by StoneWall 20 Replies latest jw friends
I can't imagine any parents on earth today hiding their existence from their children and then getting mad at their
children for not finding them.
Wow that is an excellent point!
I've been talking to many religious people lately, and this should be a great discussion subject.
As a JW or Christian did you have a hard time explaining why God hasn't appeared in almost 2000 years? We're still trying to figure out why Knorr hasn't appeared for thirty two years.
(1.) was a volcano. See the book, "Volcano", part of the "Planet Earth" Time-Life book series, Chapter 1 "The Awakening of the Dragon", page 36-37, describing a spire of molten lava that was extruded from the crater of Mt. Pelee after destroying the city of St. Pierre on the island of Martinique in 1902: "The spine, soon called the Tower of Pelee, was 350 to 500 feet thick at its base and varicolored, ranging in hue from ruddy brown to purplish, gray and white. At night, the spine glowed with a tracery of red incandescent lines, and frequently a luminous spot coud be seen at its tip"... This would have given off smoke/steam by day, and glowed "like a pillar of fire" at night.
Along with that, check the bible verses that describe Moses going up on the mountain to receive the ten commandments and see if you can guess what sort of a mountain it was.... I spotted that when I was a little rockhound who had just become interested in vulcanology; only 8 or 9 years old, and knew from that point on that the bible itself was simply the words of men...
The landscapes of Israel/Syria are pocked with Holocene volcanoes - eruptions which are 10,000 years old or younger. The primitive, superstitious, ignorant, nomadic Middle Eastern men who wrote the bible would have looked upon the fire of a volcanic eruption as something magical from their god... Which also may tie in with a theory I read about some years ago that I haven't had time to check on - yet. Something about an archaeological theory that YHWH/Jah/whatever was originally an offshoot of the god Ba'al - Ba'al being a god of lightening and also possibly a god of fire. I have to look into that again....
(2.) is a naturally occuring phenomenon in some areas of the Middle East. There was some discussion (don't have time to find the websites now but will post them later if anyone's interested) about the site of the sea being mis-translated as the "Red" Sea but should have been translated as the "Reed" sea - much shallower. The website or sites discussed the probability that the "Reed" sea was shallow enough for a strong east wind to temporarily dry up a passageway sufficient for a widely-spread-out tribal group to pass through, but a heavily-armed military troop (or troops - especially with heavily armored chariots) would tend to break through a lightly dried-up surface crust and bog down in the sodden soil that was only lightly dried out.
(3.) The term "Christ" originally applied to the so-called "Pagan" Greek God Dionysus, who coincidentally was born of a virgin (or is that Mithras??) in a humble cave (which is the original translation of the term nowadays translated as 'manger'), was humiliated at the hands of his enemies, cruelly executed only to be reborn and triumphantly dominate them. His sacrificial death was symbolized by the cutting down of the dead grapevines, and after the autumnal harvest when the grapes had been harvested and turned into wine, a ceremony in which the wine was drunk was said to be the symbolic drinking of the sacrificial God's blood, which he shed for the benefit of mankind.... Sound familiar??? The worship of Dionysus began at least ONE THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED years BEFORE Jesus was a gleam in a Greco-Romanized Jewish scribe's eye.... So who plagiarized from whom, eh??
(4.) The snake was a sacred symbol long before this story came along. It was often associated with Goddess worship, which may have been the reason that both the woman and the snake were 'demonized' in this particular story. By the way, it is highly probable that the book of Exodus is actually much older than the book of Genesis, despite their respective positions in the bible, because in the book of Exodus Moses made a copper/bronze image of a snake (on a stake) for the Israelites to look upon to cure them of their sicknesses. But in the book of Genesis, suddenly the snake is a symbol of evil. When I first ran into that story in Exodus, I read ahead several chapters in Exodus to see where the Israelites were punished for worshipping a graven image!! Imagine my surprise to find that, not only were they not punished, but this very example of hypocritical idolatry worship was a forerunner for the image of Jesus himself! That was another incident which proved the human origins of the bible to me - I was only 7 or 8 when I noticed that discrepancy!!
And there is so much more that I don't have time to go into right now...
As part of the Bible's attempt to defend itself from this kind of exposure, it says that these miracles would cease. And, this explains why God has done nothing in the past nearly 2,000 years--and people still believe it!
Now, I explain why God has not appeared within the past 2,000 years. The Bible lies.
stonewall,
The JWs response to this is that "we have the Bible and therefore we don't need miracles"
Jesus had the scrolls as well, but he still needed angelic help when he went into the wilderness.
This is a problem that my wife and I had , and still have, why was God so active back there, but not anymore.?
If Jesus took over the reins why doesn’t he carry on in the same mode.?
Good question Stonewall, but can’t reason why.
KT
When I was in the cult I never stopped to think about that question, I was quite happily plodding along believing that it was all a blink of the eye to Jehovah and that the end was imminent.
It was only when I left and joined a church, that this question really started bothering me. I came to the conclusion that God's existence was clearly up for debate and couldn't reconcile a supernatural character hiding himself from his children and as Stonewell so eloquently put it, "being mad at them for not finding him". It doesn't add up.
I really would love to be proved wrong and for an Almighty Creator to finally come out of the closet but I think we are all in for an Almighty long wait......
Very nice posts all.
I have enjoyed reading all of your replies/responses. It at least lets me know that there are many others who had
contemplated this in some form or fashion.
Ziddina I appreciate how you went to the extra effort to list each of the 4 occasions i listed and attempt to give
a rational response on each one. But the main thing I was after as I stated at the beginning is for sake of less
arguments lets just take the bible at face value (believers as well as non-believers) and say that these things all did
occur as stated in the scriptures. My point is why was it needed/acceptable for God to show that He is/was/am to
all those of various ages and spread out over many different time periods and yet all we get is where some men
wrote about him and that is suppose to suffice for us. Kinda seems unfair.
As KayTee already mentioned as well as truthseeker why was God so active back then and not now. I would
have to agree with truthseeker about I would prefer to see a miracle, not read about it. And good point above in post
about even Jesus according to bible had the scrolls of Isaiah and others he read from as well as Angelic help.
So to put it in other words, why did they get all these proofs of God's existence(miracles,angels appearing to them,
God's own voice, food falling from heaven etc. etc.) and we get nothing other than translations of text that weren't even
written in our own native tongue and that by all accounts has changed somewhat and yet we are to be judged by it?
The balancing scales don't seem quite level or fair. That would be like me having two kids and showing myself to
the one and not to the other, but leaving notes scattered about the house for the second kid and expecting both of
them to somehow put the same amount of trust and faith in me.
Anyhow points I'm pondering,
StoneWall
Oh and by the way Ziddina welcome to the board!
I haven't had a chance to greet you and looking at your post count I can see you're still relatively new to board.
I can already tell you're going to have a lot of good thoughts,ideas, as well as dialogue to contribute to the board
Why was it Ok for him to appear to those people back then to convince them that he was and is and yet its a no-no for us today?
A sister in my old KH told my 7 yr old daughter that we hurt God's feelings, that is why he doens't talk to us today.
