualities, there would be few willing to argue. Unfortunately, just as the word God has been so much used and abused out of context, love – truth - beauty have all but lost their deeper meanings. The love that exists today between two persons is often conditional, selfish, and not lasting. What I feel to be the truth today is discredited tomorrow. And beauty has come to be associated with the temporary, often bodily beauty, which is easily disfigured. If I have been searching for a love that never lets me down, a truth that is unshakeable and a beauty that goes beyond the superficial, I have indeed been searching for GOD - perhaps without even being aware of it.

It is not too difficult to understand that out of all the billions of souls, there is ONE who could be designed as the Supreme, because of His constant perfect divine Love, total Truth and absolute Beauty.

Anything that exists must have a form. God's qualities are formless but He, the Source, has a form, God is not love but the Source of Love; God is not truth but the Source of Truth… and so on. As explained earlier the soul is a point of light, of conscious energy, surrounded by an oval-shaped aura, similarly the Supreme Soul, the Parent, is also that. But the difference is in the degree and intensity of purity, qualities, powers…..

How do I use this knowledge about God in meditation? Knowing His form, I can bring that image onto the screen of my mind, and begin immediately to experience powers and qualities by associating them with That beautiful form. There is so much importance in meditating on God's form and attributes. In all cultures and religions there is some special memorial or ritual, in which LIGHT is always allied to what is Holy or Sacred. It is a reminder of the form of God as Light. Candles, flames, and other light sources have always had importance in religious practices.

The ‘near-death’ experience, in which the soul (the conscious entity) leaves the body, usually due to some traumatic happening, lends meaning to this point. The individuals relate how they passed through a long tunnel at the end of which they perceived a light, which is self-luminous and conscient. The light gave them a sense of relationship and warmth, possessed of non-judgmental love and compassion. The interesting thing about all these reports on ‘near-death’ experiences is that, irrespective of their background - religious or even non-religious - their experiences of this Being of Light and Love have always been identical.

Anything that has a form has a name, so too God has a name. There are as many names for God as there are languages, and each name highlights one of God's specialties… whether it be Jehovah, Allah, Shiva… But Shiva perhaps describes God best, as it literally means “World Benefactor” (Compare Mark 10:18), the one who recreates heaven again on earth destroying the hell that is staging on this earth presently. This he does every time the heaven deteriorates to its maximum level! Hence he is also portrayed as Lingam (Lin denotes destruction and gam denotes recreation), a perfect symbol that reminds his two main roles!

24

Isn`t it ludicrous women can be king/queen preists in heaven and rule with jesus in heaven,yet be silent and submissive to males in the congrgations ?

by smiddy in

is this just another example of the bible being inconsistent/contradictory ?

or is it screwed up wt.theology.. what`s your thoughts.

smiddy.

Rose Mary

Watch Tower is helpless in this regard!

1. When you have a complete creation account in Genesis chapter 1 which shows mankind was created as male and female SIMULTANEOUSLY, you have an interpolated parallel creation account in chapter 2 and 3 where woman is projected as the root cause for the suffering to come to earth!

2. When Josephus reports John the Baptist was put to death by Herod on account of a perceived political threat, interpolation into the Bible holds women as behind the murder of that holy man.

What can Watch Tower do?

43

There Is No 'Heavenly Hope'!

by The Searcher in

propitiatory sacrifice.

this is how christ's death is described three times in the scriptures.. the apostle john wrote, "the love is in this respect, not that we have loved god, but that he loved us and sent forth his son as a propitiatory sacrifice for our sins.

" (1 john 4:10).

Rose Mary

Indian Larry

You have done a wonderful job—I am far behind you, I did not see Matt 23:13 for a few years!

Mary

Your insight into all the parables and equating parable of Lazarus with them all make sense!

And defining the righteousness as “turning away from evil and doing GOOD” from Ps 37:27 is excellent. Because doing GOOD only makes you the real child of God, whose primary attribute is GOODNESS (Mark 10:18). Naturally the good have to live FOREVER, like their Father!