WHO IS THE INJURED PARTY? What is wrong with this doctrine?

by Terry 87 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • unbaptized
    unbaptized

    Terry,

    It seems to me that you're angry at God when you should be angry at mankind and satan!

    If God is at fault for what happened to mankind in the garden of eden, then who is to blame for the eons of years of oppression, suffering, slavery, murder, wars, diseases, military weapons, drugs, racism, predjudice, slander, killings, weapons of mass destruction, division, crimes against children, crimes against humanity, polution, abuse of animals, raping of women and children in this world. I know I have not seen Jehovah hanging around the earth. I've seen his creations do more harm than good. There are people suffering around the world now as we speak in many different lands and I have yet to see any end to this calamity!

    You say that God is at fault, but I have yet to see God except for his creations!

    Also another point I would like to make regarding this post. Jehovah also placed in the garden the tree of life as well as the forbidden tree. He did not make any laws regarding the tree of life. So adam and eve had unlimited access to that tree. The only tree that he warned them of was the tree of the forbidden fruit, which they independently chose to eat off.

    The point in which you should be considering is the fact that adam and eve were perfect intelligent beings who failed the easiest test that anyone could have passed living today! Jehovah did not give them the S.A.T., he basically told them do not eat of this tree or touch it, because you will positively die.

    Now I don't know about you, but I'm kinda angry at my ancestor adam for not obeying that easy command.

  • Terry
    Terry

    You are correct in saying that hiv is not a genetic defect and some children are born without hiv symptoms.

    So that would mean that sin does not affect human genes. Tell me do you know of anyone living today that will not die because of sin?

    If it does not affect our gene's then some of us should be able to live for thousands of years!

    I'm not Scully, but, I might ask you why you think animals die. Is "sin" the only possible cause of death that comes to your mind?

  • hillary_step
    hillary_step

    Unbaptized,

    If God is at fault for what happened to mankind in the garden of eden, then who is to blame for the eons of years of oppression, suffering, slavery, murder, wars, diseases, military weapons, drugs, racism, predjudice, slander, killings, weapons of mass destruction, division, crimes against children, crimes against humanity, polution, abuse of animals, raping of women and children in this world.

    The person or power with the ability to change these things is responsible.

    A person who stands by and watches the sort of henious crimes that you describe above being committed and does not raise a finger to help the victim is liable, even under primitive human Law. Why should God get away without criticism?

    When a child that is being raped cries out for help, or someone being tortured pleads to God for relief, or a hungry body fails and dies, and God is too busy worrying about how many hours his 'servants' are knocking at doors, or how short a woman's skirt is to actually reach out and help, well, that sounds like dereliction of duty to me.

    I well remember a WT article in the 70's, when a JW in Bethel Service related his life story. He described how he had a very rough youth and that one night his friends decided to rape a girl. They did so while he watched, his comment - 'But I did not join in'. How noble of him. he seemed to be trying to convince us that even before he was a JW, he had standards!

    It seems to me that if you wish to believe in a Bible God, you must accept that his ethics are not terribly different from those expressed by that complicit rapist who now lives in the House Of God.

    HS

  • Terry
    Terry
    It seems to me that you're angry at God when you should be angry at mankind and satan!

    I think the story which REPRESENTS a God with no credible sense of Justice is the focus of my disdain. Can you see the difference?

    If God is at fault for what happened to mankind in the garden of eden, then who is to blame for the eons of years of oppression, suffering, slavery, murder.....etc.

    If I were a kennel owner who bred dogs with vicious tendencies I'd be responsible for the damage those dogs would do. If I bred dogs with pleasant dispositions the result would be quite a contrast. Jehovah (if the scriptures tell us facts) gave man his DNA which is the NATURE of man. When man acts according to this nature his deeds are evidence of that nature. Man cannot escape his own nature any more than a Pit Bull will saunter up to the postman and lick his hand!

    There are people suffering around the world now as we speak in many different lands and I have yet to see any end to this calamity!

    If men better understood they are personally responsible for their own fate and not dupes of inherited sin you might see a different kind of attitude reflected in mankind's behavior. I've personally heard many bible-taught persons give up trying to do "the right thing" because they have been taught that "even if you THINK a wrong thought is is THE SAME as having done it" and they know of no reasonable escape. So, they simply give in to whim.

    Also another point I would like to make regarding this post. Jehovah also placed in the garden the tree of life as well as the forbidden tree. He did not make any laws regarding the tree of life. So adam and eve had unlimited access to that tree.

    You tenaciously cling to the details of this fairytale as though it were reported in yesterday's newspaper. If you want to reason through this I'll oblige a step by step.

    1.Man was created. His nature (disposition, temperment, intellect, intelligence and tendencies) were created at the same time. Man did not get to CHOOSE this. None of us ever had the FREE WILL of choice concerning what sex we are, how tall or short we are, how talented or ordianry we are; not even Adam or Eve.

    2.Man and Woman were deliberately made to be INFERIOR to God rather than on par. This was a striking feature of being created human! What did this inequity CAUSE? It caused this (think hard about this):

    Humans wanted to BE LIKE THEIR FATHER KNOWING good and bad. Being created LESS was the CAUSE of them having a deficit of knowledge as to Good and Bad. They were WITHOUT deliberately.

    3.Neither Adam nor Eve had any personal experience of any kind because neither had been babies, toddlers, children or teens under the close and constant supervision and personal instruction of a mother and father who could instruct them what was right and wrong! Think about that!

    4.The blank slates (Adam and Eve) were given a state-of-being which was LESS than God and they NATURALLY DESIRED to make up this deficit by becoming more LIKE their father. In order to do this they were told eating the fruit would accomplish this goal. (Intellectual equality).

    5.The human pair were warned of consequences which involved DYING. This creates two problems in the story.

    (1). If DEATH was immediate and physical---then---it DIDN'T happen at all! The warning was false.

    (2) If the (DEATH) was metaphorical---then---in what way was this metaphor explained and understood by them???

    6.No warning at all was given by God as to the fate of any possible children which might later result from sexual relations. Why? Because they were going to DIE on the same day they ate the fruit!!

    If we switch to the "metaphor" of "death" in order to rescue the warning from being a lie; we are left with NO MENTION of "spiritualizing" this death into an INHERITED TRAIT.

    No matter how you parse this silly mythic story in Genesis it falls apart.

  • LongHairGal
    LongHairGal

    Regarding how sin/imperfection was passed on genetically to the human race from the supposedly perfect Adam and Eve: In all the years I was a JW, I never got a satisfactory answer as to how this happened.

    Everything was just speculation and the oversimplified, infantile example of the cake pan with the dent. I can see how people can ask the question of how just making a moral choice can "change the genes". It does seem ridiculous. So, the only conclusion I can come to is that God/Jehovah directly and deliberately made this happen to Adam and Eve's bodies by exposure to something like radiation (?) which might be silent but deadly and would do the trick of killing them slowly and might be enough to fracture a gene or two.

    LHG

  • kid-A
    kid-A

    "I know I have not seen Jehovah hanging around the earth."

    And you consider this an adequate excuse for his inaction? You know, in most jurisdictions, a "landlord" is legally responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of their property. Now, you assume that an all-knowing, omnipotent being (god) has created the entire universe and every element within it, yes? Then answer, who do you think is ultimately responsible for what takes place within this "created" reality?

    p.s. the "free moral agent" argument will not work here. Given that we are discussing a macro level of ultimate responsibility (the universe and all within it), even the concept of morality, good, evil, etc had to have been arbitrarily determined by god, a priori, therefore all so-called "free moral agents" are still forced to work within the arbitrarily defined constructs of "good and evil" as defined by your god.

    If you were the supreme being of the universe, would you have been incompetent enough to "design" sentient beings with the built-in flaw of being capable of transgressing your own, arbitrarily defined moral edicts?

  • Scully
    Scully

    unbaptized:

    You are correct in saying that hiv is not a genetic defect and some children are born without hiv symptoms.

    So that would mean that sin does not affect human genes. Tell me do you know of anyone living today that will not die because of sin?

    If it does not affect our gene's then some of us should be able to live for thousands of years!

    The thing about mixing "sin" into genetic theory, is that you eventually end up with people who are going to be born without sin / imperfection. Further, that would mean that those born without sin / imperfection are exempt from death, but they still die. It would also mean that people who commit more sins than others should die off more rapidly than those who do not sin as frequently - so eventually the "genetic condition" of "sin and death" should become extinct, without the need for a ransom or intervention from anyone. That's how true genetic conditions work.

    Please re-read my comments about the cake pan analogy. I do not accept the notion that "sin" is responsible for human death. Death, in my opinion, is the end result of life, no more, no less.

    As Terry so aptly pointed out, what "sin" did animals commit that causes them to die?

  • unbaptized
    unbaptized

    Hello Scully,

    There are no humans on earth that are exempt from the sin trait that plagued Adam and Eve. We are all sentenced to death. It is an inherited trait that was passed onto all his offspring.

    Scully you can't ignore the fact that mankinds physical structure was made to live forever. Our cell structure is made to reproduce and repair itself. Scientist are still baffled by this occurrence.

    As for Jehovah being the Landlord of the earth, he has furnished us with the use of the property. That's not the problem, its how we use the property that puts us in danger. It isn't the Landlords responsibility to clean the apartment or interrogate the residents inside the home. Jehovah has taken care of the earth, so he has done his part.

    Now as far as the sufferings and injustice is concerned, satan and humans are responsible for all the other issues mankind is experiencing today. If the only sentence we were given is death from Jehovah's standpoint, then why do we have so many other issues besides death. Usually death comes at the end of suffering. Where did all the suffering come from? Who has mankind killing and discriminating against his own brother? I tell you, the same one who told Adam and Eve that they can be like God by eating the forbidden fruit!

    "Satan the devil"

    I can understand you all having beef with the WTS, but to take your frustrations out on Jehovah is ridiculous. If he was all that bad, he would not let his own beloved son die to save us!

  • Vinny
    Vinny

    Terry says:... "Your very long post and apologia are straight out of Lee Strobel and John McDowell. (I work in a bookstore in the religion, philosophy and metaphysics section, remember?)"






    If what I wrote sounds like something others have already written, well then, that only adds more to its value, in my mind. There are very legitimate reasons for considering the bible as being more than just some "good book" from men. MANY people today share this same view. I just happened to post some of those specific reasons on your thread, in my own words. You'll be okay though. And what does the "length" of my post have to do with anything? Rather than address some very significant issues that I presented in favor of the bible possibly being inspired, you instead try to knock the length of my post and accuse my of some kind of plagarism. Say what?



















































  • Scully
    Scully

    There are no humans on earth that are exempt from the sin trait that plagued Adam and Eve. We are all sentenced to death. It is an inherited trait that was passed onto all his offspring.

    Scully you can't ignore the fact that mankinds physical structure was made to live forever. Our cell structure is made to reproduce and repair itself. Scientist are still baffled by this occurrence.

    Do you have some solid references for these claims (and by "solid" I do not mean the Creation book by the WTS)? Can you publicly identify the "scientist" who believe "the fact that mankinds physical structure was made to live forever" and point us to valid research to support this "fact"?

    As for Jehovah being the Landlord of the earth, he has furnished us with the use of the property. That's not the problem, its how we use the property that puts us in danger. It isn't the Landlords responsibility to clean the apartment or interrogate the residents inside the home. Jehovah has taken care of the earth, so he has done his part.

    Yeah, the Landlord takes care of the earth with tsunamis, tidal waves, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, droughts and floods. What a nice, fair and decent landlord.

    Obviously you and I are at a point where we will have to agree to disagree.

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