I had rejected a "three faced" trinity before I became a JW but after reading a particular scripture in the NWT I began reevaluating Jesus' relation to the Father and came to the conclusion that the was and is a trinity, but not in the way most people think of it. The scripture is Isaiah 40:26. It says that God is an abundance of dynamic energy. Other bibles use other words but this one scripture in the NWT crystalized in my mind that GOD is the source of all created things as defined by E=MC squared. God, being an entity of unimaginable power, created ALL things from Himself. The first thing He created was Jesus out of Himself. I think of God as this great invisible "nebulosity" (don't know another word to use) who released a part of Himself and that part was Jesus in His prehuman form.Jesus, being of or from God in a manner like this means that He is created but is still eternal since He is still part of God. God also created the Holy Spirit this way. Now when God and Jesus began to create everything else in the universe they kept "something" out that was distinct to Them. This made Them different than ALL other things in the universe but They remain the same unique substance. As parts of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit can always "recombine" and "reemerge" with and from God but retain their distinctness and sameness at the same time. If you forget the usual depictions of God as this great human in the sky (He doesn't need a body, or anything that is relative to human existence) then it is easier to "see" Him and His relationship to Jesus and the Holy Spirit. So I do believe in a Trinity but not in the classical way of believing.
elamona
JoinedPosts by elamona
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Did you re-evaluate who Jesus Christ is when you left?
by hooberus inmany on here left the watchtower for various reasons.
did any of you re-evaluate his deity after you left?
do you think that the watchtower has been accurate in the way they present what other's believe about jesus christ and his relationship to the father?
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elamona
I worked a an inner city hosp where it was NOT uncommon for 12 and 13 yr olds to come in and deliver. Also VD is not unexpected in little kids in some section of the big cities as there is an urban myth that if a man has VD he can get rid of it by having sex with a virgin. Since girls are having sex younger and younger, it's getting harder and harder to find virgins in their early teens. What shocked me even more is that the men who usually do the kinds of things are the mother's shack-up-of-the-week. Being a product of the 40's generation brought up in the "protected" environment of the lower middle class suburbs, I can tell you that I was in total shock and denial when I had my first encounter with anything like this.
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Why do the JW's not Believe in Hell?
by Tirisilex ini may have asked this question before awhile back but i was not able to find it in the search.
other than what the nwt provides for information.. how do the jw's provide proof for this no hell belief?
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elamona
I did not believe in a fiery burning place called hell before I became a JW and still don't after I have left them. I do not believe that a God who is love could possibly even think of doing somethink like that to humans. There are some scriptures in Kings that pretty much say that. God got very angry with the Jews for sacrificing their kids upon altars to some foreign god. He said how could they do something like that when nothing like that had ever entered His mind and heart. So that pretty much tells me that God thinks this is an abomination to Him as much as it is to us.
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Your Ideas On The Bible?
by shamus inso, what do you think about the bible?
is it really ispired of god?.
i am strongly believing that the bible is nothing more than folk-tales, half-truths, and suggestions by man.
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elamona
Whether you believe the Bible or not a personal decision that has to be made by every one. I do beleive that ALL human beings are born with an innate desire for religion. How they express that religion or what they choose is entirely up to the individual. There are just too many things that point to a human desire to believe in a "higher" power. I don't know a single person who doesn't have some type of faith- christianity, judism, islam, wiccan, universalists, etc. Even atheists eventually attach themselves to humanism or science as the ultimate expression of their belief system. Since the beginning of time people have worshipped trees, rocks, other people, etc. ALL cultures have worshipped something down thru the ages. I don't think that I have ever read about an ancient culture that didn't have some type of religion. Many times I have heard or read about people who have a "void" that cannot be filled and they are tortured by this. Just the fact that we are born with a need for religion tells me that "something or someone" out there wants me to know Him and that I should search for Him. I may be wrong but I don't think so. Do any of you REALLY KNOW a truly areligious person?
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Are these PETA people nuts?
by Thunder Rider inthe link below is to the peta sight and a page aimed at kids.
i heard about it on the radio yesterday, but didn't believe it to be true.
i'm all for treating animals humanely but if this is what happens to your judgement when you cut all meat out of your diet, then i'mgoing out for a burger.
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elamona
This is a dirty little secret that PETA and vegans DON'T want you to know..........................
The Least Harm Principle Suggests that Humans Should Eat Beef, Lamb, Dairy, not a Vegan Diet.
The following abstract and the aforementioned title were written by S.L. Davis, Department of Animal Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331.
Wildlife Damage Control has received permission to reprint this abstract in its entirety which was "Previously published in the Proceedings of the Third Congress of the European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics, 2001, pp 449-450."
Again, this article was NOT written by Stephen Vantassel. See my version of this principle written long before this article at Uneasy Conscience of the Animal Rights Movement.
Key words: veganism, least harm, farm animals, field animals.
Introduction
Although the debate over the moral status of animals has been going on for thousands of years (Shapiro, 2000), there has been a resurgence of interest in this issue in the last quarter of the 20th century. One of the landmark philosophical works of this period was the book by Regan (1983) called "A Case for Animal Rights." In that book, Regan concludes that animals do have moral standing, that they are subjects-of-a-life with interests that deserve equal consideration to the same interests in humans, and therefore have the right to live their lives without human interference. As a consequence, he concludes that humans have a moral obligation to consume a vegan (use no animal products) diet and eliminate animal agriculture. However, production of an all vegan diet also comes at the cost of the lives of many animals, including mice, moles, gophers, pheasants, etc. Therefore, I asked Regan, "What is the morally relevant difference between killing a field mouse (or other animal of the field) so that humans may eat and killing a pig (or chicken, calf or lamb) for the same purpose? Animals must die so that humans may eat, regardless whether they eat a vegan diet or not. So, how are we to choose our food supply in a morally responsible manner?" Regan's response could be summarized by what may be called the "Least Harm Principle" or LHP (Regan, Personal Communication). According to LHP, we must choose the food products that, overall, cause the least harm to the least number of animals. The following analysis is an attempt to try to determine what humans should eat if we apply that principle.Regan's Vegan Conclusion is Problematic
I find Regan's response to my question to be problematic for two reasons. The first reason is because it seems to be a philosophical slight of hand for one to turn to a utilitarian defense (LHP) of a challenge to his vegan conclusion which is based on animal rights theory. If the question, "What is the morally relevant difference?" can't be supported by the animal rights theory, then it seems to me that the animal rights theory must be rejected. Instead, Regan turns to utilitarian theory (which examines consequences of one's actions) to defend the vegan conclusion.
The second problem I see with his vegan conclusion is that he claims that the least harm would be done to animals if animal agriculture was eliminated. It may certainly be true that fewer animals may be killed if animal agriculture was eliminated, but could the LHP also lead to other alternative conclusions?
Would pasture-based animal agriculture cause least harm?
Animals of the field are killed by several factors, including:
1. Tractors and farm implements run over them.
2. Plows and cultivators destroy underground burrows and kill animals.
3. Removal of the crops (harvest) removes ground cover allowing animals on the surface to be killed by predators.
4. Application of pesticides.So, every time the tractor goes through the field to plow, disc, cultivate, apply fertilizer and/or pesticide, harvest, etc., animals are killed. And, intensive agriculture such as corn and soybeans (products central to a vegan diet) kills far more animals of the field than would extensive agriculture like forage production, particularly if the forage was harvested by ruminant animals instead of machines. So perhaps fewer animals would be killed by producing beef, lamb, and dairy products for humans to eat instead of the vegan diet envisioned by Regan.
Accurate numbers of mortality aren't available, but Tew and Macdonald (1993) reported that wood mouse population density in cereal fields dropped from 25/ha preharvest to less than 5/ha postharvest. This decrease was attributed to migration out of the field and to mortality. Therefore, it may be reasonable to estimate mortality of 10 animals/ha in conventional corn and soybean production.
There are 120 million ha of harvested cropland in the US (USDA, 2000). If all of that land was used to produce a plant-based diet, and if 10 animals of the field are killed per ha per year, then 10 x 120 million = 1200 million or 1.2 billion would be killed to produce a vegan diet. If half of that land (60 million) was converted to forage production and if forage production systems decreased the number of animals of the field killed per year by 50% (5 per year per ha), the number of animals killed would be:
1. 60 million ha of traditional agriculture x 10 animals per ha = 0.6 billion animals killed.
2. 60 million ha of forage production x 5 animals of the field = 0.3 billion.Therefore, in this hypothetical example, the change to include some forage-based animal agriculture would result in the loss of only 0.9 billion animals of the field instead of 1.2 billion to support a vegan diet. As a result, the LHP would suggest that we are morally obligated to consume a diet of ruminant products, not a vegan diet, because it would result in the death of fewer animals of the field.
But what of the ruminant animals that would need to die to feed people? According to the USDA numbers quoted by Francione (2000), of the 8.4 billion animals killed each year for food in the US, 8 billion of those are poultry and only 41 million are ruminants (cows, calves, sheep, lambs). Even if the numbers of ruminants killed for food each year doubled to replace the 8 billion poultry, the total number of animals that would need to be killed under this alternative would still be fewer (0.9 billion + 82 million = 0.982 billion) than in the vegan alternative (1.2 billion).
In conclusion, applying the Least Harm Principle as proposed by Regan would actually argue that we are morally obligated to move to a ruminant-based diet rather than a vegan diet.
References
Davis, S.L. 2000. What is the Morally Relevant Difference between the Mouse and the Pig? Pp. 107-109 in the Proceedings of EurSafe 2000; 2nd Congress of the European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics.
Francione, Gary L. 2000. Introduction to Animal Rights: Your child or the dog? Temple University Press. Philadelphia.
Regan, Tom. 1983. A Case for Animal Rights. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Shapiro, L.S. 2000. Applied Animal Ethics, pp. 34-37. Delmar Press.
Tew, T.E. and D.W. Macdonald. 1993. The effects of harvest on arable wood mice. Biological Conservation 65:279-283.
USDA. 2000. www.nass.usda.gov/Census/Census97/highlights.
Stephen Vantassel owns Wildlife Damage Control and is a Certified Wildlife Control Professional. He is a nationally known writer including having been an assistant editor for Wildlife Control Technology magazine, author of numerous ADC articles as well as The Wildlife Removal Handbook rev.ed and the Wildlife Damage Inspection Handbook rev. ed. Mr. Vantassel is also a vocal critic of the growing animal rights movement. He has exposed the fallacies and deceptions of the animal rights protest industry through debate, lecture and publication...............................
The above was a study done by a bioethicist on vegan diets. So eat meat people, you'll kill fewer animals!!!!!!!!
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elamona
Absolutely beautiful enough to take your breath away. Thanks for posting.
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Movement to 'Draft" Hillary
by Guest 77 insome months ago i heard that hillary will be drafted as president at the democratic convention.
well, this is no longer a rumor.
on the hannity & colmes show last night, foxnews, this 'rumor' was confirmed to be true.. the reason for the public silence (not told on the show) but by the rumor mill, is to keep hillary on a low profile, not to create a public stir.
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elamona
I gladly look forward to her being drafted and sent to the front lines without 2,000 Secret Service Guards, no weapon and a big cross hairs sign painted on her uniform. That's the only draft I'm interested in seeing for Hillary.
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Environmentalism as Religion
by JeffT ini have been asked to talk about what i consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and i have a fundamental answer.
i believe it is important to act in ways that are sympathetic to the environment, and i believe this will always be a need, carrying into the future.
one of those structures is religion.
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elamona
I forgot to say that I like Crichton. He is a very intellegent man, a meticulous and excellent researcher and an astute observer of the human "animal". His tales are science fact when they are still in the fiction stage. He is always one step ahead of the headlines with his stories.
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First spammers arrested! Yeah, baby!
by MegaDude inlike i know this won't make much of a dent, but i'm glad some spammers are getting a little pain today.
computer crimes unit makes first arrests in va. .
updated: thursday, dec. 11, 2003 - 3:23 pm .
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elamona
Only 12,876,432 to go!!!!!!
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4
Environmentalism as Religion
by JeffT ini have been asked to talk about what i consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and i have a fundamental answer.
i believe it is important to act in ways that are sympathetic to the environment, and i believe this will always be a need, carrying into the future.
one of those structures is religion.
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elamona
Half a million years ago, when there weren't any people around, the earth went thur a massive warm up that lasted for 100,000 years. Buried under all of that Arctic and Antarctic ice are tropical jungles, frozen in time that are still being brung up in ice core samples. Humans have little to do with global warming(<9%). The rest is environmental-sun flares, forests,wetlands,volcanos,deep ocean vents, underground gas and coal fields that naturally emit huge quantities of gasseous vapors daily into the atmosphere. Under the oceans are methane hydrate fields so large that they defy description(trillions and trillions of tons), and they all leak enormous amounts of gas. You can find out about these things thru Google. NASA and other gov orgs have hundreds of items to read if anyone is interested. Unless you plan to build a huge pair of sunglasses for the earth, turn all of the wetlands and forests into parking lots, cork volcanos and deep sea vents, and burn up all of the coal and gas field beds you're not going to have much effect on global warming.