The most EERIE passage in a Watchtower Publication leads to atheisim

by Terry 47 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

Cygnus

As fare as evolution is concerned, I don't buy it, if man evolved from apes, there wouldn't be any apes around now, I don't deny that some species might have adapted but I believe the original of these was designed, also if evolution was true, I think man would have wings now, we've been fascinated with flying for ages, we'd also be able to breath underwater.

Let me be the first......
These are common misconceptions of what biological selection and diversity over millions of years has produced. The modern ape family is just as evolved as humans, just different branches from the same tree. And why in the world would humans be able to fly and breathe underwater?
ICBehindtheCurtain

Cause it would be extremely Cool!!!!
IC
Terry

It's strange how in all the thousands of years that civilized man has been around nothing has wiped us out yet, other planets get hit all the time, ours has in the past I know, but we haven't all been wiped out yet. As fare as evolution is concerned, I don't buy it, if man evolved from apes, there wouldn't be any apes around now, I don't deny that some species might have adapted but I believe the original of these was designed, also if evolution was true, I think man would have wings now, we've been fascinated with flying for ages, we'd also be able to breath underwater.

Let us subtract man from the consideration of how things were on Earth by going pre-history and looking at the pre-sin, pre-Fall of Man situation in nature. Before man, before the Fall you would have Earth unsullied by Satan and disobedience and pretty much things would be under the exact nature of what God had created. Right, are you with me?
Okay, what do we find there?
Rampant competition between species locked in a life or death struggle for survival. Weapons and defenses are everywhere evident in thorns, thistles, poisons and such in plants to horns, fangs, claws, armour-plating and venom in animals. Are you willing to look at this NATURAL situation and give your concept of God a big THUMB'S UP?
How long did this eat or be eaten scenario continue? What has science revealed about the length of this godly creation BEFORE man?
We are talking a loooooooooooooooooooooooong time. Millions and millions of years.
Are you willing to say all this competition, this struggle, this orgy of eating, fighting, struggling, swallowing, ripping and bleeding confirms your demand that a GOD is behind the design? What sort of God is this?
Is it any wonder no religious person I've ever met will face this and discuss it without instantly dismissing it and turning a blind eye?
The idea of a sweet, loving, benign Creator who created Earth just for man DOES NOT SQUARE with millions and millions of years of kill or be killed survival of the fittest plant and animal existence. No way.
You have to account for the facts. Even the myth of Genesis doesn't account for the facts. It tries mightily to introduce conflict as the fault of man. But, the Bible writers simply did not know about prehistory and the fossil evidence of countless generations of devoured meat and digested living matter that had come and gone a billion times before they sat down to concoct their tale of the Garden of Paradise and man's inept and insane behavior.
Nope, if you are going to insist there is an intelligent design behind Earth, you have to account for the truth of the evidence, the whole truth of the evidence and nothing but the truth of the evidence. Death, fear, deception, struggle, bloodshed and chaos were all about life in its very nature from the get-go. Man is a late-commer. You can't blame him for everything.
Terry
ICBehindtheCurtain

Terry --- I appreciate your knowledge, and I really admire you.
Let us subtract man from the consideration of how things were on Earth by going pre-history and looking at the pre-sin, pre-Fall of Man situation in nature. ; Before man, before the Fall you would have Earth unsullied by Satan and disobedience and pretty much things would be under the exact nature of what God had created. ; Right, are you with me?
In case you didn't know, I don't believe in the Genesis account, the tidy little package of man's fall, and therefore all the calamity, nah I don't buy it, besides whoever wrote Genesis borrowed the idea and added to it from more ancient peoples.
Rampant competition between species locked in a life or death struggle for survival. ; Weapons and defenses are everywhere evident in thorns, thistles, poisons and such in plants to horns, fangs, claws, armour-plating and venom in animals. ; ; Are you willing to look at this NATURAL situation and give your concept of God a big THUMB'S UP?
How long did this eat or be eaten scenario continue? What has science revealed about the length of this godly creation BEFORE man?
We are talking a loooooooooooooooooooooooong time. Millions and millions of years.
Are you willing to say all this competition, this struggle, this orgy of eating, fighting, struggling, swallowing, ripping and bleeding confirms your demand that a GOD is behind the design? ; ; What sort of God is this?
Yes I know that it was eat or be eaten, and only the strongest survived back then, a very violent time indeed. Perhaps there's a reason why dinosaurs existed, maybe they did something played some kind of role to make the conditions we live in today possible, I also don't know if God runs the show here on earth, or if another of his creations does, or if we were just put here and left to our own devices, if any superior being is supposed to oversee things here, then he is asleep at the wheel or, he is an evil and vindictive being.
Is it any wonder no religious person I've ever met will face this and discuss it without instantly dismissing it and turning a blind eye?
I'm not dismissing it, but then I'm not religious either, I'm only choosing to look at it more objectively, and I might decide to disagree with it.
The idea of a sweet, loving, benign Creator who created Earth just for man DOES NOT SQUARE with millions and millions of years of kill or be killed survival of the fittest plant and animal existence. ; No way.
Like I said before, maybe there was a reason why these things had to be as they were, maybe not.
You have to account for the facts. ; Even the myth of Genesis doesn't account for the facts. ; It tries mightily to introduce conflict as the fault of man. But, the Bible writers simply did not know about prehistory and the fossil evidence of countless generations of devoured meat and digested living matter that had come and gone a billion times before they sat down to concoct their tale of the Garden of Paradise and man's inept and insane behavior.
I agree.
Nope, if you are going to insist there is an intelligent design behind Earth, you have to account for the truth of the evidence, the whole truth of the evidence and nothing but the truth of the evidence. ; Death, fear, deception, struggle, bloodshed and chaos were all about life in its very nature from the get-go. ; ; Man is a late-commer. You can't blame him for everything.
Like I said, we cannot know everything, no one has survived from millions of years ago to tell us all the why's of our existence. Terry I've never spoken to an atheist before, I am curious to know why you feel as you do, please believe me, I'm not being sarcastic or critical, I really want to know. Is it anger at the world conditions and the fact that he or it doesn't intervene? Or just lack of valid evidence.
IC
Terry

TIME is only then, when space and matter exist, is it not

Well, um...no. Not exactly. Time is a contrived way of measuring distance between events according to some standard unit.
Time is rather like zero; it serves a useful function without being anything in particular. It is a placeholder of sorts. Without zero, computation is awfully awkward. With it, things are exceedingly easier.
That is why SPACE (which is nothing) is linked with TIME (Space-time continuum).
T.
Terry

Also, "eternity" is something vastly different from "a very long time", it is not only quantitatively different, but also qualitatively, so that given an "eternity", everything that might possibly happen, WILL happen.

You cannot have eternity WITHOUT it being a very long time, can you? Eternity is something that does not and cannot exist. When I say exist, of course, I mean you cannot freeze-frame the moment when it DOES exist, you can only postulate a sort of blurry, nebulous potential for it.
You see, the concept ETERNITY is rather silly, actually. Being only potentially feasible it sort of looms large without ever really getting underway. For one thing, ETERNITY can't ever begin to happen or approach completion. We are always between seeing it at all.
We've all seen too many science fiction movies and read too many books. Our minds are poisoned with the sense that such a concept as ETERNITY is an "actual" when it is only marginally a "potential". For all intents and purposes there can be no such thing.
T.
Terry

Who is to say that nothing was ever before created? Who is to say that there is not existence outside of our own perception or the one the Bible tells us about?
The idea of an omnipotent being, sitting around in nothingness for all eternity before our universe came into existence does seem kind of silly.

I know what you are getting at. It makes us uncomfortable to face the fact that our most fundamental concept about God is ridiculous on the face of it and so we seek to postpone the ridiculous by pushing back the boundry a bit and postulating, as you say above, "who is to say that there is not existence outside of our own perception" which almost sounds like it means something! But, frankly, it cannot.
When we begin excusing the ridiculous by resorting to the fallacious "argument from ignorance" (we base a belief on what we DON'T know) it is a sure sign we crave the fix that comes from the hypdermic syringe of the imaginary!
You've actually said it quite aptly: "The idea of an omnipotent being sitting around in nothingness for all eternity before our universe came into existence does seem kind of silly."
T.
Terry

What appears to us as infinity could be merely infinitesimal.

In math you'll find that the space between 0 and 1 to be filled with as many numbers as the distance between zero and infinity. You can slice up the fraction as small as you like and not reach the end!
Math is a lovely sort of game that can be most useful when it parallels reality and enables us to model feasible outcomes in advance. But, practically speaking, when we start believing ALL the models and asserting the are all equally applicable to reality, then, we fool ourselves mightily.
Terry
poppers

"5.To be All-Knowing there has to be ___something___to know; and with nothing existing---there is NOTHING to know (literally!)."
That seems to follow logically, doesn't it. But is it truly the case? Beyond logic and leaving content within awareness aside, can there be "knowingness" without an object to be known? Can "knowingness" stand on its own? Investigate for yourself. If it is the case with "you", then why not with "god"?
Perhaps the phrase "All-Knowing" is being misconstrued by the human mind. Perhaps it means something along these lines: With everything that arises there is the "knowing" of it, and in the absence of phenomena there is the "knowingness" of itself. Therefore, "knowingness" cannot be separate from anything, including itself!
Terry

"5.To be All-Knowing there has to be ___something___to know; and with nothing existing---there is NOTHING to know (literally!)."

That seems to follow logically, doesn't it. But is it truly the case? Beyond logic and leaving content within awareness aside, can there be "knowingness" without an object to be known? Can "knowingness" stand on its own? Investigate for yourself. If it is the case with "you", then why not with "god"?

Perhaps the phrase "All-Knowing" is being misconstrued by the human mind. Perhaps it means something along these lines: With everything that arises there is the "knowing" of it, and in the absence of phenomena there is the "knowingness" of itself. Therefore, "knowingness" cannot be separate from anything, including itself

Well, let us break it down, shall we?
To be aware is to be aware of "something".
If EXISTENCE exists----the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms.
1.Something exists which one perceives
2.One exists possessing consciousness (consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.)
Okay so far?
Let us continue.....
If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness. Why?
1.A consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms.
2.Before it could identify itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something. If that which you claim to perceive does not exist, what you possess is not consciousness.
Okay?
To exist is TO BE something, as distinguished from the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes.
What is the rule of knowledge?
A is A. Meaning what? A thing is what it is. Were it other than what it is, then, it wouldn't be.
Existence is, therefore, IDENTITY; Consciousness is IDENTIFICATION.
Reality is that which exists; the unreal does not exist. The unreal is merely that negation of existence which is the content of consciousness when it attempts to abandon reason!
EXISTENCE is a self-sufficient primary. It is not a product of a supernatural dimension, or of anything else. There is NOTHING ANTECEDENT to existence! There is nothing apart from existence. There is no alternative to existence. Existence exists and only existence exists.
Existence and Identity are NOT ATTRIBUTES of existents, they ARE the existents.
Every entity, attribute,action, event or phenomenon (including consciousness) that exists or ever has or ever will for the concept EXISTENCE and IDENTITY.
So, what does all this mean? As you have pointed out in your statement above, God is impossible in a pre-creation sense.
T.

The most EERIE passage in a Watchtower Publication leads to atheisim

Share this